Blogs from Asia - page 13040

Creator was in a great mood. He folded the earth crust to form several lofty peaks, dribbled a few drops of water to form 3 rivers and gifted it to several species to make their habitat. Homo sapiens decorated it with tea plants and Niligiris and call it “MUNNAR”, place where 3 rivers flows. This weekend we decided to explore this part of the creator’s creation and to feel its terrain on our bikes. Before going further I would like to introduce the team. Team of six includes- Anand, Arvind, Umesh, our bikes, Yamaha(YBX), splendor and myself Vinay. Arvind had come from Bangalore on some work and wanted to make his weekend in Kerala a memorable one. We powered our machines to an 135kms odyssey towards Munnar at 8:30am. It was a longest journey on ... read more

We left Phnom Penh in the early afternoon, retracing our steps 75ks to Skoun, (home of the deep fried wolf spider by the way), where the road splits off to the east. It was a smooth ride, pretty trafficy close to the city but we didn’t exactly get up and out early to avoid that. After a great day of riding the sun set on us so we turned on our lights and continued on for a few km. At one point Nikki lost sight of the edge of the road and went off into the dirt breaking one of the clips on her rear pannier in the process. Instead of fixing the clip we checked out this little store/restaurant across the road. We talked to the owner and asked if there was a place for ... read more

So, here we are in KL. Its certainly got a lot going for it. A ridiculous oversized shopping mals that its pretty likely gives anything in the world a run for its money (Times Square), Petronas Towers ofcourse - until recently the tallest in the world, the KL tower (like the Sears Tower really), but its not really got a whole lot of history (or character as a result). Still its interesting for a time and if we weren't stuck here finishing off our vacinations, or if we came with bags of money to spend, it would probably have been better considered. Basically, its a bog standard city, with some bells and whistles. Times Square Mall is mental. Its got two big cinemas, its got 10 floors of shops and open viewing between 7 floors ... read more

Saturday - March 10 Can’t believe I’ve been here 17 days, already. Every day is exciting, stimulating, frustrating, confusing, and EXCELLENT. Woke up at 7:30 and studied my Pinyin for about 45 minutes before I got out of bed. It’s so frustrating trying to learn the new words because you also have to learn the, usually 2 tones for each word. Without the tones the words mean things you do not wish to mean; just like a different word. I won’t even talk about the characters; they will be impossible to learn in 21 more days, but I will be continually tested on them. At some point the teacher(s), I assume, will just give up trying to get me to remember which character goes with each word, let alone expect me to be able to write ... read more

saturday march 10 I bought this movie "Yi Yi" months ago but hadn't watched it yet. It's a film by Edward Yang and takes place in Taipei and in Tokyo. It was super long, nearly three hours at 178 minutes, but it was worth it. Seemed slow at times, but really the characters are very well developed. The story follows a modern day family in Taipei . It starts with a wedding and ends with a funeral. The father, NJ, is a hardworking businessman with a quiet demeanor. His wife, Min Min, is frustrated with life and goes off to join a monestary for most of the movie. Ting-Ting, the teenage daughter, is learning about love and friendship. And the little boy, Yang Yang, has big questions about life that the adults have a hard time ... read more