The Rest of Laos

We only had two short days in the small town of Vang Vieng, but I’m glad we made time for the stop. Reviews of this riverside community of bungalows and Australians are polarized: some call it paradise found, some reckon it’s a black hole of tourists and a waste of time. It’s hard to label Vang Vieng as either category in the time we were here, but I can see both perspectives.

It’s definitely less ‘authentic’ than Luang Prabang – everything is in English and falang roam the streets in hippy gear clutching nutella baguettes sold from dozens of roadside kiosks. But it has an even more beautiful setting. Luang Prabang was neatly framed between two rivers, but Vang Vieng has both the exquisite rivers and also some really weirdly stunning mountains. The riverside restaurants had 10/10 views and we woke up to a panorama skyline of lush mountains and a twisting river, which was pretty tops.

Activities for Vang Vieng included sitting in a field for six hours and discovering the meaning of life after some fungus-flavoured shakes, and escaping the city limits at high speed on dune buggys to admire a cobalt blue lagoon past a mountain village.

Another cramped six hour journey in a minivan delivered us to the Laos capital of Vientiane, where we had just over 24 hours. We’d been told that Vientiane wasn’t really worth seeing, so apart from an early morning stroll to a couple of wats, we didn’t do any sightseeing. Instead we took over the stereo of a rooftop bar, streamed the triple j hottest 100 and got slizzard by 2pm, Australia Day style. The slowest game of pool ever ensued, and after some failed bargaining over wallets in the night market and a little too much fried food we were in bed by 9pm ready for our flight the next day. Really you could say we were acting responsibly..?

Our stay in Laos has been too short; it’s definitely somewhere I’ll be coming back to. There is so much more to explore than the three short stops we made, and there’s also a lot to learn about the country. The tonal language looks and sounds cool, there was a lot of food I didn’t get to try, and the history is fascinating. Before I started looking into Laos I had no idea about the ‘Secret War’ waged by the USA during the 1960s-1970s. Laos is the single most heavily bombed country in the history of warfare. Between 1964 and 1973, 250-260 million bombs were dropped: a plane-load every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, for 9 years. It’s completely ridiculous that a piece of history this traumatic hadn’t even crossed my privileged Australian mind, but this is something that I’m learning more and more every country we go to: there is so much that I don’t know yet, there is so much more to learn. My family telling me stories about the atrocities committed in Ethiopia, and hearing more about Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, are all things that I had such minimal knowledge about before this trip. And that’s just two countries. There are hundreds of other histories and ideologies and events and tales of humanity that I probably will never know… it’s scary that thirteen years of a really good education could leave me so ill-equipped with world knowledge. Sure, I could probably solve a trigonometry problem if you asked me to, but I couldn’t tell you the first thing about the culture of Guatemala.

Anyway, about to board a flight to Phnom Penh and then we’re hopping straight on another bus to Sihanoukville for a few days of sand and sun. Cambodia here we come!

Beer and billiards,

PT

The ‘blue lagoon’

Will and Alex on STRAYA day

Luang Prabang

We landed in Laos safely after our more than dodgy flight from Thailand and spent an hour in the airport begging customs officers to take our mish-mash of currency to pay for visas, exchanging millions (literally) of Laos kip for US dollars withdrawn from people’s handbags – the only available ‘bank’ – and finally emerged with four legit visas and all our bags! Success!

I have to say, even though there isn’t a lot ‘to see’ in Luang Prabang, I think it’s been my favourite city yet. Where the Mekong river meets the Nam Khan, Luang Prabang snugly and inoffensively perches. It’s definitely somewhere I could spend a few months wandering the Frenchified streets, admiring sparkly wats, slurping noodle soup and learning Lao from one of the numerous beautiful houses for rent in the city. It’s cheap, the people are nice and don’t speak much English so there are more interesting guesses here than in Chiang Mai.

