Hostels & Guesthouses

Ruili China

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Coming down out of the mountains we were happy to see Ruili lying in the green lush valley below…a larger city than I thought…a Chinese/Burma border town with a mix of Han Chinese, minorities and Burmese traders hawking jade and various smoking substances. The streets were not all marked in Pinyin…the communist-designed phonetic romanization of the spelling of Chinese characters…and we spent half the afternoon looking for a hotel listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook before we finally registered at a hotel owned by the Chinese water and electric company, Li Shui, meaning Sweet Water.

That night we found a Burmese street restaurant and ordered five dishes and an alcoholic cherry drink all for a little over two dollars. Back at the hotel, we fell into bed exhausted…but were furiously wakened at various intervals during the night…by prostitutes hoping to find male foreigners!

December 26
The next day after eating breakfast noodles in the market we walked down an ancient cobblestone road to the old part of Riuli called Mengmao where a lovely old man fell into step with us along the way. He took us first to see the elaborate carving of the concrete grave monuments. Huge modular slabs of decorated concrete were being fitted together at one factory after another along the road for single and double graves. Then we walked up the hill to his own grave site where he waved us good-bye.

That night on the way from the Gem Market, five middle school students (about 17 years old) started talking to us as we walked along…hello…where are you from…what is your name…our English names are Zhong (John), Paul, Fantasy, Do Na and Steven…can we help you…listen to us…we have a good idea…all of us ending up eating delicious Burmese fried dumplings and egg cake and exchanging email addresses at a Burmese restaurant. About 10:00pm we were all on our way home when Zhong remembered it was his birthday…

listen to us…we have a good idea…catching up to us and bringing us all back to his parent’s home for cake with light delicious frosting. Then we all struck out for home again…the kids reassuring us that when their parents found out that they had been practicing their English with a couple of foreigners that the parents wouldn’t be angry about the late hour.

“Listen to us…we have a good idea!” So early the next morning the kids picked us up at the hotel and took us in the fog to their school to show us around but the headmaster was already visiting with some Japanese visitors so the guard wouldn’t let us enter. The school was out that day so the students could practice their dances in preparation for the “city party” which would celebrate the tenth year that Ruili had been designated as a “city.”

We asked the kids why the schools always had the names written on them in English…the country had joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) they said and wanted foreigners to come visit the schools.

Then again…listen to us…we have a good idea…as we went to a brand new internet room that was offering free internet on this it’s first day in operation…on the way buying us french fries with chili and a little plastic sack full of Asian Pear relish. We ate Over The Bridge Noodles for lunch…the waitress bringing to the table a tray of thin sliced meats and vegetables and noodles to be “cooked” in a very hot bowl of broth. That afternoon we all took a taxi to the Ruili City Park near the Ruili River (or the Irrawaddy River to the Burmese) where you could see Burma across the river.

While watching hundreds of students acting out various Chinese stories in the dances and music, Jana and I think we must have talked to every young person in Ruili who wanted to practice their English…do you like music…what is your favorite rock band…our favorite band is HOT (High-five Teenagers) from Korea…do you know what high-five means…then I showed them high-five which they liked..then I asked do you know the “brother” handshake like most young people give each other in America but this was met with blank faces and was going nowhere…we like American country-western music they said…we like John Denver and in our last English class we learned about The Carpenters…do you like pets…dogs or cats…do you like sports…we like sand volleyball…and tennis…and PingPong…Paul saying the Chinese weren’t as good at PingPong as they used to be…I like swimming…Jana said she liked running…Fantasy saying oh, that’s too hard…

listen to us…we have a good idea…

But we fled back to our hotel in a tuk-tuk before the afternoon was over…our throats hoarse from talking…and drank a Budweiser with a Chinese label in the warm sun in the backyard patio of the hotel.

The next morning, relieved not to be traveling by bus, we caught a plane to meet Bob in Kunming where we would proceed on to Chengdu Sichuan Province the next day by train. The only event of note on the train was my losing my sixth pair of reading glasses while bending over the squat toilet…hearing the clink and catching a glimpse of tortoise shell as they clinked down the metal pipe to the tracks below.

