Naan for You!

The Belated Wrapping-Up Of Things

2006-02-20T04:34:00.000-08:00

After writing on this blog from internet cafes down twisty alleys, up rickety stairs, and in hotel lobbies, on sticky-keyed, decrepit computers, it seems almost farcically easy to stroll into the kitchen, sit down with a cup of tea, and type. And yet it's taken me almost a week. For this, I apologise.

There are a few reasons it's taken so long. I could allude to events in my personal life both happy and sad, but if you know me, you'll probably already know about them already. And if you don't know me, you probably aren't reading this blog. Okay; you definately aren't reading this blog...

It's more that after having been back for a week, I'm beginning to feel as though I've never been gone. The success of a travel blog, I think, depends on its immediacy - and back in Melbourne, without the jumbled-fragrant stench of India clinging to me like a film, without the compulsion of new things to do every day, and with friends and family at my fingertips, things are beginning to fade.

In fact, it's probably a good thing I've kept this blog, because it - and the good chunk missing from my bank balance - is all that's letting me know at the moment that I've really been gone. I went to get my photos developed in Mumbai and they all came out completely underexposed, so I don't have any photos to look back on. The negatives are possibly ruined, which would be disappointing... but Helen's photos turned out as well as expected and I might be able to get a few copies now, rather than having to buy them down the track for a fortune at some gallery.

So. From reading over this thing I see that I haven't written about our last weekend in India. Helen nearly became a Bollywood star, but pulled out at the last minute. We spent a lot of time walking around the street markets doing some last-minute present-shopping - our haggling skillz are superb, by the way. We finally discovered the perfect Indian meal, after a month of sharing everything in the hope of finding the perfect combination. (It's mutter paneer and chana masala with lots of rice and puri and raita, if you're interested. And I know you are.)

The last night we went to the cinema and watched an independent film called Mixed Doubles, which was pretty interesting. It was a Hinglish film, which meant that the characters would all say, "Now let me explain something to you..." and then break into a stream of Hindi - or else the joke was in Hindi but the punchline was in English. We didn't realise, but there's a whole stream of cinema in India called, appropriately enough, Parallel Cinema; small movies that break with Bollywood convention (and Indian conventional morality) and play basically like independant movies you'd see anywhere in the world.

This one was a sex farce about a man trying to convince his wife to become a swinger - not exactly something you'd expect in a country where kissing is forbidden in major movies. It would be fun to watch the movie with subtitles should it ever come out in Australia - though it didn't seem like a terribly good film, the audience loved it, and it would be nice to find out the punchlines to certain jokes, and vice-versa.

The flight back was fairly uneventful, though time-comsuming. Bangkok Airport is more entertaining with another person, especially when that person has a pack full of toys and is trying to attain the perfect spirograph. Qantas gave us truffle ice-cream to apologise for the lack of leg-room. Not to apologise exlicitly, but we all know what they were thinking... and then we were back, and home, and home has consumed us so thoroughly that it's begun to seem impossible that we were really away.

But we were, weren't we? I've not just made this whole thing up? (With no photos I could easily have written this from a darkened hideout in suburbia). We were gone, and now we're back - and I guess that pretty much wraps things up. Helen told me this afternoon that she has officially retired from Helen says, much to the dismay of her legions of fans. Instead, she is taking up a new career in photography, and the speaking of Japanese, possibly inspired by our Japanese photographer boyfriend Munenori.

As for me - I'm off to bed. I'm really bloody tired. I'm procrastinating a bit because I never know how to end things - so I think I'll go out with a whimper...

Bombastic Train Journey

2006-02-11T03:49:00.000-08:00

Well, we're back in Mumbai, or Bombay, or whatever you're supposed to call it... there's a really interesting, not-at-all-marked divide as to who uses which, but Helen and I have decided to settle for Bombay, because then all our experiences here will be Bombastic.

We pulled into Bombay last night after twelve hours on the train. Taking the train in India is actually one of the few experiences that lives up to the romance of expectation. As you settle into your sleeper compartment, the wheels start turning, and the Train Song starts up... a symphony of toy and food and drink wallahs advertising their wares. In booming voices -

"CheesesandwhichbhajiOMlette!"
"Tomaaato SOUP! Tomaaato SOUP!"
"CoffeecoffeeNEScoffeeeeeeeee!"
"BIS-keeeeeee! BIS-keeeeeee!"

Underpinning the whole thing like a Gloria or Dominus is the chai-wallah with his deep intonation of

"Chaaaaaaaaaaai! Chaaaaaaaaaai! Caaaaaaaaaaai!"

as he swings his kettle like a brazier, spilling wafts of cinnamon and cardamon and vanilla fleetingly beneath your nose. Every couple of stations, there is a flurry of activity, as the wallahs in their bright orange catering company shirts haul empty ice-cream and samosa and cheese sandwhich containers off the train and cart new ones on. Enterprising old women appear at the windows with baskets of bananas or hot roasted peanuts on their heads - beggers poke their fingers through the grates.

In the brief interludes between vendors strolling up and down the aisle bellowing, people-watching can keep you more than adequately occupied. The train to Bombay was especially good for this, as the people going there seemed more modern than those travelling in the opposite direction. We nearly passed out when we realised that there were women on the train wearing jeans. One had even chopped all her hair off. After sarees everywhere - even Delhi - it was a bit of a shock.

The other option is to stare out the window and watch the country change from red and dusty with palm trees galore, to wet and lush, to suburban, to urban... or if you're Helen, listen to cello adagios on your iPod and read The Odyssey.

In any case, it was great to be hurtling back towards the city - although saying goodbye to Shae was a bit sad. When you spend so much time with a complete stranger, you form a particular relationship with them - and it's odd to think that I won't see someone I spent two weeks of my life in close contact with for a year at least.

In anycase, that's that. What else? We spent our last few days in Goa visitng Panjim and Old Goa taking photographs, and went to the weekly markets at Anjuna. The markets were fun - rows and rows of tents set up like a makeshift village in a field in the middle of nowhere, perched on the shore. Amongst the usual crap we found some really beautiful things - rugs and shawls and Tibetan silver, embroideries, ground shell jewellery, shoes... and I took a photo of a whole row of Che Guevara T-shirts, flapping in the breeze.

"5 rupees for Che!" the vendor shouted out - and at that price it was almost worth it. Shae got her nose pierced by a woman who looked like Bjork, and Jane, our Irish speech-therapist/hippie friend (insert cheap "Irish accent/speech impediment" joke here), disappeared and came back with a giant moonstone bracelet. You could read your future in that thing. Helen and I walked around eating ice-cream. It was stinking hot in that field, and the ice-cream was easily the most exciting thing that happened to us that day. We took some very repetitive photos of gypsies and spice vendors and rows of shoes glistening in the sunshine, and went home all of us tired, happy, and loaded up with bangles.

Helen and I have been taking it easy here in Bombay, eating lunch at the restaurant next door to our hotel - we were the only white faces in there, I think - and wandering around. We're planning to do some last-minute shopping at the markets tonight, and catch a Bollywood film - hooray! Our grossly over-priced hotel even has a hot shower, so I will be soaking myself thoroughly. I thought I had a tan, but it turns out it was just dust from the train...

Helen says:

After recieving this glowing review, I have been forced to eat my words and grovel at Helen's feet, begging her to take some time out of her busy schedule and humour an old friend:

"Tell Helen says that I love her sardonic wit and adore the way she is able to sum up, in very few words, the absolute essence of her experiences. Her comments balance your writing perfectly... beg her from me not to stop!!!!"

A request with four exclamation points cannot be denied. Hopefully, this spells the end of my italicised attempts to account for Helen's whereabouts.

G'day everyone ! What's cracking?

I apologise for the lack of Helen Says-es during the last few weeks. I've been keeping busy getting in touch with my inner-hippie or, as Jess likes say, inner-ex-chiropractor-hit-mid-life-crisis-gone-on-vacation-to-India-15-years-ago-and-never-came-back/Israeli trance-dancer/Eurotrash.

Since I've spoken to you through your computer screen last, I've become a fully-fledged hippie! I've made friends with a Raaasta-mon (A.K.A. Jane with her monster dreds) and joined a drum circle on the beach. We sat in a circle jammin' on our djambes and I even tasted their apple pie. Jess and Shaemus were thoughtful enough to tell me after I digested that magic slice that it would surely have been packed full of mushrooms! Fortunately for Helen says, I came out of that drum circle with nothing more than a smile on my face. Rasta Jane on the other hand... She felt the wrath of that pie at her 8am yoga class the next morning when the crabs scuttled out of the Indian Ocean, up the sunny beaches of Arambol and into her yoga hut to "get her".

Not only have I excelled in djambe rythms, but I'm now down with quantam physics! In further attempts to get in touch with my inner-Israeli-trance-dancer, I sat at a rooftop cafe (with my fellow Israelis) one night watching a DVD of What the Bleep Do We Know? projected onto an all-natural, organic cotton sheet hanging off the bamboo roof!

I became even more intouch with my inner-topless-Eurotrash-doing-yoga-on-the-beach-in-my-g-string-at-sunset (vicariously) when Shae had her nose pierced by Bjork. This was possibly maybe (PLEASE let there be other Bjork fans reading this blog) the penultimate step in the long and windy road to becoming the world's whitest white-girl hippie, the ultimate being the massage I copped from some barbers today.

Allow me to digress...

I had about an hour to kill this evening while Jess was writing on this thing, so I thought it might be an idea to see if I could score a massage to rid my body of the damage done on the 12 hour train trip.

After being harassed 24/7 by massouses (please forgive my spelling) in Goa, I thought it would be piss-easy to find somewhere in Bombay! How wrong was I...