The Mekong

I’m currently typing this using T-rex arms and spider fingers in a very hot and cramped minivan on our way to Vang Vieng, so I’ll keep it short…

Highlights:
• Climbing Mount (pfft not mount… it’s 100m tall) Phu Si for a view of the town and, on the other side of the Mekong, Wat Chomphet where we were had the stunning view pointed to us by ‘guides’ aka 6 year olds with rat traps
• Wat Xieng Tong, bejazzled with sparkly mosaics and murals of naked humans hatching from eggs laid by various zodiac animals (???)
• Night markets where we could buy anything from Tigerlily cushion-covers to patchwork pants and spoons made out of fallen bombs. I bought my 13th scarf and decided that was probably the limit, so shoved them and some other shopping in a stolen box and shipped it off to sea… I really hope I see it in 2 months back in Sydney!
• FOOD. One day I had noodle soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner, it was glorious. River weed, water buffalo and more chickoo fruits were other top picks. I’ve also expanded my chilli tolerance significantly and found a new favourite snack: BLOBS, or rice and coconut milk fried in tiny poffertje pans and wobbled into waiting mouths with toothpicks on the street.

wat’s up

One of the iconic images of Luang Prabang is the dawn alms-giving ceremony where scores of saffron-clad monks line the streets and receive pieces of food, from balls of sticky rice to kitkats, from devout citizens of the city. I woke up super early two days in a row and managed to miss them by twenty minutes on the first day and got there an hour early on the second – a lot of walking up and down the main street in the predawn cold, waiting for sleepy monks was involved. When they finally did arrive the magic of the ceremony was really beautiful; in silence the monks walked in a line, golden bowls slung over shoulders, receiving their meal from the people without making eye contact with anyone. Unfortunately the behavior of a lot of the tourists present made me just leave after a few minutes… Japanese Canon-heads shoving overlarge lenses in the poor monks’ faces and Germans shouting at each other while snapping away with their iPhones completely ruined the moment for me and everybody else there. I was actually disgusted by the behavior of some of the larger tour groups… not to be a travel snob but I don’t think I would ever be so rude as to shove a camera in someone’s face when they’ve just woken up and expect to get away with it (unless it’s Will. He’s funny in the morning).

Moving onto Vang Vieng for a day or two before Vientiane for boozy STRAYA celebrations on the 26th.

Blobs and Buddhists,

PT

NOODLE SOUP

Chiang Mai

It’s official; we are out of the frying pan of India and into the fiery fiesta of Southeast Asia! Our first stop on the second half of our summer adventure was Chiang Mai, a small tourist town in the north of Thailand. I had been to Bangkok and southern Thailand before with the fam, but never to the north which is apparently a very different culture.

The first thing I noticed on arrival was the difference between third-world India and decidedly first-world Chiang Mai. The streets were clean; there were bins available and people actually used them; we saw one beggar the entire time; everyone seemed clothed and employed and happy. I think the culture shock was more about a transition from India rather than the difference between Asia and home; Thailand seems more similar to Sydney than to its subcontinental neighbour. While the driving would not have met RTA standards, I didn’t hear a single car horn the whole three days we were there. It was decidedly strange, and I found myself wondering why the people were so placid and meek – turns out they’re just normal and I’ve just become used to Indian standards of patience on the roads.

We were supposed to meet up with a few friends from home on our first night in Chiang Mai, but poor Lims got really sick in the southern islands and had to book an emergency flight back to Sydney! Her travel partners Sal and Zask still made it up a day later though, and we were also VERY happily reunited with a previous gap year buddy Alex – shout-out to you sissa! We had a couple of boozy nights catching up on stories from the past six weeks, including vomit festivals in Taiwan and playing with flaming skip-ropes in Koh Tao, and managed to get some sightseeing done in between as well. I rode a sorngtaouu (sort of the equivalent of a bus – public red trucks with seats for 10 in the back of them) up a mountain to see Wat Doi Su Thep, a huge golden 1300s temple full of Buddha relics, with panoramic views of Chiang Mai. On day two we checked out the oldest and tallest Wat in Thailand, some of which was in a semi-ruined state but was still really impressive. The Buddhists know how to gold. One highlight of the day was reading a fable about a monk who was so handsome he made another monk think gay thoughts, which was so terrible that he turned into a woman and ran away in shame. And the handsome monk felt bad for making his mate gay so he made himself fat and ugly and inspired his followers to build a five-metre tall gold (duh) statue of him in all his fat, ugly glory.

