This Month's Misadventures, Part 1 - Phuket and Koh Phi Phi.

The much-awaited holiday finally happened. I got to tour the islands and various beaches of Southern Thailand. And since there are a few experiences in life that you just cannot hope to draw into, explicate, or approximate in words, I'll just have to go with "AMAZING", and be done with it. Or, I could try this: 

 

Phi Phi Don

A decision has been made. I was born to live by a beach. No, really. Never am I happier than when I'm either underwater, or over it. And recently, I did both within in a span of 3 hours. More about that later. 

So, fully capitalizing upon a fateful escape from the traps of doom(college) and the supreme awesomeness of my parents, the most blissful, hedonistic, mind-numbingly sensational holiday was had. Braving the edifice that is the T3 terminal, over-familiar immigration officers, and the various aforementioned perils that come with air travel(the least of which is a plane crash), my flight descended on the island of Phuket, in the land of smiles and flagrant transgression. Now, most people who know me, are aware of my obsessive love for the country. What's not to love? The warm tropical weather, the beautiful untouched beaches, the extremely friendly people, the good life. But if I had to put a finger on the one thing I love most about Thailand, it would be that that it feels like the entire country is in a perpetual state of revelry and indulgence- bacchanalian, spiritual or otherwise. Thus, Phuket welcomed with sun, sand, surf, and this:

 

Of course, it was rather amazing that my hotel was a 5-minute walk from Patong beach, which treats ones sore eyes to the sights as refreshing as this:

 

 And this:

Where there were tiny, white crabs darting around everywhere in the sand. Pretty little things, those.

...and nightlife that no pictures will ever do justice to.But any seasoned travel-glutton will vouch for the fact that the best thing about a good hotel is the breakfast buffet. Which I was too busy wolfing down to take pictures of. Just let it be said that danish waffles will be the death of me someday.

Then came the Phi-Phi Islands. But before that, there came the ferry to Phi-Phi Islands. 

  

...and even before that, came the storm. (Notice ominous clouds). 

For the uninitiated:

Storm + Sea = Rough Sea

      Rough Sea + Ferry = Not-a-good-idea

Also, owing to the peculiar strain of irrational bravado that runs in my family, I found myself on the unsheltered top deck. Hanging on for dear life(literally). Without a life-jacket. The waves hitting the ship were so high, that they crashed ON us. On the 3rd deck. Now as exciting and once-in-a-lifetime an experience that may be, yours truly did little more with it than puke her way to glory, all the way to Phi Phi Don. I'll leave out the gory details. But on arriving, it was clear that it was well worth it. I'd do it a thousand times over. Why? 

Here's why:

Blue-green water. White sand. And because of the peculiar alignment on the hills and the island, the waves never reach the beach. All you have are soft ripples on the surface of what looks like a crystal-clear lagoon. Imagine that!

 

I may have known beauty of several kinds, but it's hard to beat one that you can dive headfirst into. 

Then there was Phuket again. And the Chalong temple. And Patong by night. Not to mention, the photogenic cat!

 

Chalong Temple, Phuket

With that ended, the first leg of the tour. Coming soon: Pattaya and Koh Lam.

A Little Bit of India. Everywhere.

Batu Caves, Malaysia

February 2010

Petronas Towers - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

March 2010

UnderWater.

More from Singapore.
Underwater World - Sentosa

Note: I touched a Sting-ray! And I was inappropriately happy about it.

Notice the expression? Yes. That one. That is the exact look my 5th grade maths teacher wore on her face. Only, evil-er. Exponentially evil-er. Why, she even used blue eyeliner! No wonder I've always hated maths.

An upside-down jellyfish. One of the prettier things I've seen in life.

The Weedy-Seadragon

Where it gets hard to tell what's what. 

The Fire-Eaters.

Night Safari, Singapore

March 2010

Pictures from Singapore.

Merlion Park, Singapore

Under the Bridge, Marina Bay

 Songs of the Sea, Sentosa Island

Singapore Flyer - Worm's Eye View

Chinatown

Sawasdee Ka!

Flashback to Thailand

March 2008
Bangkok

I had all of two days to explore the city that blinds your senses with color and curry. Also known as "Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit ". Ha! That's the full ceremonial name of the city. And here Pingu(BFF) thought her hometown of Tiruchirapalli was albatross-y. ;)

Well, this is how my checklist ran :

1. Visited the many Wats(temples) in the city, each flaunting ornate sculpturing and thoroughly unpronouncable names. Example : Wat Benchamabophit.


2. Bravely tried the local cuisine. (Which includes more types of arachnids and insects than I knew existed.) Suffice to say, I developed a passionate love for Thai food since that very day.

3. Shopped for trashy souvenirs and beautiful wooden candle stands at the Night Bazaar. (Which is so unimaginably huge and labyrinth-like, I could be lost there forever and never run out of things to gawk at.)

4. Rode a Tuk-Tuk. (Refer to picture)


5. Toured the city along the Chao Phraya river, in a boat steered by a drunk Thai.

6. Haggled about a set of handcrafted chopsticks with a woman who spoke absolutely no English, at the floating market on the river. Also, after providing for the amusement of the waiters at a posh restaurant for about half an hour, I managed to master their use. I now use them to eat Maggi noodles at home, and pooh-pooh at forks..

