Well.....I THOUGHT that I was prepared.....

......I mean, hell - I'd seen The Holy Trinity of Indian flims ("Ghandi", "Outsourced" and "Slumdog Millionaire")......so I thought that I was good to go!


Errmmm.......no.....


OK, well, as mentioned in the previous communique, I hadta flee Vietnam by AIR ONLY to get a new visa!! I had picked India because it was a bizarre and very exotic culture and plus airfares there were cheap! Now, AirAsia was ofering thee same cheap fare to ALL it's destinations in India! Well, I just hadta figgger out which one I was gonna go check out!


Well, I had a choice between Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Trivandrum, Bangalore, Hydrabad (sp??) And some other city who's name I had forgotten (I *THINK* it was called "Trichy" or something like that....but it didn't sound easy....just a bit tricky!).

I had immediately nixed Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai because I hate over-crowded mega cities (a mega-city is any city with a population over 3 million) in ANY country and I already live in an over-crowded mega-city in a developing country so I wasn't really up to seeing what the Indian version of Hai Phong would look like.


ALMOST did go to Bangalore because I really really wanted to go visit a call center and see the guy who I would talk to about problems with my Capital One credit card....you know, the guy who sounded like Apu from "The Simpsons" and who told you his name was "Peter" whose call center was in "Utah"......


.....I just wanted to swing by and ask "Peter" if he thought that The Jazz had a good chance of overcoming Portland and Denver and taking the Northwest Division title this season, thass all.


But, for the million or so "Peters" who imported lucrative call-center jobs from The United States, life has been good.....good to the point where it (as well as I.T.) has made Bangalore one of India's most expensive cities! This was reflected in the hotel prices....which prompted me to give Bangalore a pass this time round.....


Hydrabad? Not a big fan of any place whose name begins or ends in "bad" (which takes out Pakistan and about half of Germany for me)....and I had never heard of "Trichy" which I recall meaning either dodgy or a parasitical worm.....so I had decided on Trivandrum!


I was ready for this town - I have competed in Pub Quizzes on three continents, so I had the Triv part covered! and Rum? Well, shit....place a Pina Colada or a Mojito in front of me and watch how long it lasts! So, I was satisfied and excited to visit a place called TrivAndRum.....


So, I was done in Malaysia (and deeply wished I coulda had just another 2 days to go see Malaysia's only casino, SE Asia's biggest amusement park, the Petronas Twin Towers.....and a coupla other things) and was in a stare-down with a 2AM wake-up call and was gonna see who flinched first. I prepared for this by staying up 'till 11PM drinking a six'er of Tiger......the two AM wake-up call would flinch.......I would pay.


So woke up at 2AM (and felt literally like a zombie for the next 20 hours), jumped a cab to KL Sentral station, grabbed a bus for less than 3 bucks for the 35 mile ride to the airport and got there an hour later for my 6AM flight to Trivandrum!


Decent flight, and the plane landed at an airport that made Cat Bi in Hai Phong look absolutely luxurious by comparison. It was funny - we had to wait for the Immigration guys to run to the desks when we got there (because there are only a couple International flights there per week).


Got out of the airport and saw a buncha soldiers guiding us out the door whilst toting those scary-ass looking machine guns with all the holes in the barrel (to cool it off) that looks like it can wipe out an entire platoon. I'll always tell a TSA toadie to go fuck himself if he or she gits outta line.....but these people had that "fuck-with-me-and-I'll-shoot-you-a-new-orifice" look on their faces......


Really weird leaving the airport....NOTHING built up at all!! A few houses amongst the palm trees and one ATM machine and thass it. No hotels, restaurants, mom-and-pop stores....nothing. Creepy.


Booked everything at home before departure. Found Trivandrum City's hotels to be severely over-priced for India, so I accidentally stumbled upon a place that said it was close to a beach. I am always a big fan of close to a beach. Then I found out that this hotel was in a place called Varkala Beach......which happens to sit about 40 miles NORTH of Trivandrum City.


I figgered why the hell not, booked the place via E-Mail and got a one bedroom apartment for 1700 Rupees per night.....about $40USD.


Grabbed a rickshaw outside the front gate of the airport and was gonna pay 100 Rupees (two-buck-fiddy, maybe) for a four-mile ride to the Train Station and grab a train to Varkala Beach......but let the guy driving talk me into 600 Rupees to take me all the way to Varkala Beach. Talked with an Australian couple later who took the train and said the fare to Varkala Beach was 25 Rupees (fiddy cent). I was incensed until they told me that I was wise to take the rickshaw because "......a sardine in a tin has more room than a human on that train does..."

A line of rickshaws in Varkala Beach....