We were in Thailand for two and a half days, arriving in the evening and leaving at lunchtime, and in that thaime I managed to eat five days worth of food… it is so. good. I didn’t get sick of Indian food at all, and I’ve actually really been missing my 10+ daily chais, but Thai food is just so amazing! In Sydney I regularly complain that Newtown thai places don’t open until 11:30am, meaning they’re less than ideal for breakfast, and if I’m smart I sometimes order Thai takeaway the night before the morning after so I can cure my hangover with grease and chilli. Here, I can wander our of our hostel and have an old Thai granny cook my pad khee mao right in front of me at any time of the day or night… tom yum soup, fresh pineapple, egg-sticky rice, mangos, pad thai pad thai pad thai, pineapple fried rice, basil spicy chicken, satay skewers, banana rotis for those of us keen on gluten, and more grease and oil and butter than was at all necessary, made me a very happy chap at all mealtimes (in Thailand’s case, all times are mealtimes).

Thailand wasn’t on the original plan but I’m super glad we could have this short stopover, even if it was just for the food! Currently writing from a tiny, turbulent plane on the way to Luang Prabang, flying the very reliable Laos Airlines which started taxiing before we had all sat down and skipped the whole ‘safety video’ thing. In their crash last year only two our of the six Aussies on the plane died, so our odds are good. In response to Zaskia’s concerns about whether or not we were going to make it to landing, Alex replied, “It’s not if we land, it’s how we’ll land”. If I’ve posted this then you know we made it!

I found a hot shower! We even did some laundry! We ruined our newly refreshed and well-rested bodies on buckets (literally) of bootleg whiskey and Red Bull syrup!

Khee mao and kickboxing,

PT

Wat Doi Su Thep

Relics at Wat Doi Su Thep

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Varanasi, Kolkata and Goodbye India

First off, apologies for the lengthy rant below; limited wifi has combined the Varanasi/Kolkata/Goodbye India blogs into one interminable essay. Here we go…

On my last visit to India, Varanasi was my favourite part of the two week whirlwind, so I was really excited to come back here. Lowdown for guidebook-less goras: Varanasi is a small city in the large Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It’s one of the world’s oldest continually populated cites, dating back to 1200BC. It’s profoundly religious and holds sacred importance for Buddhists, Muslims and most of all, Hindus. According to Hinduism, dying in Varanasi gives you moksha: an escape from the cycle of birth and death – so people close to expiry tend to move towards this riverside metropolis.

Despite the heavy scent (and I sometimes mean that literally) of death in the air, Varanasi’s energy is a palpitating heart of electric life perched on the slow-moving Ganges. It’s defiantly indiscreet, with intimate funeral rites, toilet breaks, and yoga classes taking place within metres of each other in full public view. I found it to be nothing like anything I had previously experienced in India; for one, it’s a lot colder than the rest of our stop-offs, and there’s an indescribable special atmosphere in the air that you can’t find elsewhere. Everyone who visits agrees: Varanasi is unique.

I have never been religious; I believe in science and sushi, but I can see how someone surrounded by the faith in this city could be convinced that maybe something above us, apart from the ozone layer, is holey. (geddit?) On our first day we were woken up at 5:30am by the nearby mosque’s call to prayer; by 6:30am I’d seen three burning bodies and four sadhus (holy men) wandering the ghats. Walks by the Ganges are punctuated by repetitive incantations of “om” and Hindus and Muslims singing their prayers. Each evening on Dasaswamedh Ghat Brahmin priests ring bells and swirl fiery lanterns, there are more holy cows around than children, and paintings of Hindu gods and sacred orange flowers are on every street corner.

We spent most of our time here getting lost in the tiny winding streets, sampling chai and lassis in terracotta pots, slipping in cow dung, and stocking up on Indian paraphernalia. We walked from Marnikarnika Ghat, where bodies are burnt in Hindu funeral tradition, past Vishwanath Temple, covered in 800kg of gold which we unfortunately could only see the tip of, as foreigners are not allowed in. We were also lucky enough to be staying in the city during a huge kite-flying festival, so spent a lot of time untangling our boots from tricksy fishing line on the ground and avoiding youngsters running to catch their crepe-paper kites.

