I guess not every Asian girl likes her button nose...
Brian got this free gift from Watson's drug store when he bought some deodorant. It seems rather frightening to me (almost as frightening as the electric eyelash curler that I got when I bought a shoulder bag from Sogo. But I'm glad I don't have to worry about germs when I share this with my girlfriends!
The helpful comic appearing on the back of the package...
Comments? Theories?
India pictures
First house arrest by 24 and now, facebook. Damn the technology age... I want my life back. Here are some India pictures to tide you over as I try to overcome my addictions:
http://picasaweb.google.com/pamlee83(more photos to come, so keep checking)
Brian, Back from Bombay
Both Brian and my sister beat me to the punch. See photolog of the Kerala leg of our trip at Samantha's blog:
Chillin' In Chandigarh.
Below is Brian's letter to family.
More to come:
- I will finally register for a photo album online
- I will post my own episodic impressions to accompany these two fine summaries.
Cheers,
Pam
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Hello everybody:Errant cows, decorated elephants, thieving monkeys-- and those are the animals we saw outside of the zoo. India is hard to describe because it's very friendly, and very rude, beautiful/ugly, touristy/not touristy, cheap/expensive. I'm really glad I went. I'm happy I don't live there. I would go back. There are a few quiet, secluded and affordable places we found. We were so busy running through the country I feel we had little time to relax. We landed in Mumbai (Bombay) early in the morning and got a prepaid cab to the Gateway of India, big tourist mecca for everyone visiting India. The sun wasn't up yet but hustlers ("touts") were already trying to get us to join a boat tour, car tour, do you have a hotel room? This is Mumbai. The traffic is some of the worst in the world. People honk non-stop. No one looks in the rear view mirror. If you are behind someone it is your responsibility to honk to let them know you are there. These words are painted on the back of almost every truck: HORN PLEASE.Walking is just as dangerous and hectic. The main drags of every city are lined with street vendors: shirts, dvds, sugar cane juice, tea, pakoras. The funniest of these are giant balloon vendors. They will walk up to you holding an enormous rubber balloon that looks like a club and say, "big balloon?" They'd sell you a deflated one, but I still can't imagine who'd buy one. We saw beggars at every major intersection. We saw one little girl, about 10 with a 4 year old boy lying still on her lap. She was frowning, her little brother had a bandage covering what seemed to be an open wound on his eye. They were covered in dirt and flies. The boy had no pants. 10 minutes later we passed by again, and the same kids were running around and playing, laughing-- no wounds, no blood. It's hard to tell the fakes in India. Children are sometimes encouraged by their parents to beg to earn money for their families instead of going to school.
After 2 hours in Mumbai, I wanted someone to turn down the volume, turn down the brightness, turn down the people incessantly selling us stuff. We started what would become a regular practice in India: finding our hotel room for the night. Now, we rarely stayed at what you'd call a 'hotel' by Canadian standards. At best, most were hostels, and at worst, they were complete dives.We quickly got in the practice of haggling for everything: hotel rooms, auto rickshaws, clothes, everything but the bill in the restaurant.We started in Mumbai, then went to Cochin, Munnar, Varkala, Trivandrum, Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Delhi, Chandigarh, Delhi, Mumbai then home to Taipei.The tea plantation in Munnar was great, calm and relaxing. The beach in Varkala is very touristy, but we stayed in a secluded, quiet, nice, resort area. This was the highlight of my trip, relaxing and swimming in the Arabian Sea. We saw the Taj Mahal. We ate delicious food. We saw wild animals. We took time to talk to locals, who wondered what we were about. We traveled the country from North to South to North again. Some of those bus rides were great, too-- just watching the countryside roll by. By the time we got to Pam's sister, Sam's place in Chandigarh I had come down with a bad case of diarrhea. I'm ok now. We went to the hospital in Taipei yesterday and I'm all hooked up with some medication. I knew going to India wouldn't be without its price. 1 in 2 people who visit India get this. I'm in the clean, slick, city comfort of Taipei now, though-- away from the dirt and heat, and hustling and bustling of India. I miss Canada\n lots. I'm hoping to do a little tour of Canada when I return.I miss you all. Photos to follow.Love,
Brian
