The rat temple eases the pain

How can you not be happy about rats running all over your feet. Gross scabby rats. (photos soon)

Also, I don't mind taking my shoes off to enter your fine temple, but do you think you could sweep up all the pigeon crap? Seriously, that's a lot of pigeon crap. I found a broom and swept a path to the stairs in a Jain temple and got a standing ovation from a group of Japanese tourists huddled in the corner trying to figure out a way past all the poo.

funk

I am currently enjoying the time honored travellers occupation of This Sucks And I Want to Go Home.

India - Agra

Living in India did not prepare me for India. The traffic is insane. A taxi driver in Manila told us Manila has the worst traffic and wouldn’t believe us when we said India was far worse. Manila is like Legoland compared to India. We stand out like neon fluorescent thumbs, and every scammer within a 5 miles radius makes a beeline for us. They all start with asking what country are we from, what’s our name, how long are we here, and so on. Nothing you say will deter these men. Ignoring them just means you haven’t heard them so maybe if they get louder and more insistent you will answer them. There was an ad on tv, in Hindu and sponsored by the tourism board, that showed two white women being hassled and an Indian man rescuing them and bitching out the abusers, with a few stern words for the viewer. It’s not working, but I appreciate the effort.

Agra has a reputation for being dirty and full of those clinging men, and it is one that is well earned. We lucked out in that the homestay we booked online is managed by a very kind married couple, both my age, that have decided the way to success is to sit with all their customers and give them tea and cookies (and you WILL eat the cookies) and have a lovely chat. I think they are probably right on this.

The Taj Mahal is stunning, though I felt a bit under whelmed. You see too many monuments, it becomes just another queue for tickets. I don’t care if I never see another church, mosque, palace or fort at this point. Every guidebook warns of the hawkers and guide men at the gates going in, but it wasn’t even remotely as bad as China was when I was there in ‘98. I guess China gets the gold in annoying tourists in that category. Later, beside the Taj, a man came up and started chatting with us and we kept ignoring him and finally told him we didn’t need a guide and he smiled politely and said he worked there and it was his job to make sure people took their shoes off in the Mosque. Whoops. I’m sure he gets that a lot. There’s still a chance he was going to try and get a tip for something from us though. I’m really not enjoying the feeling of being a bag of money to be bled out. I suppose many people here don’t enjoy the feeling of extreme poverty. It’s a circular thought that can really make you want to go home.

The highlight was when the bees started swarming, just as we walked under them. The Taj is infested with bees! These photos are about 10 or 20 seconds apart (however long it took to run away) and 30 minutes later they were gone.


The next day we headed to Ranthambore to go on a safari. You used to be guaranteed to see a wild tiger, but then some wardens realized they could really cash in if they killed all the tigers and sold their pelts. Surprisingly, we didn’t see any tigers, but a bird did land on my head.


We had to get up at 5am to buy tickets and get to the park for early morning and holy crap, I never expected India to be so cold. We’ve been freezing at night, but at least we’re under a blanket and not rocketing down a gravel road on a safari bus with no roof. Also, it turns out peacocks CAN fly, especially if you try to run them over.

Bangkok

I’m really glad that I forced Derek to come back to Bangkok. Also I really wish we had spent Christmas in Bangkok instead of Manila, airport fiasco be damned. Some expats we talked to said they didn’t like Thailand because, while everyone is smiling and seems nice, they are all out to scam you. Well, everyone is out to scam you everywhere, at least in Thailand they’re nice about it.

One of the great travelling activities now is cooking courses, so I looked some up and decided on Angsana (website). She runs it out of her home and it’s a private course, and you get to choose which three dishes you prepare. We chose a spicy shrimp soup, fish stuffed lychee, and an egg custard cooked inside a small pumpkin. I really enjoyed the experience, Angsana is very kind and happy to talk about life in Thailand and the food we made was delicious.

Even though my egg custard failed in it’s visual integrity, it tasted better. We also learned of a new flavouring, pandanus leaf. I doubt we’ll be able to find it Toronto, but maybe the extract. I rather liked it, something to use as an alternative to vanilla.


Another traveller told us of a market that is one of the largest in the world, larger then the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul by a significant amount. It is. The stores aren’t set up in districts like most bazaars, so it’s a maze of similar stores repeating like a cheap cartoon background and after we had had quite enough (10 minutes) we couldn’t find the way out. Apparently they sell monkeys, but we only found the tiny fluffy puppies and bunnies (wearing tiny little dresses), also baby squirrels. Miserable looking baby squirrels that apparently get vicious when they get past puberty and have to be put down. I can’t imagine a worse pet. Here’s something tiny and adorable to care for, and the number of a vet that will put it down for you in a few months. They should just install a time bomb in it so when it’s almost at that point it explodes. Preferably around dinner time.


Thailand is well known for it’s sex tourism, which I knew, but still I was not prepared for the sex shows. When you are walking down the night markets hawkers are following you and hassling you to go inside a strip bar and watch a sex show. Derek thought they would bother him less if he was walking with me then when he walked around with Jim last year, but apparently enough couples are interested. They even had a laminated sheet of all the different acts. I’d seen enough tv specials on people being sold into brothels by their parents and the very dark side of the sex trade to deflate any interest. Also, ew.