I only had about 20 minutes left until I had to write Helen Says so in a last ditch effort I ran into a barber shop and yelled "Gimme a massage, STAT!" So the fellows there put me in a chair and wrapped a towel around my shoulders. So far, so good. Then they promptly massaged 2 or 3 handfuls of Vaseline into my face and clean hair. Disappointing! THEN, my eyes sealed shut by the sheer weight of the mighty petroleum jelly - but heightening my other senses in the process - I heard my barber switch on some electrical instrument which began to buzz in fury! I used all the strength in my mortal body to open my eyes just in time to see my Warwick Capper-esque mullet-ed barber poised, [I should take this time to apologise for the length of this sentence] with what looked like a power-sander attached to a rubber glove with cable going into the wall, ready to go to work on my face!

"Yikes!", I screamed. I decided to flee the scene, seconds later there was nothing left in that shop but a cloud of dust in the shape of Helen, Road-Runner-style.

Does anyone know the nightmare when (and Steve I know you will - Jess told us tales of your late night experimental dental surgery back in the day) you're at the dentist, and you wake up from the gas to see Dr. Death with a power drill or chainsaw rather than an electric toothbrush hovering over your mouth, ready to strike! If you have experienced such a nightmare, then, and only then, could you perhaps begin to grasp the magnitude of my newly aquired fear of barber-shop-massages... and Australian footballers from the 80s.

Gotta run, have a hot date at the movies with a choc top (and Jess).
See you soon!

Love Helen

Goa-ing Strong

2006-02-06T00:17:00.000-08:00

That is, the puns about Goa are still coming thick and fast. Ah, puns about Goa. You never get old.

Turns out I won't be going to Hampi after all, which sucks, frankly. Part of the reason we're spending so long here was so we could fit in a trip there in the middle, but the overnight bus is booked out for the next few days and that's really the only affordable way of getting there. Rats.

I'm not really complaining, of course, but I didn't come to India to spend a week lying on the beach, lovely as it is. Still, I have no doubt that I'll be back sometime in the near future - that is, as soon as finances allow - that is, retirement. I'll go to Hampi when I retire.

However, if one has to spend a week lying on the beach (...I'm so unfortunate), there's no arguing that Goa is a pretty good place to do it. This place really does have a split personality. There's the Eurotrash and Israeli trance crowd, the dropouts and the stoners on the one hand - all the whities that have made Goa famous for its party scene - and the locals on the other, who, away from the beaches are just mainly living traditional village lives. They come to bathe in the ocean in sarees, standing bright against the gemlike sea, while half-naked Western women haggle with male sarong vendors on the beach. Some of these women make me blush. Really.

The women wear sarees, but the men just get around in their jocks, which Shae is immensely taken with. She's got photos of men walking along in Mumbai holding hands, as well - this place is homosocial heaven. While coming out is still pretty much the worst thing a Good Indian Boy or Girl could do, society has no issue with the full gamet of homosocial behaviour - which means that boys walk along the beach in their wet singlets and jocks with their arms slung around each other's waists, totally platonically. It's hot.

The bathing-in-sarees thing seems really sensible, and I suppose the funny thing is is that India has made me quite conservative, not in thought, but in dress - I'm so used to the women being covered head to toe and so aware of being respectful to the culture that it's become second nature to cover myself completely (less chance of sunburn, too). I mean, it's not as though I get around half-naked in Melbourne, either, but Shae lent me a skirt that was above the knee the other night and I barely felt dressed at all. Getting out in my bikini was horrifying - although I think that had more to do with not having seen any sun (malaria pills make you really photosensitive) or having done any excercise in the last five weeks. Ugh.

There's not really much to do, though, except laze about, except get Ayurvedic massages (there are little massage huts everywhere) and shop for hippie-chic threads. Last night we went to see the advertised "Jam Session" at a local restaurant. The place was packed out, but open-air, so we went to the restaurent next door and ordered a beer. The band came on and it was, quite honestly, the worst thing I've ever heard, playing original songs like "Hey hey, little monkey" and butchering a medley of Bob Marley classics. The "jam" part of the session came when a random balding, bearded German guy came up on stage and played a selection of pseudo-folk songs on a borrowed guitar. We thought his head would fall off from all the emphatic shaking it was doing between lyrics.

There was also an Afro'd white guy who falsetto'd into the mic at ill-timed intervals, and a drummer tapping a tabla and grinning manaically at all the pretty patterns. Patterns everywhere, man. And so many colours. The crowd really dug it. Best Worst Gig Ever.

There was also a big Hindu bash on the beach, which was a bit like a school fete. The music was blaring, and then some guy started making speeches over the megaphone in Hindi. The speakers were aimed right at our tiny bamboo hut, so we got the full benefit. We're used to it by now, though... the other morning we were woken at dawn by a bunch of hippies having a drum circle on the beach. There are people here who walk up and down the beach strumming their guitars and singing. I kind of wish I'd brought my flute along so I could break out into some Mozart over the loudspeaker. That'd learn those hippies...

Helen says:

Helen is off lazing on the beach - again - and it might be time that we acknowledge the failure of this section. It was a noble experiment... Apparently, she has no desire to spend half an hour every couple of days in an internet cafe purging her own inane observations onto the interweb - unlike some of us writing on this blog... Whatever will become of an Arts student with no taste for literary self-indulgance?

"It's a Goa!"

2006-02-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

( ...has been Helen's response in the affirmative to every question posed since we ditched the city, took a 12-hour train and wound up in Arambol, in the north of this state.)

Goa, from what we've seen today, is a pretty amazingly contradictory place. Everyone we spoke to before we came warned us, "It's not India," - and they were right. I do kind of miss Mumbai, for all the pollution, the poverty, and the commercial hustle: you don't get more India than that. Still, with me still recuperating and Shae coming down with a cold, we thought that a few days on the beach sounded like a good idea - and just because it's not India doesn't mean there isn't plenty to see.

Oh no. Arambol is supposed to be one of the most relaxed places in Goa, but if so I really can't imagine what the others are like. Here it's a frenticly low-key mix of faded hippies, stoners, middle-aged drop-out ex-lawyers, Israeli psy-trance freaks, multitudes of backpackers, locals, shopkeepers, tradies, and cows. There's no getting away from the cows in India - they wander on beaches framed by palm fronds past topless, G-stringed Eurotrash; by yoga devotees doing stretches as the sun goes down; and into the rubbish bins beside the restaurants and beach shacks that line the shore.

We're staying in one of these shacks, for about $3 a night each - a little bamboo hut with a double bed, mattress on the floor for the third of us (we plan to rotate), and a little plaster Jesus above the light switch. Goa is the most heavily Christian place we've found so far, being a former Portugese colony - there's a little whitewashed church lit up by neon lights on the main road, and crucifixes and statues everywhere. We're planning to spend some time in Old Goa, where there are many many cathedrals, some ruins, and the relics of St Francis Xavier, who last went on show two years ago and who will be resting deep in the tombs when we visit.

It's odd to be in a place with such a heady mix of religious devoutness and hedonism. We're planning to go to church tomorrow to atone for the day on sloth we've had today, browsing the stalls and drinking Indian wine. Then for me it's on to Hampi, and after that... well, a few days of leisure never killed anyone, did they?

Helen says:

Helen is off drinking wine and so not available for comment. I plan to join her very, very soon.

Continued as promised...

2006-02-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

...though I still don't have much to say.

I'm back at the Salvation Army Hostel, where we've been leading a very school-camp-like existance for the last couple of days. Mumbai is much more expensive than Delhi, oddly enough, so the Rs 150 we're paying for a bunk bed, a breakfast consisting of white bread, jam and a banana, and all the cold showers we can handle is a comparative bargain. Also, there's the free entertainment provided by the Indian women staying there hacking up their phlegm in the early hours of the morn. Hacking up one's phlgem is a national passtime in India. Sometimes I feel as though I'm on holiday in a TB colony.

We got into Mumbai late last night, although it seems much longer ago than that. It's such a vibrant place - though when people tell you that it's filthy, they aren't kidding. We taxi'd it out to the Hanging Gardens today and could hardly see across the bay to the other side of the city for all the smog. It's a city of tar-filled lungs, of slums, and of colour - so much colour. The air smells alternately like roses and sulphur gas.

It's funny how precisely the mood of a place changes with its climate. Jaipur was beautiful, dusty-pink, with pigs snuffling in the streets, and kites for some reason lodged in every tree. The people moved slowly there, being technically in the desert, though the tourist-hassling aspect was at full bore. Mumbai has the peculiar affability I always associate with places on large bodies of water - Can Tho had it, as did Hoi An - as though every day is a holiday.

We met Shae, Dave's friend, at the hostel, after a gruelling two-hour taxi trip - the traffic here is incredible. We got in tired, and were immediately taken to the local pub by Shae, her friend Anna, and a career counsellor from Melbourne Uni named Julie - five Melbourne girls sharing a beer on the other side of the world. It was pretty surreal. We took the circuitous route back to the hostel, via the India Gate, and took in some of the night-lit sights. This area has such a funny British Raj feel to it; colonial architecture and red double-decker buses, taxis instead of rickshaws, and an incredibly elaborate train station built like some Duke or Earl's place in the country somewhere.

Shae had, with great forsight, organised a taxi to drive us around for the morning on a photography excursion, to places like the Hajiali and the Hanging Gardens, finishing off with a jaunt at the Ghandi Museum. The museum was really cool, the highlights being a recreation of the room where Ghandi slept, and a series of three dozen one-and-a-half by one metre dioramas, each depicting a key scene in Ghandi's life, using very elaborately handcrafted dolls. It sounds odd, and could have been really condescending, but instead it was a good way to follow his biography without the usual drily-captioned photos and heavy tomes printed onto the walls. Yes, dolls. You had to be there, alright?

The Shanteram reading turned out to be for Saturday (if in fact it's happening at all); we just had dinner and a beer instead. Right now, Helen, Anna and Shae are out at an Indian hip-hop night - I'm bloody exhausted, so as soon as I finish this, I'm off to bed. The bug I wrote about wasn't too bad but the hangover from being sick is a bitch - I'm just tired all the time. Of course, I've been getting up at four to catch trains and whatnot and haven't really slept for the last few days, so it could just be that. I'll let you know in the morning.

