Indian food

Note: I am back in New York. My laptop broke a while ago so I am catching up on blogging now that I'm back. Plenty of stories and craziness to share in the coming weeks. This post I did largely write before I left India but did not publish until now.

I have not said much about food in India. I suppose there have been more than sufficient distractions such that food has taken a back seat.

I have always liked Indian food since I started eating it back in college. I was excited for the food here and it has been good, and in some cases great, but I admit that the hygienic concerns have kept me from really going hogwild.

In fact, let me say a word about hygiene. Traditionally in India and in many other Asian countries, the left hand is viewed as unclean because it is the hand that is used to clean oneself in the bathroom. By this I mean you use your left hand and water to wipe your ass clean after you're done. I add that detail since just telling the story people seemed to be confused as to what I mean by "clean oneself." So, when eating food with your hands, as is often done in India, you will use your right hand to tear off pieces of bread, scoop up some whatever, and shovel it into your mouth. Also, as I have done a few times here, rice and curry or whatever will also be eaten with the right hand. The left hand remains largely inactive during meals, though it is used to occasionally hold silverware or manipulate plates or cups. The idea is that it wouldn't touch the food.

Now the funny part about that is, that the left hand is traditionally unclean, but zero attention seems to be paid to which hand is *actually* clean. Now people will actually wash their hands before they eat it seems pretty regularly, but as far as I can tell that is not a concern among the food preparers. I see guys reach in with a bare hand, pick up a samosa, put it on a plate, hold it there with their thumb while they squeeze sauce onto the plate, then hand it to the customer, and then use the same hand to collect their money and give them change. Vada pav are also assembled by hands. Basically everything that happens to your food before it gets to you happens with bare hands. The same hands that handle money, shake hands with buddies, or scratch their asses. Now I'm not a super squeamish guy. I don't carry around a little bottle of hand sanitizer with me everywhere but I think this is the opposite extreme here. It did make me laugh though as I saw what people do with their hands in India without washing them as I thought of people in New York breaking out a small bottle of hand sanitizer in every restaurant because they might've touched the subway pole that day.

Maybe in the US we've gone overboard with trying to avoid the transmission of germs, but when I see kids sitting on the floor of the train with their hands touching the floors, hands that are not gonna be washed anytime soon, I can't help but feel a little concerned.

Anyway, such as it is, I was very aware of food preparation in a way here that never bothered me or even occurred to me in China. In China I eat 70% street food I'd say, and this last trip I didn't get sick once. For what it is worth, in China they tend not to eat with hands too often, so maybe that's part of why it concerned me less. So that aside, I have since eaten a bunch of street food here in India and mostly ate in small cafeteria style restaurants. My stomach has been a little upset the last few days, but nothing catastrophic so far (fingers crossed).

Some things I have eaten here that I have had in my life before include varieties of dosa including my favorite, the rava dosa. This was always tasty and similar to good dosas I have had in the US. Vada Pav, which is the mumbai street sandwich made of a potato patty on bread with varying sauces. Also very good. I had street samosas yesterday for the first time which were very delicious. I have had some rice pulao with alu mattar and chana masala. I have had dal fry several times. I have had a few mixed vegetable curries and a few thalis as well. I had a vegetable biriyani which was the best I have ever tasted. I had a few new dishes too which defy description a little but I will try. One notable dish was Thalapith which was this sort of bread pancake made out of "pulses" and serves with some sort of tomato-ey sauce. I had sev puri, sort of like bhel puri. That was one of the only raw things I ate which concerned me a little but I survived. I had this really interesting dish called panki which is some sort of chickpea flour cooked in banana leaves I think, and then you can take the cooked flour/bready result and use it to scoop up this spicy green chutney. I had a great street food veg kebab roll. Oh, I had this thing called a frankie which turned out to not be a hot dog but instead was potatoes and onions rolled up inside of bread and cooked up on a griddle. I've had a few good meals here, though I think the really stand-out items were the new things I have never seen in the US before. The other things were perfectly good and sometimes great, but I don't feel as if I can't get food of similar quality in NYC or elsewhere in the US. There were a few meals I ate at Shweta's house which were noteworthy, although it is difficult for me to describe all the dishes. Those meals all a home-cooked touch which none of the restaurant meals could really touch. It has inspired me to take a real run at Indian cooking when I get back home.

I was thinking about the insistence of people that the street versions of things are always superior or that there is no way a dish outside of the native country would ever be as good as the one there. I was wondering if this has something to do with the cooking surface, such that whatever the hell is stuck on the pan or the grill or at the bottom of the sauce containers is the magic sauce. This made me think of Steve Martin who said that people always assume it's difficult to eat well on the road, but for him it was never really a problem "because I love animal lips...I do...I guess rat feces is about one of my favorite things. I do enjoy it." I imagine rat feces is the mystery ingredient in many a street delicacy. Maybe Anthony Bourdain knows.

Matheran

I woke up at 4:45am this morning and walked to the station formerly known as Victoria Terminus, now known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus or CST more often. I met Mulchand the Couchsurfer and we caught the 5:19 train to Neral, about 2.5 hours away from Mumbai. This is a local train, same as every other train I have ridden in India. Seats are somewhere between a NYC subway and Amtrak I guess, though neither really fits the bill. As we got farther out, various others joined our group. This was not actually a Couchsurfer outing, but rather an outing of a Mumbai photography group of which Mulchand is a member. They choose various places of interest and head out there on a weekend to take pictures all day. Today's target was the Matheran Hill Station.

A hill station is a village on a hill that makes some kind of weekend getaway for the nearby urban residents. In the case of Mumbai, Matheran is a popular spot to get out and most important up where the temperature is much more pleasant than the usual thick, humidity that is hanging over the city this time of year. In US terms I'd say the city is typically in the 90s and humid whereas up in the hills it was probably 75 or something without quite as much humidity, though it did pour several times during our visit, though not so much that it wasn't nice to see for a while or that it was actually disruptive to the visit. It just means you find something to stand under for 10-20 minutes til it returns to a light drizzle or disappears. You typically end up standing under a tarp or if you're lucky a larger restaurant or shop type structure, huddled together with a large group of other people, and in today's case, dogs, horses, and lots of monkeys. For Indian folks the monkeys are not really a big deal, but seeing loose monkeys everywhere is a new thing for this city slicker and I think I will never get used to them just walking or sitting right next to me like a dog.

Anyway, the hill station has a sort of (very muddy) main road filled with hotels, restaurants, food stalls, little carnival games like knocking over bottles or shooting balloons out with a rifle, souvenir shops, and guys asking if you want a horse to take you to the viewing points. There are various rocky and muddy paths through the woods that take you to these view points which vary from half a kilometer to maybe 3 kilometers away. I visited quite a few and as I wandered through the woods, I often found myself alone. It is an amazing contrast to daily life in Mumbai that's for sure. Probably partially because of the rain and partially because we arrived so early, there weren't too many people about though every group of Indian people was extremely excited to see me. I saw one non-Indian person today. All the other tourists with whom I spoke were from Mumbai. Most stare initially, with very little exception. Sometimes I'd break the stare with a "HEY HOW ARE YOU GUYS I'M A PERSON IT'S OKAY YOU CAN TALK TO ME!" or something like that, which usually elicited laughs and handshakes and occasionally instigated conversation. Sometimes people wouldn't want to converse, they'd just want to take my picture. Sometimes one member from a group of young guys would want to take their picture with me. Sometimes they'd all want to take turns taking pictures with me. One guy wanted pictures of me with his kids, and then once just by myself. That was my least favorite. I felt kind of like a zoo exhibit. Eventually I put on my iPod as I walked which didn't really deter anybody from asking for pictures, but at least I had nice background music as I walked around.