Other highlights include dinner with a clown, osteopath and a yogi, lunch with a chef from Biarrtiz who declared India “dirty, ugly, and tasteless” with a perfectly French sneer, and getting lured by myself into a back alley at night by a 13-year-old asking for sex! I kind of laughed at the little guy and told him absolutely not, and he said “okay bye” and scurried away. Despite newspaper reports of daily rapes in India, and numerous warnings from family, friends and guesthouses, I’ve never felt threatened here until now. Luckily my rapist-to-be was shoulder-height and terrified, but it made me realize Varanasi’s labyrinth of dark, twisted backstreets is probably the perfect place for good old criminal activity. Don’t worry mum, everything is fine!

Kolkata wasn’t on our original trip plan but we ended up spending half a day here due to a 13-hour-turned-20-hour freezing cold and utterly sleepless train ride from Varansi. The combination of zero hours of sleep and the suddenly frigid climate sent me to bed with a headache and a case of the grumbles in the afternoon, but Will toured the majestic Victoria Memorial with a Malaysian buddy we picked up in the taxi rank and his classmate, a Kolkatan native called Neha. They came to collect a very sleepy Ella in the late afternoon and Neha whisked us all off to some classic street food stalls (Bengali food is superb, and Kolkata is the place to do it), and then back to her house, an incredible multi-storey mansion in the suburbs housing 20-something family members. There, her mother cooked us an amazing meal and we hung out in her sick room, which sported a drum kit, several guitars, disco lighting and a dance performance from her younger cousins.

Until now, I thought that the outrageous hospitality shown to us by good old Inder earlier in the trip had been a one-off from a very generous man. Now I can see that Indians are just the most giving, welcoming, warm and open people: a family had three strangers into their home for dinner without even a second thought, and spent so much time making sure we were comfortable and stuffed with food that they must have devoted their whole evening to making us feel at home. Unfortunately that backfired a little bit and I accidentally ingested a pile of gluten, which sent Will and I home early after a rushed goodbye.

Currently sitting in the flash Kolkata airport waiting to fly to Thailand… here are some closing thoughts on India:

Best meals:
– Channa masala and paneer butter masala on our first night in New Delhi; I won’t forget the exceptional taste of dozens of real Indian spices in that first spoonful, mmm!
– Chicken tikka and sikh kebabs with Rahul in the mechanic’s workshop in Jaipur
– Berry pulao from the 91-year-old owner of ‘Brittania’ restaurant in colonial Mumbai
– Chickoo flavoured kulfi (sort of like sorbet) from the Bengali street stall with Neha
– Crispy dosas from fastfood joints all over Mumbai
– Chai, chai, chai – every 20 cent cup was worth a million bucks

On the next trip to India (hopefully soon):
– Kerala, Hampi, Bangalore and the South of India in general. From the small tastes I had in South Indian restaurants the food sounds sublime, and it sounds like a very different experience to the rest of the country.
– Varanasi, but not in foggy January. I could spend much longer than the 2 days we had in this spiritual centre, especially if the view is as picturesque as I remember it from three years ago.
– Tea stations in Darjeeling, and panoramic views from Northern Ladakh and Leh – it’s supposed to be beautiful and as close to Nepal and Tibet as India gets.
– Delhi, Jodhpur, the Taj Mahal and Mumbai again and MORE.
– More trains, less planes – budget and horrible though they may often be, you learn so much more on a draughty freezer on wheels than an air-conditioned box in the sky
– I will actually learn some Hindi more advanced than ‘namaste’, ‘aloo ghobi’, and ‘ek, do, teen’.
– Figure out how to eat rice and dahl with my fingers. An art I haven’t even come close to mastering.

