First impressions

My flight from Kuala Lumpur to Bali was pretty empty. So empty, in fact, that the flight

Sculpture at ngurah rai airport in Bali

attendant offered me a choice to switch seats so that I’d have an entire row all to myself. Hence, I got good rest on the plane and was not too tired when I arrived in Bali at sometime post mid night. First things first, I spent some of the Indonesian rupaih I had bought in Malaysia with the ringgits I had left to pay for the visa on arrival¹. The first thing I noticed standing in the queue waiting for the immigration officer to stamp me a visa on arrival was how many Aussies there were. More than 80% of the people in the queues, in my estimate, were Aussies. Being the denizens of the most distant “western” country with significant per-capita income puts Australians in a bit of a quandary when it comes to picking holiday destination, I guess.

Kleptocrat immigration officers

Seaside temples, beautiful Bali

The clerk in on duty was mechanically stamping out visas for everyone in front of me. When it came to my turn, however, he suddenly turned inquisitive. “What is the purpose of your travel, uhhh… Rah-jish?”, “It’s tourism”, “Really? What are you here to see?”, ” I don’t know” … silence… I knew he couldn’t deny me visa, I had paid for it already and even if he had to deport me he had to pay for the air ticket, and all for what? Because I don’t know what I want to see in Bali? I didn’t think so. So I was confident and unflinching. After a moment’s hesitation, the clerk stamped my passport and handed it back to me, unsmiling. The price of an unfavorable passport and brown colored skin, I thought. I wouldn’t have expected this from fellow brown-skins. Besides, why would I run away from India into Indonesia? I was more amused than annoyed² by the whole thing.

Deja-vu

Crowds at a temple popular with tourists in Bali

When I got out of the airport terminal, there was a lot of hustle bustle. Traditional Balinese music was being played out. There were touts everywhere trying to get visitors into Taxis. There were a few vendors trying to sell bottled water and such to the white people, even though it was late at night. Then it stuck me, this was exactly like India! At this thought, I became confident as to what I had to do. I went to the official taxi stand and hired a prepaid taxi to my destination³. I was to couch surf here as well and my host was OK with me arriving late at night. She had given me her address well in advance and so that is where I was headed.

Surfing in Bali

One of the less popular "surf" beaches in Bali

There are lots of surfers in Bali, apparently the surf is very good. But I’m not talking about that surfing, but couch surfing. My taxi driver was talkative throughout the drive althought he barely spoke English and I knew not a word of Bahasa. He was however a very inept taxi driver, he lost his way several times. I didn’t have a cell phone that worked. However, I did my host’s number. I gave him her number to get directions. He repeatedly called her and got new directions and kept getting lost. Eventually, though, he did make it to my host’s place. I suspect he wandered half the island looking for the place. Anyway, when I got out, my host was there to greet me. The driver wanted more cash. By his logic, he had driven more than I had paid for and I owed him more cash. My host and the driver had some heated words exchanged. Then my host turned to me and said give “him five thousand if you’ve got it, no more!”. The driver made a sign of disgust as if I were offering him loose pocket change and walked off without accepting it or uttering another word.

Thosands of rupiah

100000 rupiah note

This brings me to another interesting thing about Indonesia. Long term hyperinflation has left the the country’s currency in such a state that the lowest coin in circulation worth anything is a thousand rupiah! My taxi to my host’s home had cost me eighty five thousand rupaih, 85,000! In fact, that was one of the first things I said to my host when I got off the taxi, “I just spent eighty five thousand rupees on a taxi!”. I felt like I was Vijay Mallya – spending thousands of rupees on a limousine ride. Of course, my host looked at me like one would look at a child proudly spouting something inane . For she knew the truth of the matter. It is much more in line with the realities of my wallet. Ten thousand rupiah is about 50 India rupees. So the five thousand extra I was offering for the driver was like a 25 rupee tip for a 500 rupee taxi ride – not a bad tip, but not luxurious either.⁴

And so I had arrived in Bali. I was to spend seven very fun days there. As the title may have indicated, “picture abhi baki hai” and I’ll write about Bali times in more posts to come. Stay tuned!

1. The visa on arrival is cheaper if you pay in Rupiah. It costs US $25, otherwise. They perhaps accept AU $ and Euros, but I wouldn’t try. They have absolutely no regard for Indian rupees or any other currency. To the Indonesian immigration, it’s worse than toilet paper.
2. Unlike in Chicago, where the redneck immigration agent had really put me in a bad mood by the time I had finished my “interview”
3. It was one of the very few times in the whole trip that I used a Taxi. Essentially, I didn’t have a choice because the island lacks any kind of public transport.
4. If you prefer USD, ten thousand rupiah is about 1 US dollar, so five thousand tip I was offering was like a 50 cent tip on a 10$ taxi ride.

Views on Cameron highlands

Cameron highlands

The gang that went to Cameron highlands included my host, co-host, their three friends  and two other couch surfers who were surfing with our hosts back at KL. So it was a small troop indeed. We had hired an apartment just outside the town of Tanah Rata.

View of tanah rata town from our apartment

Cameron highlands is an interesting place in that it’s perpetually cool, because it is at an altitude. Most of Malaysia is hot and humid due to its location on the equator. It is also a place where it can rain with least amount of warning. Cameron retains all these properties except the heat. This makes for an really interesting flora. There is rainforest here. But it is temperate! Of course, as you can imagine, Malaysians love the place – who wouldn’t love a place where you can cool down from equatorial heat?

The jungle walk in Tanah Rata

The highlight of our stay was a hike through the jungle here in Tanah rata. When we set off, it was cool even though the sun was out (duh).

Random shot taken when there was a lull in the rain

I took my jacket with me – it is an almost rain-proof jacket (the seams can leak a little bit of water under torrential rain) that is fleece lined inside (so it is warm as well). It also has a removable hood, which I had removed for a reason I cannot fathom right now. As we started going on this lovely trail with lots of obstacles that seemed like they hadn’t been cleared for a long while. Now and again we would come across a fallen, dead & decaying tree on our path. Constantly, there were puddles of water with foliage rotting in them. The dense jungle also made the views intensely claustrophobic and yet beautiful.

Steamboat meal that my friends had post the trek

The downpour

Then all of a sudden there was a not-a-small drop of water on my head. This quickly turned to a torrential downpour. Should I remind you, dear reader, that this is a rain forest? Suddenly, I was scampering to make the jacket cover my head, which left large portions of  my back exposed to rain. And so we walked. The rain ebbed and flowed, never really stopping – enticing little lulls were always followed by more heavy rain.

View of Penang island atop Kek Lok Si Pagoda

At one point, we encountered a dead tree looming across our path. It was pretty big, imagine the kind of tree that grows unmolested in a rain forest with plenty of fertile soil, then multiply it by a factor of three. This tree loomed that massive in front of us. We couldn’t skirt it since there was sheer drop on one side and a sheer wall on the other. Only one of in our gang really had a full rain coat an looked like he was out on a proper hike.