The rich, Corinthian Leather interior......a Lux Interior.....

Scary, wet ride in a downpour from Trivandrum airport to Varkala Beach...


So, an hour-an-a-half later, we get to a village (which I presume to be Varkala village) and my rickshaw driver doesn't know where the Shiva Gardens Homestay.  Nor do I!  He asks somebody at a shop who doesn't know, I then ask to borrow the driver's cell fone (to call the place), but he claims that he doesn't have one.  I slooowwwllly get the idea that he's had enuff of the long ride and 600 rupees wasn't terribly to his liking and that he just wants ta dump my ass and git back on home to Trivandrum!  So, I hop outta the rickshaw and walk down a muddy path (that I guess functions as a street) and ask a few people about the Shiva Gardens......no dice - never heard of it.

About a quarter mile later, I reach the end of the muddy path (passing some newer construction and a bunch of backpacker-type hotels and the odd [what passes here for a] "resort" along the sides of this path) and end up on a rather nice beach!  


"Hmmmm.....can deal with this" I thought to myself!


Not to be.....


I showed the E-Mail printout to a few people along the way:  "Ahhh....yes yes....North Cliff district!  OK, you go up these stairs (pointing to this endless-ass Earthen staircase) and then go left....walk for a while, then you in North Cliff area!"


"Errmmm....ahhhh.....so, ahhhh, The Shiva Gardens ISN'T in this area with an easy walk to a nice beach?"


"No no!  It is up there Sir!"  (points to this ledge-looking place about a mile or so from where we are).


Joy.....


So, I walk the Stairway-To-Heaven and, at the top, cross a small parking lot that doubles as a staging area for old Ambassador taxicabs and rickshaws and also operates as Varkala's heliport.....

....and past the hospital where The Government takes care of Nature -

So, when I git to the end of the car park/taxi-and-rickshaw stand/Heliport, I see a really neat little village of shops and bungalows and nice little well-kept hotels....cooooolio........

"Well!" I thought excitedly - "I can easily deal with this......."


......or not......


LITERALLY NOBODY had heard of The Shiva Gardens!  It had been going on about two-plus hours of walking around now, and my backpack was getting heavy.  I was just about to say "Screw it!!" and grab one of these cute little hotel rooms right on the cliff (I didn't pre-pay the Shiva Gardens....but was reaaallly leery of bad Karma should I decide to stiff 'em) when I finally found one guy who was like - "Uhhh....yes yes - you go by the CD music shop, then turn left and through the little pathway past the small marketplace and Shiva Garden back there....."


...and, about a kilometre later, in the middle of the Jungle, I found The Shiva Gardens.


Ya gotta understand - places here do NOT have detailed addresses like - "Jones Hotel, 123 Anystreet Lane.....right off the corner of Anystreet Lane and Bumblefuk Road next to the Library"


Noooo....I got -

Shiva Garden
North Cliff
Kurakkanni
Varkala
Trivandrum District
Kerala
India 


Uh-huh......




Now, I can't say enough about the owner and staff here - AMAZINGLY FRIENDLY folk.......but, I mean, their website did a great sales job.  Check it - http://www.varkalahomestay.com/




Now, ".....perched near a majestic red cliff...." led towards very liberal interpretation of the word "near".....and I loved the Al Fresco dining - 

Now, I was NOT in the mood for Posh de la Posh resort accommodations........but I wasn't really expecting this degree of roughing it.....


Still, though - the one-bedroom apartment WAS INDEED spotless and quite cozy.....

...but being in a tropical jungle almost on the Equator...there were some weird-ass looking bugs!  I was a bit freaked....was expecting to see some nasty bizarre tropical jungle insect that had the body of a crab and the head of a social worker attack me on my way to my room.....


Owner and staff again were amazing - the owner (the guy on the right in the pic below) hacked my bill to a flat one thousand Rupees per night (meebee $22USD) because it had rained the entire two days I was there!  

But, vegging on a cliff-front restaurant with several ice-cold Kingfishers, and enjoying some AMAZING curry....well....all was well with the world.....

*************************


Few more pics.......

Saw several women HARD AT WORK on a construction site (whilst the menfolk were kinda lingering about)....hadta snap this pic of this one lady and admire  the dexterity displayed of balancing that big-ass basket on her head.....

"Back in a bit, Honey...just gonna take the cow forra walk...."

Veggin' while waiting for a rainstorm to pass and enjoying a few cocktails at a restaurant while watching a cliff-side fish barbecue........

....prolly grilling this fresh-caught Marlin.....

The dodgy-looking stairwell to the beach from North Cliff.   WAS gonna head down there after a few pints, but it had been raining all day, and when ya git to be MY age....and ya got a wife and kid, and....and.....shit - running outta excuses here......