Also, every guy with a horse asked if I want a ride. No matter where I was, no matter which direction I was heading, no matter if they had seen me before, and no matter if they had seen me turn down 3 guys with horses in the last 10 seconds. In a way you have to admire the persistence. They also don't take no for an answer, although I have found that responding no in Hindi seems to do a bit better. So far, for everyone who has wanted something from me or wanted me to buy something, saying something in Hindi makes them give up or go away immediately. This only reinforces that I have to learn more. I asked a few questions of various friends on the train and took a few notes. I also bought a Hindi phrasebook that I started perusing. The main problem is that I haven't heard the language very much and it takes some time and exposure to get the sound of it into my head. That said, I started learning basic sentences and the grammar of simple sentence structure while on the train to Matheran, and then got to immediately use a bunch of it in various conversations. Very, very simple stuff of course, but surprising enough at least once to elicit applause and high fives from a young group of guys who were really excited to converse with me.

Overall it was a nice day including the travel on the train which I still like a lot and in this case provided some very green countryside scenery on the way out. We also had a nice shared taxi ride up the mountain to the hill station with six people in a minivan that was close to death and almost didn't make it several times. The guy really had to swing wide on the curves and restart the van several times. I was pretty sure we'd end up walking eventually but we made it in the end. There is also a "toy train" which goes up the hill very, very slowly and apparently provides very nice views but it takes 2.5 hours as opposed to about 20 minutes in the shared taxi, so we didn't do that. I have heard of other trains like that at other hill stations including a very famous one at Darjeeling. Under other circumstances I'd like to give that a try. At Matheran we split up as most of the group wanted to move very slowly and take tons of pictures and I prefer to walk at my own pace. We'd agreed on a lunch meeting spot so I went off and wandered my way finding various panoramic views and readying myself for a career as an angry and involuntary model.

The train station at which we arrived felt more rural and the small street adjacent to the station was filled with food vendors. Everybody got vada pav upon our arrival, which is a potato sandwich with various chutneys and one of my favorite things to eat in Indian cuisine which is famous and originates in Mumbai, but I elected not to get one from the street guy for two reasons. One reason is that it was like 7:30am or something. The other is that I made a deal with myself that I would be as careful as possible for my first week here with regards to what I eat from the street such as to try and reduce the likelihood of getting ill during what is only a two week visit. If it was my plan to stay in India for months then I'd follow the common advice and just eat everything and get sick in the first week just to get it over with, but I'd like to be a little cautious with my time since I don't have that much of it. I had one thing that was genuinely street food, but mostly I have eaten in restaurants which are by no means universally safe, but I have steered clear of raw things and anything with potentially unclean water which is usually what does people in. I had a few raw things and survived and apart from some gurgles the past few days, my stomach continues to at least not prevent me from going to the hill station today. That said, I'm glad I have at least some Immodium and Pepto Bismol with me. I think it's more likely that has to do with eating Indian food every meal for the last week, plus a little more beer than usual, rather than having eaten anything dirty or something like that.

I have eaten a lot of very good food since I have been here. Now that I'm heading into my second week, I will probably allow myself to be a little more adventurous. Not that I want to get sick or anything, but there are one or two things I really want to try from the street so I will be as cautious as possible but I don't want to miss them on this first visit to India. This Monday I will relocate to a different neighborhood farther north called Bandra which everybody tells me is a really cool and interesting place. I'd like a change of scenery as I think I have explored this neighborhood pretty thoroughly and would like something completely different for the last 5 nights I have to spend here in Mumbai. A week from today I will have arrived in Israel to which I am looking forward. Like all my traveling experiences, this has been an interesting trip, but I'm a little tired and ready to be in a place where I don't have to have my guard up quite so much.

I still have a week in Mumbai and a bunch of interesting plans yet. Tomorrow morning I'm attending this Chinese class which I think will be really interesting. I'll probably see Shweta and Shrestha in the evening in Colaba where I probably won't hang out all that much after tomorrow night, although I have at least one other reason to come down here for a dinner next Tuesday also related to China and Chinese. Other than that, it'll be hanging out in Bandra and doing some exploring of nearby neighborhoods. Also for those who have asked, I have indeed taken pictures though I haven't uploaded any yet. I will do all that when I get home. For now you're stuck with this overflow of words.

About a week so far in Mumbai

I've tried to figure out what it is about this place that I specifically find to be so overwhelmingly intense.

I think the honking is a big factor. Rarely do let's say 3-5 seconds go by that I do not hear a car honk. Usually it is a chorus of honks. I've tried to listen to them as music instead. When they are off in the distance or when I'm indoors and they are not quite so loud, it's manageable, but often walking in the street that's not the case. Normally they are so loud as to make you want to cover your ears. I'm one of those people who covers their ears when an ambulance or something goes by. I know too many people from music school with ringing in their ears, and having had that for a day or two after loud concerts, I definitely don't want it for the rest of my life. That said, you can't really prepare yourself for it here, such that I would worry that if I stayed here for months or a year or something, it'd only be a matter of time before I'd have hearing damage. I wonder how many people already do.

So the honking makes up some huge bulk of the noise. Of course there is the engine and people noise as well which contributes. There are also the smells. Car or bus exhaust, pollution, stagnant water, garbage, unknown smells of human origin. Those are the bad ones. There are some good ones too, like the incense that a lot of vendors burn to keep flies away from their food. Then occasionally there's the food and spices, but I find it usually gets drowned out by the other smells.

The constant staring doesn't help anything. You'd think after China I'd be used to it, but I guess not being able to shock them out of it by speaking the local language doesn't help. Also, people do tout things quite a lot, most commonly little tourist souvenirs, toy drums, bootleg dvds, or knockoff merchandise, even more so in this neighborhood or near anything remotely touristy, though since I walk without a backpack or anything and I have gotten better at ignoring them completely, they often don't bother approaching me anymore, so that's been better the last few days.

Maybe most of all, here in India like in China, personal space doesn't really exist the same way. So people are constantly passing right near you, standing practically on top of you, bumping into you, touching you, spitting right next to you, shoving and pushing into each other to get in and out of places, passing directly in front of you if you're waiting for something or standing on line, and whatever other kind of offense you can imagine. At the restaurant waiters or customers are always putting their hands on the table or the chair as they pass by to support themselves. They also tend to stack things up on unused parts of the table like extra menus or whatever. Since you're often (at the budget places anyway) sitting at a table with people you don't know, this is hardly a surprise.

Did I mention about the guy sitting in front of me on the train? We were sitting knee to knee on a train, shoved between people. This guy first goes digging into his nose past the second knuckle, no shame at all. Flips the findings onto the floor in what is supposed to be a subtle gesture I think, then pulls out a handkerchief/rag. A lot of Indian men carry these around to wipe sweat off of their faces during the day. This guy is a business man by the way in a nice enough business shirt, tucked in, gold watch, etc. So it's probably 100 degrees on the train, and this guy goes and sticks his rag into his armpits one by one, taking a good 5-10 seconds to soak everything up, then takes the rag out, folds it once, and wipes off his face. I'll let that sink in. The guy next to him had a pack of some kind of tube-like chips. He bites the plastic to open it, then spits out the plastic and it lands on the guy in front of him. Neither react. When he's done, he throws the plastic out the window. There are very few garbage cans around the city in general. They most often are found near a food stall of some kind, but most of the time people just throw their trash on the ground. I guess this is similar to a lot of countries I've visited in Asia, and of course we have assholes who do this in the States too.

Anyway, that's a smattering of things which occurred to me. As far as my activities go...