7. Squeezed into a traditional Thai silk dress. The pretty black thing now adorns my wardrobe to up its exotica quotient. Right next to the GAP hot pants that never got out of the same Alcatraz. ;)

8. Last, but definitely not the least, explored the highly infamous Patpong market, which, unbeknownst to me, was flanked on both sides by strip clubs. No, make that two unending parallel lines of supernumerary strip clubs, one next to the other, catering to all tastes and *cough* orientations. Crossdressers are all the rage, apparently.And yes, we landed up there as innocent wanderers, with no clue as to what we were about to see. My eyes found more reasons than one to turn into saucers every now and then. Memorable, in a hilarious sort of way.

And you've got to love a matriarchal society. Not like Thailand has much of a choice in the matter. Men hardly exist. That might be a slight exaggeration, but the sex-ratio there is majorly skewed. So essentially, it's a society dominated by women. For women. The only congregation of the male specie I saw, was a group of farmers on strike(doing nothing at all) . That's a study in contrasts for someone born and brought up in India.

Moving on, the cab driver we hired to show us around turned out to be a riot, in his own right. He was named Dow-Dow, and chuckled like a hyena at the slightest provocation. :) Nice guy, he was. Thai people, from what I observed, are extremely friendly. From the woman in the silk store who welcomed us with "Andar aaiye", and through the course of the next 15 minutes, worked at acquiring as extensive a Hindi vocabulary as we could offer her, to Mr. Dow-Dow himself, who insisted on playing a DVD of Himesh Reshammiya's songs to make us feel right at home. Heh..Little did he know!

So there we were, out on a starry starry night, in a foreign land and cruising in a luxury sedan, with that irritating nasal voice blaring out for the entertainment/horror of all and sundry. It could easily have been a truck in Bihar, with little difference. That was the moment I almost felt a certain respect for Reshammiya. Thankfully, the state of mind didn't last long.

The Pictures, As Promised.

The Beach 1 : Harihareshwar.
Pretty, ain't it? :)



The Beach 2 :
Words cannot describe how much fun I had navigating through those rocks.



The OTHER Beach : Diveagar



Footprints in the sand.



And the foot that caused them. ;)



The Gulmohar.



What a tropical forest looks like, up close and personal.



The way to the beach.



Canopy. Of banana trees.




Somewhere, near some lake, near some dam, where they had jack fruits growing all over the place.








On the way. Taken through the window of a moving car.




Also taken on the way.




Yep. This too.



Because no trip is complete without the local cuisine.




My uncle's place. You've got to love the greens.



Perspective. At Pink City.



The Little Kitten in the window. :)



The nest of a baya weaver. Fascinating stuff.

The baya is like a wild sparrow but yellow. It is extremely intelligent, obedient and docile. It will take small coins from the hand and bring them to its master, and will come to a call from a long distance. Its nests are so ingeniously constructed as to defy the rivalry of clever artificers.

—Āīn (trans. Jarrett), iii. 122. (ca. 1590) quoted in the Hobson Jobson

A Comparative Tale of Two Cities.

Being in Pune makes me feel like I'm seated right in the middle of a time-continuum discrepancy. Life in slow motion. None of the bustling rush that is only so characteristic of the capital. Every morning, you're greeted by something that can only measure up to a mere excuse for a newspaper. Apparently, nothing much happens in the city. I cannot express my amusement at finding the Page-3 section featuring a culinary workshop, with a 60-or-so year old chef demonstrating the finer points of a zucchini to a bunch of middle-aged women, all swathed in aprons with spatula in hand. Talk about contrasts! This is usually a good thing as long as you're on vacation. Living in Pune is, of course, an entirely different proposition.

The people are better behaved. Nothing like your average ostentatious Delhite. I personally find them to be unusually amicable, without being the prying sort. At least here is a place where people have mastered the art of minding their own business.

Owing to the presence of the Hinjewadi IT park, and the various universities that attract students from all over the country, my layman estimates accredit my predisposed notions of most of the city being a humongous, over-grown campus. In any case, there has got to be a good reason for it being called Oxford of the East (which, even to me, is too much of an exaggeration). The fact that I have friends there back from school days, only adds to my enthusiasm.

What I find strange is that if ever you choose to venture out of the city, and into the many quaint little towns dispersed all over the western ghats and the Konkan belt, it is like being in an entirely different country. Mahabaleshwar, Matheran, Lonawala, Khandala, Panchgani, Malsaaj Ghat, Hari-Hareshwar and Diveagar are the places I have had the opportunity to visit during the course of my stays in Pune and Mumbai, the last two being the most recent. In the more remote of these places, it is not uncommon to find that nothing is ever written in Hindi or English. Navigation can be especially fun when you find that even the people don't really speak anything other than Marathi. I found myself comparing this with my experiences in Guangzhou, China where at least all signboards and text was accompanied by (grammatically absurd) English translations! The extent of cultural diversity to be found in our country, within a matter of a 1000 km or so, is nothing short of astounding. In a good way.

The weather is great. So are the vast expanses of lush greenery. And the never-ending monsoons and thunderstorms. Pune is also the point of confluence of the Mula and Mutha rivers, which have an unusual inclination towards being flooded, in all convenience.

Pune is pretty much the only place where I have been denied entry into a store like Croma, at exactly 9:02 PM. Something of the sort is fairly unimaginable in Delhi, where the shopping begins post office-hours. And as a friendly word of advice, if you ever happen to be in a mall, dining at a restaurant, and decide to leave anytime post 10:00 PM, be prepared to walk out and find the place having been shut down on you. The "stores closed-lights out" sort of shut down. Yes, that happened. :)

And I do have a lot more to say, but I'll let pictures do the talking.
"Sights through a Pentax".
Coming soon.