Helen says:

What, weren't you listening? Helen is off dancing to Indian hip-hop and is having far too good a time to sit around this hostel thinking of witty comments to write on her friend's blog. Jeeze.

Pinch and a punch...

2006-02-01T03:32:00.000-08:00

...what am I, six?

This is going to be a brief one, as I don't really have much time. Also, I don't really know where to start with this entry - we've had an action-packed last few days, and listing everything we did in them would be tedious and time-consuming.

If you want to know the sights we see'd in Jaipur, I suggest you grab a guidebook and look up the entries for the Mammoth Crazy Giant Jaipur Fort; the Legoland Telescopic Theme-Park; and the Honeycomb Observation Deck; all of which have real names that I've forgotten. It will make for a fun fact-finding expedition. (Actually, I'm just too lazy to run upstairs and grab the Lonely Planet, but I'll fill you in on the real names when I can be bothered - possibly, never.)

We see'd all these sights with a hugely enthusiastic French guy that we met on the Agra-Jaipur train. His name is Sylvian, he's a jeweller, and apparently he found us hugely amusing, as after a few hours of conversation in (his) broken English and (my) broken French, he declared,

"I will go shopping tomorrow with you. It will be funny."

"Fun," we corrected, fearing being laughed at.

"Fun," he amended, "but also funny."

In any case, we never made it to the bazaars - there goes our dorky plan to get matching friendship rings in Jaipur. We did see practically everything else the town has to offer, though, courtesy of Sylvian, who had organised a driver for the day and whisked us around the city in a whirlwind or spectatorship and tourism. And all without us contributing more than a few dollars. He told me (while Helen was sleeping on the train) that an older traveller had shouted him a day on the town twenty years ago, and so he was repaying the favour, and Helen and I should take out some young kids when we're jaunting around the subcontinent at the ripe old age of 42.

So that was lovely. The next day at four in the morning - I was suprised to find out that they have one in the morning, too - we got up to take the train to Delhi - then on to Mumbai - then many things after that that I will detail the next time I write, as now I am off to see Gregory Roberts of Shanteram fame do a reading around the corner. You can take the girl out of Melbourne Uni Arts...

Helen says:

Still reeling from the back-gammon loss; too ashamed to type.

To be continued (like so many cheap radio serials)...

She's got it...

2006-01-28T04:58:00.000-08:00

Oh baby, she's got it.

A cripplingly painful stomach bug, that is.

Serves me right. After reassuring my nearest and dearest that I really am being careful and that it's safe to eat from street kitchens, I've spent the last 24 hours shivering, vomiting, and sleeping. Not to mention taking a two-hour train journey.

You'll have to ask Helen what the vegetarian breakfast on the Shatabdi Express was like - she ate mine as well as hers, seeing as I was passed out most of the time. I have to say, she's an excellent nurse; got me water, fed me crackers, even humoured me about chaining up our bags when it appeared that it was blatantly unneccessary. I wasn't really making sense at that point, being at the nadir (or as I prefer to think of it, Turning Point, parabola-style) of the bug; cold sweats, prickly skin, dizzy, hot, blah.

The irony is that tracing it back to 6 hours before the symptoms started, it wasn't even Indian food that did me in - it was a vegetable chowmein at a goddamn Israeli cafe. Just another reason to curse the name of Zion forever. I told you you couldn't trust those Israelis!

All of which is to say that while we've been in Agra all day, I really have no idea what it's like. I'm feeling much better, so we'll probably make up for lost time by hitting the Taj at sunrise. It's about a ten minute walk from our hotel, and easily visible from the rooftop, which is a bit surreal. Agra's just like any city we've seen, except that there's this great shimmering marble monument, palaces and the fort forming a background to all the square concrete buildings. As far as city monuments go, it beats the shit out of Federation Square.

The other thing is that as well as the usual cows, there are monkeys everywhere. Helen suspects that they sit on the rooftop cafes and drink tea and play backgammon when we are not around. There are heaps of parakeets as well, and the odd camel - which is to say that all camels are pretty odd. It's a menagerie over here, though the animals are not as interesting as the human zoo, which is made up, from what I've seen, of backpackers, Indian sight-seers, and non-plussed locals.

Helen is currently playing the owner of this internet cafe for free internet - her mad backgammon skillz are standing us in good stead. I'll let her fill you in on Agra, as she's spent most of the day exploring, whereas I've spent it with my head next to a bucket. Looking out the window of this cafe, Agra looks really interesting, and we have most of the day to explore before catching a train to Jaipur, so hopefully the next time I write I'll have something fascinating - and not nauseating - to report. Fingers crossed.

Helen (regretfully) says:

I am struggling to lift my head high enough to see the words I type. I am so crippled by shame. I just lost 184 freaking Rps in a game of backgammon!

Oh, Don't worry! I was as shocked as you are all, no doubt.

As soon as Jess finished writing on the blog I yelled for help and tag-teamed her into the ring.

It all started out so well; I defeated Shahid back-to-back in a way that could only be described as "brutal" or as a "devastating loss" on his behalf. Alas, it all went down-hill from there. As I watched (in utter bewilderment) our money for tonight's dinner... the hotel... a trip to the Taj... mortage on my house - disappear into the pockets of our cheerful friend Sha-hiddle , as we so fondly refer to him..

...so the sun set on Agra.

And it was the end to a magical day, full of vomitting and crushing defeat.

PS. The vegetarian breakfast on the Shatabdi Express is second to none ...NOT

Jess writes a coda:

The tag-teaming was an idea about on par with eating that chowmein. We now owe our firstborn children to this Indian hustler, who has backgammoned us out of house and home. As I slumped down across the counter on which the board was set up, I gave out a muffled scream; "You don't understand how much pain I've already been in today!" This got a laugh - yeah, ha ha, you Indian bastard. With a glimmer of hope, I asked, "Is gambling even legal in India?" Apparently, if he's winning, it is; if he's losing, it's not. Never before has a friendly game of backgammon ended in so many tears.

And I would have had him in the third game, if he hadn't rolled three consecutive high doubles. Now who said anything about loaded dice?

Culture Vultures (Eat the Parsi Dead)

2006-01-27T06:04:00.000-08:00

We've been in Delhi for a few days now but haven't really done much sightseeing, preferring instead to walk, shop, and drink gallons of tea. Yesterday we hiked up to the train station and organised tickets to Agra, then Jaipur, then back home - tomorrow we leave for the Taj. So today we decided to have an Explore Old Delhi day, which we did, with varying degrees of success.

The first item on our agenda (of aproximately two-and-a-half items) was the Jama Masjid, a gigantic, beautiful old mosque in the heart of Old Delhi. We got there too early to enter - we could see prayers taking place on the terrace with the Red Fort in the background. So we wandered around for a while at the Tibetan Refugee Textile Market and the streets surrounding the mosque, until we could haul ourselves up the steps, take off our shoes, and take photographs galore. It was a challenge - there were bright sarees and men in traditional dress in front of dusty, centuries-old architecture, and everywhere we looked, a great photo sprung up.

Helen's been using her long-range lens as a spy-cam, but she got caught out today - the group of women she was taking a photo of caught on and got out their own cameras, and proceeded to pose for photos with us for the next ten minutes. We were like celebrities - it was bizarre. One woman even handed her baby to Helen for a cuter shot. We took all the photos we could and hot-footed it out of there, mobbed by children who all wanted their photo taken too.

From there we autorickshawed it over to the Museum of Modern Art, which, it turned out, was being renovated, and so was mostly closed. We still managed to see a few good exhibits, including one by Amrita Shargill, who is kind of like Gaugin, but without the post-colonial exploitation and pedophilic tendancies. On the way back, we even passed a street named after her; Amrita Shargill Marg. It was very cool, and made us feel very cultured, even though thirty minutes beforehand we'd had no idea who that was.

The museum itself is in a gorgeous old residence, which was nice, with a hideous sculpture garden as an added bonus. We love hideous sculpture, so that was probably the highlight of the day. On the way back, we also passed a Parsi cemetary (a link! I wasn't just being tasteless!) which I found pretty interesting. I read in the newspapers that India's declining vulture population is posing a major problem for the Parsis. I think there's a breeding program underway. That's kind of irrelevent. But interesting, don't you think?

Helen's Israeli friend Noy had recommended a good market to us, so we instructed the driver to take us there. He was, (justifiably, as it turned out), incredulous. "If you want to see another side to Delhi," Noy had said, "you can go to Khan market, about 15 minutes by autorikshaw from the main bazaar, it's a small area with western shops, a couple of cafes that cater mainly to expats, embassy workers and rich Indians, a cool book shop, and grocery shops selling imported stuff. You can also get indian red wine, which is almost drinkable, in the wine shop across the street (it's hard to find, you have to ask for it)."

Well, we went there, and unless there's another Khan market, it was a dud, more of a suburban shopping strip full of pet stores and ice-cream parlours than a cool, happening enclave - which just goes to show that you can never trust an Israeli. We've even bought special locks and chains for the train tomorrow just in case all those Israelis try to steal our packs.

Better head off now - Helen and I are getting up ridiculously early to be at the station at 5.30. We are catching the Shatabdi Express, which sounds classier than it probably is; it will get us to Agra in two hours though, and they're giving us breakfast. Either plane and train food has improved immensely in the past couple of years, or I've spent so much time with impoverished Arts students that I get ridiculously excited about free food by proxy; either way, I can't wait to see what vegetarian goodies the Shatabdi dishes up.

Helen says:

Hi there ! We've had a splendid day. Jama Masjid was rocking, and it was cool to be on the otherside of the lense when a muslim family asked Jess and I to have photos holding their babies and whatnot. The Gallery of Modern Art was equally smashing . Noy (you suck) recommended that we hit up the Khan bazaar. Worst bazaar ever.

Probably the highlight of my day occured at around 5.30pm when Jess went to have her hair washed. I left her there, 20 minutes and Rupees 500 later, Jess had lovely clean hair and I had a lifetime's worth of holographic stickers!

Yessssssss......