Sunday I took a local train by myself up to Kandivali East where Shweta lives, then walked a few minutes to the local bus station and took a local bus out to her area, about 15 minutes away from there. I think not speaking the language is part of what makes everything feel so different to me than China. I've just become used to being able to communicate comfortable. Of course there are differences, but at least part of what makes it feel so exotic is not being able to communicate effectively and thus feeling myself to be even more of an outsider. Shweta's suburb was much quieter once I got away from the train/bus station area. You can walk through the streets without encountering much traffic, although there are people walking around of course. There was a giant field where lots of young folks were playing cricket. We went up to her place and her Mom cooked me a delicious home-cooked Indian lunch. We sat and talked for a long time both before and after. For those who don't know, Shweta and her Mom and I met through Couchsurfing. They came to New York almost 5 years ago exactly and stayed with me just before my own long trip to China. Now 5 years later I'm sitting with them on the floor eating lunch in suburban Mumbai. Incidentally, I've eaten certain Indian foods with my hands, but pretty much always bread or dosa which I then used to scoop up whatever. This was the first time I ate rice with my hands. It's one thing to fold up some bread and scoop, but I felt like each time I made an attempt with the rice and dal (lentils) mixture, I ended up getting more and more on my face. I was proud of the attempt regardless. For the curious, the meal was roasted papad which she cooked directly on the gas burner of the stovetop, a delicious cabbage dish that I wish I could get in NYC, roti, rice, dal, and then a bunch of other items at least one of which was a spinach dish of some kind and the others I am not sure. All around delicious to be sure.

Shweta and her friend Shrestha then took me for a walk around the area to a nearby temple where I could stare at fish or be stared at like a fish, whichever I preferred. I chose both. Next came an auto-rickshaw ride to the mall, which provided an opportunity to see something insanely out of place. The mall was basically a western-style mall with lots of upscale shops, all clean and new, the only real difference being more vegetarian food in the food court. Subway had some kind of potato patty sandwich which looked kinda good, though I don't think I'd be brave enough to just have raw lettuce & tomato on a sandwich here no matter where it came from. Also the separate security booth for women to be wanded over with a metal detector is something you don't see in the states. In fact, I think most malls still don't make every customer pass through metal detectors. We reserve that mostly for our public schools. We walked around the mall, really only stopping so I could try to play the drumming game in the arcade which turned out to be all Japanese music anyway. Shweta and Shrestha played a game of air hockey. Oh yes, I also played whack a mole, the basketball game where the hoop is too small, and some other game where I hit things. I had to use up the credit I was forced to buy to play the Japanese drumming game in the first place. After the mall, we wandered next door to an upscale supermarket. This was kind of like a Walmart I think. Downstairs was all food, kind of like a big Walmart or any supermarket I suppose. They had a huge selection of produce and interesting products, both imported and domestic. It reminded me a lot of Whole Foods actually. Upstairs was kind of like K-Mart. They had bikes, appliances, computers, dishware, and basically everything else you can imagine.

After this, I headed back on the local train to South Mumbai where I am staying. That train trip is something like an hour but it goes fast since there is so much to look at on the way. I have since taken the train a few times, though that day was really my first. You can hang out of the train like in the movies. I haven't ridden it during rush hour, though I did arrive back in the south around the time the rush hour was beginning such that there were large throngs of people waiting at the Churchgate station trying to hop onto the train before it stopped moving such to secure themselves seats before the train stopped and everybody had a chance to get on. This is apparently common practice and to get on and off effectively, you pretty much have to do it before the train stops moving. I was proud of my dismount in which I didn't knock anybody over or fall over myself. Apparently when things get really busy people are known to ride on top of the trains, but I haven't seen this yet though I would love too. The ones I have ridden on are electric, so I'm not sure riding on top near the cables is a great idea, but I'd still like to see. The trains here are apparently safer than they were. When you arrive at an outlying station, there are now walls preventing people (sort of) from walking in every direction across the tracks to get where they want to go. I did see a lot of people going through fences and doing this anyway, but apparently not too many years ago, this was all just open and it was quite common for people to get hit by trains when crossing the tracks. Several friends from Mumbai have told me they have seen people hit and seen bodies laying next to the tracks after being hit. I know people jump in front of the NYC subway on purpose once in a while, or have a seizure like that one guy, but seeing bodies lined up next to train tracks is pretty freakin' intense. So at least some newer safety measures have since been introduced making it necessary to duck under a broken fence to get hit by a train instead.

So that's only the end of my second day in Mumbai. I have often said "never a dull moment" but in Mumbai there seriously is *never* a dull moment. Even laying on the bed in my hotel room I can hear tons of yelling and noise and honking coming from the street just outside. As I type this, I'm in a friend's office which is blissfully quiet. It's on a side street and the office is in an interior part of the building away from the street noise. It's actually an amazing difference.

So a few other highlights as long as I have access to this computer for a bit...

I went to a CS meetup on one night and met about 15 or so local Couchsurfers. Mostly men as I have heard the Mumbai CS group can be a little prone to guys trying to pick up girls which is too bad. There was one girl from Poland who came with her travel-buddy from Scotland. He had been in the European equivalent of the Peace Corps and lived in rural Rwanda for 2.5 years. That was quite a story. He spoke the local language quite well apparently and I think that must be one of the most awesome things to bust out on the presumably rare occasions you run into people from Rwanda. I asked him if he had, and on the trip even he had found a few African folks who happened to be from Rwanda and when he approached them and spoke their native language, well you can imagine it must have been mind-blowing for them. I mean, how many non-Rwandans in the world even know that language? Very cool. Another Indian guy lived in Madagascar and then Tanzania for two years each. He had gone initially to work on a documentary I think to promote tourism in Madagascar which had been finished relatively quickly, but then he stayed and "just had a ball of a time" for the rest of his stay. There were a few other non-Indians. One guy was from France who came over and said something like, "I heard you have spent some time in China" or something like that so we got to talking about it and turns out he lived in Wuhan for two years so I immediately responded in Chinese, "So you can speak Chinese then?" And I think we were both equally surprised and happy to find someone else with whom to practice. He is now living in Mumbai working I think on automobile design of some kind and has been here for about three months.

So that discussion of China spread to the guy next to me who is Indian who is studying Mandarin and has just began. He works with an organization in India run by a Chinese girl and an Indian girl who had previously lived in China. I ended up meeting up with that guy last night and with his friend who are both in the Chinese class, and helped them since I'm a bit farther along in my own study. They put me on the phone with the Indian girl who co-runs the school and on Sunday I'm going to drop by and sit in on the class then join them for dinner next week. I love doing stuff like that and everybody I have talked about here has been really nice. The original student who I met at the CS meetup is named Mulchand and he invited me to dinner after our Chinese chat. We went to a great place which I never would've guessed exist as it was very run-down looking from the outside and inside as well actually, but after emerging on the 7th floor or so which was actually the roof, we came out into a beautiful covered rooftop filled with cabana-type structures, comfortable chairs and couches, nice lighting, sand on the floors, and in general the sort of place I might expect to find in Miami or something. From there we enjoyed a beautiful view of the southern Mumbai coastline and one of the more delicious meals I have had on this trip which consisted of the best vegetable biryani I have ever had and something called a papadam roll which defies description but is basically some sort of mashed and spiced vegetables inside a rolled and slightly soft papad. Also for dessert we ordered something called Jelabi. I may be spelling that wrong. I ordinarily can't enjoy Indian desserts as they contain dairy, but this was just a sweet sugary sort of candy consistency which I will have to work hard to hunt down in the US upon my return.

Mulchand also invited me to join his photography group on a trip to a nearby "hill station" which is a small town in the countryside called Matheran. That trip starts tomorrow by catching a 5:45am train several hours southwest of the city. I really want to go and it is my plan not to miss it, though my stomach has been gurgling a little but I will try not to let that stop me. The train is only a few hours so it's not that big of a deal and I really want to see some of the countryside before I leave since 95% of my time is being spent in Mumbai on this visit. I don't mind that by the way since I am enjoying getting to know this city pretty well and seeing a lot more than the tourist neighborhood of Colaba, but it'd be nice to see a little taste of the country life to whet my appetite for a future trip.