Georgetown is a UNESCO heritage site & the capital of Penang

This was the french member of our crew who was an experienced jungle hiker. He somehow scaled the slimy, slippery tree and got on to the other side. He then helped others along one by one, the lighter people – he outright lifted to the other side. In my hubris, I started to cross the tree by myself without really accounting for how slippery it was. I began my inevitable slide down to the 30 foot drop when the french held my arm and saved me from the fall.

Gaint buddha at Kek Lok Si pagoda in Penang

And so we continued the walk, on and on. We eventually reached a fork in the road and took a while to decide which way we should go to head back into town. There was no cellphone reception, but mostly using intuition and a bit of help from my phone’s compass we decided on a path and started walking. This turned out to be the right track and we eventually made it back to civilization after a ~4kms walk through the jungle.

We then came out onto someone’s backyard. We stopped in a garage waiting for the rain to stop. Once it stopped, we immediately went into the town to eat as everyone was hungry. I ordered some dish in a hurry and then realized that everyone else had ordered a steamboat together.

Funnily named street in Penang

Penang

The next destination I visited was Palau Pinang. This is supposed to be a foodie paradise, but I’m not one – I do enjoy good food, but I wouln’t live for it or, in this case, travel to a foreign country for it. Penang is an interesting place nonetheless, with interesting sights and different sounds.

The bridge that links Penang island with Butterworth in mainland

One of the interesting persons I met here was “backpacker granny” Gerry. That’s one of the things about travel, one meets different people with unique perspectives that are hard to find in one’s day to day life. Backpacking, in my view, is the purview of the young. But as Geraldine demonstrates with her life, it’s just a state of mind. Anyway, she’s done a better job of describing what Penang is like than I could so I’ll just post you over to her blog.

In the next post, I’ll write about my experiences in the Bali island.

Malaysian flag displayed at my host's apartment

“Malaysia truly asia, the mountains and the sea”, the ad from tourism Malaysia jungles. India has 7,500 kilometers of coastline and the mother of all mountain ranges – the mighty Himalayas. Wonder what they were thinking when the designed the ad to be aired in India. Anyway, neither the mountains nor the sea were really my driving force behind visiting Malaysia.

Why Malaysia?

What was my motivation to go to Malaysia? After all, I had been to the country before – in 2007, in a company sponsored trip. I had been to Kuala Lumpur’s massive shopping malls and the amusement parks up the Genting highlands.

Batu caves and an overcast sky

Well, actually there were couple of reasons. The first one is best illustrated with the story about a few blind men trying to “see” an elephant. It is said that each one had a fantastically different view of what an elephant was like. The man who touched only the elephant’s leg saw it as a tree trunk. The one who touched its tail saw it like a snake. The one who touched its ears saw it as a sail and so forth. My impression is that all foreign travel is essentially an experience like that of the blind in the story above. Countries are vast, number of people in them even more so – cultures are often only as good as the people who transmit them. The initial impression, in 2007, I had of Malaysia was that it was very commercialized and a bit gaudy. Of course, this was heavily influenced by the places I visited (Genting, KL) and the time I spent (of the order of three hectic days) in that trip. I always like the impression of countries that I get when I backpack. A genuine smile of an ordinary person often outshines the most practiced smiles of the “hospitality” sector. So my first reason was to experience Malaysia and Malaysians in such a light.

Giant Murugan statue at Batu caves

Secondly, and perhaps more important than all my pontifications, my airline of choice, Air Asia, flies to almost every destination via Kuala Lumpur. Hence the question was rather “why not Malaysia?” than “why Malaysia?”. Given that I was going to spend some time in Malaysia, but wanted to spend most of my time in Australia and New Zealand, I had decided that I was going to spend a week in Malaysia. I didn’t have a very clear idea of what I’d do in the week. I could visit Kuala Lumpur, and may be two other destinations of choice. These could include the likes of Malacca, Penang and Cameron Highlands. Anything too far from KL would disrupt my schedule. But, as usual, I did not have solid itineraries or plans before arriving in Malaysia.

My first surf

I had mentioned in my previous post backpacked that there was not much preparation that I did other than mentioned in that post. Well, actually I missed mentioning a pretty important thing that I had done and that was to send out lots of couch requests on couch surfing.¹

My host was an artist. This one of the interesting artworks she had in her apartment.

Hence I had a couch to surf in Kuala Lumpur.

My flight from Bangalore to KL was five hours late. So I arrived early morning in KL instead of some ungodly hours post midnight. I took some rest at the airport so as to not arrive too early at my host’s place. Although I had used CS for meeting fellow travelers in my previous trip and I had hosted travelers in Bangalore, I had never surfed before. So I was excited to do my first surf.

The Nepali connection

Petronas towers lit at night, a shot from my 2007 trip to Malaysia.

At around 6:30 AM, I took a bus from the low cost terminal of the airport to the KL international airport terminal. Then I took train and changed to a bus to arrive at the KL suburb where my host was located. My host had warned me that I needed a security badge to swipe to get into the building and that I had to ask the security to let me inside. The security guard posted at the apartment, however, had made up his mind to make me walk around a bit. He refused to let me in despite my showing the email from my host. He threatened to call the police if I did not leave. He would only let me inside if my hosts could come down and personally escort me upstairs. Since I had arrived with a cell phone with no international roaming², I had to run around quite a bit to find a public calling phone. Travelling light definitely helped! To my dismay, however, the public telephone booths I found weren’t working.

Petronas towers

So I went back to the security, I had to convince him somehow. To my delight, however, this time along there was a Nepali guard along with the other, Malay, guard. I spoke to the Nepali guard in Hindi. I was able to convince him that the hosts were my friends. He was totally incredulous. He had seen my hosts host other foreigners and he was asking me how they have so many friends abroad. I told them “internet”, he seemed convinced. The Nepali guard and the Malay guard (who seemed to be the one  in charge) spoke among themselves in Malay. Finally they opened the door and took me upstairs.

Finally at around 8:30, I had arrived at my couch in Kuala Lumpur. My hosts, turned up at the door and welcomed me in. They were still groggy. Apparently I had woken them up! In what was to become a precedent for most hosts I was to interact with, they turned out to be awesome. Although they had to leave the house that morning to manage some chores or some such thing, they left me with a set of keys so that I could sleep after my sleepless red-eye flight the previous night. Take a moment to think about that: would you give your house keys to someone you just met? I had arrived fully expecting them to throw me out and that I’d snooze on some park bench for a bit later during the day, but instead I slept in a nice bed that day.