How can you not enjoy a city with metallic hot pink cabs and Godzilla statues? I’d really like to go back and backpack around Thailand for 2 or 3 weeks, since Derek has no interest I’ll probably be pestering someone else to go with me.

(That is the biggest fruit have ever seen. Also, the apple is huge! Ba-da bsshhh)

India is brought to you by the letter Arg.

Well, he hasn't tried to sell us any gem stones, but I suspect that is because we asked him not to. He appears to be getting mad at us for not wanting to go any of his lame and overpriced hotels and restaurants (and thus not giving him a kickback), and I'm tempted to tell him to take our giant wad of money and shove it up his nose and go home. We realized shortly after that we didn't even want to rent a car, let alone get ripped off for one. This will be funny one day. Today was not that day.

We saw several butt naked holy men walking down the road. I didn't take any photos, seemed innappropriate. So the women here have to be all covered up, but the men can fling their wrinkly selves any which way. Seems unfair.

At all the tollbooths there are oxpeckers that jump onto the vechiles and start pecking off all the dead bugs and edible debris. I find it utterly adorable.

New Delhi

We're in New Edlhi. I'll try to upload a post and photos of Bangkok soon, it was amazing. New Delhi is exhausting. We booked a car to take us around Rajahstan and found out we paid more then twice what it should have cost. Whoopsie. We get scammed all the time, but normally for only a few dollars here or there, and we're not stuck with the guy for 15 days. If the driver tries to sell me fake gem stones, I'm throwing my shoe at his head.

Leaving the Philippines

We're taking another crack at India. This was supposed to be four months in India, not four months wandering around vaguely lost, and the situation there seems just as it was before the attack. I mainly didn't want to be there over the holidays just in case some crazies had it in for more tourists. We're spending a few days in Bangkok and then off to New Delhi.

The Philippines have been alright, it's not really set up for backpackers. It's more of a package tour kind of place so it's been a struggle to find information on places to stay and things to see. I just need more hand holding then that. For instance, they're both large cities full of people trying to scam you, but trying to find things to do in Manila was like pulling teeth, in Bangkok every idea has a handful of options. It's a good place for diving, but it's not a cheap hobby (and I suck at it) and we can't afford to do that for the last two months, so it's off we go.

Diving off Sabang Beach

Derek got better just in time to get one last dive in. We went off Sabang beach. It was alright, the current was pretty strong and visibility wasn't too hot, but I saw a couple nudibranches, and I love me some nudibranches.



They are the world's most beautiful slugs.

Fishes.

Clownfish are everywhere. If there's a patch of anemones, there's usually a clownfish. We've seen a lot of nemo style ones, a few black and orange ones, little black ones with white spots. This photo was taken pretty deep, he's probably quite pretty in the light.

Giant fish! I can't remember what they are. I only saw the one, but when I cleaned the photo up you can see a bunch in the back. It's hard to tell how big things are in the water, since everything gets magnified, he looked like a meter across.

These things are everywhere. Usually they are empty, but once one has a red porcupine fish sleeping in the middle, so now I always have to check.

I wanted to get more detailed photos of fish, but the current was really strong and I couldn't hold still long enough. Also the buggers keep moving.


Lil' starfish. We also saw a large mantis shrimp, but none of the photos turned out. He was very pretty, all metallic greens.

Unfortunately the dive ended early when we had to swim over a large rock, as soon as I got over it my mask filled with water and I started floating up. I couldn't get Derek's attention, and since he was below me his bubbles were hitting my face, I got really disoriented. The divemaster tried to reach me, but his watch started beeping telling him he was going up to fast. It was all too much going on and I ended up floating to the top while trying to clear my mask. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I hurt my ear a bit by surfacing too quickly, and I think the german guy with us was pissed that the dive got aborted so fast. Considering he's the reason I didn't get a photo of the mantis shrimp, bumping me out of the way and chasing it off with his own camera, you can suck it german man.

Diving is hard.

Bohol

We went to Bohol to go diving, but then Derek got sick. So then he watched videos on the laptop and I sulked. You can't dive with a head cold, since you can't adjust your sinuses to the pressure and your head will explode or whatever. Thankfully Derek was up for snorkeling a few days in and we joined Sun Divers at a BBQ at a tiny island a 45 minute boat ride away. It was a beautiful island, and the BBQ was delicious and came with unlimited beer. I highly recommend doing this. The water is a lot colder in the Philippines then it is in Malaysia, I was surprised by that, which was welcome because it was a glaringly hot day.

This is a blurry crab, because why would the camera focus on what you are taking a photo of when it can focus and inch behind or an inch ahead of it?

Biggest hermit crab I've seen, size of a baseball. Totally didn't care we were there either, we poked him right in the face and he just went on filtering sand. I found another much cuter one that had a large patch of tube shaped seaweed bigger then it was growing off it's shell, but it was too bright and I couldn't see the screen so all my photos were of the space above the hermit crab. Arg.

The snorkeling position. I got a burn through my shirt it was so sunny out.