Love Helen

Airport Security Love

2006-01-25T23:09:00.000-08:00

And so we find ourselves in Delhi, having been thoroughly frisked and hit upon by both male and female employees of the Kathmandu international aiport. Helen got felt up a bit too enthusiastically by a female security guard - what exactly did they think she would be smuggling? - and I had a guy tell me I was very beautiful as he emptied my backpack, revealing my spare pair of (clean) knickers to the world. Ah, Nepal - land of riots, yak cheese, and sexual harrassment.

It's seems kinda pissy that there are only two posts for Nepal - but internet access there is excruciatingly slow, expensive, and unreliable, and besides, we were too busy having fun (and trying not to freeze to death) to want to sit still.

And it wasn't all political tension and curfews - we did have fun. The second night we were there, we hit upon a restaurant and guest house called the Siddharta Guatam, where the bored restaurant manager came for a chat and plied us with revolting - but free - Nepali whisky. Helen ushered over a Japanese guy from the computors, who we wound up kidnapping for a week. (If you're reading this, Mune, hi!)

We drove up and down the mountains with a taxi driver who became "our" driver, taking us wherever our whims dictated, and took photos of some village kids and their goats. We ate Tibetan food like fiends - mo mo, thukpa and fat stretched noodles. Drank heaps of masala chiya, the Nepalese answer to chai, but richer and creamier and much spicier.

We washed our hair in the morning and sat up on the rooftop to let it dry, playing backgammon and drinking tea. At ground level in Kathmandu there's no green to be found - the streets are dusty, and there are no trees whatsoever - the only colour coming from the spice vendors with their mountains of spice, clothes shops selling bright rags to the hippie/stoner crowd, and prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. But walk five or six flights of stairs and step out onto the rooftop and the city becomes a patchwork of hidden gardens, all facing the sky, with pot plants and greenery, chairs, tables, washing lines and the occasional vegie garden.

In the last few days, we even adopted a tribe of neighbourhood children, who sold us paintings they had done of the city and of themselves and followed us like we were the Pied Piper. We bought them biscuits for breakfast, and they insisted on having their photo taken first with Helen and then with me, on Helen's baby digi. They even gave us an email adress, and the instructions to send said photos. They were nice kids, who for whatever reason weren't in school, and who might have been a bit bored, seizing on our presence to entertain (and feed) them.

Throw in a lot of photography, some temple visits, blue skies, freezing nights, a lot of walking around, window-shopping, chatting to Japanese people and drinking tea, and that's pretty much the sum of Nepal. We were pretty sad to leave it behind - although the shenanigans of the airport security staff did make it that much easier.

We've spent the last few days in Paharganj; this is the first time I've been able to access this page, for some reason. We're currently having another government-enforced day of leisure, as we're avoiding the Republic Day crowds, and also, ecverything is shut. Except for the restaurants - we've spent the morning at our new favourite haunt, a tiny, sunken cafe known as the Momo Cave. It is perpetually full of Japanese hipsters and Fench yoga teachers, and looks like a minature Indian version of the Night Cat. Some things are the same the world over, it seems.

In any case, the food is great, and while not as cheap as our favourite street cafe, where we've eaten 'til we've dropped for about a dollar each, it's peanuts by Melbourne standards. Our plan to eat our way around India is off to a flying start.

Yesterday was spent browsing the bazaar. I accidentally bought a traditional Punjabi outfit - I only wanted the tunic to fiddle around with when I get back to Melbourne, but it came with a gigantic scarf and some very soft, billowy pants, which are the most comfotable thing I've ever worn. They have immediately taken the place of my mum's old tracksuit pants as pyjama bottoms, and the scarf is wound around my neck as I write, so it was a pretty good deal, all in all.

It's funny - Helen works at a jewellery store, and is going crazy for all the turquoise; I'm nuts about textiles, and am stopping every few metres to exclaim over embroidered silks. We can't walk down a street here without flitting to every window. It's a sickness.

Last night we went to see a Bollywood film from the eighties at the Imperial Cinema. It was in Hindi, of course, so we made up our own storyline and dialogue and enjoyed it immensley. We also tried to get to the Museum of Modern Art, but the autorickshaw driver didn't have a clue what I was talking about and when we stopped to ask someone he got really huffy and asked me to speak English, please. "Do you know English?" We just gave up after that, and had a relaxing day walking the streets we've grown to know.

Helen says:

Hi there !
It's great to be in India!
So many Japanese people!
(konnichi ha Mune san!)
I am currently in struggle-town trying to think of things to say. It's not particularly easy to follow Jess theJournalist on this blog! We're having SO much fun and look forward to seeing everyone again in a few weeks time.

(No new backgammon scores to relay, but if there were - I would probably be up by approx. 1 trillion points)

Love Helen

Back in Kathmandu

2006-01-22T21:38:00.000-08:00

So. For those of you who have been worried, we're safe and sound here, and have only done risky things accidentally; for those of you who don't read the newspapers, well, there's no excuse for you.

I'll write a bit about the political feeling here when I'm out of Nepal and not so worried about government censorship - I doubt I'd be arrested, but anything goes here at the moment, and most of the lawyers we know are currently in or have just come out of jail. So all the goss from the safe, warm embrace of Mother India - and sightseeing news from Nepal.

(If it's been in the news, though, we were at Durbar Square on Saturday, holed up nice and safe in a little temple courtyard with a Colombian woman named Maria, at the time of the protests. Remember those pesky protests that kept us (and the rest of Kathmandu) indoors all Friday? Well, they were rescheduled for Saturday, which was actually in the Kathmandu Post that morning; but we didn't read it and apparently neither did the taxi-driver who merrily took us into the thick of things about an hour before the protests kicked off. That is, before the roads were closed off. It was pretty interesting - again, see news sources for details. Sorry - being here tends to make you a little bit paranoid.)

Anyway, we decided to get out of Kathmandu for a bit, and so drove up a very windy mountain road in the back of a seatbelt-less cab to a place called Nagarkot, which has nothing there except spectacular views of the mountains. We stayed at the topmost of the hotels, and climbed many wrought-iron, rickety Stairs O'Death at dusk to watch the sun sink over the valley housing Kathmandu. After the sun set, there was nothing left to do but eat dinner and stare at the stars, which came out in force at about seven in the evening.

And my, how they shone. They shone hard and clear and bright like diamonds in that frigid sky, far more so than anything I've ever seen. We admired them for about five minutes before our toes fell off and we had to go to bed. Helen was only wearing thongs on her feet, which for lack of a discernable reason I'll attribute to general insanity - sad, cold rubber thongs, in the thin mountain clime. So we went off to bed, though not to sleep, and with fresh, cold air in our tarred-filled city lungs, thought pleasant, warming thoughts until the morn.

For some reason neither of us slept very much - we're not feeling it yet, but I'm sure we will. In any case, at about six-thirty we rugged up to watch the sun rise over the Himalayas. The hazy snow-capped mountains came into focus beneath a blanket of fairy-floss clouds - the sort of view that takes your breath away but makes for fairly mediocre photos. We took heaps anyway, of the two of us looking unimpressed at the cold and at the ungodly hour of the sunrise, and of the view. Only time will tell which turn out to be the more spectacular.

Helen also took some gorgeous photos of village kids who ran up to the cab to ask for lollies at the foot of the mountain. We have taken to carrying a big bag of them around to give to kids who ask for chocolate or sweets, as often that's all that kids on the street want. They take the lollies, we take their photos, and we tell ourselves that everybody wins.

We're leaving for Delhi at lunchtime tomorrow, and despite the craziness, we're really going to miss it here. There's really something about the place that gets under your skin (I say from my full five days of experience here). It's the calmest place I've been to yet, which is saying something, what with the political situation what it is. In any case, we never made it to Pokhara, so I guess we'll just have to return. Rats.

Helen says:

Helen is in a self-professed foul mood and as such will not be making a comment today. Incongruous as this may seem with the above comments - Nepal is truly a land of contradictions.

Fear and Loathing in Kathmandu

2006-01-20T05:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday got off to an auspicious start: I boarded the plane for Kathmandu, and over 100 civil and political leaders here were arrested in sweeping civil rights violations.

It was on the front page of the Kathmandu Post today, along with the news that, to prevent the planned demonstrations that were to have closed off some of the main streets of Kathmandu, the Government had issued a curfew to come into effect at 8 o'clock this morning and finishing at 6pm at night.

We're still not sure whether the curfew was only for Maoists and foreigners; we saw a lot of Nepalis sitting out on their respective roofs, eating and reading, and all the shops were closed, but the radio reports weren't exactly friendly to Western ears, so for all we know, the rest of Kathmandu got on with its day, same as usual, while we watched it spin around us from our vantage point at the top of the world.

That is, Helen and I spent our time sitting on the rooftop garden of our hotel, reading, basking in the sun, splitting a bottle of tremendously bad red wine, writing, and playing backgammon. When we met up at the airport, we both screeched, "We have so much to catch up on!"... and a good, thing, too. It wasn't exactly how we planned to spend our time, but very relaxing nonetheless.

Our Travelling Library consists of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Odyssey, Ulysses, Midnight's Children, and The Story of an African Farm, so we weren't short of light reading. We also spent a lot of time eating - food is cheap here, and, well, there wasn't anything else to do.

The Tibetan Breakfast comes highly recommeded, being spicy fried potatoes and Tibetan bread. The waiter asked whether I wanted normal or Tibetan tea; I asked what Tibetan tea was like, and he told me very cheerfully that it was "very nice", and in the spirit of trying everything once, that's what I ordered.

Well. I later saw it described as "Salty Tibetan Butter Tea", and that's what it tasted like - actually, it tasted like someone had thrown some sugar in hot buttermilk as a hideous, twisted joke. We've falled heavily for the Tibetain mo mo dumplings, and there's a great Tibetan noodle soup; if the government continues its petulance, we may end up eating our way around the region from the comfort of our hotel.