Christmas At Re Hai Hot Springs 2002

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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We went to Re Hai Hot Springs..a short half-hour bus ride from Tengchong.

The Asian and European continental shift also resulted in over 80 crystalline hot springs…grand Boiling Hot Cauldron…age-old Toad-Mout Hot Spring…Drunk Bird Hot Spring…Pregnant Well…Fairy Pool…Majic Pool…others…jade colored water bubbles and cloudy vapor…Beauty’s Bath…Pearl Bath…boiling hot.

At the bottom of the hill just outside the main entrance was the Jiaotong Binguan for 60 yuan a night for a double…only problem was that the WC was down the stairs and 50 meters away from our room…they had no rooms with bathroom. Showers were in a little room down the stairs and up some other stairs to the back of the main unit with a hot water pool about two feet deep and about 12×12 feet square…one each for men and women. The dreaded evil karaoke downstairs could be heard through the thin walls until late. Restaurant behind a row of triple rooms with no bathroom across the parking lot from the main building was great…they let us in the kitchen to choose ingredients….seeing what we get is part of the adventure!

Monday December 23
However, since it was nearly Christmas we decided to treat ourselves so we walked up the mountain through the park to the Bright Pearl Hotel…finding five giggling girls at the reception desk with no word of English. After a fashion we were able to secure a double room for ourselves…with all the amenities…WC (even if you did have to flush it by lifting the tank lid sideways), hot shower…and can you believe it…my laptop hooked up to the internet!

Tuesday December 24 Christmas Eve (for us on this side of the world)
We spent this day walking through the park in the sun…Jana took a dip in one of the pools…meeting five Burmese on her way back to the hotel. Where was she from and was she traveling alone…they wanted to know. Yes, she said, she was traveling with a friend…she was sorry that her friend (me) wasn’t there because she (me) and her (my) husband had just been in Burma for the month of August which they found very interesting…are you Catholic they wanted to know…surprised by the question she said, well, yes she was. I am a Catholic priest said one…the two women were nuns…and one of the two Chinese was a Deacon. They exchanged Christmas wishes and then the priest blessed Jana with safe travel.

Volcanos in Tengchong

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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A young Chinese woman on the bus had struck up a conversation in English…telling us about the sights around Tengchong. We thought that maybe we could pay her to guide us to the nearby Hot Springs but the plan was aborted after her friend drove us around in a minivan…we paid for an expensive Bai minority lunch…we looked at a hotel we didn’t want…and after the driver took us to a hotel that we didn’t ask to go to…and we still don’t know the name of. The receptionists didn’t know a word of English but we managed to get a double room. The lights dimmed every time someone used the elevator, the dreaded evil kareoke bar was on the next floor down, the telephone rang at least twice a night with no one at the other end of the line. It was ok though because it had a WC and hot shower after 9pm and there was internet down the street a few meters, through some big iron doors and up some dark stairs to a huge room full of young boys playing computer games. There was a girl on each floor with hot water and towels. Supposed to have had dance hall. restaurant, beauty shop but nothing was operating except the dreaded evil kareoke bar and the parking lot inside the hotel compound.

The first day we just hung around the neighborhood and found great homemade dumpling soup made by a very friendly Chinese woman in the market. Bought a CD of a Chinese pop singer and a bag of fresh peas in the pod and delicious tomatoes to snack on…and after some looking Jana finally found an undershirt…in military green camaflage.

We had lunch at the Myanmar Tea House…asked a couple of English speaking Burmese men when they had come to Tengchong…1988 one said…everyone exclaiming at once…one: I fled my country…we saying, oh, since the military junta took over after the last election…told one I guessed he was a University professor in Rangoon and he said laughing…oh, about 30 years ago! I suspect these men may have figured in the opposition during the last election. That night we went back for dinner taking my laptop to treat the owners and their son and a couple young Burmese/Indian patrons with bleached crewcuts to a slideshow of our month in Burma last August.

The next day we struck out for the Tengshong Guest Hotel where there was a map that was promised at the reception desk…first I and then Jana trying to gesture our need for information…seeing the wheels turning in their heads…big pain in the arse Westerners that don’t speak Chinese…until one receptionist gave Jana a card for the T.C.C. backpacker cafe!