Kuala Lumpur

Carambola or starfruit, makes excellent juice

I spent the next couple of days exploring Kuala Lumpur. I basically roamed around in the the city, met up with other travelers and generally had a good time. I didn’t do anything very touristy except visit Batu caves. No, I didn’t get a picture in front of twin towers! My impression of KL is that it’s a nice city where people follow rules. It’s a clean city although neither excessively nor obsessively so like Singapore. There are three distinct cultures in the city: Malay, Chinese and Tamil. The people of these different races don’t seem to mix very much. It’s hard even to see interracial friends, forget couples or families. Maybe the language bond is very strong, or perhaps there is an undercurrent that I couldn’t read. In any case, do keep in mind that I’m a blind guy trying to see a very large elephant here.

Various tropical fruits cut and ready for consumption in china town, KL.

Food in KL was good, there three different fares as noted above and except Tamil food everything else was good in my books because it was different and sometimes exotic. Although the Malaysian Ringgit is about 15 Indian rupees, the cost of living in KL was not much different from Bangalore and as such I had a little more money than I’d burn for this part of my trip, especially given that I was couchsurfing in the most expensive place in Malaysia.

When I had sent my request to my hosts in KL, they had kindly invite me along to a Cameron highlands trip that they were planning. It was awesome that they had included me despite not knowing me. But I had agreed to join them. I will write about this portion in the next post. Stay tuned!

1. Since my readers may not all be aware of what Couchsurfing (CS for short) is. I’m going to give a very brief primer here. If you are aware of what it is, you can skip this note. Couchsurfing.org is a place that links travelers. The basic idea emerged when the Casey Fenton, a co-founder of CS was visiting Iceland. He wanted a basic place to sleep for free, as he was under a very tight budget. So he emailed thousands of students at Reykjavik university asking if he could crash their couches. He was amazed that quite a few agreed and even offered to show him around. Couchsurfing creates a platform to do this in an organized way. Would be hosts and guests create profiles on the site. When one of CSer is traveling, he or she simply looks up hosts in the city that they find themselves in and then send the requests to host them. That’s the basic idea – there are lots of other things that go into making it safe and lots of features that lets you plan other stuff, but that’d be tangential here.
2. Airtel wanted a INR 5000 deposit to enable roaming! While my Indonesian cell phone with just IDR 3500 pulsa (~INR 20 credit) in it was roaming in Australia!

This is a strange land. The days that are not hot under the burning sun are usually humid under the oppressive humidity of rain bearing clouds. When it rains, it does not rain in drops – like it should, but in sheets of water. In the rivers and streams exist predators unchanged in countless centuries. The dry land is not safe either, as it has many poisonous creatures, unseen and unheard until they cause death. It’s not surprising that people living in the more hospitable land to the south consider this to be a wasteland. Neither is it surprising that this land has few humans. It’s not that this land is without a strange, almost ancient, kind of beauty. However, it’s not, obviously, something that attracted visitors or would-be residents with open arms.

This is why it was so weird that they had left their cozy homes and comfortable jobs to move here. Mat & Sid’s parents had always romanticized this land. Their youth and innocence had misled them into a notion of freedom in the life off the land under this harsh sun. It would have been ironic, had it not been such a tragedy, that they had far too soon lost their lives to this unforgiving land. The twins were at the tender age of five or thereabouts.

It was a matter of tremendous luck then, that in such a thinly populated area the twins had found a caretaker. Bigg was an anti social person, probably on the run from the law and most definitely a maniac who thought of himself as near God. In his mind, he was the king of this land. No animal could harm him. The shining bright sun that dried leaves of living trees was powerless to make him sweat and the venomous creatures were but rats to be squashed underneath his bare feet. But that is what made him special and especially suitable to live off this land. He was fearless in the face of danger which was always paralyzingly close. This, in turn, made him able to fetch food, water and shelter at will.

It didn’t come as surprise to Mat that they had a very unusual childhood. They didn’t learn about the world or math or culture, no, they learnt about the greatness of Bigg. They learnt how he could bend the land to his will. When not learning how else to praise Bigg, they learnt to kill animals that could kill them and eat the rest. They also learnt to stalk and hunt, to beg before Bigg for more ideas and when all else failed, to steal – from each and from other bigger animals. Mat never liked this life and wanted to escape. It’s not that he was ever prevented from escaping, it’s just that he knew, even as a child, separation from Bigg meant death in this harsh landscape and that caused him great pain. Sid, on the other hand, while never deriving sadistic pleasure out of any of this, was, for the lack of a better word, content. This annoyed Mat, it did as child and it did now.

Despite all his strangeness, Bigg was a father figure for the twins. He valued the stories of their exploits in the land more than the spoils. He had, for example, no interest in the meat that took a great deal of effort on the part of twins to hunt, but he had great interest in their story of the hunt, and the fact that they did it. While he enjoyed some of the fruits of his own work, he never grew attached to them, neither did he place a great deal of value in things the twins had obtained at great effort. He was too attached to himself, perhaps. This was another thing that Mat never understood; to him, something that took effort to obtain was valuable, it’d even more valuable if others valued it too, of course, but they didn’t. Mat would often remind himself that Bigg was a mad man, that would explain everything. But what annoyed Mat was the fact that Sid would let their spoils go to waste, without too much care, if Mat did not to take notice.

When the twins were fifteen or thereabouts, they were “discovered” by some strong travelers passing through. Child protection services had put them up in a care center and eventually a foster home. The date they were brought to the foster home was celebrated as their birthday ever since. Mat loved his brother and he was sure Sid loved him back, in as much as  he could be said to love anything. But they had increasingly grown distant despite being in the same home. Mat remembered their first “birthday” in the foster home very clearly. Their foster parents had baked a strawberry cake for them. Sid’s advice was “Mat, enjoy the cake, really taste every bit of it and enjoy it when it’s available. But don’t get addicted to it, don’t remember later and don’t have a want for it. Expectations only bring misery.” This and other such strange things is what made Mat grow tired of his brother.

Initially, they were not adjusted to the life in the City. They were, after all, wild children – they didn’t belong in civilization. Despite their history however, Mat did remarkably well at school. Sid was not interested in what civilization had to teach them. Mat even went to a good college. In college fell in love with a girl and they got married by the time he was in his early twenties. After college he took up a job, not much different, perhaps, from his parents’ routine jobs. Mat and his wife lived in a suburb, had a pet dog for company and generally led a life that society had taught them would bring happiness, or at least this is how they were to pursue happiness. In all the years since Mat went off to college, however, he had hardly met Sid. Sid had come to Mat’s wedding, but that was about all they had seen of each other during all these years. Their foster family was not much close to them, because they were rebellious and wild teenagers when they were brought there and by the time they could appreciate what that family had done for them, their foster parents were divorced.

Last year, however, Sid had called Mat to meet him. It surprised Mat, because in all these years he couldn’t remember a single time when Sid had asked him for anything, not even to meet him! The conversation they had then was very strange to Mat, even by the standards of his conversations with Sid. Mat recalled the conversation in his mind.