The other lasting impression I’ll have of India is about the impact of foreign tourism. We lugged around The Book aka the 1000 page Lonely Planet to every city we went to, and based lots of sleeping/eating/travelling choices off it. But it was clear to see that lots of the places recommended in the 2011 edition had since been “Lonely Planet-ized”: they were double the price, all had signs saying “Recommended by Lonely Planet” outside them and were full of fellow Book-toting white people. It’s a shame because lots of the places described by the guidebook were originally local joints untouched by the American dollar and Coca Cola. Today, they all have English menus and also hold directions to the nearest ATM/Post Office/national monument. Of course, there are still heaps of authentic places, and we learnt early on that you find more interesting spots if you don’t take the guidebook’s advice, but the fact that travel in India is so much easier now than it was ten years ago means there is more and more homogenization of the fascination Indian culture that is so unique. Obviously travel is good and everyone should have a chance to see the world, but I shudder to think of the influx of Nike-wearing, Big-Mac-eating, Canon-toting tourists that India has waiting for her. #globalisingthelocal #doyouevenpoliticallycomment # #wankytraveller #culturecultureculture #okayillstop

OKAY I’m nearly done I promise, all I have left to say in my teary farewell to India is I’ll be back.

Namaste.

PT

P.S. 23 days strong without a hot shower. Smella out.

Mumbai

Following our quiet few days in hippy Gokarna, a few full trains trapped us back in Palolem… what a shame (not). We browned ourselves up and only crashed our motorbike ONE TIME, sampled more yummy Indian cuisine – I’m still not sick of it – and spent good few hours learning Spanish. Las niñas comen el almuerzo. After a twelve hour sleeper train we arrived in the “cosmopolitan capital of cool”, Mumbai.

After a couple of elephant-paced weeks, I feel like the past two days in Mumbai have been chock-full and faster than a Japanese bullet train. After dumping our bags at the India Guest House (of Shantaram fame), we embarked on a self-guided walking tour of the city. Compared to idyllic Goa, India’s largest city was an electric shock to the system. The smells, sights and sounds of 16 million people smashed into our skulls; I felt like I needed six heads to take everything in. Maybe because I still have the thirty thousand things I learned today running through my head, but I’m struggling to put it all into words – apologies in advance for the jumble of dot points below, language is failing my overstuffaddled brain.

• Mumbai architecture is unique. It’s distinctly European, yet wouldn’t be found anywhere except India. Highlights include the Gateway of India; Taj Mahal Palace Hotel; Victoria Shivaji Terminus, the busiest train station in Asia; the High Court, which we walked through to observe judges swooping around Hogwarts-esque spiral staircases and citizens looking worried, and Mumbai University with its 80m clocktower and white-clad cricketers.
• It was weird seeing sites such as the Air India building which had been subject to terrorist bombings only five years ago. There weren’t any visible signs of the “26/11” attacks (but for preserved bullet holes in the walls of the famous Leopold’s Café), but it was strange to think that just a few years ago, hundreds of people had died under falling debris and fiery explosives where we were standing.
• We visited Girguam Chowpatty, Mumbai’s not-quite-Goan beach, to dodge local tourists wanting photos and touts wanting money and watch a kickass sunset over the futuristic skyline
• Found a breakfast food that almost rivals Sri Lankan hoppers: dosa, rice-flour pancakes about the size of a (hollow) rugby ball to be dipped into spicy coconut milk and hot, red sauce of some kind. They can be filled with potato dahl, or palak (spinach), or cheese and tomato for a more Western taste, and they’re simply DELICIOUS. Another thing I’m going on the hunt for back in Sydney.
• Ecked out the Haji Ali mosque, marooned on an island off the coast of the Mahalaxmi area and connected by a long, thin footpath for pilgrims to cross and pray. Reminded ourselves that religion makes people bad-crazy (26/11 bombings) and good-crazy (creating beautiful buildings because they love God).
• Observed the Dobhi Ghat, where the dirty city comes to wash – hundreds of flapping shirttails and lungis hang on tiers of washing lines above scores of men and women stonewashing the city’s clothes. A production line that Ford would be impressed with and a standard of cleanliness that even Mum might not turn her nose up at!
• So to get out of our hostel you have to fight your way up the Colaba Causeway, where a literal crush of people attack your personal space with suggestions of bangles/printing stamps/pajama pants/henna/football jerseys/watches/sunglasses/other shitty souvenirs to buy. Meanwhile you have to fend off beggars and thieves and people wanting your photo and fat Germans, and I think in the 1km stretch I probably personally touch 300 people, and glance my eyes over at least a thousand. And some of them are rich and white like me but most of them aren’t, and some of them are just so desperately poor. There are amputees and lepers and street children and you see people vomiting and digging through cow shit and babies crying and women crying and no one has anything to eat or drink and from my early morning walk I know that they all slept right there on the street under hopelessly inadequate blankets, and even if you had 100 rupees for them all you know you can’t fix it and you wonder who can fix it and then another tsunami of people washes into you and you have to concentrate on who is stealing your shoes and who is shoving incense up your nose and it’s just so unbelievably overwhelming. You emerge from this tunnel of noise and first-world guilt and then there’s Mumbai unfolded in front of you and you go off and explore the sights and take happy snaps and read Lonely Planet, and push the people-crush to the back of your mind until you have to attack it again on your way home. Anyway after one swim through that puddle of humanity too many, I decided I had to go and fill my face with beautiful things to drive out the fact of the ugliness behind me so I visited a local art gallery and gave myself a much-needed transfusion of really impressive creative activity. Sorry for that rant but yeah just saying art is great and I see why people make it now. If you’re ever feeling soulless and weary: DO ART.
• Even the most polite taxi drivers and fruit-wallahs treat women like second-class participants here; even though I carry the wallet and I pay the money they hand the bill and the change to Will and rarely look me in the eyes, I’d burn my bras if they weren’t so hard to come by in this country #getaroomofmyown
• Haven’t had an indoor hot shower since Christmas Day. Surprisingly not really bovvered.