Helen is off flirting with the waiters at this very charming internet-cafe/restaurant, and she just yelled over that the curfew was for everyone. So that's that. We're trying to set it up that Helen can write on this blog: in the intertim, we're tacking on her thoughts to my posts. Therefore -

Helen says:

Just a quick note to let all of Australia know that I beat Jess twice in backgammon (one by 224 BIG ONES BABY!), and that I will be referred to from now on as "Helen, pearl among women".

Love from Helen (Pearl among Women)

On the road again

2006-01-17T04:20:00.000-08:00

Well, that's it for Hoi An - I'm in Nha Trang at the moment, which is pretty much the Surfer's Paradise of Vietnam, in a ridiculously overpriced internet cafe that doubles as a bar. There's free internet for an hour if you order a drink - hm.

It's odd to think that my time in Vietnam is almost over. I'm learning that Travel Time is a very strange beast indeed - I feel on the one hand as I've been travelling for months, and on the other that my time here has finished before it even began.

The last week has been fairly slow-paced, which is why the dearth of posts here - there's nothing really news-worthy to report. There's probably something to be said for full-on travelling, whisking yourself up and down coasts and having amazing adventures that make pat little anecdotes when you get back - gives you better entries for your blog, and I fully intend to come back and see the parts of this country that I've missed this time.

But I think there's also something to be said for just sitting and absorbing the rythms and nuances of a place. I've gotten to know Hoi An pretty well, and oddly enough, it's gotten to know me. I've made friends with a lovely old man who runs a tiny little antique store on Tran Phu, and who lives near the hotel I was staying. He fought for the South during the American War and showed me a few photos of himself in uniform. I went in to the shop for a chat a couple of times after that, and he told me that he'd seen me walking the kilometre or so to the main drag a couple of times a day - "No motorbike for you!" I gave him the response I usually give the moto drivers calling out in the street - "No thanks, I have feet!" Granted, it's not much of a quip, but it usually got a rueful smile or a wink from the moto drivers and they stopped hassling me after a few days.

I made friends with Diep, who runs a stall across the road from the hotel and who sold me bananas and water every day and who told me the best places to get coffee and which antique shops sold the genuine article and which sold fakes. (My soldier friend passed the test.) I met her friend Ly, who takes in laundry, and after that I got a big cheerful wave from the both of them whenever I left the hotel. There's nothing like having someone call out your name to give you a sense of place.

I made friends with Bao, the tailor, who ran me up a few things (thanks for the new clothes, Nagyi and Papa!) . I had a running joke going with a woman who ran a street kitchen about the fact that I don't eat meat. And I got to know the markets pretty well - the best person to go to for cuttlefish, the woman with the best banh bao cakes all wrapped up in a banana leaves, where they baked the freshest baguettes. It's all very well to see fields and fields of rice paddies all up and down the country, but I think that if you're missing out on the human contact side of things, you might as well watch a nature film.

Which is not to say that the scenery wasn't spectacular, or that staying in the one place didn't make me a bit antsy at times. Taking the bus, as gruelling as it is physically, is actually a nice balm for the feeling that I'm missing out on something - I'm seeing the country from a window, it's true, but so far I've seen nothing that would magically trump the last week or so, which, as low-key as it was, was pretty damn good.

Tonight's sunset made for a particularly pretty drive, with spectacular streaks of gold and pink making shadow-puppets of the mountains, and bouncing off the ponds scattered through the rice-paddies. The usual green of the fields deepened from inner-avacado to out; and just like that, the darkness. Off the coast all the fishing boats switched on their fluorescant lights and drifted like fireflies through an ocean of night.

I'm getting in to the city tomorrow so I may just get to see the sun rise over Ho Chi Minh. That would be a pretty way to end the trip. I'm going to see if I can leave my big bag somewhere - a lot of places have left-luggage facilities for a dollar - and then just walk all over the bits I missed the first week. Twelve hours straight of walking - I should be able to see a lot. And then back out to the airport: back through the shanty-towns that lie on the fringe; back towards the tarmac lying grubby in a field of green; and then onwards, upwards, towards Helen in Nepal.

I can hardly wait.

Friday the 13th...

2006-01-13T23:07:00.000-08:00

...was actually full of good things, as at night it played host to Hoi An's monthly Full Moon Festival.

I stumbled out of the internet cafe last night in search of a bowl of cao lau, a Hoi An specialty that is not particularly kosher but exceptionally delicious. I've been a bit slack with the vegetarianism while I've been here, eating meat stock if not actual meat; I'll just have to eat a lot of masala thosai while I'm in India. My God, what a world I've created for myself in which eating thosai is penance.

Anyway, walking the streets I noticed an eerie lack of motorbikes, and an insistant throb from the foreshore. Investigating, I found signs designating the main streets "walking streets" - bicycles could be wheeled through but motos and cars were banned. The streets were lit up with string upon string of paper lanterns, glowing brightly against the faded paint of old villas. Kids were playing shuttlecock; teenage girls sat in rows on the curb and gossiped; and old men played a variation of chess with passers-by craning their necks and placing bets.

The water-front, usually dark at night, was lit by the stalls moved over from the market; the river itself was illuminated by hundreds of candles that people lit and then sent floating in coloured flower-shaped bowls. Young couples took boat rides down the river, and young kids bought balloons and popcorn from the vendors cycling their way slowly down the street.

A few stages were set up. One had Cham traditional singing, which is unfortunately just as atonal and nasal as every other sort of traditional singing. Another had a competition between two martial-arts groups, which was more of an exhibition than an actual match. The third and most spectacular was a musical staged on an extremely ornate wooden boat, which had been brought in a few days before and floated tethered to the bridge petulantly, anticipating its moment of glory.

The waterfront was lined with food vendors, fortuitously for my empty stomach - cao lau, all sorts of fried concoctions, White Rose dumplings (another Hoi An specialty - steamed rice-flour dumplings with shrimp and pork mince inside, shaped like flowers), Quang noodles, Hoanh Thanh dumplings, sticky peanut brittle, fruit.

All in all, an orgy for the senses. The next time the moon is full, I'll be somewhere in India. Wonder if there's any celebration there?

Cruising along

2006-01-13T04:18:00.000-08:00

Not much to report - I've been taking it easy these last few days, having a holiday from being on the road. It's been nice: I've eaten banana crepes for breakfast, had coffee on the waterfront, read, watched overwrought French period dramas on TV5Monde, navigated the markets a bit.

I did manage to make it out to My Son yesterday, where they have some fabulous ruins. The place is very atmospheric and absolutely crawling with tourists. The bus I was on in particular was full of francophones and a very annoying American family. Sometimes cliches exist for a reason - and fat and obnoxious Americans abroad apparently attempt to fulfil expectations, rather than subvert them. In this case, it was the three chubby pubescant kiddies making themselves conspicuous, designating things as either "cool" or "gay", loudly making sure they were the first at everything, and rolling their eyes at centuries of history.

They seem to be the exception rather than the rule, though - despite the number of white faces in Hoi An, there's no real brash tourist vibe. People here seem to relax, don't insist on sticking to their own nationalities so stridently, and mingle with the locals rather than seeing them as an imposition - which, incredibly, some people seemed to in Ho Chi Minh. I guess travel for some people brings out rather ugly behaviour.

What else? Managed to get my hair washed again, only this time it was a rather more rustic experience - lying on a bench against the wall with my knees up to my chin and my head in a bucket of frigid water. I guess for most people this wouldn't be particularly uncomfortable - I just forget how bloody tall I am in relation to most Vietnamese women. I keep forgetting to duck and walking into awnings and signs and umbrellas - most of which injure my dignity more than anything.

Still, there was shampoo involved, there was a complimentary, weird, and kind of painful face massage, it was half the price of Ho Chi Minh and shamefully, it was the first time my hair was washed since then. I've been letting my grooming standards slide just the teensiest, teensiest bit.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to look into taking a day trip to Hue - it's only five hours away by bus and the Imperial Palace seems pretty cool. Of course, I might just spend the time lounging by the river, enjoying that fish-market tang. Palace or patisserie? Patisserie or palace? Yeah - life is hard.

I [heart] Hoi An

2006-01-12T06:17:00.000-08:00

I've been in Hoi An for the last couple of days, and I don't want to leave. This place is so incredibly vibrant. At first it seems very commercial - everyone wants to sell you something. But between the kitchy souvenir shops are proper art galleries, patisseries, a sprinkling of temples, book exchange stalls, laquerwear workshops and shrines. Despite the bustle, the mood is relaxed.

The city centre is basically three main streets running parallel to the river, bounded by two bridges. It's cosy and very friendly, with lots of French architecture and traditional facades. There are traffic restrictions in the city, so there are a sprinkling of motos in the daytime, but children play shuttlecock on the street at night. It's a perfect city for walking.

Everyone wants to try out their English on you. Little kids call out "my name is (kid's name). What is your name?" Teenage boys pose languidly next to their motos and ask, "you want ride?" (Their second favourite phrase - "I love you!").

The most absurd, though, is from the tailors, who have a steady rehearsed stream that bubbles up whenever you walk by, tweaked for national/aesthetic specifics. "Hello! What your name? Where you from? You very pretty!" they exhale, grabbing you by the arm. "Where your boyfriend? Why he not travel with you? Very pretty, skin very white! Very good complexion! You want come see my shop? I have shop in market, you come see it, okay?" They grin at you and it's impossible not to grin back, because the entire exchange is a game; their goal is to get you inside the market, yours is to think of a plausable yet creative answer, and escape.

The cloth market - the market they're talking about - is insane. Everywhere stall-holders pile fabrics high above their heads, in little booths with stall numbers on a sign. In the middle of these booths is a table with a sewing machine, some pattern books and magazines - no-one uses patterns, the main method being for a customer to point out something they like, the tailor to take mesurements, and then sew it to those, making the pattern up as they go.

Next to the cloth market is the market proper, which, as it's on a river, is also a fish market. The smell is everywhere, there's dust and fruit and sardines drying in the sun. Tarps are slung between stalls creating alleyways with a roof just a bit lower than my head, so when I go it's always bent double at a scurry.

