The trip to the Sundarbans was a bit of a bust. The actual geography was not very interesting, and I was not impressed with the tour company - our driver was a maniac, and they almost couldn't get us back to the city last night due to disorganization.

I was expecting the mangrove swamp to be something like the everglades or the bayou, with trees growing out of the water over a very large area. It turns out the Sundarbans is a large delta of quite large islands (mutiple km across) with waterways between them that look like large rivers. Only the edge of the island have trees that get submerged with the tide, maybe 10 to 100m of shoreline goes underwater at high tide. It took about 6 hours each way to get to the base camp area, and then we just toured around in a large boat in this wide open river system. We didn't see any tigers, there were very few birds or other wildlife - pretty boring.

The area we docked the boat was in a small village. It was actually more interesting just to be in rural West Bengal than it was to see the swamp. A few farms with random animals, cute kids running around. Seeing the farms was the best part of the trip.

The tour company was quit poorly run. Driving in India is always a little insane, but our driver was an asshole. At one point we passed a woman walking on the side of the road carrying some bowls or boxes flat on her hand (like a waiter would carry a tray at shoulder level). We wizzed passed here at 60 or 70 km/h and knocked the bowl in her right hand to the ground. I don't think we actually hit her, but I'm not sure. I yelled at the driver but he didn't stop. He was a dick, to say the least. I'm not sure what else I could have done in that situation. It still bothers me.

Coming back last night we were stuck in the small town where the boat docked. Normally they organize some bicycle rickshaws to take us part of the way to a ferry, and then to our van, but because of some festival there were no rickshaws, so no way to get home. Long story short: they had to send another boat for us and we got back home hours late. But I guess that's India for you - you can't expect things to go smoothly.

Today I flew to Dehli. I have heard terrible things about Dehli from other travelers, but it is actually quite nice. It's the nicest city I've seen in India by far, and is really better/cleaner/prettier than a lot of cities I've been to. Not sure where the reputation came from.

Tomorrow I have the whole day in Dehli, and I fly back at 1am on Monday morning.

I left Goa yesterday and spent most of yesterday traveling to Kolkata (Calcutta). My itinerary is a bit crazy, if you look at a map of India Bangalore to Goa to Kolkata to Dehli is a big zig-zag across the country. I came to Kolkata because there are some mangrove swamps just outside the city which I'm going to see tomorrow and Friday, and because it's a bit crazy city and that has appeal on its own.

Today I had a full day tour of Kolkata on motor bike. My guide drove and we went all over the city, to Mother Teresa's house, to 'Garbage Mountain'* (a literal mountain of garbage), temples, the flower market (which was pretty cool), the red light district, etc. Seeing the city this way was great. To put it kindly, Kolkata does not have much charm, but it is a fascinating shit show (literally and figuratively (I'm sitting in an internet cafe in the nicest part of town and I just got a very pungent whiff of urine)). The city is what you would expect from a city that is reknowned for being very poor - it is very dirty, busy, smelly. Seeing it all on the back of a motor cycle was great, because we got to drive through slums, the markets, the crazy traffic and really get a sense of the entire city. I think Kolkata is a bit like New York: the most interesting thing to do here is wander around and soak in the energy. Normally it's hard to see very poor cities, as the infrastructure is not there to see the interesting/poor/dangerous parts. Seeing it by motor bike was great.

Of course, seeing people live in abject poverty really made me appreciate what I have. I had more money in my pocket than some of the people I saw make in a year. By pocket I mean money belt, but you get the idea. It feels a bit strange riding around taking pictures of people just trying to scrape by. I'm not trying to make a statement here, just reflecting that on how lucky I am to live where I do.

Tomorrow and Friday I'm taking a tour of the mangrove swamps south of the city. They are a Unesco heritage sight, and tiger preserve, so hopefully they should will be pretty nice.


* I had a thought while I was at garbage mountain: there are only two places I have been where the garbage dump is an attraction of a city: Kolkata and Whistler, BC. Though in Whistler it because it attracts the bears.

After leaving Bangalore on Saturday I flew to Goa, as small state on the west side of India. Goa is known for it's beaches. After doing some research, I decided not to go to one of the two most popular beaches - they sounded too popular for me. Instead I headed to Palolem.

