I was hoping for a turkey feast, but I chose the Australian filet steak as the turkey had a liver gravy. The steak was delicious! Afterwards, there was a nice singing duo with great lounge music.
One of the busy shopping districts in Kaohsiung. That spaceship in the background is 88-floors (a lucky number in Chinese tradition) and was the highest building in Taiwan before the Taipei-101. I had Christmas dinner on the 39th floor Sky Lounge.
A pretty promenade goes around this canal in Kaohsiung.
My cousin Hank brought us to a nice small restaurant for dinner. There was a Taiwanese Santa Claus giving out bags of candy. Christmas was the next day.
Christmas isn't really celebrated traditionally in Taiwan, but it is a transplanted holiday; even department stores have holiday decorations and play Christmas carols.
My dad took me to get some breakfast at the morning market in Fengshan, where he grew up. The same noodle shop is being run by the same family (three generations later) as when he was a child.
Thanks to one of my uncles, I got to stay in this flash motel room in Pingtung County, just outside of Kaohsiung. A plasma screen tv with HBO and Cinemax! What a change from the $4 rooms in India!
My mouth was watering thinking about the great food at this food court between the international and domestic terminals. It's far better and cheaper than the franchises in the international terminal, but still nothing compared to the night market in Mae Sot.
I stopped for some Chinese food at Connaught Place. The restaurant was filled with upper middle class Indians and no other foreign tourists. The food was okay -- kind of the quality you expect from a Panda Express back home. The vegetables were overcooked into a mush.
A nasty backpacker ghetto. Yuck. The accommodations mostly stink. The food sucks. But if you want to get cheap trinkets or want to live near the New Delhi Train Station, this is the place to go. I preferred visiting Connaught Place, a upscale shopping area about a kilometer away. Almost no touts bother you there.
I still haven't mastered the Indian rail system. I bought my ticket to New Delhi last minute at the train station for an unreserved seat and payed extra to upgrade to a sleeper bunk for the four hour journey there. I supposed there might be a better way to do this, but it probably involves preplanning a time and filling out a form and standing in a long line.
On trains, people walk around selling random stuff and refreshments like chai or this. Yummy and delicious, this tastes like Mexican food: tomatos, red onions, chilis, and salt, mixed with some limes and dried lentils. Well, maybe except for the dried lentils, it does. Only costs 5 Rs.
For 260 Rs you can explore the somewhat restored palace grounds of the old capital (built around the 16th century). There are intricate fascades on the red buildings.
It is free to walk around the crumbling ruins as well as the mosque.
The dude (Shah Jahan) who created the Taj Mahal wanted a son and came to this guru in Fatehpur Sikri who predicted that he could get a son. When he did get a son, he built this tomb for him and it has become a site of pilgramage for barren women or those who want sons. So devoted was Shah Jahan that he moved the capital of the Mughal empire here. Now all that remains are ruins and the palace. And daytrippers from Agra 40 km away and hordes of touts.
A Grand Mosque at Fatehpur Sikri supposedly modelled after the mosque at Mecca. There are lots of touts hounding me around and inside the mosque, which really pissed me off. After trying several tactics, I finally found that completely ignoring them was the most efficient at getting rid of them. The touts really ruin the country of India. They overwhelm you and it is exhausting being confronted every two minutes and being engaged in a conversation that goes like this:
"Hello, yes! You want guide?"
"No, I don't want a guide."
"But, I am not a guide, sir. I am a student/volunteer. I am not selling anything."
"Leave me alone."
"Please, I do not want to sell you anything."
"Piss off...Leave me alone..."
"Where are you going?..."
etc and eventually he falls away only to be replaced by another tout who clearly just saw you get rid of one dude.
After seeing the Taj, I went to pick up my bags from the train station and took a cycle rickshaw to a bus station to go to Fatehpur Sikri, about 40 km from Agra. I wanted to spend the night here instead and visit the old Mughal capital.
The Taj Mahal was built as a mausoleum for Shah Jahan's wife who died in childbirth. Both he and his wife are buried beneath the Taj Mahal. It took over fifty years to build at a cost of about $60 million today. For some reason, this Muslim structure has become the iconic tourist postcard shot for this mostly-Hindu country.