What else? The food is excellent, there's proper coffee to be had - although I must admit I'm beginning to get a bit addicted to Vietnamese coffee. What you get, when you order it, is a glass with a stripe of condensed milk; sitting above that is a cup full of hot water on a saucer, with coffee compressed at the bottom. This drips through I think two filters, and comes out very strong. There's a technique to drinking it; mix the condensed milk with the coffee, and then when it's still very hot, tip it down your throat. If you get it at the right angle, you can avoid most of the sugar-detecting tastebuds, and just get a thick, fragrant coffee hit. It leaves you feeling jumpy, being basically sugar and caffeine, but when, say, you're an insomniac on a 24-hour bus journey, it's just the ticket.

I've been using it to drain off any physical fatigue, as I've gone back to getting about three hours sleep a night. I don't know why - I'm fine during the day, and apart from a mid-afternoon slump don't feel it that much, so it's not too much of a problem. I do worry about what I'll be like if it goes on for too much longer, but there's so much to see here that it's nice to have some time at night - say, four or five hours - to just digest things and hang about.

By the way, apropos of nothing, or of me writing on this blog: there's no way here for me check the comments section, as I can't seem to access any page any page with the word 'blog' in the address. I assume it still exists, as I can still write here, but if have no way of knowing whether this problem is specific to Hoi An or whether I'm just writing into the ether. Somebody, let me know?

French Colonial Food Porn

2006-01-10T23:29:00.000-08:00

Last night, during our 11pm dinner stop, I sat around with some people from the bus and we reminisced about the foods we missed. Garth and Emma - from Brunswick of all places, by Merri Creek - wanted potato cakes; Andrew, the ambiguously accented Scottish or Irish guy, wanted fried mars bars; I had a yen for dolmades, rye bread with pickles, and wasabi peas. (Maybe I have a green fetish?)

In any case, we were commiserating about how farcically difficult it is to find proper Vietnamese food if you're a Westerner in Vietnam. At home, the prevailing foodstuffs are rice noodles, coriander, chilli and lemongrass - over here they seem to be Maggi noodles and chilli or fish sauce. You can, of course, if you're a meat-eater, be in heaven eating proper food from the street kitchens; battered pigs' faces and all sorts of dumplings, porcupine, and snake abound; but ask for an chay and blank looks of incomprehension are all you're going to get.

In fact, to get a flavour fix, I've been sneaking into street kitchens and ordering pho an chay. I pretend and the stall-holders pretend that it's not chock-full of beef stock - I get chilli, they get 10 000 dong. My plan to eat my way around Vietnam has until today been a dismal failure. Long story short, due to a combination of the heat and humidity and the lack of tasty vege food, I've fallen into the habit of eating only two meals a day, with one of these being a bread-roll with La vache qui rit cheese, or a durian icecream, which, I suppose, might technically be a snack.

So when it got to 12.30 today and I realised that 1) I hadn't slept for 48 hours (hellooo, insomnia) and 2) I hadn't eaten for 24, I was fairly indifferent to my situation. Wasn't sleepy; wasn't hungry. Until, that is, something happened to restore my faith in food.

Remember travel-mama Clare? She had suggested a patisserie in Hoi An called the Cargo Club, where supposedly I was to find some of the best pastry in Vietnam. I wandered over, getting good and lost along the way. This actually helped raise a tiny bit of an appetite. When I finally found it, it looked just like every other tourist trap, and had prices to match. I was doubtful, because the rule in this sort of situation seems to be the higher the prices, the smaller the portion, the blander the food. I am sorry, Clare - wherever you are. I'll never doubt you again.

Because my God, the food. I think I levelled out my calorie intake for the entire week I've been here - eight or nine skipped meals in one buttery hit. I ordered the "Parisian breakfast", expecting a croissant and maybe a coffee. What I got was pure french-colonial food porn.

Three or four slices of toasted sourdough came first, in a basket with a little tray of three jams; guava, grapefruit, and pomelo/tomato. With them came a little rye-bread roll, a piece of brioche, and a wholemeal roll, all toasted; then a buttery, sultana-stuffed escargot pastry and a small, flaky chocolate croissant. It was the sort of basket you'd choose one thing from and nibble on, back home, or share with a friend if feeling indulgent. Or, if you haven't eaten properly for days, the sort of meal you'd scoff down (elegantly) in one unrepentant orgy of butter. Just when I was about to order a drink a waiter arrived with an icey grapefruit and orange juice and an absolute bowl off coffee - one of those enormous mugs, filled a third of the way up with proper black espresso coffee.

As I said, sitting on the balcony overlooking the river, dunking hot pastry into strong, dark coffee, restored my faith in food - and possibly life itself. I think I know where I'll be breakfasting for the next few days.

I'm going to go for a stroll down Le Loi street now, check out the second-hand bookshops, and try to digest. It's a good thing Hoi An is full of tailors as I think I've gone up a full size in the last hour. But my God - it was worth it.

Now who says nothing good ever comes out of colonisation?

Safe, Sound, Delirious with Fatigue

2006-01-10T17:11:00.000-08:00

I have arrived in Hoi An. The bus trip was long. I am very tired. That is all I have to say.

Floating Market Heaven

2006-01-09T05:24:00.000-08:00

Spent the day alternately puttering down the Mekong and riding on the bus. Guess which was more fun?

The day began on a good note when my alarm successfully went off. Luckily, Clare, my Sydney art-teacher room-mate, was doing an affiliated tour (same first few days, then off to Phnom Penh), so she also had to get up. At six. Which is bloody early no matter the country you're in.

We straggled next door to the hotel we were supposed to be staying in, and ate bread and jam and bananas for breakfast. There was coffee, too - and although I didn't realise it, in Vietnam, coffee with milk is actually coffee with condensed milk. My little cup arrived with a cream-coloured stripe across the bottom, as though the crema had woken in a bad mood and had sunk back into bed. It was thick and sweet and not too bad... still, I think I'll stick to black coffee while I'm here. I'd like to keep the teeth that I have.

After breakfast we all boarded various boats and went and saw the biggest floating produce market in Vietnam. People load up their boats with produce, and then come and live on their boats for five or six days at the market until they have sold everything. Sellers affix poles with limes or pineapples or durian or whatever to their boats; buyers zip through the gaps between crafts in little motorboats, or glide past in two-oar Vietnamese gondolas.

It's a riot of colour on a grey river. After pottering around we were taken to another Kickback Isle to see how ricepaper is made (if you're interested - like crepes are), and then were given the choice of what next to do. Most of the group wanted to see a rice mill; about five of us wanted to see a local floating market about an hour's boat trip away. So we split up and our little group boarded a tiny, traditional rowing-boat (with a motor attatched for oomph) and that's where the day got good.

We made a funny little group, speaking a combination of French, German, English and the Basque language, with the occasional Vietnamese word thrown in. We set off to the market and before we knew it, we were winding our way down all sorts of funny little waterways. Everyone relaxed. The silence was bliss.

If the boat was like a gondola, the Mekong was a bit like what I imagine Venice to be, though on a larger, more humid scale - houses and buildings perching on a criss-cross of waterways. It even has Venice's famous decay, though here it's from the fronds and leaves that rot luxuriously on the rich, dark mud of the riverbank. The mud swirls into clay where it meets the water, and a fine silt runs all along the river. The occasional waterlily blooms next to the occasional plastic bag; reeds curl out to meets the boat and shrink back in its wake. Creatures glide beneath the surface. The river seems alive.

The locals don't seem to mind the intrustion, smiling indulgently at passing tour groups from their kitchens. Tiny children who have not yet learned to be restrained rush to the banks, waving little hands madly at the passing boats. The rice paddies in the area are an almost-neon green; everywhere is green, everywhere is water. Everywhere cone-hatted Vietnamese brush off the tourists, give a shrug to wonder why their lives are being inspected, wave perhaps, and go on with their day.

Tomorrow I am taking a bus - for 24 hours - to get to Hoi An. It may be gruelling but I fully intend to spend the day afterwards luxuriating on the beach. I have already gotten a tip-off about a good tailor, the name of the best patisserie in town, and the sound advice to put on some weight before I go to India. The next time I write, I will be very frazzled, having just gotten off the bus; or very relaxed, having come from the beach.

It will be nice to leave the sounds of the city behind. I have things I plan to see when I come back to catch the plane - the Jade Pagoda, Notre Dame cathdral, the Botanical Gardens - but they can wait. They will wait.

I think I'm beginning to get the hang of this travel thing.

Coconut Candy and Banana Whisky-a-go-go.

2006-01-08T06:30:00.001-08:00

I'm in the city of Can Tho at the moment, having signed myself up for a two day tourist-trap tour of the Mekong Delta. It's the fifth-largest city in Vietnam, and has a lovely seaside feel, perhaps from being perched on an open body of water.

The trip so far has been a bit of a farce, beginning with the hotel owner (predictably) failing to wake me. This meant that I got out with seconds to spare, and the decision as to whether I should leave my bag or not was made for me by sheer lack of time to check out. This is especially annoying as a) now I am separated from my passport and pining for it like a child lost in the supermarket pines for their mother, and b) there is a special compartment on the bus for baggage and no need to lug anything around, especially on boats.

The day culminated in the hotel the tour booked us into being too full to give me a room, so I am sharing with a woman in the hotel down the road. Her name is Clare and she has quickly become my travel-mama, having trekked around Asia for a good twenty years. She reckons India will be hell. Whoopie.

However, the in-between, non-farcical bits that didn't involve touristy stop-offs (so that the guide could have a smoke and hopefully get a kick-back) were lovely. I think I have found what I am looking for in rural Vietnam. It's as far from the brash hustle of Ho Chi Minh as you can get - all rice paddies and riverboats and grey cloudy sky merging with the Mekong. The boats are painted like dragons and glide past languidly. Locals wave from their kitchens at the tourists going by, and then go back to their daily lives. The air smells clean. Like the water.

And Helen, you will be pleased to know that I did indeed stop off at the famed Unicorn Island, home of the coconut candy that has become so famous in our household. (My mother: "Is 'coconut candy' a euphemism for something?"). The smell of coconut and suger caramelising is actually quite appetising - someone should make a perfume of it. Yum.