Derek trying to dive down and see something. He was a lobster the next day, all "I don't need sunscreen, pft" and now he's peeling giant disgusting flakes and I can't stop picking at him.

This is what it looked like around the island when you got further out. Like boulders of coral scattered among a grassy field. It was bizarre. Also, it looks like the jellyfish fields from Spongebob.

I love plumeria.

The next day, Derek still being snuffly AND now too burnt to get into a wetsuit, we went snorkeling near some resorts. It was nice, not as many fish as in Malaysia, but the coral was in excellent condition. These fat little sea cucumbers are everywhere.

These are striped catfish, tiny little guys that move as one unit. It's freaky to watch.

Some fish cruising along.

Derek thought this coral was pretty. Shortly after he got a leg cramp and I saw a large barracuda and we went home.

We went on one dive the next day. I didn't bring the camera, my buoyancy needs some work and I need my arms. They strapped 6 kg of lead to me and I was still struggling to stay underwater. I wish I had tried anyway though, we saw some cool things. We started above the same coral as above and then swam over and down a cliff, which is slightly terrifying and Derek might have panicked, but then his goggles fogged up and he couldn't see how scary it was anymore and he was fine. There was a large batfish, about a foot tall and an inch thick, that is used to being fed by divers so he came right up to us and then followed us like a puppy for the entire dive. My favourite thing was an enormous rectangular sea cucumber, as thick and long as my leg. I patted it and it felt like tofu.

We are currently in Sabang, where Derek is sick again, and we haven't done any diving. I'm thinking he's faking it.

Snorkeling in Bohol

"Why did you take off like that?"

"I saw a barracuda. It was like 4 feet long."

"Pff, there's nothing to worry about, unless you have something shiny. ...like your underwater camera.

"Uhm, yes."

Siquijor

I found an ad for the Coral Cay Resort on the web before we got to the Philippines and decided we should spend some time there and relax. It was sort of random, we didn't even know where it was, but the photos looked good so we went. I'm really glad we did, even though what I really wanted to do was play in the ocean and the ocean around Siquijor sucks. The beach is white sand, yes, but a foot into the water it turns into mud and then it's about 3 or 4 feet deep all the way out and covered in seaweed. It looks like this:

We borrowed a kayak and rowed out to the small floating raft you could see from shore and all you could see in the water was seaweed and a million fat starfish. When we rowed over to a private beach to check it out, halfway there I looked down and the ground was covered in spiky black sea urchins. With big spikes. And the water was 4 feet deep. Capsizing would have been a phenomenal disaster. It was like being in a Mario game.

On the way back, with much whining and complaining because I have pathetic t-rex like forearms, a school of small fish tried to escape us by jumping out of the water. Oh dumb little fish. The only other thing on the beach was crabs, big blue ones and an infinite number of hermit crabs, most very very tiny. We finally discovered what all the holes on the beach were caused by when a large blue crab ran out of one and chased us yelping away before it dove into the ocean.

New Years was a big improvement over Christmas, we had a buffet with an entire roasted pig and singers and fireworks on the beach. Even though it started pouring, it's hard to be worse then Christmas in Manila. One of the fireworks shot into the resort, but sadly just fizzled out.

Outside of the resort, the island is very quiet and people are very nice. I met a Belgian after who was heading to it and she told me that all the locals kept warning her not to go, that it's too dangerous. It's very well known for it's voodoo and witchcraft apparently. She asked if they could cast spells on her if she white and they thought about it and decided probably not, so she'd be okay.

Renting the motorbike and driving around the island was awesome and if you are ever in the area you have to do that. We got a cheap rental from Marlon who runs the restaurant down the street from Coral Cay. We ate there quite a bit, the food was good and significantly cheaper then in the resort (though the resort did have whole wheat bread, which we had honestly thought didn't exist in the Philippines). At our last dinner there a translucent pink gecko fell off the ceiling and missed my soup by an inch, but managed to hold onto the large beetle in its mouth.

That fat dog was very cute, and very fat. There are two type of dogs on Siquijor, fat ones and skeletal ones. All the cats in the Philippines are terrified of people, which makes me sad. I guess they aren't considered pets so much here. Cows, goats, and chickens are everywhere.

Siquijor - the anti-Manila

It's much nicer here. The only bump was the guy wearing a Coral Cay shirt who told us at the pier that he was sent from the resort to pick us up, and it was included, but when we got there it turned out to be a horrible lie and he demanded 200 pesos. The resort charges 350 for pick-up, so it wasn't the worst thing that has ever happened, but it should have cost 30. I've never even heard of this scam before, so here I am warning you.

Everyone else was incredibly nice. Marlon, the owner of a nearby restaurant, found a motorbike for us to rent for 400 and we drove around the entire island yesterday, dodging cows and stray chickens and saying hello to every single person who lives here. It was a highlight of this trip, the road is in fair condition and there are few other vehicles, so we could putt along at 25 mph and admire the rice steps and palm groves. Everyone sits out on their porch and waves at the passerby's. Two 8 year old girls squealed "I LOVE YOU" and then dissolved into giggles.

We're catching a ferry to Dumaguete at 4:30 and after that we have no idea what we are doing.