A future trip to India by the way will be *just* India. I think part of why I'm tired is cause I broke the rule and went to too many countries in one trip. I'm extra glad I bailed on Burma on this trip cause I never would've had any energy left for this. So next time, only India and definitely learn Hindi before I go. I have been going to China repeatedly and I just forgot what it is like to not be able to communicate. It really does make a huge difference to me. Some people don't mind pointing and gesturing as necessary and not being able to talk freely to locals, but it means a lot to me. They do speak English here to some degree, but at least several times a day there are people I want to speak to more than I can. I am going to remember that lesson before I go traveling again.

As usual, much more to come...

First day in Mumbai

After my crazy cab ride, I was pretty hungry. My flight from Singapore involved a stop in Kuala Lumpur. On the first flight, they had a meal for me. The second flight they forgot. I guess you get what you pay for flying Air Asia. They are famous for low prices and that's about it, although the meal on the first flight was decent actually. Some kind of vegetable biryani I recall. Anyway, I arrived and was sent down the street. I just found out I went to a place that was much more of a hole in the wall than the one they tried to send me to. They said "Mahesh Lunch Home" but I ended up at "Modern Lunch." I didn't make the right right. I sat down in the non a/c part initially, but the owner spoke English and came over and told me I might want to move into the a/c section because it was very crowded that night and I might get "pissed off." I thought that was pretty funny. I ordered Dal Fry and roti which seemed safe. Everything came out really hot, tasted good, and I didn't get a stomach ache or anything. In fact (fingers crossed) my stomach is still okay after 5 nights in Mumbai.

I was exhausted and crashed, then woke up at some ungodly hour, maybe 6am let's say. It was a three hour time difference so I had a big of jetlag. Now I'm back to my waking up at 8 or 9 schedule which is typical for traveling, especially without internet or a computer. So I woke up on Saturday morning, my first full day in Mumbai, and went out for a walk. I didn't have a map or anything at that point, so they sent me over to this place I have been many times since called Marine Drive which is a long avenue that runs along a stretch of Mumbai coast. Early in the morning it was fairly quiet. Various people walked themselves or their pets, jogged, or sat on the wall and looked out at the water. Walking through the streets of course I experienced similar shock to the night previous at my surroundings. I have since adjusted somewhat, but the unrelenting noise and movement, the shock of small children and their families living on the pavement, the aging colonial buildings side by side with makeshift stalls and old apartment buildings. It's a lot to take in. Along the marine drive, there are mostly large concrete blocks between the wall and the water, though as one walks north nearing Chowpatty beach, there is some sand. The sand is unfortunately completely covered with trash and debris, though up by the actual beach it's a bit better. I later learned on Sunday nights that everybody in Mumbai goes to the Marine Drive and Chowpatty beach to hang out and eat. Sunday night was *insanely* crowded there. It's a long stretch of road and it was completely packed that night. But that comes later.

Saturday afternoon I met up with Shweta, my Couchsurfer friend of 5+ years who lives in Mumbai. We met when she and her mother came to travel in the US for several months some years ago. We walked around Colaba which is apparently the touristy and foreigner-friendly neighborhood. I'm staying in a place called Fort which is nearby but not quite in Colaba. Colaba also has a bunch of "cool" places that young Indians like to hang out. We walked by Leopolds, a foreigner friendly bar that was famous for being among the locations damaged in the terrorist attacks a few years ago. We also walked past and through the Taj hotel, which is the really famous one that had the gunmen inside during the same attacks. The Taj is right next to the Gateway of India, a giant Arc du Triomph style monument by the water. Eventually we settled into Cafe Mondegar, which is another western-friendly cafe in Colaba. We drank a few bottles of Kingfisher which is the popular local beer here and listened to American music surrounded by young Indians and maybe 40% travelers and/or expats. They played "Maniac" from the movie Flashdance I remember. After that, we went up to meet Shweta's friend who is living in Mumbai for a few months but previously lived in Bangalore and is originally from Gujarat, a different but relatively nearby province. We met him at the (brace yourself) Hard Rock Cafe in Mumbai which is one of a not huge number of "cool" places to hang out in this town. I have only been in a few Hard Rock Cafes before. Of course the reputation in the states is a little different, but here, it was the happening place to be. It is not in Colaba either, it is maybe 6-7 train stops a way. The train rides here are epic, but I'll describe that later. So the Hard Rock Cafe. Surprisingly not that expensive even by local standards. These places always have a quick show of security too, like a barely functional or observed metal detector and some people with metal detecting wands. Certainly it is harder to get in to places if you're not a foreigner I'm sure. The waiter at the Hard Rock was very excited to suggest lots of things we might want to try including various promotions and memberships and things. He kept returning to suggest new things. That is until it was time for the staff's big dance number which consisted of maybe 20 male employees all standing up on a counter in the middle of the bar in a long row, and doing a choreographed dance to "YMCA" I kid you not. I have a video of this. It barely seemed obligatory too, they loved doing it and everybody loved singing along. So my first night in Mumbai quickly took a turn for the surreal.

For a change of pace, after the Hard Rock we took a cab down to Colaba. Despite being the foreigner-friendly neighborhood, that's a very relative term. It's not like you walk around and see malls and brand names that look anything like anything you'd recognize in the west. There are a few upscale landmarks and nice hotels scattered among the area, but other than that it's not all that different and lots of Indians hang out there. Maybe in the tourist season it's more filled with foreigners, or so I have heard, but for the most part I didn't see too many down there and it is actually very popular with Indian tourists as well from other parts of India. Maybe they go to see the tourists from non-Indian countries. I do seem to get stared at more down there than up here or elsewhere, though that's not saying much since I'm still a pretty popular tourist attraction in my neighborhood. It's not like China where they take pictures of you semi-surreptitiously, but they take long, long ganders and repeated second and third looks. Guys tap their friends on the shoulder and point to me. It gets old, but I guess that's just part of being in a place like this. Even in my hotel they stare at me. I ride up the elevator with someone who works here and they just stare at me until I say "Hi!" and then they do the Indian head wobble thing. It's friendly or curious but there is no smiling until you acknowledge it so it still feels aggressive or irritating at times.

Before I talk about the local bar where we ended up which was great, I am reminded of this story a guy told me last night. He lived in Madagascar for two years, then Tanzania for two more. He said he loved it. Specifically I think he said he had "a ball of a time" in both cases. Then he said people are incredibly happy in those countries. He gestured around to the busy street on which we were standing and said, "how many smiles do you see?" and I had already noticed that not many Indian people smiled just walking around. He said in Africa, he said you'd have to look to find one who wasn't. I thought that was really interesting. I'm not sure that you can judge how happy people are just by their facial expressions walking down the street, but who knows, maybe you can, and this guy was Indian so he'd probably know better than I would.

So anyway, we went to this bar called Gokul. This is Saturday night and the street is a packed and crowded side street with a bunch of sort-of street food stalls but that are actually "restaurants." Apparently one is a very famous place to eat. We walk in through the thick crowd and I follow Shweta upstairs. The upstairs room is filled with small tables packed into a low-ceiling'd and smoke-filled room and loaded with people. We sandwich ourselves into a booth and order what are apparently among the cheapest drinks to be had certainly in Colaba. There is no music which I thought was interesting, though by this time it was already around midnight so the noise of the crowd was more than enough for the small space. It was probably the raucous and completely local crowd along with the smoke and slightly sketchy feel to the whole thing that made it so entertaining. Apparently at the end of the night they usher you out of a back entrance specifically to avoid confrontations with cops hunting for payoffs.

