Welcome to India

There is no way for us to show you what it is really like to be here. We've survived Kolkata for 3 days now. Before we landed here, we thought we were becoming wisened and even partially hardened travellers, but we were wrong. Cairo and Bangkok are a nice warm up for Kolkata, but are TAME compared to this place. There are so many images and smells (namely urine) that we haven't been able to photograph, but if you want to try to imagine it, go sit in your local Husky Truck Stop bathroom, blare a car horn constantly in your ear, and have somebody persistently try to sell you something you don't want. Sorry, we don't want to say that we're not enjoying ourselves, but that we have to put a little bit more effort into things. Everything, actually. Now that we have that off our chest, we can show you some of our discoveries so far...

The bus at the top is your average Kolkatan public transport bus. You only need to imagine it with a blasting horn, belching black smoke, and driving at breakneck speeds into large crowds of people who move out of the way at the last second, or jump on while it's still moving. On the back, there is usually a boldly painted sign that says: "DANGER - PLEASE HONK!"

These cabs are everywhere. It's not just the cabs that look like 1950's gangsters; almost all the cars are vintage. Their horns work very well also. The Victoria Memorial is a beautiful, and tranquil place. A left-over from British colonial times, the gardens are where all the young couples go to hold hands and wear their Sunday best, and walk around the Reflection Pond. It was such a nice break from the hecticness of the streets.
Our current room is on an ubiquitous backpacker street, called Sudder St. We find it quite difficult to stay here because of the massive poverty. Young girls will follow you asking for milk for their babies, and these rickshah pullers live in their carts. It seems inhumane to hire them, and equally to not, as that is their source of meagre income. This one at least has sandals, most do not.
Kolkatans love to play cricket and have family picnics at a huge park called The Maidan. There are cricket clubs all over, so we stayed and watched them for a while, trying to figure out the game. Alas, with terms like "sticky wicket", it was hard to put it together.

Our favourite aspect of India so far is the food. We LOVE it! We usually don't know what to expect when we order off any menu, but so far we have been pleasantly surprised, almost every time. The only time things don't work out, is when you go for one of your familiar favourites from home, such as milkshakes, which look much better than they taste. We've also learned that "mango lassis" are not actually Indian. You can get a great one in Edmonton at any Indian restaurant, but here you can only choose between sweet or salted lassi. BTW, a lassi is a blended yogourt drink. The huge things in the picture above are dosas. Tear it off with your RIGHT hand and dip it in the sauces. Deeelish!
He has a mattress on his head. Wherever you look, you'll see someone carrying some impossible load on their head. Today we saw a guy with 10 huge bricks balanced on top.
India is India because of it's people. Colourful. We'll try to capture the energy of this place for you to see, since this post paints a very calm picture. We've found it to be anything but calm, but in the midst of it all, it's often hard to pull out a camera. If you stop for a moment, someone will approach you and ask you, "Excuse me kind sir. What is your qualification?" And on goes travelling in India..

T & K

Scratch 'n Sniff Bangkok

Our mission in this post is to bring you to Bangkok and feel the heat. There are so many interesting and bizarre sights and smells to be had in Bangkok that we have fallen short of describing to you. Be prepared, for what you are about to experience is not for the faint of heart. Don't worry though, we're leaving out the rats and cockroaches. Use your imagination for those.

Scratch 'n Sniff #1:

There is a plethora of good eats to be had from street vendors in Bangkok. In fact, we are eating a dish of noodles and spring rolls from one such vendor as we type. They start with oil and garlic in a huge tipped up wok and then they add veggies and pull your noodles down from the top of the wok. You can add egg or meats if you like. Spring rolls are cut up and topped with a sweet chili sauce. This costs 35 baht, or about 1 dollar. (notice all the tourists in the background, this is Khao San Road, mecca for backpackers)

Scratch 'n Sniff #2:
Actually, we don't recommend that you touch this situation with your fingers, nose, or especially tongue. There are far more convoluted wiring situations than this to be found. We cross our fingers whenever we plug anything in.

Scratch 'n Sniff #3:

The vegetable market is great. Unfortunately, we weren't in the market for 80 kg of cabbage so we couldn't take advantage of the deals. There is also a floating market on the canals but we haven't found it yet.

Scratch 'n Sniff #4:

The flower market is buzzing, with bees. It's a fiesta for the senses.