By the way, if I can make the effort to walk past an internet cafe in Can Tho and think, "Perhaps I can check my email", you all should be able to make the effort to write me emails, so that I am not disappointed when I open my inbox. Also, this is an effective way to reduce the number of rambling, non-sensical Joyce-related entries on this blog - more emails, less of me trying to use up my pre-paid internet time with rambling nonsense!

Really, everybody wins. Also, I'm still finding my feet here, and a little bit of news from home to lessen the culture shock would be appreciated. When I get back tomorrow I think I'll book a bus ticket to Hoi An; sounds like the next best thing to Hanoi, being full of beaches and silk markets and quiet. Still, you will hear me whinge about not properly budgeting my time and missing out on the northen capital for quite some time. Yay! I resolve to go there the next time I have any money together - which should be retirement.

I'm off to beddy-byes now, as I'm quite clearly losing it and don't want evidence of my gradual mental degeneration on the internet. I expect emails when I get back to Ho Chi Minh at 5.00 local time tomorrow. Your time starts... now.

Notes on Ulysses from the Temple of Shampoo

2006-01-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

As you may remember from my previous post, I have purchased a cherry-red alarm clock - although not yet a watch. It falls apart if you look at it funny, but it chirps like a budgie on crack, which is what I'll need if I insist on getting up at 6am tomorrow - which I do.

While I was testing the alarm I read a chapter of Ulysses and the corresponding chapter of its companion. I now know that the alarm clock works when set 20 mins into the future, and that Leopold Bloom a potato has he. Whether the alarm clock actually wakes me at my desired time remains to be seen, but I have asked the desk clerk to come and bash on my door at 6.30, just in case.

Anyway, I was wandering the streets trying not to think about the fact that my hair really needed a wash: the many gymnastic contortions that would be required with my description-defying "shower"; the detangling of many knots; the slightly cheap feeling of being naked but for thongs; the necessity of sleeping with my wet hair splayed across a towel, resulting in unmanageable tangles upon arising.

Suddenly before me, like manna from heaven tarted up in neon lights, appeared a Beauty Salon. (I'm pretty sure this was the name of the place.) And glancing at the price (about US$3 for a wash, blow-dry and straighten), I figured that it was probably false economy to spend the evening swearing in the poky little bathroom when I could, for the price of a sandwich back home, be luxuriating in a nice, clean salon. After all, I'll just eat one less sandwich when I get home, and that should even it out.

So I walked in and then I was being detangled by an exceptionally thorough Vietnamese girl, and before I knew it, I was lying prostrate out the back, the cold jets of water trickling down my spine. It's actually rather stimulating to have your hair washed in cold water when the rest of your body is clothed and relaxed.

And as the beautician raked her acrylic nails across my scalp, I began to think of Leopold Bloom, and how the fragmented, lyrical prose of all of Joyce's work seems especially suited to travellers whose own thought processes may be equally fragmented, if not especially lyrical.

And as my hair was being enveloped in a fragrant, shampoo-y lather, came the line Mrs Dalloway decided she would buy the flowers herself into my head. And then I began to reflect on the similarities in Joyce's and Woolf's work - whether, as per a previous email, there were "masculine" and "feminine" sensibilities that could be invoked even when much the same style and language was being used. I began to ponder upon the necessary gendering of the omnipresent third person and the subtleties and nuances effecting these differences in prose.

As my hair was being gently conditioned, and combed with professional, acrylic fingers, my mind skipped to The Leopard, in which these two sensibilities happily co-exist, (and which is currently the book under discussion in a long-distance bookclub). And I thought about how these two sensibilities are inherent in us all, and that while Joyce (mainly) wrote men and Woolf (mainly) wrote women, this does not at all mean that either one could not as easily have written the opposite.

And as I floated over to the chair to have my hair blown dry and straightened, I realised something. So far, several people have suggested that my moments of fretfulness over the past few days have been the result of my natural tendancy to overthink things, and have suggested that rather than thinking about things, I just experience them*. But this dichotomy need not exist! It is perfectly possible to enjoy an hour's pampering and also think of Joyce! There is no diammetric opposition between thinking and feeling - they can live together happily. It's just a matter of finding the right balance - which, come to think of it, is advice I think I've heard before, in a breakfast cereal commercial. So from now on, I have decided to have my cake and eat it, too - have moments of pure sensory exhiliration, and moments of analytical bliss, but mostly try to walk the sanity-preserving tightrope between the two.

This is all bloody obvious, right?

And while we're being self-conscious and post-modern, I do realise that it is tremendously neo-colonial to go to an Asian country and have my every whims catered to by a pair of smiling locals. But my hair is shiny and it smells like flowers - and I don't care.

Tomorrow I'm taking a boat down the Mekong Delta, and I'm going to smell all the smells, and experience the humidity, and drink in the uniquely Asian quality of light, and I'm also going to think of James Joyce if I bloody well feel like it.

That's if my cherry-red alarm clock actually does wake me up.

*I realise that the example I'm using is not quite what you were talking about. But I think I will be fairly simple to apply this pseudo-revelation in practice, in regards to certain other things I may or may not have been overthinking. Ahem.

A decision has been made!

2006-01-07T02:00:00.000-08:00

And really, folks, that warrants an exclamation mark.

I've decided not to go to Hanoi. It would have been too rushed, with more time spent in transit than actually enjoying the country-side, and while I think costs would have evened out in the end, it still seemed a little daunting.

My new plan - I'm just so excited to have a plan - is to go on a two-day tour of the Mekong. Tomorrow. I have already booked myself in, which means that at 7.30 tomorrow morning I am getting on a bus, and then driving a few hours, transferring to a boat, and cruising down the Delta. I really didn't realise the significance of not owning a watch whilst travelling - I've done pretty well so far - until I realised that I would have to be up at a certain time. Oy. I bought a red plastic alarm clock from a woman in the street after all the watches that people tried to hawk to me turned out not to have alarms. I have no idea how to work it, and so I think I'll be spending a bit of time tonight trying to figure that out. My hotel doesn't have phones in the room - it's US$7 a night - so I might so and ask if someone can come and bash on my door at six-thirty.

When I get back, I think I'll spend a few days exploring the city, then take a bus up to Hoi An and stay there for a few days; take a connecting bus to Da Lat and spend another few days there; then spend my last days in Saigon alternately touristing, wandering the streets and going on day-trips. Whaddya think?

In other news, I think I have acclimatised to some degree, although I am constantly covered in sweat. It's only the low thirties here but the humidity makes the heat like a film, which clings to you where-ever you go. I don't really feel hot but get back to my room and find myself gleaming. Still, it's something I'll think of fondly in the depths of my next Melbourne winter.

Having proclaimed my decision-making prowess in the header, I now ask your help in making yet another decision. Do I pay for the night I'll be away and store my big back-pack at the hotel, thus relieving myself of about 12 kilos and guaranteeing a room when I get back and just want to sleep; or do I pocket the US$7 and lug my bag around? I'm currently in favour of leaving the bag and taking my day-pack, but am a bit uneasy about being separated from all my wordly possessions for more than a few hours. It's a tough one.

I suppose I'll be out of contact for the next few days. I wish I could upload photos here - I guess I'll have to settle for taking heaps and showing them to people. You know, in the real world.

Ah, the real world. So far away.

Kind of the same, actually...

2006-01-06T20:26:00.000-08:00

(To pre-empt the inevitable family-tradition question of "how does it feel to be X years old?")

Pusia, the issue is whether or not I go to Hanoi at all. Should have been clearer on that. Because of the travel time involved, I would only be spending four, possibly five days in Hanoi. Of course, the travelling could be interesting (...it could also be hell), and the limited time frame might force me to get off my arse and make sure I see the things there I want to see. I've been fairly lazy so far about seeing things here in Saigon, preferring to think that "acclimatising" is a legitimate passtime.

Last night I had a birthday beer with a 31-year-old Nigerian electrical engineer that I met in an internet cafe. He was sitting next to me, I dropped something beneath his chair, picked it up, apologised, introduced myself etc. I must have looked awful - this was right after my crying fit - but apparently not awful enough as he kept telling me later how "cute" I was. Anyway, I explained that it was my birthday, he suggested a beer, (bia in Vietnamese... tricky, I know), and I wiped my nose and went along, thinking "what the hell... it's my birthday."

Well, it turns out that the beer was a good idea, but Henry the electrical engineer was not. It's not that he was sleazy - I can cope with sleaze - but that he was boring. Isn't that just my luck? All he wanted to talk about was sports, and himself, and how good he was at sports, and what a nice guy he was. "I'm not praising myself, but..." he'd begin, and then my eyes would glaze over, and then he'd tell me that I looked cute. When he told me he'd moved specifically to the computor next to me because he thought I was pretty, I'd had enough. Goodnight, Henry. I went back to my shoebox, lay down on the bed, and somehow managed to sleep through the night. (This despite the cacophony from the room next door. I thought someone was getting killed until I realised it was just a Vietnamese soap opera turned up loud, loud, loud.)

On the upside, I learned that there is a big African ex-pat community in Saigon. A lot of wealthy Africans study in Singapore, come over to Vietnam for a holiday, get jobs here, and stay. There are heaps of tall, bald West African guys roaming the streets, making a picturesque juxtaposition to the locals lazing by the roadside and the Western tourists running around in sunburn and army surplus shorts.

I'm planning on trying out tonight a tourist trap cafe that Helen recommended in the hopes of meeting someone who does not continually crack on to me even after it has been made patently clear that I am not interested. At some point in the day I am going to have to make my mind up about Hanoi, as well, as hard-sleepers book out a few days ahead. (No luck getting a soft-sleeper berth - they sell out a few weeks in advance). The cheaper alternative is to take a tour on a bus, which would stop off at points of interest where the tour guide would get a kickback from the cafes, and break up the journey with a few nights in cheap hotels. I might only get a three-day weekend in Hanoi, though, before turning around and doing it again...