Getting up at 5 tomorrow for a flight to Varanasi, so I’d better hit the hay – or in my case, roofless stall of a room full of the sounds of the French guys next door watching The Simpson’s. Marge’s voice in French is oddly soothing…

Dosas and dahl,

PT

Gateway to India at sunrise

Masala Dosa

Dobhi Ghat

Gokarna

After the dense hustle and bustle of New Delhi, where you can sometimes barely breathe for the crush of humans, I thought northern Goa was quiet and small. Then we moved south to Palolem, and I thought I had found the most peaceful spot in India. But a few hours by train further down the coast is Gokarna, in the neighbouring state of Karnataka.

It’s a collection of drop dead gorgeous beaches, separated by cliff paths and palm trees. It’s almost empty by India standards, silent at night except for lapping waves and rhythmic cicadas. The early mornings litter the beach with yogis and sandy cows. By day we’ve been sleeping on the beach and munching on pineapples and shakshuka (the Israeli influence is still around down here). And, by night we’ve been sleeping off the beach and munching on papayas and moussaka.

The ‘sit back and watch the world go by’ thing is lovely and all, but I’m not entirely sure that the crowd here is really my scene. It’s a little too not-of-this-earth for me. Don’t get me wrong, inner peace? I dig it. But everyone here seems to have found their inner peace, and now feels the need to smugly parade that fact. The 50 year old chick doing tai chi in the shallows with her eyes closed and a big silly grin on her face? Inner peace: check. The guy with hair longer than his arms and Chinese characters tattooed down his back? Enlightened. That pair of brothers who seem to have given up both shoes and shirts, proudly displaying their furry beach ball-tummies? Found the meaning of life ages ago. And the middle aged couple smoking weed in the mornings while carting their baby around in a hemp sling are so far along in their journey to the Truth that they’re ready to impart their wisdom to others – and by others, I mean everyone they meet.

So even though the past couple of days of chilled-out bliss have been really nice, we’re moving north again for another stop in Goa before Mumbai – trying to squeeze in some more action in our last couple of weeks in India!

Aloo and aubergine,

PT

P.S. On our first morning here we saw a chick determinedly meditating on the beach as two cows loudly humped a metre in front of her. It was hilarious.