After walking a mile with me limping behind Jana, we practically hugged 25 year old Li Bing with his long ponytail and big smile. You saved our lives in Tengchong we wailed. For two hours were reveled in our conversation in English while he cooked us a great lunch…club sandwich for Jana and fried pork with french fries for me…a nice break from the noodle soup we were eating since leaving Lijiang. In his traveler tip book a couple from the Netherlands wrote that both Lonely Planet and Let’s Go guidebooks were useless in Tengshong, “need to put TCC Cafe in those books!!!”

There are over 90 volcanic cones in Tengchong county…22 of them with preserved craters. Jana and Li climbed one large nearby cone called Dakong Shan or “Big Empty Hill” (which pretty much sums it up) while I gave a verbal little three year old girl, Zhou Xiue Ping and her mother, Yang Yong Lai, an English lesson in the warm sun…fireworks, shoes, pants vs the English trousers, ice cream. When I pointed to a picture on my Magellan Point-to-Pictures International Translator and said “tomato” she looked perplexed…finally saying “oh, tomahto!” Jana, having climbed the ubiquitous Chinese steps all the way up to the crater of Big Empty Hill said that the view of the valley peppered with craters was stunning…thinking about what it must have been like millions of years ago…all erupting…

Conversation With Roland

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Had a final dinner at familiar and cozy Sekura’s Cafe in Old Town Lijiang…splurging on Western food…sharing our beer with Roland, a 30 year old economics teacher in a university in Singapore. (Surprisingly and to his delight Jana guessed his age…so many young Asians look much younger than they are.) Roland had attended the University at Flagstaff Arizona and a small business college in Whitewater Wisconsin.

We immediately fell into a discussion about the likely future of China…the cities will eventually be fine but what will give the Central Government trouble, everyone agrees, will be rural China. There is great unequal distribution of wealth…but as Jana says…where isn’t there? Roland said that conservedly 95% of all food, whether horticultural or animal, are genetically altered and we agreed that China will never export food to the United States because of it. A chicken develops from embryo to full grown fryer in six months, he says. Safe ecological methods, it seems, is a luxury of rich nations. Roland has done some consulting for various environmental groups and says that the Philippines has done the most of any Asian country in terms of using ecological methods like crop rotation etc. instead of the overuse of fertilizers. But the bigger problem, Roland says, is that more efficient methods of agriculture do not rise to the surface because of individual initiative as in the United States. China, because of it’s centralized government imposes one unified model, regardless of local needs and conditions, that is communicated to all the villages via satellite TV.

I mentioned the book I had been reading, “The Coming Collapse of China,” and Roland laughed…saying yes, for every opinion you will find economists agreeing or disagreeing largely because of the lack of reliable statistics. China’s problems, the book says, could be solved with political reform but the Communist Party will never let that happen. China insists it’s GNP is growing at 8% but many believe the figures are cooked in order to get that rate, Roland agreed. Yes, the GNP is growing now, but my book says the banks are going broke because the central government is spending at breakneck speed to bring China into the 20th Century world market…last year it joined the World Trade Association. Can that kind of growth be sustained at the same time that the unemployed workers in rural China, who are already demonstrating on a regular basis, cause bigger trouble for the country? And are China’s reserves really as big as they say they are?

Than we lapsed into more esoteric subjects like evolutionary biology and creationism which requires faith…and the personhood of the chimpanzee…which was the subject of Jana’s son Jordan’s Master’s thesis…a huge leap which, Roland thought, also required faith. We ended with a discussion of the probable end of the species…at the very least a stimulating end to the evening.

When we returned to Mr. Yang’s Inn at 11pm Mr. Yang, who has taken very good care of us for almost two weeks, was waiting up for us so he could close the gates…Welcome Home… he said with a smile.

The next morning as we were leaving for the bus station, Mr. Yang told us in his limited English “to take care.” We will miss this gentle man who brought Jana two eggs instead of one to eat when she was sick.

And we will miss Fifi the Lijiang dog and Debu the Beijing puppy who loved us enthusiastically and unconditionally.