Argh! I am not good at decisions at the best of times. That is why I would like people to make them for me. Hands up who knows what I should do?...

It's my birthday...

2006-01-06T00:46:00.000-08:00

...and I'll damn well cry if I want to.

Today has been an odd kind of day. I woke up at about seven, ate a banana, and took a bath (probably the only one I'll get in the next six weeks - bliss). The hotel I was staying at was an early birthday present from my parents - thanks, Mum and Dad! (Quite clearly I mean that the two nights accomodation were the present, not the actual hotel. As far as I know, I do not live in Monopoly, and therefore, do not own a hotel.)

I then caught a cab to a very grotty backpackers inn, installed myself there, and hit the streets. At the old hotel, I was incredibly nervous about crossing the road. From the roof, where I spent a considerable amount of time trying to analyse traffic patterns - there were none - the motos and cyclos looked like swarms of locusts, buzzing in loose clouds, in vaguely the same direction. It was terrifying.

Well, it turns out that my fear of crossing that particular road wasn't purely based on pasty-faced Western nervousness - it was bloody well founded. The hotel was on the corner of one of the busiest intersections in Saigon. The traffic where I am now is much calmer, although crossing the road still entails a certain kind of existentialism, or alternately, a Zen approach: be at one with the road. Do not avoid the traffic - let the traffic avoid YOU.

So, a little less apprehensive about being squished under a moto, I've spent the last few hours just wandering the streets. Called my family and had a little cry - only I was calling over the internet at an internet cafe so my snotty-nosed display of homesickness was kind of funny, and public, rather than tragically sad. At the moment I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Here are my options:

Go to Hanoi.

Pros: I really, really think I'd like it there. Beautiful French colonial architecture. A train ride up the coast. Stop off at Hoi An.
Cons: 40 hour train trip each way (30 on the more expensive express). Fairly costly.

Stay in Saigon.

Pros: Already here. Could do a three-day tour of the Mekong, stay in the city a few days, then take the train to Hoi An and spend a few days there. Less travelling time. A bit less costly.
Cons: I've come all this way and I want to see Hanoi!

So, what do you think? I am opening this up to a poll. Please leave a yea or nea in the comments section regarding whether I should go north or not.

Also, thank you to all the people who have sent me birthday wishes. I really, truly appreciate it - makes me feel a bit less cut off from the sinful Western world. So - the Mekong or Hanoi?

Eating and Sleeping, Part One

2006-01-05T06:29:00.000-08:00

I wish I had something scintillating to write here, but shamefully, I don't. This is because the plane trip really wiped me out, and I have spent the day variously eating and sleeping.

I feel really bad for having not strayed far from my hotel room - what sort of backpacker am I? But my hotel is at the edge of town, and I've been so damn tired. At first I couldn't figure out why. Sure, the 14 hours of travel was both boring and gruelling. But nothing that a good night's sleep couldn't fix. And then I realised that "a good night's sleep" was the key. During the six weeks between the end of uni and getting on the plane, I was averaging about four hours of sleep a night. Not because I've been out so much - although that post-exam glut of parties, the Christmas ones and the "quiet-get-togethers" probably added up in the end - but because I've been going through an insomniac kinda phase, which happens once in a while.

I just didn't realise how much I needed to sleep until I flew to another country and forgot to do anything exciting. Plus, when else am I going to have the chance to laze around in my underwear, watching MTV Asia, Star World, and the Asian version of the world news? (The media nerd in me was exeptionally excited to discover the biases and language quirks in "objective reporting" in Asia. Also, the fact that MTV was running cute little cartoons promoting the importance of condom use was interesting.)

As this is entitled "Eating and Sleeping", not "Jess's Various Self-Justifications", here are some things I have eaten in the last two days;

Plane food.
Airport food.
Dried plum lollies, which are dried plums (prunes?) covered in a glaze of some description and then dusted with flavourings. The orange version I would not recommend. The liquorice plums though - heaven. Heaven on a prune.
A plate of complementary lychees (last night's dinner).
Seafood noodles (today's lunch).
Sauteed spinach and chilli squid (dinner).
Three bananas.
Some watermelon.

Apart from that, there's nothing to see here, folks. My world has become so temporarily insular that I'm blogging about the fulfilment of my primal needs. In fact, the only new things I have discovered here have had to do with my own body - three new insect bites on my right ankle, and a bruise.

Of course, I don't intend to spend the entire trip sleeping, (or writing about sleeping). Tomorrow I'm going to find and drink a glass of champagne, move my stuff into a nice, dingy backpacker's hotel, book a train ticket to Hanoi, and let the fun begin.

Wish me luck.

Things to do at Changi Airport, Singapore

2006-01-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

1) Hang out in the Orchid Garden. Chat to the Koi. Admire the finely-tuned orchid watering process: compressed water; fine, thin tube; tiny nozzle.

2) Contemplate paying S$30 for a three-hour nap. Decide against it.

3) Catch the beginning of a romantic-comedy exploring the ethics of guerilla film-making, starring Gael Garcia Bernal with a bad Brazilian accent, called Dot the I. Luxuriate in the comfy chairs and breezy coolness of the airport's free "passenger-only" mini-cinema.

4) Fall asleep, missing the denouement of the aforementioned movie, and wake up during a recent (read: bad) Woody Allen film in which Christina Ricci makes doe eyes at that guy from American Pie and Woody Allen thinks everyone is anti-semitic.

5) Stumble out onto the balcony, into the rooftop sunflower garden. Breathe in the warm, humid air. Marvel at the lush fringe of green enclosing the airport. try to remember the last time you saw so much green in the one place.

6) Eat a bowl of dhal and some hot, oily, charred naan. Decide the predominant reason for the crapness of aeroplane food is lack of naan.

7) Watch people jogging on the treadmill through the glass window of the gym.

8) Meditate in the Meditation and Prayer room.

9) Doze.

10) Snooze.

11) Realise that you snoozed through the only free bus tour of the city that would have fitted with your schedule.

12) Pretend to be filthy rich and browse nonchalently in Hermes and Prada. Nothing you haven't seen before.

13) Regret not wearing socks.

14) Surreptitiously sketch people who are asleep. They'll never know.

15) Detail the minutae of your daily life on your nascent, self-indulgent blog.

Free interweb - hooray!

2006-01-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

Here at Singapore Airport, there are some funny little booths - no chairs - with laptops encased in heavy clear perspex. Only the keys are touchable. It makes typing difficult, but it's free! Free interweb, hooray!

It's five o'clock in the morning here; seven in Melbourne, I think. I've gone back in time. I nearly kissed the ground when I arrived at Singapore, although the flight wasn't too bad. I even managed to twist into a yoga position and sleep for an hour, which was both refreshing and an excellent stretch.

There's something surreal about flying that I always forget to anticipate. The airports are artificially lit and the air is artificially cooled and recirculated. It's as though you've suddenly been cut off from the natural world. The aeroplane itself is the same, but exaggerated - a long metal tube with fiddly climate-control knobs and meals served out of synch with your body clock.

On the plane, non-denominational, seasonally appropriate plastic flowers and leaves tied with red and gold ribbons are placed strategically between portals. Synthetic holiday cheer. Outside, dusty concrete is bathed in orange light; the forklift operators and luggage-train drivers skid around like Lego men in Lego golfcarts. At some point the plane whirs and screams and the city becomes an ocean of fairy-lights. Then, suspended in the clouds, you're as cut-off as it gets.

Still, when the plane took off from Melbourne, (and left my stomach behind), it was exhilirating. Nauseating, but exhilirating. I sat on the aisle next to two little red-headed kids named Brianna and Adam. When I introduced myself to them they looked startled and had trouble remembering and stuttering out their names. They regarded me warily after that. So I watched a crappy movie (which was uncut! Nudity and swearing on the way to Singapore?!!) and settled in for the long haul.

And so I hauled. And now I'm at Singapore Airport for another nine hours. I think I'll go and sit by the Koi pond and compose a haiku. Or wander around the perfume counters and try on different smells. Or take a nap. Mmmm... nap.

Just what the world needs. Another blog...

2005-12-30T00:54:00.000-08:00

At the moment, I am sitting in front of my laptop in my pyjamas listening to Ella Fitzgerald, drinking a gin and tonic. There is a fan involved - it's about 35 degrees. I am going to Vietnam in four days, where the temperature is significantly lower than 35 degrees.

I got out my (borrowed) pack today to try on, and the bloody thing is bigger than I am. It's navy blue and makes me look like a navy blue turtle. But it smells like travel and will hold enough worldly possessions to last me for the next six weeks. So far, my wordly possessions include: a travel towel; some travel shampoo and Dettol (thanks, Santa!); a copy of the Ulysses Challenge; Arlene Textaqueen's TextaPlanet Guide to Hanoi; some thermals (for Nepal); some non-thermals (for Vietnam and India); and a lolly-bag of prescription medicines my doctor prescribed for me.

I somehow plan to buy walking shoes, a few pairs of cotton throwawayable knickers and a couple of new bras before I leave. But even if I don't obtain these things I should be fine, because I have St Christopher looking over me (and occasionally down my top) and a leather-bound journal to scribble in. I have a best friend meeting me in Nepal, who will join in the blog-tastic madness and post her own thoughts and gripes and puns - my God, the puns - when she gets there. She has a digital camera, yay! So expect photos, or a long, involved post explaining the lack of photos, from about the 20th of January.

There will be frantic typing from the internet cafes of Ho Chi Minh City, Kathmandu and Pondicherry. There will (probably) be photos that Helen and I take of each other sleeping on the train. There will be naan-based puns. But mainly, we'll be posting the bread-and-butter stuff that we'd be writing in every email anyway, so that when you write us emails we can skip all the today I went to the market and it was very beautiful and now my feet hurt stuff that tends to take up so much room in travel emails. Also, people can ask questions or make funny/sarcastic/intelligent remarks and we can respond to them without having to type the same thing over and over.

I'm going to go now and tip a glass of ice-water down my spine. Thus endeth the inaugural posting in the blog of Helen and Jess.