Scratch 'n Sniff #5:

As you walk through it all, you can only absorb a small portion of everything there is to be seen. Notice how Tyrn is crossing the street very confidently? Although we find Thai drivers not as crazy as Egyptians, it is still a test of the nerves to step off the curb.

Scratch 'n Sniff #6:

Chinatown. We're not sure how to even approach these things, never mind eat them. We could do a whole post on "Scratch 'n Sniff Chinatown".

Scratch 'n Sniff #7:

Bangkok is very humid and you'll see tropical plants and trees everywhere. The plants are the backdrop of Bangkok.

Scratch 'n Sniff #8:

This is Kelsey waiting impatiently for the english tour guide at the Grand Palace. If you scratch in the right spots you should be able to sniff her sweat. Gross!

Scratch 'n Sniff #9:

This is a very common and interesting sight, drinking out of a bag. I am not sure what this particular pink liquid is, but anything that comes in a bottle, can go in a bag. They do this for recycling purposes, believe it or not!

Scratch 'n Sniff #10:
The tuk tuk! Smells especially nasty from behind. These are the 3 wheeler, 2 stroke engined contraptions that "tuk" you all around Bangkok. But be careful if you go for a ride, because your driver might have unexpected stops at his "friends" stores in mind.

Scratch 'n Sniff #11:

Mmmmmmmmmm, good food! Can you smell it?

We will finish our Scratch 'n Sniff portion of the blog now by saying you could never sufficiently capture all the sights, sounds, and smells of Bangkok without strolling the streets yourself.

To complete this post we felt that the Grand Palace needed it's own mention. It is the holiest place in all of Bangkok, filled with elaborate Buddhist sculptures and architecture.

Hope you enjoyed your very small tour of the Palace. We never did end up on the English tour. We saw Russian, French, Chinese and Japanese guides, but somehow our English one slipped by us.

From here we are actually jumping again, from Bangkok to Calcutta, India. We leave tomorrow morning and are in India (the northeast part) for just over a month.

See you in India,

K & T

In Bangkok and lovin it

The last few days have mostly seen us trying to recoup from our jetlag and adjusting to the heat of South East Asia. It's about 30C most days, but we're not complaining. It's nothing a cold pepsi in a glass bottle can't cure.
We explored the canals in our part of town. This is the traditional side of Bangkok. Most people don't associate canals with this city, but many of the old houses are built along them. Long tail boats come by and sell vegetables, meats, and supplies.
We haven't ridden on a canal boat, yet. But they are nothing like the Venice gondolas, that's for sure. There seems to be no speed limits here. In Venice, the canals are tightly controlled at 15km/h or less. Here we saw these boats zipping around, doing U-turns and spraying water everywhere. It is fantastic.

It is HOT and HUMID here and our bodies are still adjusting. The climb to our 5th story room is like death, we are literally crawling by about floor four. We took a walk up to the Golden Mount, and had to stop a lot along the way for pictures. Bangkok seems overwhelmingly picturesque and so we find it hard to take many photos. It isn't like there is the waterfall, take a picture. It is like, there is a waterfall and a jungle and a canal and a beautiful temple with ornate handrails, and ...
We haven't ventured too far from the "touristy" Khoa san road yet, but we have experienced some great food. We have eaten a lot of noodles from street vendors. In fact, one time we ordered from a lady with her rice cart and then she giggled, got behind her cart and then ran away as fast as she could. We stood there thinking, what in the world? But then we looked just behind us and saw two cops coming down the road. It is funny because other places we have seen street vendors pick up and go when they see cops coming, but never a food vendor and never one that we had placed our order with. Talk about "fast food". Don't worry we chased her down and got our chicken with rice. Some of our favourites include Pad Thai, fresh fruit on a stick, iced coffees and fruit shakes.

The poll is in and the vicarious winner is:
EGYPT by a mile! Thanks everyone that voted. We have loved blogging for you from Big Ben to the Acropolis and everywhere in between.

This cute chick is our niece Mya. We just got some great pictures of her and thought we would take this opportunity to brag a bit. We put her at the end though, because she steals the spotlight! Cutie!!

K & T

Hello Asia

We made it, after 2 flights, 9 hours in the air, and 36 hours of total transit time sans sleep, we are in Bangkok. Wooohooo! Kelsey's leaning on the elephant because she can hardly stand up, showing a little fatigue.