I arrived in Agra just as the sky was brightening. I was there to get morning photos of the Taj Mahal, but the morning was so foggy with haze and mist that I couldn't see more than a hundred feet away for another hour or so. I left my luggage at the train station (only 10 Rs per piece per day) and took a rickshaw in the freezing cold to see the Taj Mahal.
At the Taj, Indians pay 20 Rs to enter. Foreigners pay a whopping 750 Rs! But for the 750 Rs (about $15) you also get free bootcovers (like in surgery) and a half a Liter bottle of water, so I guess that makes up for it. On the bright side, the cleanest bathroom in India is inside the Taj complex.
India has the largest rail network in the world (and happens to be the largest employer in the world with over a million employees). Oddly enough, the trains are not in the best condition. I slept in the 2nd class sleeper bunk which didn't come with bedding unlike in Vietnam or China. Theft is such a problem that you are encouraged to chain your belongings to bars or cables and there are armed guards that patrol the cars through the night (with huge automatic rifles). No one tells you when your stop has arrived, so you have to guess. In both Vietnam and China, someone came to wake you up before your stop.
Interestingly, it was on the train that I realized (having some GI distress after that bad meal) that I actually preferred a squatter toilet over a sit toilet because you don't have to strain your quad muscles hovering. I think I came to this conclusion unconsciously at the Yak Hotel in Lhasa when the Tibetans were crapping all over the toilets.
Large flat iron skillets used ubiquitously for cooking. I ate at this place before getting on my train to Agra. What a mistake. The food was terrible and I had diarrhea for the next few days.
Vegetable vendors on the ground, man warming himself by a fire, a cow in the middle of the street. This is night life in Varanasi.
Finally some great Indian food. I found a relatively expensive restaurant on the top of a hotel. It cost about $10 for two of us -- not bad!
I picked out some peanuts, crushed corn, corn flakes, noodles, and rice and he roasted them in sand and salt and sifted it out. Five Rs a bag!
In contrast to the men, the women don't strip down and keep their beautiful sari dresses on and scrub underneath.
The main cremation ghat in Varanasi. There are two cremation ghats, one with a modern oven for cremations, and the other is this one with open funeral pyres like at Pashupatinath.
Like at Pashupatinath, cremation and disposing of ashes in the Ganges is a quick trip to Nirvana -- no more reincarnation. Burning is a process of purification. Pure people aren't burned, they're weighed down with bricks and sunk -- and they later float downstream or wash ashore on the eastern banks. Pure people include holy men (sadhus), children, pregnant women (because of the pure fetus), unmarried people (supposedly because they are virginal), and snakebite deaths (because Vishnu appeared as a cobra before). No women are allowed at the cremations which can last three to four hours, because crying can keep the soul from ascending, and to keep them from perform sati, that is, the ritual of jumping on the funeral pyre.
Loads of wood is used for a funeral -- about 200 kgs. Wood costs 5-10 Rs/kg but sandalwood costs about 150 Rs/kg. A very interesting funeral rite.
With these ashes and floaters, people still bath and wash their clothes, and sip the holy water of the Ganges. Awwwwwesome.
I took an early morning boat ride on the Ganges so I could gawk at the morning bathing ritual (puja) that the Hindi perform. It was only 50 Rs/hour, but, as expected, the tout tried to change this half way through the ride.
There are loads of Koreans in Varanasi. Why? I don't know. As with the Swedes in Thailand, the Koreans are in Varanasi. Restaurants have loads of Korean food on their menus. As it turns out, most of the food in the tourist quarter is pretty mediocre and the menus are the same. I did opt for some kimchi ramen as everyone else seemed to be ordering it.
A nightly event of offering to Mother Ganga, the river.
This is a Hindi country, and cows are everywhere. Cow crap is everywhere too. No one bothers the cows.
This is the main ghat in Varanasi. There are about 365 ghats, or so I was told, in Varanasi, many built by wealthy Maharajas in front of their palatial estates. Those estates are now subdivided and rented out or in disrepair, giving Varanasi a decaying elegance like that of Venice -- just don't mind the floating bodies in the water.