I knew that Goa had nice beaches, but I was really blown away by how nice this is. The beach is about a mile long, has beautiful sand, there are no rocks or pieces of coral. This is one of the most beautiful places I've been. And, if that wasn't enough already, my coco hut right on the beach costs me 800 rupees (US$16) per night.

This place reminds me a lot of Thailand - it's beautiful, nice weather, nice people and it's really cheap. I like it.

Of course, me being me, I have a bit of a hard time relaxing and just doing nothing even when faced with paradise. But really I can't complain too many choices to relax.

Last Sunday I flew to Bangalore, India to deliver training related to a project I have been working on for the past two years. The training was scheduled for three days, but since it's a long way to come for just three days I'm taking another week to travel around India on my own.

This was a busy week. I arrived in Bangalore at 2am on Tuesday morning. Tuesday I worked, but I managed to get out of the hotel at about 7pm and walked around a little, had a very tasty dinner, and went to a brew pub.

Since then (it's currently Saturday morning), I have not done much but work and sleep - or at least try to sleep, jet lag sucks.

I was providing training to 7 or 8 people from Accenture. Their office as a short walk from the hotel, so I did get to walk back and forth to the office. That was nice, it made me feel like I was doing something more normal than taking a cab from this very nice hotel to an office. I actually got out in the streets and saw something. The trainees from Accenture were very nice and very hospitable. I think the training was well received.

It's now Saturday morning here, and I'm about to venture out on my own. Depsite already being in India, it has been pretty easy so far. I'm in a very nice hotel, I had a car meet me at the airport. There have been very few challenges.

When I left the US I did not have an itinerary for the rest of the trip, but over the past couple of days my plans have crystallized. They are:

- Today I head to Goa, a state known for beautiful beaches, for three days
- Tuesday night I fly to Calcutta. I'm going to do a one day motor bike tour of Calcutta on Wednesday
- Thursday/Friday I'm going to the Sundarbans
- Saturday I fly to Dehli
- Sunday I'm going to the Taj Mahal, and I fly out early in the morning on Monday

It's a very busy itinerary, but that's how I do.

Anyway, I should have something more interesting to say soon, once I stop working and start vacationing. More to come.

I finally posted some photos from the trip to China. I never really concluded the trip on the blog. The last couple of days in Hong Kong were low key, but good. HK is a really interesting city, the food was great, the culture is interesting in that it's very western, but still feels like a chinese city. Hong Kong city is on an island, on the side of steep hill. This means that space is seriously limited. HK feels a little like Manhattan, but compressed, and if China town exploded throughout the entire city.

I ended up having a suit, and five shirts made. The quality is pretty good, and the suit fits really well. The price was not dirt cheap, but quite cheap. I'm happy I had the clothes made.

I never posted anything here, but started a new blog around beer. Check it out, there will be some interesting content there soon.

beerstyleproject.wordpress.com

- Luke

There's a foot note to my story about the guide putting me on the wrong flight. She had told me she'd be in Shanghai at the same time I would and she gave me her card and asked me to get in touch with her. I asked her if she was looking for more guiding work, and she said we could just hang out. So, I got in touch with her mainly because I wanted to find out exactly what happened in the Beijing airport. We arranged to meet at Bar Luna, in a particular neighbourhood in Shanghai. Turns out the neighbourhood was the most expensive in Shanghai, and Bar Luna was an expensive restaurant in that neighbourhood. Entrees were about US$40, and beers were US$10. Ken and I ate before we arrived, but we both got beers and waited for her to arrive. But she never did.

I got an email later with a weird excuse/non-excuse. Basically she just didn't want to show up. Again she screwed me, but only ever so slightly. She's a genius at whatever game she's playing.

I've been in Hong Kong since Wednesday night. Rather than writing about it, I thought I'd share some pictures of my experience.

I LOVE HONG KONG!!!



This is a politician, standing on the side of a busy road, in a neighbourhood with no foot traffic at all. He really reminded me of Bruce McCulloch.



The suit I'm having made

Saturday was Jon's wedding. It was really fun, and a very unique experience. First a little background. Jon married a very nice girl named Weina, who has lived in Beijing for the last 14 years, but grew up in a town called Jingzhou, which is a "really small town" of only 800000 people in central China. Jon's family and 6 of this friends along with some SO's and some of Weina's foreign friends converged on Jingzhou for hte wedding. There were 15 people from out of town.