Local artist selling hand-screened T-Shirts......THIS was some impressive stuff.....








After two days of rain in Varkala Beach, I took off back to Trivandrum (exactly when the rains stopped and the sun came out and it got hot).  Caught a rickshaw to the train station and hopped a train.


I remember seeing scenes in the Holy Trinity of Indian flicks (Slumdog Millionaire and Outsourced) showing these people literally hanging offa moving trains and thinking - "Cute, guys....niiiice exaggeration....real funny....."


Uh-huh.....

Trivandrum City itself was really disappointing.  A friend of mine had told me that - "They really don't have restaurants on the street in India as we know them.  You can't just go inside and grab a table and git waited on and eat!  You order and take it away and that's all there is there!" 


Yeah....suuurrre....OK...whatever.


Well, he was right!  There was NOTHING of ANY sort of amusement in Trivandrum City....restaurants, cinemas, pubs, this, that....whatever....nothing.  Walked all over the city forra 'bout a good four hours......nothing.   Nice people......nothing really to do......nothing of any interest to shoot pics of....so I just went back to my hotel and crashed, as I had a 7AM flight out the next morning.....






For further reading - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varkala


Next - getting Slung into Singapore.....




-E-

Sorry 'bout that....


Just kinda ran off an' left ya.....


....actually, been (near) deathly ill the last coupla days.  WAAAAY too many late-night landings followed by WAAAAY too many crack-of-dawn takeoffs (and nowhere even close to enough proper quality hours of sleep in the bed in the hotel room).......


Cold/Malaria/Dengue Fever/Swine Flu/Yellow Fever/etc.....


....be up and running on or about Tuesday!


Tell ya about India and Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City!!




Cheers.....


-E-

Every so often......

....just to shake shit up and scare people and impress the populous by providing the illusion that they're taking a hard-line stance on immigration, The Powers That Be here will start sending out rumours ("OH NO!! There's gonna be a crackdown on visas and foreigners working here!! Heavens to Murgitoid!!") and making strange policy changes.

Before September 2009, one could grab a visa for Vietnam for 6 months or a year and get it renewed rather easily. However, there has been ranting and raving from several quarters (and, rightfully so) that illegal Chinese workers have been coming in and working and taking jobs (which is strange - because the Chinese are saying thee same thing about The Vietnamese).

So, like the Transportation Security Administration puts up a presentation of "security theatre", The Powers That Be put up their own production, which I'll call "immigration theatre"! Basically, in the TSA's security theatre, nobody is truly genuinely protected, but it makes certain segments of the population feel better at MUCH inconvenience to another segment of this population (the flying public, in this case). 

In the play called "immigration theatre", it also makes certain segments of the population feel better (unskilled Vietnamese labourers), to a great inconvenience to another segment of this population (namely, E.S.L. teachers and other skilled foreign workers).  I say this is theatre because, simply, the lone, solo Chinese worker may not get in and/or may be deported, but most of these MEGA-projects are built with Chinese Yuan Renminbi.....therefore these Chinese conglomerates who develop these projects want THEIR PEOPLE building them!!!!  So they just simply bring their people from China in with them to the construction site!!  

The Powers That Be here will then go to the building site, scream and holler and threaten and try to kick these workers out....then the Chinese developer will threaten back to A) - Stop the project entirely  B) - Call in the Chinese Military or C) - pay a big 'ole bribe.

After A, B or C occurs, life goes on as normal!!  So it's theatre, nothing real, nothing concrete, just a show!

Except that foreign skilled workers (especially free-lancers) and E.S.L. teachers don't quite have the same sort of influence as, say, the Chinese Yuan Renminbi - so because of the visa changes imposed though "immigration theatre" (NO more 6-month or 1 year visas AT ALL/THREE-MONTH VISAS ONLY), above-mentioned foreign skilled workers (especially free-lancers) and E.S.L. teachers have three choices:

• Pay a thousand-plus dollars and a lotta ass-kissing and get a three-year green card/residency permit/work permit

• Get the three-month visa RENEWED INSIDE VIETNAM through someone who, ahhh, "...has a good relationship with The Powers That Be....." - usually at $200 or so per three-month renewal

• Fly out to Thailand or China or any nearby FOREIGN COUNTRY and fly back in and get your NEW three-month visa over the Internet and pick it up upon arrival - THIS costs, like, sixty bucks not including the cost of the plane ticket.  But ya GOTTA FLY....can't cross land borders for the three-month visa (cute, huh?).