Siem Reap

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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My original plan was to take a boat up the Mekong River in Cambodia to the Lao border and then on up through Laos but I kept hearing reports about the opening and closing of the border and you have to pay off the guards to let you through and someone reported they had to pay $200 and if they don’t let you through for some reason that day and then you are faced with coming all the way down the Mekong back to Phnom Penh and starting over in another direction so I said the heck with it and decided to do the “tourist route” to Siem Reap instead.

Siem Reap
While Bob took a bus to the Thai border and then on to Bangkok, I took a fast boat down the Tonle Sap (Great Lake) to Siem Reap, a sleepy village famous for it’s many wats (temples and monasteries) especially the biggest-Angkor Wat-but fast becoming a major tourist destination. Most of the people sat on the roof of the boat for the four hour trip through marshes and past entire villages on stilts.

I spent an entire day on a motorcycle taxi going from one temple to another that was built between the 9th and 14th centures in the middle of the jungle when the Khmer civilisation was at the height of its creativity.

Angkor is one of the most important archaeological sites in South-East Asia. Stretching over some 400 sq. km, including forested area, Angkor Archaeological Park contains the magnificent remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th century. These include the famous Temple of Angkor Wat and, at Angkor Thom, the Bayon Temple with its countless sculptural decorations. UNESCO has set up a wide-ranging programme to safeguard this symbolic site and its surroundings.

You could easily spend a week or more here seeing all the monuments. Most temples are actually little more than ruins…blocks of carved volcanic and sandstone rock lying in piles at the foot of the remaining structures. Much of Angkor’s finest statuary is stored inside conservation warehouses because of the danger of theft. In some monuments such as Ta Prohm, where a French movie company was filming the few days I was there, the jungle has stealthily waged an all-out invasion with bare tree roots spilling out and over the walls.

I had a Cambodian roast chicken and vermicelli salad late lunch at Les Artisans D’Angkor, a small artisan shop and cafe amazingly situated directly opposite Angkor. I thought of my friend Jana who visited here in the 60’s and wondered how the town had changed since then. My day ended taking pictures of the sun setting pink on the face of the dark stone of Angkor Wat.

I had had my fill of war museums in Vietnam and Phnom Penh so I avoided the War Museum in Siem Reap with an exhibition of Soviet and Chinese Mi-8 helicoptors, Mig 19 destroyers, T 54 Tanks and US 105mm artillery. You could also see an artificial minefield here, the brochure says. My motorcyle driver did pull onto the grounds of a Buddhist temple on the way back from Angkor that displayed a glassed-in pagoda filled with bones and skulls that could be viewed from all four sides.

Back in my hotel I spent some time organizing photos on my computer…we have some really wonderful ones of people…especially women and children. I gave a two hour English lesson to one of the Khmer girls that worked in the kitchen of the guesthouse where I was staying.

Finally, after five days, it came time to leave Siem Reap so I regretfully said goodbye to Arnfinn and his Khmer staff and left the simple and elegant Earthwalker Guesthouse that was built and managed by a young Norwegian cooperative and made my way down a dirt road out to the highway with my pack on my back to flag down a motorcycle taxi for the 10 minute ride to the airport. The young guys working in the airport laughed at my hair when I walked in. “Motorcycle Hair” I said laughing! The $100 Lao Aviation flight that took me to Vientiane Laos had no safety card, no airline magazine, no safety demonstration by the hostess and no floatation device under the seat…and I doubt if there were oxygen masks…but we did get a sad little hamburger patty and bun with a packet of catsup.

Hanoi

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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September 24 2002
Bob left Hanoi right away on the train for Sapa near the Chinese border to do some trekking among the colorful minority villages and then to spend three days in Halang Bay learning to kayak. We are traveling separately until we join a friend in Hong Kong on November 20 when the three of us will spend two months in China before going back to the US after the first of the year. Bob is presently somewhere between Hanoi and Saigon and I will meet him in Saigon on Monday for a flight to Phnom Penh Cambodia.

Flying into Hanoi felt very strange after watching years of television during the “Vietnam” War in the 6.s and 70.s. (The “Vietnam War” is called the “American War” here.) The first night in Hanoi I ate a dinner of pork with pepper sauce and french fries, a wonderful break from the Burmese and Thai food, on the deck of a popular cafe while watching the lights reflect off Hoan Kiem Lake near the Old Quarter.

