"Daily, daily" --- from New Delhi, Indo

Some things that have happened:

Luke and I just got tea and pokoras (breakfast) from street vendors. A cool Indian guy nearby who spoke spotty English in a thick accent that made it very difficult to understand him invited us to share his bench, and we chatted with him for awhile about nothing important, his necklace, where to get great sweets, and some other stuff. He then asked us if we smoke ganja and told us to wait a second, he would go get his great stuff and come back with it. We were hesitant because while there doesn't actually seem to be rules or laws here, it is illegal and Indian prison can't be fun. Prison anywhere can't be fun. He didn't want any money or anything, saying: "No, no, no, its friendship. You are my big brothers. No, only brothers. No big, no small. We all brothers. I smoke the ganja to see God. When smoke, go 100 kilometers away. You wait, wait." So we kept eating our food and waited to see what would happen. He told ust that he smokes daily right where we were, on a bench off of Main Bazaar, a busy touristy area of New Delhi. It's basically a big marketplace. He came back and said one of his friends must have stolen it from him and that if we really wanted it we would have to go 20 km. away with him to get it. We weren't interested. He really tried to get us to follow him but since we have to check out today and we both wanted to use the internet, we told him we couldn't. Luke gave him a quarter as a souvenir (he had a necklace on made out of coins, and he showed us his Canadian dollar coin, which seemed to be the centerpiece, but told us he had no idea how much it was worth) and he asked me for my phone number so that after I got back to America, I could figure out what pills he needed to help him grow his hair back (he was bald on top and said he always wears his hat to hide it) and then he could call me and get the name of the medicine. I gave him my cell phone number in Japan even though I think he was in earnest, and Luke and I wrote our names down for him so he could remember us.

Right when we arrived we wandered around the city for a little bit and the poverty we saw (and continue to see) was quite extreme. On the side of a major highway we saw a homeless guy laying on his back, totally splayed out and one of his testicles had popped out through a hole in his shorts. He appeared to be asleep. There are lots of people begging, and last night on a tuk-tuk ride back from where Ghandi and Nehru's ashes are kept, I saw a man asleep at a bus stop, stark naked, and he had pissed himself. Luke met a young kid on his first night here and they were walking and talking together when they passed a big crowd of people. The kid looked at everyone standing around, quietly, and said "it must be a death." It turned out to be a crazy woman arguing with someone, but the fact that it COULD have been a death helps you to understand what its like here. While I've been warned about the poverty here, I've already had exposure to it, as I saw a woman squat down and piss under a tree in Kuala Lumpur, right on a busy road where traffic was backed up in both directions and most of the tourists stay in hotels and hostels.

It goes without saying that the food is indredible. A lot of it is fried which I'm not crazy about, but everything is great. We bought two cucumbers, spiced and with lemon juice on top, which were refreshing since its so damned hot here. We've been to this one restaurant, The Gem, just around the corner, twice for dinner and it has been incredible both times. Masala Chicken, Masala Thosai, some tofu dish, naan, pokoras and samosas, plenty of beer and whiskey, and other stuff that I couldn't name. I think it would be impossible to convey how great the food is to you. You'd have to come here and try it yourself.

We've already bought our train tickets to the border with Nepal and we leave tonight. Its a 12 hour train ride and we should arrive by 8am tomorrow, the 16th. We've been here for 2 full days already and chose to stay that long just because we couldn't find an available train any earlier. I feel as though we've seen as much of the city as we need to and when we return it will only be to fly home (if I come back with Luke on the 21st which I still haven't decided yet).

I guess that's about it. Oh yeah, and my Indian Airways Express flight, the one that should have taken off at 6:50am from Singapore and landed in Chennai at 1:30pm, left at 9:50am and landed at 8pm. Fantastic. The three days right before I met Luke, saw me sleeping on an overnight bus, in a chair in the Singapore airport, and then in a chair at the Chennai airport. I was so happy to have a bed in Delhi that words can't describe it.

