Welcome to the motherland! A week off from backpacking, Bangalore-style

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As we’re finding out, India can be a crazy place to backpack through, so we were extremely lucky to start in Bangalore, the southern city where my parents grew up and where much of my extended family still lives. And even better, my mom flew over from the U.S. to see us!

My parents were generous enough to get us a hotel for a week, an Indian cell phone, which has really come in handy for booking hotels and whatnot for the rest of our India trip, and as is standard practice for NRIs (non-resident Indians), a hired taxi to take us wherever we wanted each day. For two backpackers who were totally sick of researching, planning, booking, etc., we were more than ready to play puppets. Tell us what time to be ready, and we’ll go wherever you tell us.

That said, it had been 10 years since I had been in Bangalore and most of my fond memories have been clouded by the fact that I always, always, always, always got sick. On previous visits, I rarely got to do anything fun because I was too busy throwing up. TMI?

This time was different. I think traveling in Third World countries beforehand prepped me because I didn’t get sick!

So, armed with a robust immune system and a more well-rounded knowledge of the world we live in, I could finally appreciate nuances of Bangalore that I never before realized. For starters, the people are incredibly kind and mild-mannered (probably because it’s not a big tourist spot). The food is crazy good. The streets feel open and airy even with the notorious traffic. There’s greenery everywhere. The list goes on. The point is, the more I travel through India — I’ve previously never been outside Bangalore — the more I realize how special Bangalore is.

It was amazing to have a bit of a homecoming here — to see my family, including my 90-year-old grandmother, spend time with my mom, shop for Indian clothes, eat outrageous meals and most importantly, show Eaman what my motherland was all about.

So what does a week in Bangalore look like? Well, our days consisted of eating, shopping, seeing family and watching Animal Planet in our comfy hotel room. It was grand.

Welcome flowers.


To grandmother’s house we go…


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Our trip is almost over! Here’s how it’ll all end…

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Our last post was on Malaysia, but we were actually there a whole two weeks ago. Myanmar put a major delay on real-time blogging thanks to a lack of good/any Internet, and once we got to India, let’s face it, IST (Indian Standard Time) kicked in. This is my opportunity to catch you up to speed.

We’re currently idling by at a beachside resort in Kannur, Kerala, but the clock is ticking. Our trip is almost over. On October 16, my backpack and I will head to the Delhi airport and board a plane bound for New Jersey. Yikes!

So the question is: What have we got left?

Well, kind of a lot, and Eaman and I are not going home at the same time. Allow me to explain.

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Forget Thailand and Bali — Malaysia’s got the best beaches in SE Asia

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For beach bliss in Asia, nearly everyone does Thailand, Bali, Goa and nowadays Vietnam. But there’s a place* fewer people visit that has untapped beach bliss, and it’s called the Perhentians in Malaysia, a pair of islands with the clearest, warmest, most gorgeous water we’ve ever set foot in — water so clear that we could easily see fish, sting rays and even a baby shark from the water’s surface.

Just look.


We’ve been to a lot of beaches together — both on this trip and before — and this schooled them all. On the Perhentians, you realize rather quickly that, yep, life definitely does not suck.

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Not your cup of tea? Try again: On the wonders of Burmese tea shops

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Every country we’ve traveled to has given us various versions of snack time. There was the merienda in Buenos Aires, beer on the beach in Hawaii and condensed milk coffees in Vietnam.

In Myanmar, afternoon tea (either green or milky Indian style) or coffee is a staple of Burmese culture. It’s there that you’ll see friends talking politics, fathers with their children fresh from school and plenty of fried accompaniments to ruin your appetite for dinner. (Interestingly, it’s mostly just males convening.)

It’s maybe the best snack food we’ve had in traveling. It’s dirt cheap, very tasty and throws you deep into local life. It’s also the best, sweetest note to end on re:three weeks in Myanmar. Enjoy!

Yangon

A roadside tea shop where we struck up conversation with a local lawyer (below, top) and the deaf owner (below, bottom) of the tea shop. He can read lips, so he was delighted to “see” us speak some Burmese.


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Why tourism in Myanmar is going downhill: A short rant

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Today marks our one-year travelversary! Yay! I’ll save heavy reflection for a month’s time when our RTW trip comes to an end, but I did want to bring up a topic that I’ve been forced to think about given the number of different countries and cultures we’ve encountered in this year: good tourism vs. bad tourism.