I stayed at a small charming hotel called the “Classic Street Hotel” in the Old Quarter which is full of narrow winding streets with tunnel or tube houses so called because their small frontages hide very long rooms that were developed in feudal times to avoid taxes based on the width of the frontage onto the street. At the time they were only two stories high but over the years stories have been added so the buildings are now very narrow and very tall.

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My cozy little room had a little veranda where I could stand and watch the busy street scene below.
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I loved my little neighborhood for the five days I was there…early mornings the same ladies in the same clothes and cone hats came to sit on the street below me with their big shallow baskets to sell small silvery fish and vegetables…one morning a young woman at a street stall angrily chewed the heck out of one of the women for some reason and chased her away…every day in the early afternoon I ate a huge bowl of duck noodle soup for about 30 cents at a food stall down the street….sitting on a little plastic stool at a two foot high wooden table with my knees under my chin……the same old man and his wife with kind faces welcoming me like old friends each day.

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Across the street was the A to Z Queen Cafe which was a kick-back comfortable budget backpacker hotel with dorm beds for $2.50 a night and free internet if you bought something at the bar…otherwise you donated a few dong via honor code in the little plastic boxes sitting on top of each terminal. Every night the guest house showed a war movie to the mostly young males from around the world, many of whom are Israeli by the way. An Israeli guy told me that every young man has to spend three years in the military…and then they take off to travel to clear their heads.

Nearby was a street market where the women did all the selling and the men sat on the sidewalks drinking whisky and playing board games. As I walked by, the women laughed when I gestured and said to them…look…you work…they play…

Down the narrow street and around the corner the local street kids pestered you to buy postcards…just buy from me today…I am lucky you are my first sale today so I can buy some food…old ladies glided along in slippered feet carrying two fruit-filled baskets one on each side of them that was balanced like a pair of scales across their backs with a long flexible blade of bamboo who wanted to sell you exotic fruit…pumalos that have to be picked a few days before it is eaten so it has time to “forget the tree,” custard apples, durian so stinky it is forbidden in the hotels, green dragon fruit, guavas, jackfruit, longan, lychees, mango-steen, rambutan, starfruit and juicy persimmons.

Then you could escape all this by ducking into the Tamarind Cafe & Fruit Juice Bar where the Handspan Adventure Travel Company sold tickets to Halong Bay and Sapa in the back. Bob took a three day excursion to incredible Halong Bay and claims it is one of the very best experiences of all time. Here you were sure to find fellow foreign travelers to trade stories with…not just a few of whom…to my amazement…or maybe just never noticed before…were women traveling alone. In happy solidarity I invariably urged them on…

Taunggyi…Last Frontier of Burma

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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Taunggyi is the official end of the line for east-bound foreigners in Burma–at least if you are travelling by road. Beyond Taunggyi lies a world of black-marketeers, ruby miners, insurgent armies and opium and methamphetamine warlords. Because it functions as a conduit for smuggled goods from Thailand, China and India, this is one of Burma’s most colorful towns. Long-haired smugglers in army fatigues down the street alongside turbaned hill tribe people and sleek-suited Chinese businesspeople. An abundance of black-market consumer goods is displayed in the Taunggyi market.

In the market we see two Buddhist nuns asking for donations from the vegetable vendors followed by a young girl in a white T-shirt with Jesus (Heart) You on the front. I particularly liked the military green combat hat with a pirated Nike label which was very popular. An Indian in a military hard hat explained to us that we could get “free” pastry at the tea shop. Guys with camoflage jackets and military green Chinese issue tennis shoes are everywhere. On a second floor alley I was carrying some chicken and rice in a sack when two small raggedy boys came up to me so I gave them my chicken. They ran off tickled to death. A few minutes later they appeared again and handed me my 1000 kyat bill that I had forgotten that I had dropped into the bag. So we took the bill and gave them back 500 kyat (about 40 cents) and you would have thought they were just handed a fortune.