P.P.S. Tried uploading photos but wifi is too crap, sozzz

Goa

After a series of flights (#budget #backpackers #whyohwhyohwhy) from Sri Lanka, on one of which we somehow managed to get three different boarding passes printed for the same flight, Will and I arrived in Goa and hopped in a taxi up to Morjim, the northern party beach where we had a few nights’ accommodation booked over New Years’.

“Subcontinent” is right: India is truly vast. We were expecting to jump right back into the hassly, loud, smelly city-India that we had left just over a week before, but Goa seems like a totally different country to everything else we’ve experienced in India thus far. It’s got surprising Portuguese undertones, with Christian churches and European architecture. Rather than rivers of sewage, it has the ocean, which isn’t nearly as dirty as expected. It has sandy beaches and hippies and hostels, which is definitely a first in India – everywhere else we’ve only been able to find guesthouses and cheap hotels. And it has a bizarre abundance of Russians. Everywhere you turn there are scary square-cut fringes and right-angled men in speedos, it’s really odd.

We were lucky enough to be stationed in a fab hostel overflowing (literally – there were several sleeping on the roof) with fun people, including some gals from Sydney whom we actually have connections with! The ‘small world’ phenomenon has been hitting me harder than ever over here – we did a day trip into Arambol, a slightly larger and even hippy-er beach just north of Morjim, and got tapped on the shoulder by an Israeli friend we met in Udaipur. On New Years we had a boozy dinner with an interesting Canadian couple who had been to fourteen different countries in 8 weeks, and our Aussie galpals, which proved to be too boozy for some of us (me, #repeatofmy18th, #oneyearlater #embarrassing). I called it a night early, and woke up in the morning to discover Will not in his bunk! I wandered down to the beach to grab a bite to eat and discovered a very disheveled Willbur wading into the sea with some Japanese-Swedes. Seems like he partied hard enough for us both!

On the morning of the 2nd, my birthday, we decided to up and move south to more chilled out, quiet beaches. The journey to Palolem was to take 4 bus rides and about 5 hours, so we were prepared for a long bumpy journey full of bum sweat and Hindi music. What we were not prepared for was for a truck to crash into our bus as we went round a corner… Luckily no one was seriously injured but it was very scary to be in a crash on Indian roads, given how many people die every year on them. In the kerfuffle loading off the busted bus and onto a new one, Willy’s daypack including his DSLR camera and my laptop somehow got left on the side of the road… we had a very stressful few hours including Will getting on a random’s motorbike to get to the bus depot before, against all odds, he found the bag and all was well again! After all the terrible stories we’ve heard about theft (one guy got his mobile phone stolen by a cop… who do you report that to?) I wasn’t sure we were going to get it back but looks like Ganesh decided to give me a birthday present of amazing luck this year!

Palolem has been even prettier than Morjim, and much more chilled out. We have lounged on sunbeds, stalked down Disney-channel stars, ridden a motorbike to a tiny adjoining beach called Agonda and feasted on salad – GOD BLESS SALAD. On both mornings here I wandered 30 metres from our hut to the beach and saw the sun rise, and I’ve decided this is where I’ll come when I’m having a mid-life crisis, divorced and fat, to write my Great Australian Novel. You can rent a hut here for 10,000 rupees a month (about AUD$200), and I have to tell you it’s pretty tempting. In the morning, before the Russians and the henna-painting, sarong-selling touts descend, it’s poetry-peaceful down here. That is, except for the three local dudes who followed me halfway up the beach for my photo, #celeblyf. The sea is so much warmer than the tap-n-bucket ‘shower’ in our room. There are yogis, some of whom look like they’re just walking the Egyptian, and some of whom look like your headphone wires after they’ve been in your pocket for a couple of hours. It is tempting to stay forever but there is just too much to see! Today we’re heading down towards Gokarna, another beach in the adjoining state of Karnataka, for a few days. My addiction to Shantaram is also probably going to lead us towards Mumbai for a day or two before Varanasi.

Vodka and vindaloo,

PT

Russians #amirite

Typical accommodation on Palolem

Motorbike selfies?