Christine's take on the trip so far.

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Christine has sent out a much more detailed record of our travels. With a small fee paid for the privilage of posting... Here it is... Enjoy


We left Dalian with about 30 of my colleagues on the plane and arrived in Bangkok (a change from -5 to + 30 degrees made it BIT difficult with the baggage packing). For the first few days, I traveled with John, Marilee, and Margot (who also left the school for good), and reminisced about the good old days in Bangkok. Funny enough, I didn’t go visit any tourist places in Bangkok and John didn’t seem too eager to get off his butt either. What did we do then? Hmmm, I’m actually not quite sure, but I think that we ate Thai food until our tummies doubled its size (not from dysentery)!

I had to wait to get my Indian visa, so John and I left Bangkok (& our other 2 friends) and headed to Ayuthaya, Kaoh Yai national park, Mostly there were ruin temples, wildlife (some monkeys?), pottery arts ,and good food to be sought. Then we headed back to Bangkok and stayed at the “Middle East” hotel (yes, that was weird) until our flight to Mumbai!

We stayed only 1 night in Mumbai just to get a bus ticket out to Ellora. The city was absolutely nuts-o, with noisy rickshaws, thick smog, dirty yet expensive hotels, and stares all around. We were so thankful to reach Ellora, a tiny village just outside the World Heritage site - a huge cluster of ruin temples that had been carved out of a hillside. Most people spend a day at the caves, but John and I spent 3 days looking through Buddhist, Hindi, and Jain carvings! We met an extremely helpful man named Atihk, who was the brother of the guesthouse owner, and he went to extremes to take us around several villages. He even invited us for dinner at his home where his wife cooked us the best dinner yet! We couldn’t really see what we were eating because the power was out, but I think that it was spinach paneer, dal, rice, chapatti, chai and some kind of a puffed rice cracker! We entertained their 3 daughters with our digital camera and Atihk’s wife ended up giving me a beautiful woolen shawl because we made them so happy!

We were sad to leave Atihk’s family and Ellora, but we had to go on. Next was a stop in Lonar, a crater that had been filled in with a lake. The villagers had never seen tourists before so we had an entourage of “hello-ing” children wherever we walked. Our 2-hour wait at the bus stop was busied with hoards of staring, curious people led by one man who would interrogate us about everything from our salary ($0) to our children (0).

We took some bumpy bus rides & chaotic train rides over a few days and ended up in Hyderabad. It was over those days that we learned how inefficient, maddening, and confusing the Indian transportation system is. We finally got to Hyderabad, which is supposed to be the IT capital of India. Incidentally, John and I took a 2 hour walk before finding an internet café! We stayed in the city for 3 nights, just to get some supplies and emailing done, and then headed for Hampi.

If you asked me why I chose to stop in Hampi, I would say that the name sounded good. The little village sat right in the middle of field of temples and huge boulders that made the scenery look outright bizarre. But we loved the atmosphere cuz it was chilled out, man! This was also the first place where they served Chinese, Israeli, Italian, Japanese food, which of course, was nothing like we know it in Vancouver. But at least it wasn’t curry. We were getting a tad tired of it after 2 weeks of mushed up veggies.

We finally landed on the west coast of India this week in the state of Goa. This is the place where you can get real Portugese food, Christian churches, booze, beaches, and civilized people! In other words, it’s the most “westernized” city that we’ve encountered, despite the occasional hippie that wanders by. So far, we visited the remains of St. Francis Xavier in Old Goa, celebrated Carnival on the streets of Panaji, ate fish thalis until we got sick, played in the mini surfs of Anjuna, and shopped for jewelry and knick-knacks until my backpack was ready to burst.

So that leaves us here, still on Palolem beach in Goa, where John and I have done nothing today bit drink beer on the beach interrupted by the occasional dip in ocean. We found a Mexican restaurant in town so we’re going to gorge ourselves out because we know that a good plate of nachos is hard to come by in India! Itadakimasu! (sorry, don’t know the word in Mexican)

Next on our agenda are the hill stations in the central south of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which should bring us cooler temperatures and better working computers (since these ones are not sitting in an AC room)!

I hope everyone is doing well and celebrating Chinese New Year! Please write whenever you can, as I would love to hear your stories. Bye for now!

Christine

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