On our way out an old man came up to me and spoke in excellent English. He used to be a teacher he said and just wanted to talk. San Francisco, San Francisco he laughed. (People always seem to mention San Francisco for some reason when we tell them we are from America.) Good city! Then he cautioned me against buying any of the rubies two traders were trying to offer me. “Glass,” he said, “glass!”

Mothers make a big deal out of having their babies see us. They beam if we pay any attention at all to the small ones or take their pictures-almost like it is good luck for the child. We are a symbol offreedom-freedom they long for and hope to have sometime in their lifetime.

On the way back to our Chinese owned hotel called New Paradise that night we stopped at the Coca Cola Restaurant with pigs ears and pig brains on the menu and spent 20 minutes trying to get the waiter togive us some sugar for Bob’s ice tea. Think about it. How do you explain “sugar” to someone who doesn’t understand a word of your language nor you theirs?

Continuing along the street that evening, I asked a young guy at a betelnut cart to make me some betel chews that are made with small chunks of dried areca nut wrapped in a betel leaf smeared with lime paste. Some may contain flavoured tobacco (Indian snuff) peppermint and other spices. Experienced chewers can hold betel cud in their mouths for hours without spitting. An alkaloid in the nut produces mild stimulation and a sense of well being. The chewed nut stains the teeth dark red and leaves the streets everywhere running with blood-red spit.

Poverty, Government Greed and Human Sweetness

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August 18, 2002 Rangoon (renamed Yangon)
We took Thai Air to Rangoon. Bob left his Lonely Planet Guidebook Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military junta) on the plane and of course someone had pocketed it by the time we debarked. But we remembered the Yoma Hotel downtown and headed there in a taxi…discovering how the locals get free rides when a guy jumped in our taxi with us for the ride into the city.

At the Yoma a French Canadian couple at dinner loaned us their LP so we couldlocate a bookstore somewhere in the city. Incidently the guidebook says that Lonely Planet is outlawed by thegovernment in that country…but lo and behold we found one…at a government gift shop/ bookstore no less…the Myanmar Book Centre…for the hefty price of $30 for a book that has a sticker price of $17….but hey, we have to admit we felt lost without it so we were stuck paying the money.

I was pretty much cut off from email and the internet; the government does not allow anyone the use of the internet-even tourists. They only allow businesses to have access and it was extremely disconcerting for the hotel to tell me I could not click on the browser to get my web-based email. The hotel had their own email address that I could use on Outlook Express, they told me! That was no help of course because all my email addresses were on the web.

Rangoon (Yangon) is the only city in Burma, I was to discover, that had access to the internet. All of this restriction, of course, is government control to limit access of the populace to international information.

Watching the street scene outside the hotel window that first evening I see bare-footed boys playing soccer on the sidewalk and a line of bare-shouldered monks in maroon colored robes banging a gong as they marched single file down the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Bicycle rickshaws with side chairs weave in and out of traffic..there are no motorbikes or auto rickshaws here…it is heavenly…a third boy in thongs has joined the soccer game.

The next day walking down the sidewalk I am stopped by the sign of an old man nuzzling a tiny baby while carrying it. More barefooted monks carry louvered or round food bowls on their daily rounds. They usually carry a large fan the same color as their robes that they hold up to their faces.

Having called ahead we took a taxi later to the bookstore to bargain for our Lonely Planet guidebook. The taxi driver and I laughed when I pointed to the steering wheel; he had used his horn so much he had worn a hole through the vinyl in one spot! After checking out the outrageous prices for the ethnic artifacts in the museum/bookstore we walked next door to a very nice hotel. The Prime Minister of Malaysia happened to be in town and there was a trade exposition at the hotel. Found out the most common kind of oil the people use for cooking is Palm oil which isn’t even considered a food in the U.S!

One afternoon we decided to check out the American Embassy and register our presence in the country but when we found the building it was cordoned off with guards stationed around it and we were told we could visit an out-station about 20 minutes away by taxi. Needless to say we scrapped that idea.

