God's Own Country - Kerala, Southern India

Hooray for travelling again!

Malaysians used to say if one can drive in Kuala Lumpur, one can definitely drive anywhere in the world. I think this no longer stands. Not after I’ve seen the traffic in Myanmar, Egypt, and more recently, Kerala, India.

Stuck in traffic

One thing’s for sure though, God was definitely looking out for us when we were traveling on the roads in Kerala. Imagine a two-lane road that’s a mere seven feet wide.   You overtake another tuk tuk that is overtaking a truck and there’s an oncoming convertible on the other lane coming at you as a couple of pedestrians attempts to very slowly, at a grandma's hobble pace, cross the road.  Everyone honks and flashes their vehicle lights.   And miraculously, everyone makes it safely to where they need to be.   This, is the traffic situation in all of Kerala.

To drive on Kerala’s cramp, small roads requires a lot of patience, concentration, extremely good judgement, and a smidgen of road-hog attitude.  As a passenger, the ride involves long naps - a 200km car ride takes six butt-numbing hours – intermittent rushes of adrenaline, and new shoes (“The front half of my right Timberland are all worn down because I helped slam on the [invisible] breaks [on my side of the car] every time we came too close to hitting a car.” – Dad.)

When I picture India, I think dancing maidens clad in colourful saris bursting into song.   The Taj Mahal.   Ganges River.  Then I think pollution.  Dusty air.  Dirty, bacteria-filled tap water you wouldn’t even risk to rinse your mouth with.  Bustling crowds (if I have to name one pet peeve, it would be invasion of personal space.)  And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t exactly ecstatic about the prospect of spending nine days in a place where (I thought) my personal space would be invaded.   What can I say?  Canada morphed me into a gazelle.   I love my wide open spaces.  Did I mention I loathe crowds?

My perception couldn’t be more skewed:  Crisp, fresh air.  Abundance of clean water (while we didn't drink directly from the tap, we did wash our hands and rinse our mouths using tap water).  In fact, if I were a herd of gazelle, I’d have more than enough empty space to run about in the rolling hills of Munnar with its beautiful tea plantations.

Tea plantations as far as the eyes can see

Spot the teeny-tiny tea pickers

That one goat.
(The bus jerked around the corner
as the camera snapped)

While we didn't see any gazelles, we did chance upon Nilgiri Tahr, an endangered species of mountain goat.   To spot these goats required an eight-minute, heart pumping, teeth-rattling, five-mile bus ride through the narrow winding roads into Eravikulam National Park.  We glimpsed one goat peeking over on the way in. My thoughts at that point was, "Man, it would totally suck if this was the one goat I see after all this way." (Signs at the park entrance had warned "Sighting of goats by chance.")  We truly thought this was the case having hiked all the way to the end of the trail and only spotting herds of these goats - looking itty-bity - up the hills far far away.  Lady Luck was with us however, on our way down.  We hit the mother of Nilgiri Tahr jackpots when one by one, goats started to slowly make their way down the hill towards us.

Nilgiri Tahr look more like deer

Our accommodation
perched atop a tree

Words that spring to mind if I were asked to describe Munnar: Green. Serene.  Peaceful.  Mind-blowingly gorgeous.  Mother.Effing.Cold. Who would have thought to associate cold with India?  We didn't.  To say we came unprepared would be an understatement.   Dad, in charge of looking up the weather said the lowest temperatures we'd endure would be 18°C. Was he even close?  Nah uh.  Try 0°C.   (Ba, you're officially fired from weather research duties.)  Top that off with a faulty water-heater in a heat-less bamboo hut perched atop a tree at 6,900 feet above sea level for the night, we froze our butts off.  Layering up (in my case, four shirts and three pairs of pants - all cotton-made, which was pretty much everything in my luggage) didn't help much with heat retention.  Dad resorted to wearing a wind-proof, water-proof, plastic raincoat to bed.  The people at the resort had to drop a match into their diesel tank to melt the frozen diesel in order to start the jeep the next morning. How they didn't blow themselves up is a wonder.  We laugh about it now, but it was a pretty torturous night.