This leads me to our short walk along the water at around 2am after our evening of drinking. We sat by the water along with many other groups and gradually security from a nearby hotel would come and push the groups farther and farther down the water, presumably to avoid disturbing hotel guests, but eventually some cops rolled up and started to specifically hassle the three of us. The conversations were all in Marathi which is the local langage, but the crux of it was basically what the hell were Shweta and her friend doing hanging out with an American guy and how could they possibly know an American guy. It was also apparently suggested that she might be up to no good for hanging out with a foreigner and/or for hanging out with a couple of guys late at night. Apparently it is quite common for cops to approach people in this way, harass them for a while looking for payoffs. He ultimately held onto my passport while he interrogated them for a while, although I just stood there unable to participate since it was all in Marathi. Ultimately I guess he figured out we weren't going to give him any money so he just gave me my passport and told us to get out of there. It was kind of a frustrating if fascinating encounter for me. It's amazing to me that this sort of thing is commonplace, but that's of course just because I live in the US where though there are probably corrupt police but not who I encounter in my life at least. I suppose some people would say that's just cause I'm white, and who knows, that's probably true, but the fact that the police would regularly shake down people for money is pretty extreme I think even in the US. Maybe in the states black people might get pulled over more often or even harassed, and I wouldn't belittle that, but it is different than cops every day making people pay $20 for being potentially morally corrupt. Apparently the government has even had policies to close down bars here for corrupting youth.

So that was my first day in Mumbai pretty much.

So, we hung out at the Hard Rock Cafe. At one

I have arrived in India

I have an incredible amount I want to say, but my laptop backlight died so I'm a little stuck at the moment without my own computer. There is a public computer at the hotel at which I'm staying in Mumbai, but it's not ideal. I will try to set a little down.

The subject line of this post should really be "holy shit" cause that's kind of how I have felt since arriving in India. I realize I only wrote once about Singapore, and I do have various interesting things I could say about Singapore and the week I spent there. It's a cool city, good food, interesting people, certain interesting qualities to the culture, but really the last three days in India have been among the most incredibly intense travel experiences of my life. Maybe I felt that way about my first week in China, but India is really it's own thing, completely unique and different than anywhere else I have ever been, and I have only been here for 36 hours in Mumbai, nowhere else in the country. Probably many of the people who spent months and months traveling here would say I haven't seen the "real" India which is an expression I hate for anybody to use about any country. It's just as bad as saying I "did" that country like they have seen all there is to see just because they made the round of tourist attractions. I am sure there is more to India, but there is a lot to Mumbai too.

Anyway, I took this cab on Friday night (which turns out to be a really busy night here) from the airport to my hotel in southern Mumbai. I got in this cab, a non a/c Fiat probably from the 70s that looked like it was on it's 14th out of 9 lives. The driver spoke about 3 words of English, but we figured out the destination or at least direction. Leaving the "parking lot" of cabs it already began.

The first thing that begins to overwhelm is the number of people and the number of vehicles. Constant movement and traffic of both in the streets, on the sidewalks, and in every direction. No lanes or anything like that of course. People walking on the sides of the streets, cabs and motorcycle rickshaws dodging and swerving in every direction to try to get ahead, often coming within inches of vehicles and people. Constant honking of horns, drivers yelling ahead at other drivers. We did that for about two minutes, then pulled into a "gas station." On the right, pumps that sort of resemble a gas station, on the left, something that resembles some kind of bamboo structure supporting some kind of tarp under which are several "pumps" which look more like the skeleton that is probably underneath a normal gas pump. It looked more like a bunch of guys dug holes to tap into a gas line without permission. It seemed that was for the cabs and rickshaws only, though I do not completely understand why. Lots of joking around, honking, driving around people to get in a more advantageous spot to get gas, coming within an inch of each other's "cars" and honking, and that sort of thing. Also this is around 9 or 10pm at night or so, dark, dusty. I'm the only foreigner in this whole scenario by the way, and since being here I've hardly seen any, so lots of staring everywhere. I'm told this is because it is the monsoon season and therefore not a touristy time, although I have been very lucky with weather and it has barely rained at all since I have been here.

So we get the gas, then immediately pull over again so the driver can buy two pouches of what I am told is tobacco mixed with crushed betel nut. This is being sold out of a tray of sorts by a bunch of guys sitting on the ground near the gas station. Seems to be a popular stop for the cab guys. Betel nut for those who don't know is a nut you chew on which gives you some kind of high or buzz. I haven't tried it yet. It is very popular in Taiwan. Here they have various preparations but the most common I've heard is wrapped in some kind of leaf with a little lime and called Paan. They sometimes put water on the leaf though which may or may not be clean, so I'm saving that for my second week in India when I eat anything. My first week I'm trying to be conservative to gradually scope out what my stomach is capable of. Last night I had raw onions in a dish and survived 24 hours so far without incident, but you always hear stories about any contact with raw veggies or local water ending in disaster. The standard rule is if you can boil, fry, or peel it you're good. So I just aim for hot, though last night I broke the rule for the first time. I figure being a little cautious the first week is good. I eat tons of street food in China without incident, but as I said, India is a different story in every respect.

After the driver got jacked up on betel nut, we drove for maybe an hour through the streets and highways though they are basically the same. I'm told it is 28 kilometers from the airport to the south of Mumbai. Lots of traffic. Similar chaotic scenario. My mouth was hanging open most of the ride. The sidewalk scenery is just chaos. There are very few of what we'd call chains or anything that looks every like a 7-11 or some other recognizable business. No comparable Indian chain though I'm told a few do exist. The streets are just packed with small businesses, food stalls, restaurants, and of course people everywhere. Walking, talking, hanging out, cooking, sleeping, eating, drinking all out on the streets. This was Friday night, but other nights haven't been very different from what I've seen. I wish I could describe this chaos more. I have a video I took of some street scenery today and I'm going to take a few more, cause pictures really don't capture it.

The other thing that had my mouth hanging open was the poverty. I think on Wikipedia I saw these people referred to as pavement dwellers. I saw a few slums, but most of what I have seen are people just sleeping on the streets. And it is not like a homeless guy in New York who curls up in a doorway or something or under a bridge with a sleeping bag. There are people who have tents or things like that, or a tarp under which they sleep, but there are tons of people just laying down in the middle of the sidewalk with nothing. If you saw someone in NYC like that you'd call 911. I heard a disturbing story today about the 911 of India that I will write about later. But anyway, you also see them face down in the train station on the floor. Or on a median strip of a road, sprawled out and people just walk around. Lots of people just sleeping and living completely outside, no homes at all. Women with small babies crawling on the sidewalk in filth, playing with a piece of trash like a plastic bag or something. Children without clothes. This is just on the streets within a few blocks of where I am. I walked through a few side streets and a small "village" which is more like a "slum" I'd say though I guess not technically since they have some kind of an actual house-like structure in which they live, whereas in slums I gather it is mostly plastic and tarps. I am going to visit Dharavi which is one of the biggest slums in the world. Some students from there who still live there run a tour to show you what it is all about. I saw a smaller one today in a suburb but I didn't walk through. Anyway, the number of people just living on the streets with seemingly nothing is incredible. I read that depending on where the line is, 40% of India is living below the "international poverty line" which is less than $2 a day I think. I'm sure there are people who know a lot more about the situation in India, but since being here I have only just started reading more about it. There are a lot of different opinions and a various efforts have gone into combating poverty here but it is obviously an ongoing and complex problem. I'm just trying to describe what I have seen.

I guess I'm going to publish this and just add on stories. I have a lot to write about India but it'll have to be in successive posts. I haven't even gotten to my first meal on Friday night, which I will write about next. Saturday I took a long walk along the water since we're at the coast of the Arabian Sea. I met up with my friend Shweta who is local and spent time in Colaba, the "touristy" neighborhood of Mumbai that is supposed to be filled with foreigners and barely was. We went to several bars including the Hard Rock Cafe which was also mostly locals because it is a "cool" place to hang out here. After that I was in this *really* local bar, then we had a run-in with the cops which is another story. I hung out with another local friend the next day, and today I went out to Shweta's suburb an hour north of here for my first solo ride on a local train and a local bus. There's a lot to say and I will add details and tell all these stories, but it'll have to wait til the next one!