“How have you been, my brother?”
“I’m alright Sid. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. What are you doing these days?”
“Oh, it’s not much, I just bring people to our land and show them its beauty. Can you believe they pay me to do that? They pay me good money – just to show them something that could harm them!”
“I’m glad to hear that, are you happy?”
“I’m content, brother. I heard you bought a house?”
“Yes, Bigg would’ve been proud!”
“Indeed, say, do you ever wonder… never mind…”
“What is it?”
“It’s just that, do you ever wonder… you were so depressed and sad at our parents’ sudden death and so suddenly we find Bigg… or that he never provided us with anything real, just… comfort… or that the social services never found anyone else where we lived…?”
“Well, it was God’s grace that we found him. I don’t find it hard to believe that no one found him, remember he was a master of disguise and he’d lived off the land for god knows how long.”
“Yes, never mind. The reason I called, my… err… business is doing rather well… too well in fact. But I don’t want it. I want you to have it”
“What? I have my job here, my life here, I don’t want to go back to the land”
“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. You can sell it. I have other people who guide people in the land as well, you could just manage it”
“Are you serious?!”
“Yes. Here are the papers.”
“And… what.. what will you do?”
“Oh, I’m off to explore places, experiences and the world…”
“You know you are giving up lots of things. You can have a good life here, a family perhaps… You can be happy!”
“Ah, but that’s not what I’m after!”
“What ARE you after?”
“Well… nothing”
“You are crazy”
“So are you, my brother”

It turned out that Sid’s business was worth millions. Mat would’ve been a fool to not keep it. It annoyed him that Sid didn’t want to be happy, it annoyed him that he had to be back in the land he didn’t like. But it meant money. So he was back, he was guiding a few folks in the area, showing them how to survive the land. He thought to himself “this is a strange land”…

This is why it was so weird that they had left their cozy homes and comfortable jobs in the anonymous suburbia to move here. Mat & Sid’s parents had always romanticized this land. Their youth and naivety had misled them into a notion of freedom in the life off the land under this harsh sun. It would have been ironic, had it not been such a tragedy, that they had far too soon lost their lives to this unforgiving land. The twins were at the tender age of five or thereabouts.

It was a matter of tremendous luck then, that in such a tenuously populated area the twins had found a caretaker. Bigg was a recluse, probably a felon and most definitely a maniac with delusions of grandeur. In his mind, he was the king of this realm. No animal could harm him. The shining bright sun that made tinder out of living trees was powerless to make him sweat and the venomous critters were but vermin to be squashed underneath his bare feet. But that is what made him special and especially suitable to live off this land. He was fearless in the face of danger which lurked paralyzingly close. This, in turn, made him able to fetch food, water and shelter at will.

It didn’t come as surprise to Mat that they had a very unusual childhood. They didn’t learn about the world or math or culture, no, they learnt about the greatness of Bigg. They learnt how he could bend the land to his will. When not learning how else to exalt Bigg, they learnt to kill animals that could kill them and eat the rest. They also learnt to stalk and hunt, to grovel and beg before Bigg for more ideas and when all else failed, to steal – from each other, from other, more formidable, critters. Mat never liked this life and yearned to escape. It’s not that he was ever prevented from escaping, it’s just that he knew, even as a child, separation from Bigg meant death in this unyielding landscape and that tormented him. Sid, on the other hand, while never deriving sadistic pleasure out of any of this, was, for the lack of a better word, content. This annoyed Mat, it did as child and it did now.

Despite all his vagaries, Bigg was a father figure for the twins. He valued the stories of their exploits in the land more than the spoils. He had, for instance, no interest in the meat that took a great deal of effort on the part of twins to hunt, but he had great interest in their story of the hunt, and the fact that they did it. While he enjoyed some of the fruits of his own toils, he never grew attached to them, neither did he place a great deal of value in things the twins had obtained at great effort. He was too attached to himself, perhaps. This was another thing that Mat never understood; to him, something that took effort to procure was valuable, it’d even more valuable if others valued it too, of course, but they didn’t. Mat would often remind himself that Bigg was a maniac, that would explain everything. But what annoyed Mat was the fact that Sid would nonchalantly let their spoils go to waste were Mat not to take notice.

When the twins were not much more than fifteen, they were “discovered” by some hardy travelers passing through. Child protection services had put them up in a care center and eventually a foster home. The date they were brought to the foster home was celebrated as their birthday ever since. Mat loved his brother, and he was sure Sid loved him back, in as much as  he could be said to love anything. But they had increasingly grown distant despite their physical proximity. Mat remembered their first “birthday” in the foster home vividly. They had a hastily baked strawberry shortcake presented to them by their foster family. Sid’s advice was “Mat, enjoy the cake, really taste every bit of it and enjoy it when it’s available. But don’t get addicted to it, don’t remember it and yearn for it. Expectation only brings misery.” This and other such strange things is what made Mat grow tired of his brother.

Initially, they were ill adjusted to the life in the City. They were, after all, feral children – they didn’t belong in civilization. Their history notwithstanding, Mat did remarkably well at school. Sid seem disinterested in what civilization had to teach them. Mat even went to a prestigious college. In college fell in love with a girl and they got married by the time he was in his early twenties. Post education, he took up a job, not much different, perhaps, from his parents’ anonymous vocation. Mat and his wife lived in a suburb, had a pet dog for company and generally led a life that society had taught them would bring happiness, or at least this is how they were to pursue that elusive emotion. In all the years since Mat went off to college, however, he had hardly met Sid. Sid had come to Mat’s wedding, but that was about all they had seen of each other during all these years. Their foster family was not much close to them, for they were rebellious, not to mention feral, teenagers when they were brought there and by the time they could appreciate what that family had done for them it had grown dysfunctional.

Last year, however, Sid had called on Mat to meet him. It startled Mat, for, in all these years he couldn’t remember a single instance where Sid had asked him for anything, not even to meet him! The conversation they had then was exceedingly strange to Mat, even by the standards of his conversations with Sid. Mat recalled the conversation in his mind.