Alleppey - Venice of the East

How does one transport a goat if one lives in the backwaters?  By boat, of course!

While I can't honestly say that it reminds me of Venice, staying on a houseboat was quite cool.  I could sit back and relax, with a camera at the ready for photo moments to drift by.  Plus, I could bust out in capris and not worry about people staring at me.  (Yes, people do literally stand long minutes in close proximity and gawk at foreign women wearing shorts.  I had a crowd gathering three feet away from me having arrive at Cochin Airport in a snug fitting 3/4-sleeved shirt and 3/4 length pants.  It was unnerving and not in the least bit flattering to have men leering and pointing at you.  If there's one tip I can impart having traveled so many places, it'll be to do your homework on what (not) to wear in a foreign country.)   

Clockwise from top two pictures:  Women doing laundry,
bathing with daddy, old man fishing

Kovalam

Having spent six days in Kerala, this was the first place in India we came across another (yep, just one) fellow Asian of the yellow-skin variety.  He looked as surprised to see us as we were him.  He kept gaping at us and looked very much like he wanted to come over to say hello just to make sure we weren't an illusion.  Poor guy, must have been totally weird not seeing another yellow-being for days and then greeted with the sight of four enjoying the sights. 

Oh, funny story.  This was a conversation between myself and a cigarette seller ("CS") by the beach.

CS: Cigarettes?

Me: Shakes Head 

CS: No cigarettes? 

Me: No, thank you. 

CS: You no smoke? 

Me: No, I don't. 

CS: Good. Smoking is bad for health.

Two things I won't ever get bored of: the sounds of pounding waves and sunsets.

Gorgeous sunset in Kovalam

Selected Pictures from Cochin

Chinese fishing nets still used by the Indians

School children waiting for / boarding the bus

Cute lil' Indian girl pulling a face at the camera

Some of you might think it weird that we flew all the way to India only to immerse ourselves in nature and all its glory. Yea, I'm a tad gutted I didn't get see the Taj Mahal, but India, if you didn't know already, is a friggin' huge country. One of these days, Taj Mahal will happen. In the meantime, visit Swan's blog for her take on Northern India. (errr...she's not there yet, but she will be :P! Update: Swan's in India right now and her experiences are drastically different from the family's.  Check out her adventures here.)

Travel Agency: Travel Bug India (Agent Name: Pratheesh)

Accommodations:

Cochin: Blue Waters Cherai, Travancore Court

Munnar: Swiss County, Tall Trees, Nature Zone Tree House

Alleppey: Houseboat

Trivandrum: Poovar Island Resort

Myanmar De-mystified

If you're ever plonked into Myanmar with only a map and no knowledge of Burmese, well...good luck.  For one, there's no satellite, so you don't have the option of calling someone to seek help even if you have international roaming on your cell phone. Two, road signs are scarce.  (Yes, this may easily be a repetition of my blunder in Prague, but I swear, I looked!) And even if there are road signs, outside Yangon, it's all in Burmese, with no English translation. 

Wait, which side of the road
should we be driving on again?

Heck, the road system itself took me some time to figure out.  The taxi we'd taken upon arrival in Yangon International airport was a right-hand driven vehicle.  Preoccupied with taking in the Yangon scenery on our way into town, it wasn't until much later - during one of our hairy dashes across the chaotic traffic - did we figure out that Myanmar drives on the right side of the road.  Yet, less than 50% of these vehicles are left-hand driven.  It's the weirdest thing.  So how, you may ask, do cars overtake other cars on the road?  According to Wikipedia: 

“

All vehicles are driven with a passenger called a "spare" in place to watch the oncoming traffic and inform the driver as to whether it is safe to overtake or not.

”

My numerous taxi rides in this country tells me otherwise: Drivers simply ease their cars to the left side of the road and pray that there's no oncoming traffic.  Jeepers.