Getting to Singapore

I set my alarm today for 5am. Exactly 12 hours later, I walked into my hotel room in Singapore.

Upon first awakening, I want back to sleep. To snooze is divine as the old saying goes. I made it out the door of my Hangzhou hostel by 5:30am, proud of myself for allowing extra time (as I always do) for my 8:10am flight. I found a cab and we rode in silence through the completely empty streets and under the gray skies that persisted for much of my visit. Hangzhou does have more green than the other major Chinese cities I've visited, I'll give it that. It's not hard to see why it's a popular escape for Chinese tourists and a romantic getaway for young couples. We passed many trees and parks on the way to the airport, though it isn't quite enough to take away the somewhat bleak look of the city away from the lake, a look shared by many other Chinese cities. There's something that's just too spread out, too big, or too sprawling. Maybe it reminds me of LA too much. Maybe it's that it feels like in order to travel within it, you have to be part of the perpetual (except for at 5am) traffic jams. Maybe it was just the crappy weather.

We arrived at the airport at about 6am. I figured out which counters were servicing check-in for my flight but it turns out, they don't sweat it too much in China and hadn't yet put any personnel there. So the passengers who'd arrived early like I did pretty much sat around til about 6:30 when they started check-in. I figured it was an international flight so maybe best to be on the safe side, but it turns out it was only sort of international. We flew to Fuzhou (capital of Fujian), got off the plane, went through immigration, then got back on the plane and flew to Singapore. The flights were about 1.5 hours and 4 hours respectively. I slept a little on the first but mostly worked on the second. The flights were pretty easy although there was this queasy guy next to me with his girlfriend who kept picking up the barf bag which concerned me. I don't normally get any kind of motion sick on flights although we had experienced a bit of turbulence so I could see where the guy was coming from. That said, there is nothing that makes me sick quicker than having somebody getting sick right next to me. I think it's mostly the sounds they make. An old blog entry from what I'd guess is 2007 recounts a similar anecdote on a minibus in northern Laos, although that one involved many people getting sick and actually throwing up. This one is happily anti-climactic in comparison.

This is a completely meaningless detail. The girl was rubbing her boyfriend's back to soothe him as he considered puking. When she rubbed his back, she repeatedly restarted at the top, like petting a dog or cat. I think most people rub up and down or in circles. Seemed weird to me.

We finally landed around 3pm as I recall. I was starving since there was no vegetarian meal or anything on the flight, so upon spotting Burger King I decided to get fries. I love fries. I experienced my first local Singlish expression when the girl said, "Having here?" I had to ask her to repeat herself cause the first time I wasn't sure what I'd heard. Studying the free tourist map as I ate my fries, I observed the new mix of faces walking in every direction. Singapore they say is about 75% Chinese of varying descent, then a whole bunch of Malay and Indian, then a mix of other countries for the last 3% or something. As I took the subway to the hotel, it was the first time in a while I listened to conversations around me and had absolutely no idea what language was being spoken. I mean, I know what languages are spoken in Singapore mostly, but a lot of the Chinese dialects in common use here as well as Malay, Tagalog, or any Indian languages are pretty much unknown to me. Of course I don't understand them, but I mean I can't even distinguish them. Being on the train and looking around, there were indeed a decent number of apparently Chinese faces, but it really did seem more varied than any other non-American city I can recall being in the recent past. Even in Hong Kong, most of the people you see are Chinese and it is not a close call. This is the first place where multiple minority groups seem reasonably well represented.

So now having been here for an evening and walked around a bit, I've got a very slight sense of the place. First of all, I have spoken almost entirely English. That seems to be what people lead off with and what everybody speaks by default. I have heard other languages of course, but if you go into some store or have any exchange, it's hard to know what the other person might speak besides English so that seems to be the starting point. One guy in a 7-11 spoke particularly brutal Singlish and looked Chinese so I switched to Mandarin which sort of worked, but may have caused more confusion than it helped to clear up. So much for Mandarin practice in Singapore.

The restaurants and shops are wide and varied. Things are pretty modern on the streets. Well, completely modern. In some ways it feels very western in terms of modernity and cleanliness. The city is incredibly clean by the way. Probably because I saw a $300 fine for littering sign. Also $1000 for smoking on the subway and $500 for eating and drinking on the subway. For a lot of things they cane you here. That means they hit you a bunch of times with a thick, rattan cane. There turns out to be a whole article on caning in singapore. It sounds unpleasant and worth avoiding. Interesting, one of the ways you can get caned here is by overstaying your visa. I'm sure a few of us remember that American guy who vandalized a bunch of cars here and got caned. You can get caned for drug us, although importing drugs means the death penalty. I looked it up cause I was curious and the death penalty is carried out here by hanging. So tonight when I was about to cross the street, I waited for the light. Interestingly, a lot of locals waited too. I don't think they cane you for that, but I wasn't 100% sure and I figured I'm not in such a big rush that I care to find out. Back to how modern the city is, I have seen fast food chains everywhere from many countries, including a lot of Burger Kings, a KFC, and a Long John Silver's of all things. Lots of Asian snacks in fancy storefronts, and then lots of more cafeteria and casual style places. Obviously there are a billion shops and shopping malls.

I took a walk for dinner and found myself in nearby little India without aiming for it. The city is fairly compact and easy to navigate on foot so far, though it's not as small as certain folks seem to think it is. In Little India, there were without exaggeration a half dozen completely vegetarian Indian joints within a few blocks of each other. Many more had signs on the front saying veg and non-veg. It looks like some large number of the vegetarian restaurants here are going to be Indian, but tomorrow I'm going to look into this in greater depth. I got a rava dosa with sambar and a bunch of chutneys for 5 SGD. 1 USD is 1.20 SGD or so depending on where you exchange. I thought it was a pretty good deal. I was the only non-Indian dude in there and the food seemed pretty tasty to me. I went with the crowded rule, and it was pretty much full to the brim. I ate with my hands. I eat dosas with my hands sometimes in the US, but this time I really went for it. Normally I kind of half-ass it with a fork and knife to help along. I figure I'm going to be in Indian soon and that's how they do it, I might as well stop being afraid of getting my hands dirty. For those wondering, yes, there is a place to wash your hands before and after. That said, we will see what happens to my stomach. Singapore is a warm-up for India. I have had astonishing good luck stomach-wise, something I should probably not say, but apart from some Hong Kong gurgles, I survived a month in mainland China without a single incident of any sort. And that's eating street food probably 70% of the time I'd guess. I'm pretty good at sticking to really hot food most of the time which is safer than the alternatives. I'm excited for Singapore's hawkers' markets filled with street snacks. I got a line on a good place to go tomorrow night, hopefully it can live up to China's street food. I love the Indian stuff and will probably eat it here and there in Singapore, but I'd rather try to go to some more unusual places serving Western (if it exists), Malay, Chinese, or really any kind of Asian vegetarian food. Something a little more unusual would be nice, cause for two weeks after this I'm gonna be eating the real deal in Mumbai and I don't want to be sick of it already by the time I show up. I have avoided Indian food pretty much since Hong Kong for that reason, so I don't want to ruin it now.

So anyway, yes, Singapore, amazingly modern but still pretty intense walking down the street surrounded by not just one alien culture but several all at once, and packed into this weirdly surreal modern society reminiscent of the US in many ways and yet with lots of Asia in the mix. Tomorrow I will explore more, though carefully during the day cause when I arrived this afternoon it was really, really hot. That's another thing I'd better prepare for in Mumbai cause I think there it will be similar or even hotter. The evening tonight was fantastic though. I love that warm weather at night, it's my favorite. Now I get to wear my flip-flops all the time for real, along with everybody else who lives here.