“How have you been, my brother?”
“I’m alright Sid. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. What are you doing these days?”
“Oh, it’s not much, I just bring people to our land and show them its beauty. Can you believe they pay me to do that? They pay me good money – just to show them something that could harm them!”
“I’m glad to hear that, are you happy?”
“I’m content, brother. I heard you bought a house?”
“Yes, Bigg would’ve been proud!”
“Indeed, say, do you ever wonder… never mind…”
“What is it?”
“It’s just that, do you ever wonder… you were so distraught at our parents’ sudden demise and so suddenly we find Bigg… or that he never provided us with anything, nothing physical, just… comfort… or that the social services never found anyone else where we lived…?”
“Well, it was providential that we found him. I don’t find it hard to believe that no one found him, remember he was a master of disguise and he’d lived off the land for god knows how long.”
“Yes, never mind. The reason I called, my… err… business is doing rather well… too well in fact. But I don’t want it. I want you to have it”
“What? I have my job here, my life here, I don’t want to go back to the land”
“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. You can sell it. I have other people who guide people in the land as well, you could just manage it”
“Are you serious?!”
“Yes. Here are the papers.”
“And… what.. what will you do?”
“Oh, I’m off to explore places, experiences and the world…”
“You know you are giving up lots of things. You can have a good life here, a family perhaps… You can be happy!”
“Ah, but that’s not what I’m after!”
“What ARE you after?”
“Well… nothing”
“You are crazy”
“So are you, my brother”

It turned out that Sid’s business was worth millions. Mat would’ve been a fool to not keep it. It annoyed him that Sid didn’t want to be happy, it annoyed him that he had to be back in the land he detested. But it meant money. So he was back, he was guiding a few folks in the area, showing them the ropes of surviving the land. He thought to himself “this is a strange land”…

In the beginning of this year, viz 2011, I was feeling my travel bug itch again. My wanderlust had not been assuaged for quite some time. I really wanted to go to Bhutan in 2010, but that plan was foiled due to various reasons. So, I was planning to travel towards the end of 2011 and I thought I might as well go to southern hemisphere and experience two summers in a row! I’ve always wanted to travel to New Zealand. When I hosted a kiwi couch surfer and heard tales of the place from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, I became even more convinced that this was a place I had to see.  So my original plan was to go to New Zealand.

Tickets

To my luck, at this time (in Februray of 2011), there was a huge sale on Air Asia. So I bought the tickets shown in the map below till Darwin in Australia.¹

At this point in time, viz February, I didn’t know if flying to Darwin was a good way to get into Australia. Tiger airways which flew from Singapore to many locations in Australia was still operational (they were grounded by Australian authorities for not being safe in August!). So I thought it’d be a good option to be able to fly to Singapore from Bali and get a flight into Australia later. Hence, I also bought a ticket to Singapore as a sort of insurance, which turned out to be useless, eventually.²

Visas

Come June, I began to apply for Visas. First one I applied to was Australia.³ Incredibly, although I had given the date of my arrival as 28th September in my visa application, they gave me a visa that said “must not enter after Sep22″. When I called up the embassy, initially their reaction was something of a canned response from a call center – “I am sorry sir, but your visa has been issued with a certain date for internal reasons and it cannot be changed”. Later someone professional behind the scenes took over, I guess. They called me back and said they’d fix it for me if I could just courier it back to them. So I did that.⁴ Eventually, I did get a proper visa after about 3 weeks from the date of my applying.⁵ It let me enter the country for a maximum duration of 3 months per entry before 22 July 2012.

In July, I applied for New Zealand visa.⁶ The application I sent was pretty much similar to the one I sent to Australia. I fit in the “positive profile” as listed on the New Zealand immigration site and so I hoped there wouldn’t be much problems in getting a visa. My hunch turned out to be right, I was issued a proper visa with no further questions. It was issued by the New Zealand embassy in Bangkok for some strange reason, though.⁷

In August, I applied for Malaysian visa. I hired an agent in Bangalore, since there was no process to approach the embassy directly.⁸ The visa application process here was much simpler. I just gave the agent a copy of my tickets to and from Kuala Lumpur and that was sufficient.

More tickets

At this point, in August, I was constantly on the lookout for special or sale fares in and around Australia. I really didn’t have a fixed itinerary although I did have a list of places that had to be in the itinerary. As such, I was open to tailoring it anyway around the cheap tickets that I could find. I did find tickets for the last two segments listed in the map above.⁹

Again these are including a 20kilo baggage allowance.¹⁰

 International Driving Permit

Although strictly not necessary, this was one of the things I wanted to have. I approached the Jayanagar RTO for this purpose. When I went there, for the first time, the clerk responsible was reasonably polite and told me where to get the forms. However, instead of giving me the forms, the attender there gave it to a tout. I was not very happy about this and so asked the tout if he worked at the RTO, he answered in the negative. I asked him could I please have the application forms. He handed it over to me. I walked out with these, determined to bring a duly filled form without the tout.

The officer concerned had made it clear that the medical certificate to be attached with the application form had to be completed by a Government doctor. So, I took the form to a doctor in the Jayanagar public hospital. The doctor asked me some basic questions and signed and stamped the form and handed it over to me. He asked me for a fee and took INR 100 from me. Although I didn’t think much of it at the time (100 is a standard fee for any doctor in Bangalore, after all), after I had paid, I realised that this was a bribe. I felt stupid for having paid it. Later that day, I went back to RTO with every document asked for in the application form. The clerk promptly asled me to come back the next day. I asked if there was a schedule posted somewhere. He told me there was one just outside the building. I went there and there was no schedule posted for accepting forms. So I went back to this ckerk, who was getting ruder by the moment, and told him there was no schedule. At this point, the clerk suggested that I go  and speak to his manager. I did this and the manager (politely) explained to me that the cash coutner closes at 1 and they cannot accept application after this.

On a side note, it made me wonder: why do they need a medical certificate to issue an IDP? If I am not fit to drive, how come I still have a license? Or is there a category of people who are fit to drive inside the country but not outside? Why is it required that only a Government doctor issue this certificate? Does the government not trust other doctors in the country? If they don’t, how come they are allowed to practice medicine? Another requirement was that passport and the driving license must have the same address. If they didn’t, you have to get one of them reissued so that they do. Again: Why? Why does the RTO care about this? Is it the case that it’s OK to have two address while inside the country, but the moment you step out, it’s a crime? They also wanted all the air tickets and visa copies. Why? What if I was getting last minute tickets to a country that issues visa on arrival to Indians? Should I not be eligible for a IDP?

From what I understand, the only requirement for issuing an IDP is a valid driving license in most countries. All these rules by RTO in our country makes me think that some babus sitting in their A/C offices are making up all these rules so that they can extract some bribes. In any case, after running around for three days, the the RTO of jayanagar finally issued me an IDP with no bribes paid.¹¹

Gear

My next task was to buy some Gear. I did this in early September. I bought a backpack¹², a sleeping bag¹³ and a pair of sunglasses¹⁴, which I was soon to lose, two quick dry hiking shirts and a quick dry hiking pant that converts into a short (the best clothing I bought)¹⁵; all at decathlon, Bangalore. I also bought some assorted supplies like a small flashlight, an umbrella, some earplugs and a pair of small scissors. I also bought a money bag at a travel shop¹⁶.

Forex

While I know that travellers cheques are a safer way to carry money, I also know that they are more expensive and you need a bank or some sort of money dealer to buy them. In my previous trip, I had carried cash as well, and it seemed like a good idea to me this time as well. So I bought some 970 AUD for INR 47556, 690 NZD for INR 27600, 1000 MYR for INR 15940 and 900 USD for INR 41400.