The wedding has some familiar elements, and some elements that were totally new. It started out with all the guys meeting in the hotel lobby. The first part of the tradition was to go and get the bride. We went up to her hotel room and had to bang on the door and ask for Weina. Jon had to answer a bunch of questions about Weina, he had to slip envelops with money in them under the door, he had to sing a song, we all had to dance. Once they girls were satisfied he was interested they let us in. We then had to find Weina's shoes, that were hidden in the room, before we could go. After we found them Jon slipped them on her feet and we left to get pictures taken. I think the tradition of the groom going to the bride's place to get her is pretty sweet, and was really fun.

Next we went for pictures. This was quite similar to what we do in the west - we went to a park, pictures with various groups of people, pretty standard.

Then came the ceremony. This was pretty amazing. I really can't do this justice in a blog, I really need video to fully convey the full experience, but since I can't really get video out from China I'll try to explain it. The wedding was in a banquet hall in the hotel. There were 300 guests, so lots of tables in a big room. In the center of the room was a white alter-like structure, which was the start of a runway that led to the front of the room, which was decked out in white, draped fabric, with an enormous photo of Jon and Weina. There was an MC/efficient overseeing the wedding. Jon entered first, to the most epic music imaginable. The MC asked him some questions, then Weina entered, accompanied by her parents, which was really sweet, and quite similar to the western traditions. Then the couple stood at the front of the room while various random music played (Enya, Madonna come to mind) and while a bubble machine was blowing bubbles all over then the said their vows. Then they poured a giant bottle of some beverage (Champagne?) over a stack of glasses, and the parents gave speeches.

While the ceremony was going on food was being brought to the tables. We had about 15-20 dishes delivered to our table. The food was great. The white people all waited for the ceremony to finish before we started eating, but the rest of the tables dug in as soon as the food arrived. People started leaving as soon as they were done eating, some before the ceremony had finished. Apparently this is normal.

The tables of foreign guests lingered (the ceremony started at 6:30 and we were there till maybe 9pm). By 8:30 there was no one else there, and the staff had broken down all the tables, the alter, the runway and there were just two table left, and the staff at the hotel were glaring at us wanting us to leave.

After the ceremony the tradition is that the friends of the couple are supposed to keep the bride and groom 'awake'. So we went to their room and made them play games like blind folding Weina and having her feel all the noses of the guys in the room and have to determine which one is Jon (she did). We also tied pot lids around their chests and made them bang them together. I imagine before pre-marital sex this tradition must have been a little painful for the groom.

After all that we went for karaoke, as it was still just about 10:30.

The next day we went to the Weina's parent's house for brunch. I think Jon told her this was a western tradition (I guess it is to an extent). She prepared about 10 dishes for 15 people in her tiny kitchen. She used to run a restaurant, and the food was unbelievably good. It was a once in a lifetime experience for me, I'll probably never get a home cooked meal in central China from a great chef how speaks no English.

The wedding was a really great time, and fantastic experience. Thanks Jon and Weina for inviting me.

Ken and I spent two days in Xi'an, one day seeing the city, the other seeing the Terra Cotta Warriors - a set of over 6000 clay statues that guard the tomb of an emperor from 2200 years ago. From Xi'an the plan was to take the overnight train to Jingzhou, where the wedding I'm in China to attend is going to take place.

There are different types of train in China, and different classes of seat within those trains. The type of train is determined by the route. The train from Beijing to Shanghai, for instance, is really nice and travels at something like 350 kph. The train from Xi'an to Jingzhou was the second slowest/oldest. Even within this type of train there are 5 classes (in decreasing price/comfort): soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, hard seat, standing room. The train from Xi'an to Jingzhou was going to be 13 hours, and overnight so we wanted to get the soft sleeper tickets (each person gets a bed in a berth with four bunks). Apparently these go very quickly, and all that was left were hard seats, which are very cheap, but meant like we were traveling like regular Chinese people.

Before we got on the train we didn't know quite what to expect. Lonely Planet made hard seats sound pretty terrible. Just boarding the train was an adventure, people were pushing as hard as they could to get into the hard seat cars (though on the soft sleeper/seat cars everything was pretty calm). The seats themselves were not that hard, though we didn't have a lot of leg room. Turns out the train wasn't that bad, though it was ridiculously crowded. We had assigned seats, but there were people filling the aisles for the whole trip. At various points of the night (we were on the train from 5pm to 6am) people were standing, sitting or lying in the aisles. For about two hours a woman was leaning on the seat and basically sitting on top of me. For most of the trip someone was sleeping under our seat. In the end it was really a lot of fun. I'm glad with rode with the locals, though if I had to do it again and had the choice for a higher class I'm not sure I'd go for hard seats again.