My international friends

I've met a few cool people. Canadians are not among them.

I met these two Canadian girls, Sherry and her older sister while taking a bus to Taman Negara. They were aggressively patriotic which struck me as very un-Canadian. While we were chatting I mentioned that Starr and I had said once or twice that we were Canadians while traveling and they both turned red. The older sister said something under her breath and then Sherry (who turned out to be the much bigger bitch) said that they HATE it when Americans do that. She then began to interrogate me as to why we would lie like that and why we feel it necessary to say 'Canadian' and not, say, 'Australian.' I couldn't believe she was asking me such a stupid question. We were afraid that other people might react in a negative way to us, being Americans, and we chose Canada because our accents are indistinguishable. Sherry's older sister then said, in not so many words, that Americans aren't fit to call themselves Canadians and we wreck their good name. I told her that in retrospect I wished I hadn't done it, because no one we met preferred Candians to Americans and it was completely unnecessary. Then I told her that I would call myself a Canadian from now on and I would only ask and say the DUMBEST shit I could think of to everyone I meet. I laughed with daggers in my eyes and they didn't find it funny.

I met this cool Malaysian guy named Shad, Sijitan in China, a Danish chick in Malaysia, and some Japanese and German guys. I kept seeing them again and again where I traveled so we became close. Sort of. The best people I've met so far though are these two British chicks. Len and Nikki. The very first time I met Nikki she was across the room and then announced: "I'm sorry you guys. I just farted and it is seriously RANK." That was the first thing I heard her say. She said that before she even introduced herself. It was a nice change since most people try to pull this traveling pissing-contest that isn't fun to be a part of. "Oh where have you been? Oh yeah, we just came from there, and I also went to blah, blah, blah, blah..." She was also at the Indian embassy in KL and stood up for me the second she caught wind of what was happening. She started arguing with the woman behind the counter and lying about crap before I asked her to or anything. She was awesome and I know she was headed for India so maybe we'll meet up again.

Leeches!

So I got attacked by leeches! I caught and tore off three of them but judging by the giant bloody mark at the end of the day, I missed a big one.

You totally don't notice them. No joke. I was hiking in Taman Negara and something just a little bit itchy above my right ankle was annoying me. I pulled back my sock to see two leeches (just little baby ones) hanging out there, just sucking my blood like its just a thang. I tried to brush them off but they weren't having it. I had to scratch at them like they were a bug bite.

I was really excited when I found out that I might see leeches to be honest. I wanted to get some photos of myself covered in them, but when I saw how small and innocuous they were, I lost interest.

Taman Negara was great and I saw lots of cool shit. Including a tribe of natives out hunting.

Changi Airport, Singapore

OK. I'm using the free internet access (thank you Samsung) provided here at the airport to update my blog and to try to find a flight from Chennai to Delhi. It looks like I'm not going to be able to book a flight until I get to the airport in Chennai because you can't use any website that I've seen to book a flight in less than 24 hours. That sucks. And it will probably be expensive at the last minute. Maybe a train is the way to go?

My Indian visa is fucked up. Actually, everything about the Indian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur is fucked up. I tried to start the process on the 3rd (what was to be my last day in Kuala Lumpur) but arrived one passport-sized photo short and 20 minutes prior to closing time (it turns out closing time is noon). The only place to get my picture taken was a 10-minute cab ride away, so I gave up. The next day I got there with my forms in order and the right number of photos (it's 3 by the way, unlike every other visa I've gotten so far) so everything went a little smoother. I received a receipt for the 40 MYR processing fee I paid and on this receipt it said that I could return at 4:30pm but failed to say which day or to do what. I asked the guy behind the counter and he said next Tuesday I could return and I assumed that meant to pick up my visa. I DID NOT give him my passport. This is important.