Packing

My intent was to travel very light this time. This was a lesson I learnt the hard way on my last backpacking trip to Thailand, Cambodia and Singapore. In that trip I had carried way too much – a lot of which I didn’t really use. I had carried two pairs of jeans, for example. Lugging it around really made me change the trip than what I’d have ideally desired. I could not walk around and shop for the best price before deciding on a place to stay, for example. Nor could I refuse a expensive transport option and walk instead. Towards the end my backpack tore near one the straps causing me additional pain (one of the reasons why I bought an expensive but reliable backpack this time). My target this time was 10 kilos or less. The “dry” weight of my backpack and sleeping bags was around 3 kilos. So I had roughly a payload of about 7 kilos to work with. I packed: two quick dry hiking shirts, one full sleeved shirt for any formal occasions, four trousers including the quick dry hiking pair and a lightweight night trouser, two t-shirts, 3 pairs of socks, 6 underwears, two towels, a rainproof, windproof and warm jacket, one old and disposable day-pack bag, one umbrella, one small flashlight, one deodarant, toiletaries including shaving cream, shaving razor, nail clipper, small scissors, toothbrush, toothpaste, other assorted supplies like earplugs, eyepatch, cleaning cloth for phone screen and  sunglasses, a box to keep sunglasses safe, the sunglasses themselves, some prescription medication in case I get sick with cold, fever, upset stomach or some infection, my cell phone, an additional low cost cell phone, a camera and assorted chargers and batteries. The whole pack weighed in at about 8.5 kilos, I could do 10 pushups with the backpack on my back! Mission accomplished.

Set out

With only this much preparation, I set out on the 14th of September to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.¹⁷ My flight was delayed by 5 hours! So I had to get some stupid airport food¹⁸. After this, I was off. In all, including foriegn exchange, I had spent about INR 193000. My intention was to finish the trip under this budget with about INR 1 lakh more for my ticket out and other such expenses. Still with me? Good, either you have too much time or are planning a trip of your own. In the latter case, good luck, get in touch and may be I can help out.

Stay tuned for my experiences in the following posts!

1. I spent ~INR 15k on this segment of the tickets. The detailed breakup of ticket prices, including a 20kg baggage allownace, are:
   Bangalore to Kuala Lumpur: INR 3119
   Kuala Lumpur to Bangalore: INR 3119
   Kuala Lumpur to Bali: INR 5055
   Bali to Darwin: INR 2291
2. I spent INR 1436 for this ticket
3. It cost me INR 4800 as visa fees and another INR565 for VFS as processing charges.
4. This cost me about INR 300.
5. All told, I had spent about INR 5650 to get my Australian visa.
6. It cost about INR 4800 in fees and INR 120 in miscellaneous expenditures.
7. In all NZ visa had cost me about INR 4920 and it let me enter NZ for one month before December of 2011.
8. The agent took INR 1500 and picked up and delivered my passport to/from my home. The fees paid to the embassy as per visa stamp is INR 750. So I guess the agent’s fees was INR 750 too.
9. Costs: Uluru (Yulara) to Sydney: INR 7676 (Virgin Australia)

   Sydney to Auckland: INR 9108 (JetStar)

10. All told, I had spent INR 16784 on these tickets. As I was to discover later, everything in Australia is ridiculously expensive, travel – doubly so.
11. The whole thing cost me about three days of running around and about INR710 (including photos, parking, bribe to the doctor and the IDP fees).
12. The back pack cost me INR 5999
13. The sleeping bag cost me INR 1899
14. The sunglasses cost me 599
15. The quick dry hiking clothes cost me INR 3297
16. All the supplies cost me about INR 1100
17. The bus ride to airport cost me INR 200.
18. which cost me INR 249 more

One of the problems I had was that rtorrent is so efficient in using the bandwidth that it makes browsing very sluggish. Whenever I wanted to use the internet for something else, I used to ssh into the box and terminate the rtorrent process or at least throttle it from the webUI. However, my father also uses the internet connection and I needed a much simpler way to control how much of the bandwidth rtorrent uses.

One way could me using rutorrent and cutting it down to just barebones. However this solution seemed inelegant. rtorrent has an excellent XML-RPC implementation to control most of its actions. In fact, rutorrent uses this to control rtorrent. So, I thought why not use Rails to write a small webapp for iPhone to use XML RPC and do basic throttling and status reporting? Rails was probably too much for this application. Especially given that I didn’t need a database. Perhaps something like sinatra should’ve sufficed. However, it turned out to be exceedingly simple to write it in rails and I did so anyway.

The app simply has three buttons as follows:

Unlimited mode

This is the default mode of the app, where it keeps the bandwidth caps on rtorrent to unlimited. Limited mode puts it in 25kbps upload and 100kbps download limit mode. This allows normal things like browsing to be done in parallel with ease.

Limited mode

The restricted mode sets limits to 10kbps download and upload. This lets heavy duty operations such as downloading or watching videos to be done in parallel.

Restricted mode

By default, whenever you put the app in either limited or restricted mode, it gives you a 30 minute lease. Post this time the app switches back to unlimited mode. You can keep extending the lease indefinitely if you want to.  I implemented this feature because we used to forget to put the thing back in unlimited mode after we finished browsing or downloading. This led to wasted bandwidth especially at nights. However, I use file read write for this persistence in storage and some race conditions exist in the code. These conditions however are very unlikely to be a source of problem given our usage and have therefore left out costly semaphores for synchronization.

Of course, remember this is entirely a server based application and all the heavy lifting needs to be done on my little plug computer. Hence I’ve tried to keep the code light.

I’m publishing it here in hopes that someone else may find it useful.

Source zip: rtorrent-iphone-control

License: Creative commons share-alike

Bajaj M-80, the closest thing to the scooterrettes kea and his friends rode..

So, me and Kea boarded a bus from Siem Reap to Kampong Thom. Guess which movie was played on the bus? Rambo – first blood! Kea says it’s one of his favorite movies. Of course – who doesn’t like Rambo – first blood? When the movie starts I notice something strange, Sly speaks in a weird high pitched tone in a language that he probably doesn’t know exists – Khmer . It is still an awesome movie to re-watch.

We arrived in Kampong Thom a few hours later. Now, this is not a place that is frequented by tourists and you can tell.  Kea puts me up in a Guesthouse that costs me 7$ a night. The room is spartan if clean. At least there aren’t taps here that require advanced degrees to operate.

One of the scenic locations I visited - a water reservoir.

The room was on the first floor with there was  restaurant of sorts on the ground floor. The next day morning, I come down to this restaurant for breakfast. While the restaurant looked deserted the evening I arrived, it was now packed full. It was filled with people who looked like they did hard physical labor in their day jobs. They were eating various dishes that looked all exotic to me; while watching WWE on television: the audio, of course, was Khmer.