Day one in Yangon was spent in Bogyoke Aung San (Scott) Market shopping for semi-precious jewelry and exchanging money.  Turns out that the forums on the www are right.  The Burmese accept only clean, crisp, new-looking US dollars.  Notes with a distinct folded crease down the middle, or those with slight scribbles, inked, or even the most minuscule tear are rejected.  With no ATM machines or credit card terminals, we found ourselves with hundreds of "unusable" US dollars that no merchant was willing to accept.  The ironic thing is that local Burmese kyat notes in the most deplorable conditions can be used. One grocery store owner in Nyaung Shwe attempted to return our change with a torn 500 kyat note - the missing half of which was patched with paper to complete the rectangle shape of the bank note.

Bagan

Bird's eye view from Pyathadar Pagoda

Absolutely astounding.  Despite our three attempts to view the sunrise and two sunsets in this ancient city failing spectacularly - rain for the first two sunrise attempts; ominous looking clouds sliding over the sun and remaining there for exactly the duration for the third sunrise and both sunset attempts - we had a brilliant time there.

The failed sunrise attempts provided the unexpected privilege to see a group of alm-seeking Buddhist monks making their way to the market.  The footfalls of the burgandy-clad monks, crunching quietly into the sand and mud, as they trek across the still asleep town, is a far cry from the scene in Luang Prabang - or so I think.  Mind you, I haven't yet have the opportunity to travel Luang Prabang, but I imagine the scene there to be quite the circus, what with chattering tourists jostling to take pictures of monks on their morning rounds.

Maybe it's the off-season. But life in Bagan is simple, unhurried.  Horse carts share the roads with locals on bicycles. Trucks packed with people and piled high with sackfuls of what-not putter past women balancing huge baskets on their heads.

Left pic - Burmese women promptly balancing their empty basket on their heads after being dropped off
Right pic - A lady giving alms to Buddhist monks in the early morning

The classic way of traveling around Bagan is by horse cart.  The other way is to rent a bicycle and explore on your own.  We did both, the latter of which we sweated lakes under the hot afternoon sun.  The last time any family member ever did any proper cycling - bar the older sister who up until a couple of years ago was a serious rider - was at least seven years ago (30, for mom).  The experience made for some pretty hilarious moments.  At any point in time where we had to cross the road to a cluster of temples located on the other side of where we were, my lovely mother, so diffident was she in her cycling abilities, would break abruptly while jamming her feet to the ground. Once her rickety bicycle screeched to a painful halt, she'd hop off her bicycle and proceed to wheel it across the street to where we needed to be.

The romantically lit stair-
well of Temple 2007

With the exception of Shwesandaw Pagoda, our clambers up the narrow, steep staircases of the temples are often enveloped in darkness and overwhelmed with the smell of bat poo.  The adorable little brother of a caretaker in Temple 2007* together with his equally little friend lit candles along the stairwell for us.  Our climb(s) were rewarded with unparalleled views of Bagan:   


Note*: Most of the 4,000+ temples are unnamed and identified only by numbers.

Magnificent panaromic view of the temples and pagodas of Bagan from Shwesandaw Pagoda 

The impressive Ananda Pagoda.
(Had to wade through an icky ankle deep puddle to take this picture!)

Inle Lake

From the dusty, hot weather of Bagan, we arrived to the cool climate of Shan state where Inle Lake is.  Running low on kyats, we were dismayed to find that the taxi drivers outside the airport were quoting a fare twice than what we know it to be.  No driver budged from their asking price, and in the end, we decided on sharing it with a couple of Canadian boys who'd disembarked from the same plane.  Now, sharing a car with six people isn't usually a big problem, unless, 

(a) The car is small, or

(b) The passengers are taller, like, way taller than the average Asian and of football player size, or 

(c) All of the above

How we managed to squeeze into the teeny tiny car, I don't know.  But after an hour bouncing on roads full of potholes and driving through calf-deep water (it had been pouring rain earlier that morning), feeling like squished sardines and desperately hoping that the car doesn't break down half way, we finally arrived at Nyaung Shwe, the town a few kilometres north of Inle Lake.