I also want to add, all these people told me a week was too long to spend here. I guess I must really be a city guy or something as a few have pointed out to me recently, but how anyone could have trouble killing a week here is beyond me. Much more to come soon.

Oh yes, I'm also glad the internet work and that I can brush my teeth with tap instead of bottled water again.

Some Shanghai, but mostly Hangzhou

Here are a few paragraphs worth of details about Shanghai. I always forget details. These details are not necessarily going to be interesting for you. They are more for me. Sometimes it is nice to listen to somebody speak in another language even if you don't understand.

My hostel in Shanghai was one of the best in which I have ever stayed. It's called the Rock and Wood Hostel in Changning. It's down an alley off of a more major street called Wuyi Lu. Getting back I usually tell the cab drivers the intersection of Wuyi Lu and Kaixuan Lu.

The nearest subway stop is Zhongshan Gongyuan on line 2. Exit 7 is the one that dumps me closest to where I want to be. On the walk back to the hostel on Kaixuan Lu, there is this Xinjiang bread guy who sells the onion/sesame disks. I probably ate 6 or 7 of them during my stay. Also nearby is the Yan'an Xi Lu subway stop on lines 3 or 4. Walking there is nicer cause it's through a park but it makes the most sense when transferring to line 10 or line 9 which are south of here. In that case, it makes way more sense than going to Zhongshan Gongyuan, not just cause it is closer, but because transferring lines in a Shanghai subway station usually involves a lot of walking.

I spent a lot of time on line 2 which goes to the Jing An Si stop, the Renmin Guangchang stop, the Nanjing Lu stops, and the Lujiazui stops. I got off at all of these stations multiple times. I think I used line 10 the next most commonly, especially Shanxi Nan Lu I think to go to a few different Couchsurfer meetups and also a few different bars. I went to the CS meetups in Lujiazui in Pudong at a place called the O'Yamee Cafe. The Wednesday meetups were at a pub called Kangaroo bar. The Saturday language exchange meetups were near to Shanxi Nan Lu in the garden in front of the Hotel Okura Garden. One time it was rained out and we went to a nearby Starbucks instead. I went to a smattering of other random bars. A horrible, horrible place called Zapatas on Hengshan Lu, then a Ktv place called Shanghai Ge Cheng. Also one night a bar filled with foreigners called I Love Shanghai. Another night a "New York-style" place called the Apartment and a basement / converted bomb shelter with cool tunnels and ambience but very bad ambience and music. I went to that music place the Cotton Club one night which I wrote about I believe, which has the distinction of having the most expensive drinks of any of these places. As I recall the cheapest beer was about 10 USD.

That's probably enough details for now.

I have a few random thoughts to share from the last few days in Hangzhou pretty much beginning with my train ride from Shanghai.

I had to show my passport in order to buy that train ticket by the way, a 45 minute ride on an express to a neighboring city. Apparently it's a newish policy, but still, give me a break. Of course you have to show it to check into any hotel. Who knows how many photocopies of my passport are sitting around in Chinese filing cabinets somewhere. Having my own computer on this trip, I didn't go to internet cafes, but did I mention that in order to visit an internet cafe as a foreigner, one must also show one's passport? I assume Chinese must show their ID though I'm not 100% sure about that.

I forgot about the staring thing. In Hangzhou, kinda started to get to me. Also a lot more hellos here. Not the good kind of hello. The kind where they yell it at you repeatedly. Also the way they don't give a shit about anybody but themselves. I was thinking about this on the train when the girl to my right stretched way out into the aisle and spoke so loudly on the phone that even the older Chinese guy in front of her turned around and shook his head. Not that she noticed or cared. People don't really rebuke each other for behavior. Nobody ever says hey, you should just let me get off the train first and the whole of society will run more smoothly. Or hey, your elbow is in my face. Or hey, jesus fucking christ pay attention to where you're walking. Then, arriving at the Hangzhou train station, I waited on line for a cab. Now let me say, I'm pretty good at not getting agitated by this stuff. I really can laugh it off. That doesn't mean it doesn't continue to amaze me how people will brazenly just push and step in front of each other in any way possible to get ahead in a line, and nobody will actually acknowledge what is going on. If you try to acknowledge it, the response is as if you had spoken an alien language. So yeah, staring, and today, lots of picture taking. That is, people take my picture without acknowledging that I am a human being. I am more like a circus animal or an alien. Or Britney Spears.

While in a cab from the Hangzhou train station to my hotel, I had a business idea. Glamour shots for cab drivers. The pictures they have now look like the worst possible pictures known to man. I was going to say mug shots, but they're much worse than that. I'd say more like the pictures terrorists take of hostages to show that they are still alive. There's an opportunity here. Also, I find it strange that the picture hardly ever looks like the person driving. I'm pretty sure it's not just the western inability to distinguish between Asian people.

I love food on sticks. Specifically, that tofu (dou fu gan) but also the veggies like miscellaneous unnamed greens, lotus root, and almost anything vegetarian on that giant platter of sticks from which one can choose. Of all the food in China, there isn't much that I enjoy as consistently as I enjoy the sticks. I don't know what all that stuff is he puts on. I have been trying to figure out what makes it so magic. I'm sure Joy would interject here that it is the lard. I have asked before and I am confident that is not the case. There are different approaches. The guy here cooks the stuff on a griddle. "Big bean" oil is common here, though I have seen the big beans and I'm not sure what we'd call that. Of course I can't look it up because that would make me an enemy of the state for accessing restricted information on the internet. I can't even look up movie quotes here without a proxy. Yes, IMDB is blocked. Anyway, the spicy stuff that goes on towards the end is the real magic, but it's in an unlabeled container so I haven't been able to ascertain what the brand is or what makes it so magically delicious. In Guizhou it used to be fresh, dried chili. Here it is more of a powdered red chili of some kind. Oh, the guy tonight also threw in a bunch of onions when he cooked everything. Nice touch. These are my last few nights in China so I figured I'd indulge my love of stick food while I still can. They just don't make it like that in the US, at least nowhere I have ever seen.

I saw scorpions on sticks tonight. Also what I would describe as large maggots. Possibly locusts as well. I saw that in Cambodia before and heard of it in China, but this was the first time I actually saw it with my own eyes here. I saw some Chinese folks considering it but none partaking. Did I mention that I met a girl from Guangxi who told me they have an alcohol that is made from ants? Yes, ants. A girl from Yunnan said they have it there too. I asked my security guard friend from Anhui about it but he didn't believe me. It is for drinking and/or medicinal purposes apparently. I think by medicinal, my friend meant you can rub it on wounds to sterilize them. So that's handy.

The street food near where I'm staying is kind of sterilized in a way. All the stands look the same. I'm not sure but it seems like they all have the same corporate owner or something. In most real markets, I think the individuals own and operate their stand. Here there were multiple stands selling the same thing. It reminded me vaguely of the street fairs in NYC which have the same exact stands every time and every block or two, in case you realize a block later that you actually would like to eat a mozzarepa.

Every time I buy popcorn here, I am excited cause I like popcorn, and then I take the first bite and remember that it is sweet here. Edible sweet, but still sweet. I cannot seem to preserve that memory in my brain. I used to think it was because they put sugar on it, but it is actually a totally different looking popcorn kernel which must be inherently (and unfortunately for me) sweet. Sometimes peanuts are sweet too. Even the ones that you buy in the shell. That was a new one on me, though at least the salty ones exist too. I can't tell the difference from the packaging, but at least sometimes I get lucky.