I ask the waitress for some food for breakfast. This being not a very touristy region, it was not surprising that she didn’t speak any English. She suggests the various options I have by pointing at stuff people are eating. Most of these look like pieces of meat in some sort of soup or some sort of minced-meat and fried rice. One of these dishes looks like a clear soup served with a large fluffy bread. I ask her what that dish is.

A local delicacy made of boiled molluscs (or some animal like it)

Fortunately, there was a cow walking past on the street. She points at it. Oh, this must be beef soup and bread. I ask her to get me the bread and forget the Soup – not a trivial task in Sign language. She confirms this with me a couple of times with “are you really really sure” look on her face. I imagine her to be thinking on the lines of “This guy is nuts! He wants to pay full price and eat the bread not eat the delicious beef soup! Oh well, good business for me, anyway..” So it came to pass that I ate a large piece of fluffy bread messily for breakfast.

Post breakfast I give Kea a call. He picks me up on his scooterette. He takes me to a relative’s place in town. They all treat me graciously – like an important guest. But of course, the only person who speaks English is Kea, so only when he’s around could I attempt any sort of conversation.

Kea visits his grandmom

After a while a few of his friends show up, one at a time. All in all there were 6 of us and 2 vehicles that looked like Bajaj M80. We triple rode – first to a few scenic places nearby. One of this places is a small reservoir of sorts. One of Kea’s friend’s mom had a small shop next to this reservoir. Here, kea and his friends munched on some shelled creatures while I ate fried mushrooms.

We then rode onwards to our destination which is a good half an hour on the highway and another half an hour on dirt roads.

Finally we got to the village where the wedding was going to be. Kea visited a lot of his relatives including his Grandmom. Apparently he hadn’t been back here in a couple of years. Every relative he visited, he paid a few dollars. May be that’s the reason he was absconding for couple of years

Typical Cambodian house

Most Cambodian houses I’ve seen are like typical houses hoisted on top of six to eight poles. I never found out the reason for this. On one of the relative-visits, we went to Kea’s uncles place. We were stting on a cot under the house, yes I mean under the house – as in where ground floor would’ve been. Kea’s uncle used to be a history teacher. I wondered how he survived the Khmer rouge regime, given that they killed most people thought to be “intellectual”, who in their definition was anyone who could comprehend the concept of alphabet. I thought it would be extremely impolite to bring this up, so kept my musing to myself.

On one of the relative-visits, I saw this. A boy helping his mom collect fruit from a tree by shaking it.

They were having some animated discussion among themselves and Kea introduced me as an Indian. Kea’s uncle immediately said “Ah India, Indira Gandhi!”. That’s how he remembered India from his teaching days, presumably. All the while there was a duck roaming around under the cot which was under the impression that my legs were some sort of delicacy.

So about half a day of this kind of wandering, we arrive at the wedding location. I could tell we were close even before I could see the place. Guess how? The sound of course. They had gen-set powered, house sized, speakers in what looked like a cart under the house where the wedding was on.

This is Kea's aunt gathering the fruit shaken up by the boy in previous picture. It tasted sweet-and-sour

We enter the house and the ceremony is on. Kea stuffs $$ notes into an envelope to present it to the couple. I carefully eye how much he is stuffing as I want to appear to be neither showing off nor sponging off him when I make my own contribution

Kea then introduced me to Groom’s parents. They were a very gracious hosts. Before the feast was to begin I mentioned to them that I was a vegetarian and they were like “What? Are you a monk?”. They went out of their way, however, to provide me with monk food – which was some sort of papaya salad with peanuts. Most delicious stuff that I ever tasted in Cambodia.

Giant set of speakers they used for post wedding party!

Then there was, of course, beer. As I mentioned in one of the previous posts, I am not a big fan of getting sloshed. But here not getting drunk was not an option. Every time my glass was even half empty, it was refilled for me. Kea’s friends would not let me drink slowly either! So after a short while of keeping this I was beginning to feel the effect. I was never a heavy drinker nor do I have high tolerance for alcohol. So to give myself respite, I took off and went on a walk. As soon as I got back, Kea’s friends were like “Dude, Are you sad? Why aren’t you getting drunk? This is Cambodia! Drink up! Nothing’s gonna happen.” Whatever trauma their country has gone through, no one can accuse the Cambodians of being an unhappy people. For, in my experience, they have fun every opportunity they get.

Actual rituals at the wedding did not seem very many..

By late evening, everyone was drunk. The groom’s dad, the host, remained ever gracious, though. He made his rounds asking people if there was something they wanted, and everytime he saw me he broke into a big warm smile, made an OK sign and asked “All OK?”. I was floored by all the hospitality of all people here. In reality, I was nobody. Someone, who when the Bride and Groom showed their wedding pictures to their children, they’ll probably point out to me and be like “Who the hell is this guy?”. But they treated me like I was an esteemed foreign dignitary gracing upon their wedding.

Anyway, towards the night the dancing begins and the speakers are on full volume. It is now that I appreciate all the beer, for if I were fully sober, my eardrums might have burst.

Posing with bride & groom and a couple of Kea's friends.

All the songs played were famous pop songs like “I know you want me, you know I want cha” except that they were dubbed into Khmer. People danced to the music while going in a large circle. It did not matter how you danced or what steps you took as long as you went around in the circle!

The dancing stopped a while when the bride and groom cut a “cake” made completely of fruits, the parents of both of them cheered each other with beer and chugged it down. Then the dancing began all over again. This went on till about 11 in the night, when Kea dropped me back to my hotel.

Dancing at post wedding party

I used my iPhone as a camera during most of the trip and the quality of pictures has suffered for it. I apologize for the quality of pictures in the travelogue.

In case you’ve been a silent reader of this travelogue, I request you to please drop a comment. This will encourage me to write more since I’ll have tangible proof for the existence of readers!

I had trouble doing it, it turns out my USB hub was faulty and wasn’t letting the TonidoPlug detect the hard disk at boot time. I changed it and this works like a charm.

Now you are freed from the crippling limit of the 512MB internal flash, assuming you’ve booted off a nice big hard drive.

ssh into the plug. The default password is nosoup4u for the user root. It’s recommended you change it as soon as you log in.

Make directories for APT to work. Somehow these are missing in the plug:

cd /var/cache/apt
mkdir archives
cd archives
mkdir partial

Now install deluge:

apt-get install deluge

This installs a lot of useless packages including some X and some GTK packages. Unfortunately, the PPA for deluge doesn’t work for Jaunty as dependencies are messed up. So you’ll have to let these packages be.