We took it easy that first day, meandering through the busy town, trying out various street foods by pointing at dishes ordered by locals seated at another table.  It should be mentioned here that any traveler visiting the Shan state of Myanmar should most definitely try the very tasty Shan noodle.  The closest thing I can liken this dish to is Malaysia's gan-lao kuey teow (干捞粿条), though it tastes nothing like our dish and is soupier, stickier, spicier, and peanut-tier. Yummers.


We left for the lake bright and early on day two.  Five minutes into our journey, we spotted fishermen afar doing the one legged rowing that is unique to the region.

A lone fisherman fishing while maneuvering the boat using one leg only 

Boats filled with sacks of tomatoes packed to the brim sped along in the opposite direction.  When asked where the tomatoes are from, our boatman steered us into a maze of canals and we found ourselves in the midst of a tomato farm - rows upon rows of tomato plants floating on the lake.  It was explained to us that to create these farms, the farmers anchor thin bamboo poles to the lake bed and create these strips using mud and water hyacinth dredged from the bottom of the lake.  Tomato plants are then planted on these strips, absorbing the necessary nutrients from these man-made islands.  Most fascinating.

Floating tomato farm at Inle Lake

We had the wonderful opportunity to meet a beautiful long-neck lady of the Paduang tribe.  The brass coils, we were told, are first applied to an eight-year old child, then longer coils are added at eleven, and again at fifteen.  It doesn't look it, but gosh, these rings are heavy! They had one of these on display and it weighted about four kilograms by feel. 

Upper left - One legged rowing fisherman
Lower left - Farmers harvesting water hyacinth for the tomato bed
Right - Beautiful long-neck lady from the Paduang tribe

 Yangon
The heat was a slap to the face after Inle Lake.  We arrived at our accommodation feeling irritated, hot and hungry, but all these were forgotten when greeted with the view from our room.

Wowza! Shwedagon Pagoda from our room.

Up-close, this great pagoda is positively marvelous.  The yellow you see in the pictures? REAL GOLD.  And there's a friggin' diamond at the very tip. Seriously. 

“

The golden glow can be attributed to the 8,688 solid gold bars plated on the lower pagoda whereas another 13,513 bars are plated on the higher pagoda.  The tip of the stupa, visible only to the gods or for those who get a birds eye view of the Shwedagon Pagoda is set with 5,448 diamonds, 2,317 rubies, sapphires and other gems.  About 1,065 golden bells help in praying to the gods whereas a single 76 carat diamond winks to the gods from the very top. Read more here and here.

”

76 carat diamond! That, my friend, is one super whopper of a diamond.  Some person - a tourist, probably - decided to make life easy for fellow Lonely Planet readers and took the liberty to mark "X's"  on the ground behind one temple.  Depending on which "X" one stands (when it's dark out) and look at the tip of the pagoda, one would be able to see the tip glinting in that precious stone's colour (i.e. ruby red, emerald green, white diamond, yellow & orange gems.)  Very cool.

We spent a good five hours people watching and getting bedazzled by the various sparkling temples in the vicinity.  

To think that we first arrived with no itinerary and no plans, only vague ideas of the places we'd like to hit.  It all worked out beautifully in the end.   

For more on Myanmar, visit my dear friends' Paula and Adam's travelling blog.

Taiwan...Touch Your Heart?

Clockwise from left: The staircase of Jiufen, turquoise waters of Tarako Gorge, the Theatre
at Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, Taipei 101, Sunrise at Alishan

Cliche tagline, but dang, if it wasn't right! The vibrant city of Taipei bustling with youthful energy is in complete juxtaposition of the peacefulness and tranquility exuding from the forest of Alishan. Chilly dawns reminded me of frosty mornings in New Zealand while mild temperatures during the day brought me right back to my gallivanting days in Victoria. We were gobbling ourselves silly with the crazy varieties of food available - explains that additional doughnut ring around the waist while ushering into the new year.

So, why Taiwan? In jest, I laid it out in ten words on a friend's Facebook wall:

A little background here: by cutie-guy, I mean this hottie who sat behind me in Math Class in first year university, whom I had a bit of a girly crush on. His debut in this detective TV series mid-last year propelled him into one of Taiwan's hottest hearthrobs.