After that I took off on a jaunt through the countryside. I visited the tea plantations of Cameron Highlands and saw the oldest rainforest in the world (including its tapir, crocodiles, monitor lizards, enormous spiders, and leeches) at Taman Negara. I returned on Tuesday at 4:30pm to pick up my visa. The woman behind the counter took one look at me and said "and how are we supposed to give you your visa when you have your passport in your hand?" An excellent question. One that had escaped me. I told her I had no idea and I had assumed that the visa would be placed in my passport when I arrived today. She said that I had to give her my passport and then return the following day at 4:30 to pick it up. This was annoying because I had already paid $150 for my 6:50am flight from Singapore. "Why on earth did you not take my passport the first time I was here?" We fell into arguing and I learned that they have a weird protocol where they can't hold any foreigners' passport for more than 24 hours so to get a visa is a 3-step process. None of this was explained to me on the first day I was there, despite their insistence on the opposite.

I lost my temper but got them to promise to rush it the following day so I could catch my flight (it leaves in an hour and 20 minutes by the way). I got the visa at noon and paid an additional 228 ringgit, pocketed my passport, and hurried to the bus station. It was in the cab on the way there that I realized it was fucked up. They marked down 'single entry' instead of 'mulitple entries' which is what I need. I'm meeting Luke in Delhi and we're leaving India to see Nepal first. Then we'll return to India and he'll fly home mid-May. Without a multiple-entry visa I'll need to reapply all over again in Kathmandu and then pay again as well. This all sounds very annoying and I'd like to avoid it. When I land in India in 4 and a half hours I'll try to get some help in straightening it out. I'm hopeful.

Oh yeah, and I'll try to buy a plane ticket while I'm there. Has anyone that reads this blog ever done that? Who just shows up at an airport looking for a flight?

Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

This is funny/not funny. A middle-aged Australian guy moved into my dorm room in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. He bumped into me this morning while I was getting ready to go out and told me I have a 'foot odor problem.' This is actually true. I stopped wearing socks with my shoes back in Thailand and now my shoes reek. He told me it was so bad that he couldn't sleep last night and asked me to wash my feet before I go to bed from now on. I wanted to correct him and say its the shoes, not my feet, but why quibble. I thought it was funny in a not funny kind of way.

It's been a busy day. I went to get my Indian Visa yesterday and failed completely. The High Commission of India is only open from 9:30am to noon and I arrived at 11:30. This was insult to injury since I got hosed down by the cab driver who took me there. 25 to get there, 10 to get back. You do the math.

So I got up early this morning, had Idiappum (sp?) with Vegetarian Korma, and made my way over to the embassy. Even at 9:48 it was competely crowded and no one was bothering to wait in line. You have to get a token and then wait for your number to be called but there were so many people there that thought the rules didn't apply to them. I was there for an hour and a half and all I did was hand in my already completed forms. I paid a 40 ringgit (between 11 and 12 bucks) processing fee as well. I can pay the rest when I go back to pickup my visa. I checked out of my hotel (it was on a whim but I do need to hustle around the country if I want to see everything. I meet Luke in 9 days) and went over to the bus station to see where I could go. Cameron Highlands seemed like a good choice. I'm high in the mountains in an area that once served as a British retreat (I think). There are lots of tea plantations and strawberry fields and there is extensive hiking in the area. I got in after 6pm and haven't yet had a chance to do anything. I had a few beers (by the way, since this is a Muslim country and drinking is frowned upon, there are ridiculous taxes on alcohol. In Kuala Lumpur I was paying more per beer than I was for my hotel room per night) and met some girls who are in town because of semester-at-sea. Actually this whole town right now is overrun with American college kids. There's only one bar in this tiny town in the mountains so I'll head over there after I'm done on this computer to drink and chat.

I guess that's it. I'm gonna book my flight from Singapore to Chennai, India and then write a few emails.

Miss you all.