Once done, install Web-UI:

apt-get install deluge-webui

Now you should have python2.6 installed as well. Just check for it:

which python2.6

Let us assume the output to be /usr/bin/python2.6

Now check where deluged is installed

which deluged

Let us assume the output to be /usr/bin/deluged

Now you can run the deluge daemon using:

/usr/bin/python2.6 /usr/bin/deluged

Next set the daemon to accept remote GTK connections by running deluge in the console mode:

/usr/bin/python2.6 /usr/bin/deluge -u console

Enable remote connections

config -s allow_remote True

Check if the the value is set:

config allow_remote

It should display true. Exit the console UI.

exit.

Kill the deluge daemon using:

killall deluged

Check if deluged is still running:

ps aux | grep deluge

If it is kill it manually using kill -9 deluge’s pid.

Add yourself to the user list of deluge daemon by doing:

echo “yourusername:yourpassword” >> ~/.config/deluge/auth

Re-start deluge daemon:

/usr/bin/python2.6 /usr/bin/deluged

Congratulations! You have the deluge daemon running successfully on your TonidoPlug.

The default deluge version in Jaunty is 1.1.6. Unfortunately this is one and half year old version. Installing the latest version from repositories is near impossible given dependencies. Installing it by compiling the source might be an option you can try. I am, however, quite happy with 1.1.6.

You need similar version of deluge to act as a client on your desktop. If you have windows desktop, it is pretty straight forward, download the 1.1.6 version of deluge and install it. I have an ubuntu machine for desktop. So rather than having to mess up all the repos to set up an old version, I decided to get the windows version running on wine.

The following are the steps.

If you don’t have wine, install it:

sudo apt-get install wine

Download the deluge windows installer:

cd /tmp
wget http://download.deluge-torrent.org/windows/deluge-1.1.6-win32-setup.exe
wine ./deluge-1.1.6-win32-setup.exe

Install the software on wine. It may download GTK and install that as well – the irony of it all you are running GTK over wine over GTK . Once done start deluge.

wine “~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Deluge/Deluge-python/deluge.exe”

Check if the path is right. This was the path deluge was installed on my machine.

Once it starts go to edit -> preferences -> interface. Uncheck classic mode. Quit deluge by right clicking on the system tray icon and restart it again using the above command.

Add a server connection with yourip, your-username and your-password configured previously.

Voila! You have a terrific torrent client with full GTK interface to control your daemon on the plug.

You can also use the Web-UI at http://your-ip.com:8112.

You can use the full GTK client from anywhere using ssh tunneling of the deluge daemon server port

All the information here is derived from: http://dev.deluge-torrent.org/wiki/UserGuide/ThinClient with several edits where it didn’t work for the TonidoPlug.

I was therefore left with no option but to ask the right-hand-man from Part 1 to find me a tour-guide and a tuk-tuk for couple of days. Thus for the next couple of days, my tour Guide was Thoeun Moeun – his first name is pronounced like “thun” in Mithun. Don’t ask me what the extra vowels are for. You are right to wonder how on earth do I remember that name, it is by no means and accident: I’ll come to that shortly. My tuk-tuk driver for the next couple of days was Kea.

King Jayavarman the IV smiling magnanimously at us as we pass through the gate

The very beginning of my guided tour involved my tour guide speaking of the magnanimity that the king Jayavarman the IV displayed in one of his idols. This was the first time, since I left Bangalore, had I heard any English word with more than a couple of syllables. I was impressed. I didn’t need to do half-English half-sign language that I did so far to get across, I could speak English with this man of stupendous vocabulary!

So I began to speak normal English. To my surprise, however, I was having trouble getting across! Must be my Indian accent, I thought. Now, I’ve seen enough Hollywood movies to be able to speak a somewhat “neutral American accent” which must be more intelligible to foreigners. To check this theory, with renewed vigor, I began speaking with my fake American accent awhile. Alas, to no avail. I fell back on the english-pidgin-sign language for the rest of the day. Although throughout the day he continued to impress me with his vocabulary – With a twist however, the Cambodians have a habit of eating thier final syllable. So if they say “Elephan Terra” they really mean “Elephant Terrace”.

The Elephan Terra!

This mystery was to be solved by a depiction on one of the temple’s wall that he was trying to explain. He said that it involved Krishna and Rama dueling. I, through my awesome powers of deduction, decided that it ain’t right and the depiction should really be of Balarama and Krishna. The next day, Thoeun validated my account. He handed me a mighty tome and Lo and behold, I was right – it was Krishna and Balarama. Guess how the book began? “This idol depicts the magnanimity of the King Jayavarman”. Ah.. So our guide was a man of awesome memory power rather than awesome vocabulary!

This is the view from Elephan Terra, In case you were wondering why it is called that, it is because in the expansive vista you see ahead the kings would have actual elephant fights.. awesome!

Thoeun wanted to know how to build websites the first time I told him that I worked in the technology sector. He also proudly gave me his e-mail id, although he had never bothered to check for new mails after setting it up. I tried to tell him that he ought to check for new mails. However the concept eluded him as I failed to communicate effectively, once again. His interest in the website remained. He wanted to market himself directly to tourists visiting the area through his website.

I explained to him that he’d have to pay 10$ a year for the domain name, anywhere from 20-80$ a year for hosting. An unknown amount of money to develop a website and then some to search engine optimize it before he can see any substantial business come his way. I’m not sure how much of it he got, but he definitely got the dollar figures and he didn’t like it. I told him I could set him up a blog like page for free. He was not to expect any business from it, but he could hand it out to his clients for them to send their friends to him. He was elated at this proposition. So I set him up with a Tumblr account which you can see here: http://thoeun.tumblr.com/. That solves the second mystery of how I remembered his name By the way, do give him a call if you are travelling independently and need a guide. He’s a good guy and a good gui!

Standing on the left is the Groom, sitting immediately right is Kea, my tuk-tuk driver.

The next day Thoeun went out of the way to help me in all aspects. He bought me water at local price to prevent me paying the tourist price. Advised me on how much things cost and how much I can safely bargain it down to etc. However, as mentioned in Part-1, I was getting bored of temples and decided to give it stop and head elsewhere. I told so to Thoeun, who then crammed as many things to see as possible in one day.

I tipped Thoeun and Kea an additional 10$ at the end of the day. Kae asked me about the “website” I had built for Thoeun and was incredulous that I had done it for free. He asked me what my next plan was. I told him I was undecided, but perhaps, I’ll head towards Phnom Penh. He then told me that one of his friends is getting married in his native village near Kampung Thom. He added that he is going to attend it and would I be interested in joining him? I readily agreed.

The map above shows: from left – Bangkok (starting point in Thailand), Aranyaprathet (border town in Thailand), Poipet (Border town in Cambodia), Siem Reap (Angkor Wat et al), Kampong Thom (Wedding location) and Phnom Penh (My next stop: capital of Cambodia).

This is how I ended up attending a marriage in rural Cambodia! I sense that I have taken too much space describing how I got to the point where I was invited to wedding of a random stranger. Hence, I”ll write about the wedding itself in the next post!