I see tourism in SE Asia (or perhaps even the world) on one big scale, with Laos on one end and Vietnam and India on the other. Laos, to me, is tourism done right. There’s infrastructure and tools for travelers without taxi drivers hassling you or shopkeepers driving you up the wall. Vietnam and India is (in general) the opposite — tourism gone wrong. Though we had some good experiences with locals, in general, people (mainly taxi drivers and market sellers) want to make money off you, even if that means cheating you, badgering you and hassling you until you leave the country for Laos. We’re currently in India, where we’ve had some particularly ugly episodes.

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One week in Bagan — Part II: “Ancient” temples

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Temples, temples, temples. If you don’t like ‘em, you probably shouldn’t go to Bagan. We thought we were done with our temple sightseeing duties, having toured the beautiful wats in Laos and Thailand and the payas in other parts of Myanmar, but since temples are the thing there and we did have a whole week, we said, Sure, why not? If anything, the temples were all accessible by bicycle, and we were sorely in need of a workout.

As we found out, these temples are nothing like the filigree-encrusted wats in Laos or the gilded payas in Yangon and Mawlamyine; Bagan’s temples are ancient wonders built of brick with faded paintings and crumbling Buddha statues found within.


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One week in Bagan — Part I: WiFi, restaurants and a recipe!

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Ah, Bagan. Our home for a week of temple exploration, bicycle riding, Western food dining and the Internet. Like I mentioned in the last post, we were starting to burn out, so we decided to skip the other small city we had in mind (Pyay) and settle into Bagan for the last segment of our stay in Myanmar. And it was perfect because the city had just enough infrastructure to accommodate two weary travelers.

It was interesting to finally be somewhere touristy in Myanmar. People didn’t stare, English wasn’t that hard to come by and sightseeing was pretty streamlined. It was the future of Myanmar as we knew it. I’m not sure tourism in the country is headed in the right direction, but that’s a discussion for another post.

We stayed in Nyuang U, the main hub for Bagan, where you’ll find budget accommodation, the best restaurants and the most buzz, if you want to call it that. This was no big crazy metropolis like Yangon. It’s a pretty quiet, dusty, hot village masked as a city. We found spiffy restaurants, took an impromptu cooking class, did some damage at the markets and played on the internet. A lot.

In the past, we’ve definitely hated on other American food-eating, Web-surfing backpackers. But at that point, I’m not sure we’ve ever been so happy to see pizza on a menu. And WiFi! Sweet, wonderful WiFi that didn’t cut out every two minutes, as it did in most other parts of Myanmar.

I know it sounds completely insane to be in an amazing place and spend so much time on the Internet, but we’ve met so many travelers on long trips like ours with the same mindset: Internet + cold beverage = happy. One guy told us that at the end of his two-year Peace Corps stint in Paraguay, all he wanted to do was go to Internet cafes and surf Wikipedia. Another guy at the tail-end of 14 months on the road said “Only people who travel for that long get it,” as we were all using WiFi at a restaurant, naturally.

We just wanted to watch YouTube videos, catch up on blogs and find out what “Call Me Maybe” was all about. Simply put, it was comfort.

If you needed to find us, we were most likely at Weatherspoon’s, a friendly cafe with an even friendlier owner, Winton, with whom we shared many a fun conversation.


The place clearly gets a lot of love as evidenced by the messages scribbled on the walls. I think it has something to do with their famous burgers, which Winton learned how to make at his friend’s pub in England.


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Breakfast buffets and mental health days in Taungoo

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Despite our glowing experience volunteering, after five days in the dungeon (my name for our room in our Mawlamyine guesthouse), we needed some respite. We also needed somewhere to clear our heads because at that point in our RTW trip, we hit the wall. We were tired and about ready to go home.

It may or may not have had something to do with our bus ride to Taungoo, which involved not being dropped off where we were supposed to be dropped off, taking a taxi to backtrack, then taking an awful bus to our destination and being mauled by taxi drivers who came on the bus before we even got our bags to cajole us to take their rides. I know traveling around the world sounds glamorous, but often, it’s really not. (See Jeremy and Kathleen’s blog for their excellent post on the reality of long-term travel.)

So, yes we were tired, but we weren’t going to call it quits just yet. There were still some goals we needed to accomplish (i.e. a meditation retreat in India), not to mention the fact that some plans and flights had already been booked. We just needed a break, to go somewhere where we didn’t “have” to do anything.*

So we went to Taungoo and splashed out — relatively speaking, $40/night — on a big, comfy, TV-equipped, air-conditioned room at Myanmar Beauty Guesthouse, an all-teak setup located just outside the city amidst rice fields, banana trees and papaya groves. Staff was on the meh side, but that’s OK. Can’t win ‘em all.

We didn’t do anything except read, eat and excitedly hash out our plans for the future when we return to the U.S. It was glorious.


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