We took our first flights with Emirates Air, which is our main carrier for this trip. We had heard that Emirates is the best airline in the world for services in the air. Our first flight, from Athens to Dubai was the maiden voyage for one brand new Boeing 777-300ER. This plane must have been featured on MTV's "Pimp My Ride" because it had all the BLING BLING you could ask for, especially if you're asking from economy class.

Sorry for the blurry picture, but we wanted to show you our favourite airplane meal so far. Under the foil is a delicious main course of grilled perch in a dill sauce, asparagus, eggplant, and tagliatare noodles. Around the main course (clockwise) is a fresh bun, an appetizer salad, greek salad, cheesecake dessert, complimentary wine, water, and REAL cutlery! To top off the meal, we finished with tea and chocolate. We knew we weren't on Air Canada the moment they handed us a menu!
The inflight entertainment on this plane is a party. Your personal touchscreen computer with AC outlet and USB port also comes with a 2 sided remote control. The side showing is a satelite phone, along with TV controls. Flip it over and you'll find a nintendo style game controller and a full keyboard for typing emails etc. BUT, this is not just meat with no potatoes. Turn it on and you'll find a list of at least 25 current movies, TV episodes from MASH to LOST, a virtual arcade, news and info from BBC, tons of music including new albums from Radiohead and Arcade Fire, and onboard cameras showing views from the front and bottom of the plane as well as your classic animated flight tracker.

We saw the flight attendants getting a PEP talk at the gate before boarding. From the onboard service we recieved, we thought it included "Let's make this maiden voyage the BEST TRIP EVER!" or "There's an airline review guy onboard somewhere, so DON'T SCREW IT UP!" To top it all off, there was a major tailwind, so it was the fastest flight EVER made by Emirates from Athens to Dubai.

NOW, our connecting flight from Dubai to Bangkok, (still with Emirates) was a completely different situation. Our plane was what we'd call "a classic" aka "old". The service was terrible. They missed a meal entirely. Our malfunctioning tiny tvs had very limited selection and the seats were very uncomfortable. We landed as sore and dehydrated waifs in Bangkok. In one day, we think we saw the best and the worst Emirates has to offer.

Bangkok

Now that we are semi-recovered from our jetlag, we are taking in the first sights and smells of Bangkok. We haven't done much yet, but it's warm and welcoming. Kelsey's experiencing her first taste of Asia and Ty's excited to show her around.
Sawadee Kaa,

K & T

Goodbye Europe

Someone told us that last post's windy picture didn't look that windy, so Ty decided to show you just how windy it was.

This is our last post from Europe as we will be heading to Thailand tomorrow. Aaaahhhh! Today marks the end of the first part of the trip. In case you haven't noticed, we ocassionally put a poll question on the blog. According to the 2 people who've voted so far, Europe was boring but Egypt lights it up.

These Are A Few Of Our Favourite Things:

Greek. It's a fun language to try to figure out. They use both the english and the greek alphabet, so you're always switching the way you pronounce things you read. Spelling is an art here, at best. We've seen words, even names of cities spelled up to 5 different ways.

The Landscape. The Cretan (we love that word) landscape is extreme. Steep rocky mountains rising out of the sea. It reminds Kelsey a lot of Norway, actually. We had a car for a week so we got to cruise around the switchbacks and gorges. Gorgeous. ; )

Olive Groves. Olive trees are olive coloured, but have a silvery shine to them and twisty, knarled looking trunks. PS, olives are NOT tasty when eaten off the tree!

Christmas Lights. Greece has great Christmas lights up on the streets and Christmas tunes playing in the stores. We probably only noticed it because we were in Egypt a few weeks ago, and although there are Christians there, Christmas isn't "in the air" like we're used to.

Random Thoughts & Observations:

The town we stayed in was a real beach town. Plakias is layed back, and pretty quiet in the "winter".
Greeks love to smoke! Right up there with Portugal, no public place is safe.

Tyrn finished his masterpiece. You're looking at 500 pieces of a Canadian lake, put together in Greece. Go figure.

And so ends Europe, well, for this trip. Thank You, Obrigado, Gracias, Merci, Grazie, Shukran, and Efkaristo. (It's the only word we remember in every language we've used so far.) Please feel free to look back on our trip and vote. The winning country will recieve a prize.

See you in Thailand,

T & K