Then walking past St. Mary’s Cathedral compound we decided to go in and pay a visit; we were greeted by Ms. Bernadette Ba Tin, a matronly woman who showed us the inside of the church (very unique interior-looked like Arafat’s headdress) and told us her life story. She had been in the military as a young woman but when they wanted her to spy and report on people she took the recommendation of her father and got out. “I was mean,” she said. “I would kick and pinch and hit people. But I’m not like that now.” She retired a couple years ago as the editor of a Catholic publication and they gave her the job of watching and cleaning the church in exchange for her room and board. We exchanged addresses; after all my middle name is Bernadette.

Mr. Singh’s Rickshaw In Udaipur

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We take the offer of Mr. Singh, the Sikh driver of an auto-rickshaw, a small, noisy, three-wheeled motorized contraption with no doors, to take us around the narrow streets that are filled with cows, people, dogs, pigs, men in dirty white dhotis (sarong which is pulled up between the legs) pushing handcarts, seller stands and motorcyles piled high with the entire family, other auto-rickshaws and cars that travel ridiculously fast, narrowly missing each other…trusting cows just lie down right in the middle of it all.

We go nuts taking pictures…Bob, over here, over here…in the local market with picture-perfect fruit and vegetables sold by tribal (adivasi) women sellers in colorful saris. The women laugh and put their hands to their mouths when they see themselves on the screen of the digital camera. Once in awhile, a woman will decline a picture and we respect her desire.

Mr. Singh tells us that the “higher cultured” women who have knowledge of the Indian religious texts (vedas) will want to follow the dictum of the sacred texts that say your image should not be reproduced. But the women loved having their pictures taken and I suspect the truth is that the tribal women have their own beliefs that may or may not include the texts of the vedas.

However, I was really touched by one middle class Indian tourist family from the state of Gujurat who handed me their year-old baby to hold-as if they they thought it would be a blessing for the child. Bob took a picture of the child and the father and as we walked away we heard a man calling us from behind. We looked around to see him running up the hill in his brown slacks and blue shirt. He wanted us to send him a copy of the picture so after a few more pictures of the whole family we copied down his address-we will have another pen pal.

Shilpgram Cooperative & Cultural Center
We were the only tourists in the center that has displays of traditional houses from the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa and Mahashtra. We pass by musicians and dancers that, bored to death, happily perform only for us and laugh when they see themselves on Bob’s video screen.

Monsoon Palace
For a breathtaking view of the entire valley, Mr. Singh’s rickshaw chugs up to the highest point in the foothills around the little valley to the Monsoon Palace built in the 1800’s by one of the Maharajas. The Palace is lit at night and from our hotel looks magical. But we don’t understand a word he says in his Indian accent as he describes the history of the palace!

Natraj Hotel Restaurant
For dinner Mr. Singh suggested we eat at the Natraj Hotel in the flat new part of the city. The word “new” is relative of course because it looks no different than the old city. The vegetarian restaurant full of men starved at the end of the work day serves a set-price thali (all you can eat) for 50 rupees or about $1.00.

Nine or ten barefoot waiters in dirty shirts and pants come around again and again with metal containers of potato masala, dahl (lentil soup), curd (yogurt), mattar paneer (peas and chunks of soft cheese in sauce), sabzi (curried vegetables), some other things I have forgotten or don�t know the name of, and chapatis and rice. The next day we are sick–the “GI’s” or locally known as the Delhi Delight.

Tea on the Hill at Sunset
As I am arranging to have some clothing repaired by old Mr. Basir Mohead at his tailor shop Mr. Singh happens along. We invite him to tea with us so we jump in his rickshaw and he takes us to the top of a quiet hill with a view of Lake Pachola where there are some picniking locals and a modest tea stall. While we drink our tea and are watch a soothing sunset, Mr. Singh remembers that the day before I had asked him where we could listen to some music and he offers to take us to his Sikh temple where a special pundit (chanter) that was booked a year in advance will be performing with tabla and drums.

Sikh Temple
At least 5 friendly greeters walk up and welcome us to the temple, give us little kerchiefs to cover our heads and take our shoes. Children stand around and stare and laugh-some attempting to walk up to us and talk but as soon as we make a move forward they pull back. The temple is jampacked, men on one side and women on the other, all sitting cross-legged knee to butt on the floor. I find a place in the back next to an older woman where I can lean up against the wall. I cannot get her to smile for the life of me. The music and voices were very soothing. I had hoped we could last until 11pm when about a thousand members of the temple would have a meal together that had been prepared earlier in the evening but between my loose stools and numb butt I decide at about 9:30 I have had enough and motion to Bob.