Yesterday we (15 white people who are in town for the wedding) took a tour of the Three Gorges Dam. This is largest dam in the world by volume of water retained. On the way back on the bus my nose started to run (I'm getting a cold). I tried to deal with it for about 15 minutes but I didn't have a kleenex, and my nose started running quickly. Ken was sleeping next to me, but I knew he bought some napkins for the train ride the night before in case we needed them, or need toilet paper, or just for emergencies. Finally he woke up and I asked him for the napkins (my nose is running like a faucet at this point). I break into the package, unwrap a napkin which has a really weird texture, and realized Ken had bought individually wrapped maxipads. There was nothing else to do at that point, so I blew my nose in the maxipad. I can now cross that off the bucket list.

I had a very strange travel experience yesterday. I traveled from Beijing to Xi'an, in central China, by plane. The original plan was to get on a plane at 5pm, land at 7pm and meet my friend Ken who was landing at 8 and head to the hotel. I ended up getting sucked into some kind of weird scam, that I'm still unclear about.

The trip started of well, I took the subway from my hotel to the airport and that went off without a hitch. I was feeling good about my ability to get around. I was at the airport about 2.5 hours before my flight. I relaxed, read, listened to some podcasts. Our plane arrived shortly before 5pm, and I watched the passengers on it disembark, which meant I was going to be a little late, but no big deal. Then my flight disappeared from the board, and a few minutes later the time changed to 6pm at a gate on the other side of the airport (PEK is really big, the new gate was probably 1.5 km away). I asked at the gate if I should really move, and the guy said I should wait (this was confusing, something was obviously wrong with our plane/flight). I struck up a conversation with a Chinese woman who spoke English well (also traveller), and she said the plane was having mechanical problems and it might not go at all, and we should wait and see before moving to the other gate.

It became apparent that the woman was the leader of a tour group, and she got more info from the guy at the gate. She went back to inform her group of what was going on so I followed her to eavesdrop (getting info in English is tough in China). She said that our flight was going to be cancelled, and that she arranged to get her tour group on the 8:30 flight, but there was limited space on that flight and the rest of the people on the flight would be cancelled outright and wouldn't get out at all. I left the group, but she walked across the departure lounge and asked me if I'd like to join their group and get on the 8:30 flight. I thought she was doing me a huge favour. I said yes, and I went with her and her tour group. She explained that it's easier for the airline to move a whole group of people between flights, because they don't have to pick and choose who gets out and who gets cancelled.

She walked us to the Air China lounge, but looking back she really urged us to get there very quickly, which didn't make a lot of sense since our flight wasn't leaving for 3 hours. She sat us down, and literally put food and beers in our hands.

At this point I should mention that the tour group were all septuagenarian barbershop singers and their spouses. I hung out in the lounge for a few ours with these people (who were really quite nice) while they sang barbershop, Elvis covers, and other old-timey songs. I had a few free beers, some ramen, it was weird, but reasonably comfortable. I even sang (Country Roads) Take Me Home with the group after a couple beers.

Our 8:30 flight was delayed, but we ended up getting out at about 10, and landing at midnight. I was a little tired, but happy to be there. When I went to pickup my bag it wasn't on the carousel (though the rest of the group's bags were there). This was a bit stressful, but long story short, my bag was waiting for me at the baggage claim desk - it arrived in Xi'an before I did.

All evening I was texting with Ken, who was hoping to meet me at the airport in Xi'an. Before I got on the plane in Beijing he mentioned that my flight number indicated that it had landed. It looks like what actually happened is they wanted to bump a bunch of people from the original flight, so they just bumped these two tour groups, but convinced them they were being done a favour. The original flight was only one hour late, while we ended up being 5 hours late.

What's not clear is why the guide pulled me into this, or what the upside was. I got delayed a few extra hours, which is ultimately no big deal, but if she had just ignored me I would have only been one hour late. What's the upside? Maybe she gets a kickback for each person that got bumped by the airline? I don't know. But I know I got screwed.