Had THOUGHT about (and actually BEGUN the process of) getting the green card....but after having my baby (well, no - actually, my wife had our baby, but still), I was NOT big on the idea of remaining in Vietnam long-term, soooooo.......I stopped the green card procedure and decided that 'll just hop in and out every three months until my family and I move permanently to The States!

Sooooo, my visa was almost up and I hadta figger out where I was gonna fly to forra few days!  No way for Bangkok - GREAT city, but I'd been there enuff times.  WAS gonna go to the Uyghur region of Xinjiang in far Northwest China and party with the Muslims there (and these people DO party), but connecting flights were a nightmare and it wound up going over $600USD, so I nixed THAT idea.

Instead, I pieced together some HYPER-CHEAP flights (with a couple long-ass layovers [30 hours in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and an overnight in Singapore] and a 3am wake-up call to ride the 40 miles out to the airport in Kuala Lumpur to catch a 6AM flight) on a couple of rock-bottom budget airlines and decided to head to India!

So, on Turkey Day, I got to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, another place I've never been to before, and begun my 30 hour layover.....

Hell!!  I'd never been there before, and given that I'm a big fan of stamps in my passport, I got a cab to my hotel and began walking around the town....

The cab driver didn't say a word for the first five minutes, then he asked me where I'm from.....

"America" I replied.

"Ahhh....Bush" he said in a flat tone of voice.

"Not anymore" I stated.  "I can't fucking stand that guy"

The cab driver's face lit up - "AH!  I am wrong!  Obama!  Obama!  Yes.  He is a friend to Muslims"

"Well, shit, so am I, Ace!"

"Sorry?  Pardon?"

"Naw, I just said that I like Obama" (hadta lie a bit here).

"Muslims are friend to America"

"I know they are!  And most thinking American are friends to Muslims"

Sadly, we reached my hotel before I could chat further.....but it was kinda sad that his guy hadta try to explain that main-line Islam presents less of a threat to the safety of the United States than some Christian elements do.

Still, while Malayia IS a predominately Muslim nation and there ARE flare-ups (like this) from time to time, it seemed reeeaaalllly diverse and peaceful there - Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Whites, Arabs, People from India, Asians......kinda a neat place all in all......

My hotel....not a bad place at all!  $20 per night, clean and easily accessible to lotsa cool stuff.  

Malay is kinda a weird language....a lot of it looks like phonetically-spelled English.  Like, for example, "Immigration" is spelled "Imigresen" and the above are just a couple more examples.....

ALWAYS remember to leave a can of Guiness to the Altar of Santa!

Woke up at The Crack of Noon starving.....got up, walked around the city, and I saw this!  REAL FUCKING DONUTS!!  Now, I will eat a donut every ten or twelve months back in The States, but since we have nothing like them in Vietnam, I was gonna dive in......except that I could NOT find SIMPLE, NORMAL Glazed at this place......

So I got these potato thingys soaked in curry and then wrapped in fried dumpling batter.....GOOOOD stuff.

Proceded to walk around some more until I encountered what seemed to be thee world's largest mall (it's called Times Square, and it actually is the world's third-largest mall), complete with an indoor amusement park!  WAS gonna ride the roller coaster, but it was all pay-one-price vs. separate tickets for each ride, and time was running short.  Now, IF I had another four hours to kill, well.....

Shortly before this, I had gone to what must be thee world's largest computer geek mall and just drooled!  LOTSA neat gadgets, with most of the computers being cheaper and faaaaar newer technology than what we can get in Vietnam (except the digital cameras were priced about twice as much as what you can get them for in The States)......basically, it was a lotta fun window shopping, but after a while, this wasn't the exception - it seemed to be the rule in terms of the city's landscape!  Kuala Lumpur basically seemed to be one huge-ass crass commercialism site.....it really wore thin after a while....and, while it's helped develop the nation at breakneck speed, there really seemed to be very little in the way of urban character......

One thing that Vietnam inadvertently got right was taxing thee living shit out of automobiles!!  No automobiles are manufactured in Vietnam, so they are subject to a 100% duty and tariff upon import......thusly doubling the actual cost of a car.  Traffic in this town is a nightmare......

The Monorail here was cool, and, unlike Seattle's, it A) - actually GOES somewhere and B) - goes faster than ten miles an hour!

"Is there a chance the track could bend?"

"Not on your life, my Hindu friend!"

(I sooooo wanted to say that while I was in Kuala Lumpur)

Finally, it was just funny to see that what I thought was easily thee best film of 2010 prolly got more advertising in Malaysia than it did in The States!  Still, though, again - being a predominately Muslim nation, I'm kinda surprised that they showed this flick at all.....

Off to bed - I got four hours of sleep before I gotta git up at 2:30am and head off to India.....

More in a couple days!

-E-