On the way out of the temple yard, Mr. Singh introduces us to his children, nieces and nephews who excitedly shake our hands and wish us goodbye. (The temple was full and many were listening to the music in the temple yard.) This close knit community has shared a very special evening with us.

Bombay Renamed Mumbai

Posted on by Laughingnomad

July 13-18, 2002
India forces you to look beneath the surface of things…there is more here than your eyes see…a midnight ride into the city from the airport in the non-A/C taxi with hot humid squalid air blowing the aroma of grey water and human waste across my face was not my idea of a good time. But we knew it. Expected it. Actually it was not as bad as I thought it would be and as I am writing this on the second day already I don’t notice it. Everyone remarks how cool it is for this time of year in India but after coming from a wintery South Africa it may as well be a tandoori oven.

Bombay was renamed Mumbai in 1996. Those that favored the change believe the name, derived from the goddess Mumba who was worshipped by the original Koli inhabitants, reclaims the city’s heritage and signifies it’s emergence from a colonial past. When I asked the taxi driver driving us from the airport which name he uses for the city he said that Mumbai was a new name and “people keep calling it Bombay so I guess we use both names,” he said shrugging-seeming not to care which name his city is called.

Eating In India
A thali dinner (there is no “th” sound in Hindi so it is pronounced t-holly) is a traditional meal on a large round platter that is served with small tin bowls (katoris) around a larger bowl of rice and costs 10-50 rupees ($l.00) or more if it contains meat. It usually consists of a variety of curry vegetable dishes,relishes, papadam, puris or chapatis and rice. Often there is a yogurt raita and rice pudding for dessert. We had thali twice at “The Majestic Hotel,” a plain large dining hall on the Colaba Causeway where we were staying. The restaurant was full of working locals, mostly men, some barefoot, some in pants and shirts and some Hindus and Muslims all in white, some in blue, yellow and white turbans-all who couldn’t keep their eyes off us Westerners. The non English-speaking waiter found the pictures in our Lonely Planet India a wondrous curiosity.

During lunch one day I struck up a conversation with two black African men at the next table. They were from Nigeria but one had gone to school in Madison Wisconsin. I asked if he thought he would ever go back to the States. No, he said, it is so much easier for us to be here…people are so nice…no hassling he said with a knowing look…I get that it is easier to be black in India than in the US.

A Sidewalk Miracle
A few steps down the street at a right angle from the hotel we are tempted by a large group of people eating at night from a pavement stall on the street. Huge thin handmade chapatis called rotis were twirled around in the air by the young chapati-maker and then cooked on a red-hot half-globe shaped grill. The chicken and lamb kabobs, dahl, (pureed split peas), bharta (pureed eggplant), curried lentils sweet and sour tamarind sauce and fresh hot chapatis exploding with flavor on your tongue.

But halfway through our meal a big truck drove up and several men got out and walked over and motioned to our table…table…have table…they said roughly and then stood and watched us intently waiting for their table. At first we refused to give up the table…they were not asking for the table of the Indian family behind us although they did take two of their chairs leaving the mother standing…how silly we Americans are-expecting fairness! What? I can’t believe they want our table…what are we supposed to do with our food…put it on a chair…the sidewalk…what? But the men just kept standing there staring at us…feeling very uncomfortable…so not wanting to be the ugly Americans we give up the table…finally figuring it must not be legal for the restaurant to have the 4 or 5 metal tables on the sidewalk. We gathered up all the little dishes, the chapatis and our water while they threw the table in the truck and took off!

Bob and I just sat there looking at each other for a few seconds…should we take the food to the hotel…no Bob says…so we set the food on a third chair and were proceeding with our meal as best we could when the truck came back with our table and the chairs belonging to the other family. A bureaucratic sidetrack? Now they can say they did their job? I don’t understand I said to the 7 year old boy with his family at the table behind us…what has happened? “A miracle!” he shouted with bright eyes as if he knew exactly what he was talking about!