M.A.C aka Math Asian Cutie. That was the nickname I bestowed him. Little did I know that that was close enough to his real name - Mark Chao 赵又廷 <-- To 
those reading this (all five of you): I've made it easy for you to go Google him.

Clearly, the seduction failed to take place. I was however, lamblasted with life-size cutouts of him promoting Let's Cafe coffee in most Family Marts and 7-11s available at just about every street corner of Taiwan. Le sigh. And I quote my sister, "Wow. You really did miss the boat on MAC. Who knew that dudes that look like that exist in our world?" I know, Jie. I know :( Better luck next time, I s'ppose. But for now, here are some selected pictures from Taiwan.

Next up: Family Reunion in Europe. Hola!

Indescribable beauty of Tarako Gorge

Frost in the morning at Alishan

The forest railway tracks leading through Alishan

Elder Sister Lake at Alishan. Legend can be read here.

Egypt in Adjectives

Showing him my sad face after the Egyptian boy refused my counter-offer price for a magnet I was attempting to purchase, he attempts to sweet-talk me, "You are beautiful, yes. But I cannot make you happy."

Good businessmen, these Egyptians. They know their priorities and would rather take money over a good-looking girl. I never got that magnet I wanted, but I was much tickled by the 5 marriage proposals I received that day. Not that it's anything brag-able, since Egyptians men pretty much on anything that moves.

The three pyramids at Giza

It's indescribable, the feelings I went through when I first saw the pyramids. They are...stony. Bricky. So...quadrilateral. One big masonry mass just to house one corpse. Nuts. There's the huge disappointment you deal with when you realized the highlight of the pyramid is in fact, what you see on the outside. While it had to be done, the venture into the pyramid was not as I imagined. No intricate carvings on the walls (you get those at the Valley of Kings); just a long ape-like crouch-crawl in and out the passageway, into this empty square in the middle of the pyramid. And that was that. Great thigh toners though. Dad walked around like a duck, cringing in pain for every step he took for the following two days.

All things Egyptian: Camels & Pyramids

Chaotic would be the first thing that comes to mind when in Cairo. Buses, cars, and motorcycles all surge to move forward in traffic that stretches for miles whilst people and donkey carts jostle to cross the roads.

Luxurious is nary a word I use to describe my travels in the past two years. This time around, it wasn't your typical slugging-it-out, crap-I-only-have-20-dollars-left-so-let's-eat-peanut-butter-sandwich-again-so-I-can-get-more-beer backpacking trip. More like, wow, Hilton hotels; ohmigosh, full-course buffet meals.

I could get used to traveling like this.

Sand, sand and more sand.  Sunrise on our way to Abu Simbel

Felucca-ing into the sunset in Aswan

Ma pulls a face of Horus at Horus, after seeing sculptures of this God one time too many.

Bali Bliss

A place where greedy monkeys with sweet hairstyles run wild, and I am a millionaire.

Literally.

Things to do before I hit 35:
1) Skiing / Snowboarding
2) Surfing
3) Skydiving

It's one down, two more to go. And no, it's not skiing/snowboarding. Rather, it's surfing. I know I know. I've lived in Victoria and was, for the past four years, within half a day's worth of travel to snowy peaks such as Mount Washington or Whistler, and I've never had any snow action. Shocking, innit?

Surfing was great. It also caused great pain: I got owned by the waves; stupendous wipeouts, crashing headlong / butt-long / sideways and just about any other way you can imagine, into the bare, gritty sand. ("My goodness, what happened to you?!" exclaimed my very concerned parents upon seeing the spectacular black and blues I sported on every visible part of my body.) I think I have Bali sand permanently ingrained into my elbows and hips. Hot.

In hindsight, this trip was highly necessary. A bit like having the dessert before the main course (this is written in relation to my slowly easing back into life in Malaysia). I think I found some sort of consolation and - for lack of words - inner peace that my decision to move back to my homeland is the right one.

Balinese sunset

One of the many Hindu temples on the island

Peace & tranquility