Wait a minute

No, I got a GREAT exchange rate here. I just assumed when I saw the number on Google that I got something worse than that, but 9.35 or whatever is crap compared to the 9.8 I got yesterday or the 9.9 I got today. How does that work?

I arrived safely. It's pouring here.

I got in a little bit after 4am. Just like in Bangkok, the bus pulled over to the shoulder of the highway and let us all out. It turns out that unlike in Bangkok, there actually was a bus station near by.

A few taxi drivers asked me if I needed a ride anywhere (they just hang out waiting for buses to show up and then swarm down on the tourists getting off) and I was happy that they were much less aggressive than in Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia. An Indian guy came up to me and asked me if I needed a hotel room. He was trying to sell me hard on it, and he wouldn't stop talking even though I was clearly ignoring him. 'Blah blah blah, Pudu Hostel, blah blah blah.' HEY! That's the hostel I'M LOOKING FOR! I suddenly became interested and he was able to walk me over to the right place. He wanted me to sleep on the couches in the lobby as the house was currently full. There would be guests checking out by noon and then I could move into a room. I had slept for a few hours on the bus so I was good to go. I grabbed my backpack and walked around the city before the sun was even up.

I had no ringgit and nobody wanted my baht, so I was effectively broke. I had bought snacks and soymilk in Hat Yai so I was fine with sitting on the curb and reading my guide book. Kuala Lumpur seems cool. Everything here is very green and the highways are great. Manicured medians with palm trees and flowers, no visible trash on the side of the road, and the highways themselves are brand new and 3 lanes wide. Everything looks and feels modern. Some of the architecture in the city is cool. There are these old colonial buildings (Malaysia was colonized by the Portugese, Dutch, and more recently by the British) that are falling apart so that underneath the paint and stucco you can see exposed brick. Some buildings have been abandoned and they look really cool set against the palm trees and jungle. Kuala Lumpur is also the only major city in the world with protected rainforest downtown.

Oh! If you've ever seen a bad Hollywood movie thats supposed to take place in a jungle somewhere, then you know that they always use this one bird call to create the 'jungle' atmosphere. It would be impossible to imitate or explain in words, but its like a KrrraaaaaAAAAHHHH! KrrraaaaAAAAAAH!!!! where it starts quieter and gets louder at the end. Ugh. That was terrible. Anyway, those birds are here in Kuala Lumpur and this morning sounded like something out of Predator.

If you tried to plot the course that I've taken with movies, then my journey across Asia would be: Lost in Translation, Apocalypse Now, The Killing Fields, Tomb Raider (part of it filmed at Angkor Wat), Brokedown Palace, The Beach (filmed on Koh Phi Phi), and now... I don't know. Something with jungle. I also couldn't think of any movies for China. I'll put some more thought into it.

There are plenty of 7-11s, KFCs and McDonald's here, but there's also great Halal Indian, Malay, and Chinese food stalls. I haven't had anything to eat yet but that's because its only noon and I just got money changed. I bought 9.8 MYR for 100 baht and I think I got hosed. I just checked Google for a quote and it lists the rate as 9.36. I'm not sure if I'm gonna be able to find a fair rate here though.


I walked to the most famous mosque in the city and got there just in time for morning prayers. No vistiors were allowed inside but someone was singing through loud speakers so I sat outside and just listened for a while. I went to Independence Square and to the Petronas Towers too. On my walk back to my hostel from the towers it started to rain and it hasn't stopped since. That was maybe 2 and a half hours ago.

I want to go get a bite to eat but my little backpack isn't waterproof and I have too many things in there that can't get wet. I hope it stops soon but I don't have high hopes.

I met these Danish travelers (two guys and a girl that I met earlier on Koh Phi Phi in Thailand) and we made plans to go out and get drinks or something. I was talking to the girl on the bus and she said I shouldn't spend more than 2 and a half days in Singapore. It sucks.

Miss you all. This computer won't read the pics from my camera so I'll find another cafe and try again later.