The first day in Hangzhou it rained. I was out in defiance of the weather, but it was not good-mood-inducing. The second day was vastly superior. Sunny and hot, and I met up with a Couchsurfer for a long bike ride up into the hills around Hangzhou. We passed several villages and places where the famous local Longjing tea is grown. I have to go drink some tonight cause I still haven't since I've been here. I've gotten used to saying no thank you. I forgot that I actually would like to drink some of that tea, even if it is a touristy thing to do. Hard to know what a fair price is, I have to research that a bit. Anyway, beautiful bike ride although a very hot day. It was probably over 90 most of the time. Me and Tom from New Zealand who lives in Hangzhou and previously Harbin rode for maybe 3-5 hours and eventually stepped into a Taiwanese place I found on Dianping, the Chinese Yelp, so I could have a decent meal. Lunch had been Burger King. Tom has been here for a while and likes fast food. I had fries. Burger King in Hangzhou does not support the veggie burger. The waiter was extremely excited about us being there. He had a notebook filled with English phrases he was trying to learn as well as an English version of his life story. It said he was from a poor family in Jiangxi and his mother died when he was two months old. There were a bunch of things in there about life being hard but carrying on. I don't think he stopped smiling the entire time we were there. He asked us to sign his book. In two months, he'd accumulated about 30 small notes from foreigners who'd been in the restaurant. He said in last year's notebook he had over 500. I thought it was noteworthy and interesting that he had no fear about speaking English and making mistakes and was very anxious to speak, practice and improve. Pretty impressive actually. He was also helpful in making sure my food showed up without meat in it. Pretty good too.

Today I walked the circumference of West Lake, the famous tourist attraction everybody comes here to see. From what I can tell it is that and the tea, plus a smattering of gardens, pagodas, and temples. It's reputed to be a very naturally beautiful city and indeed is quite green in comparison with most other Chinese cities I have visited. Today was 92 degrees if the weather channel is to be believed and was quite sunny until 3 seconds before I walked in the door of my hostel when the skies opened the fuck up and it poured ridiculously for the last 10-15 minutes or so. Now it's petering off a tiny bit or maybe it just seems that way cause it was like a faucet had been turned on when it first started. Either way, impressive timing on my part. I was out walking from about 9:30am until 4 or so. It took quite a while to circumnavigate the lake, though I also stopped to check out the Leifang Pagoda which had a nice view of the lake, plus a vegetarian restaurant I stumbled upon which despite mediocre reviews on Dianping, I found to be decent enough.

I saw a lot of people empty their nostrils today. Possibly more than I have ever seen in one day in my life. I will not go into more detail. Around the lake, 80% of women carry umbrellas to protect their delicate complexions from the sun, lest they get a tan and people mistake them for low-class. They also often wear long sleeves, long pants, or if they wear short sleeves they have these arm covers from their wrists to their elbows. I guess to be fair, I'd rather use an umbrella than sunscreen. I also saw a lot of guys holding their girlfriends' purses. Also holding the umbrellas over the girlfriends while they walk. Also wearing pink shirts. What is up with the guys and the pink shirts? I know that's not exactly new, but I have seen it more here than ever before. I'm told Hangzhou is a popular romantic getaway for young Chinese couples. There certainly seem to be plenty here, although last night within the immediate vicinity of my hotel room, I heard two separate couples arguing and the girls crying. Sobbing even. Also whining like children. I'm not sure what that means, but hopefully I don't have to pay extra for it.

Tomorrow flying to Singapore. I could've stayed in Shanghai longer, but I'm about ready to get out of Hangzhou. There are no friendly, single guests with whom to socialize at this hostel and not much of a Couchsurfing scene with which to join up. Singapore should be better in that respect. Also, transportation is kind of difficult here. The city is large and spread out with no subway. They have this pretty cool system for renting bikes with a card you can get and then use to just grab bikes and go, but it seems like it's all better for people who live here. People who are tourists stick to the "old city" and pedestrian shopping areas plus the lake, which is nice, but I think it's enough. I'm ready for functional mass transportation again and actually variety of food. Also some company would be nice.

I will probably have more realizations and thoughts to add about China later, but there are probably too many words in this one already.

Practical matters in Shanghai

For the purposes of my discussing costs I have experienced in Shanghai, 1 USD is about 6.5 RMB right now.

Getting around I use the Shanghai metro. I will never get used to calling it the metro. Here, a subway is a tunnel that goes under big streets so you can not wait for the light. Down there you will often find some kind of miniature shopping mall, in case you remembered you wanted to buy a new wardrobe or collection of moisturizers while you're on your way to wherever the hell you were going. I remember in Taiwan and cities in China that aren't Shanghai, there'd also be women down there pulling hairs out of other womens' faces with two strings. But anyway, the metro has 10 lines here I think so far. I have probably ridden on about half of them, maybe more at this point. I was buying single-ride tickets for 3-5 RMB originally, though after a few days I bought a metro card which here is a contactless RFID card like most cities in Asia. This means guys just put their wallets on the thing and women just put their whole purse on it instead of hunting for it to swipe it like in NYC. Also, they don't run into the swipe-too-fast or swipe-too-slow problems we have. I wonder if NYC will switch to something like this eventually. They have been experimenting with "Blink" and things like that where you charge your credit card directly for years but that doesn't seem to be catching on. Also, when your metro card here runs low, you recharge it, and you just continue recharging it indefinitely. I suppose this is similar to NYC's metro cards though ours experience wear and tear and eventually stop working which is why I often end up getting new monthly cards and discarding the old ones. But I digest. This is an obscure Family Guy reference, not a mistake. So the metro card is a 20 RMB deposit which apparently you can get back, then you charge it up with whatever you want. The maximum cost of any individual ride in Shanghai seems to be 5 or 6 RMB. Prices vary depending on how far you're going. I don't think you can use the card yet in stores the way you can use it in HK at 7-11 and McDonalds and so on. Still pretty good system though, and pretty cheap.

On the downside, the last train is pretty much at 10:30pm. Definitely before 11pm. This is a disaster of course. Since I don't know the bus system really, I end up taking cabs instead. The distances are pretty much too far to walk depending on where you live I suppose. So far the longest cab ride I have taken was 25 RMB which I estimate in NYC would've costed about 20 USD for a comparable distance. Most cab rides tend to be about 15 RMB during the day and less than 20 RMB at night. So cabs are pretty cheap compared to New York.

Foodwise, I probably most often buy water which is 1-2 RMB a bottle depending on the brand. They have more expensive brands like Evian if you want too which vary depending on where you buy them, but I think are still often less than $1 USD if you buy them in a convenience store. A bottle of tea or soda is something like 3-4 RMB. Those 24 hours convenience stores are everywhere pretty much. This is true in most cities I've visited in China, not just Shanghai. As far as meals go, I have been eating most often at small, informal places in my neighborhood which is called Changning. Most vegetarian dishes are less than 20 RMB. Maybe meat dishes are similar, maybe 20something but I'm not sure cause I don't look that much. Last night I got a tofu dish, a vegetable dish, white rice, and a sprite for 35 RMB. This is probably the most expensive meal I have eaten in this neighborhood. There is a fried noodle place up the ride where I can get a huge container of tofu, vegetables, and fried noodles for about 10 RMB. Depending on how much Chinese you speak, the price fluctuates. A friend from the hostel paid 20 RMB for a chicken dish. Another time we went together and it was 15 RMB. My friend the hostel security guard believes we are still being ripped off. He said my tofu noodles should be 7 or 8 RMB at most. I explained to him that we'll never get those prices as foreigners and honestly I'm not going to haggle with these guys over 30 cents. He didn't really get that and thinks it is all about the bottom line. Maybe he's right. My other favorite meal in the neighborhood is tofu or veggies on sticks, which costs 1 RMB per stick. I usually get 3-6 depending on how hungry I am. My local breakfast is congee with two vegetable buns for 3.8 RMB. There's also this guy that sells stuffed breads which I mentioned in a previous post and I usually spend 2-5 RMB there for a bag of stuff. Moving onward, things get more expensive in restaurants. Actual westerner-friendly restaurants I mean. Then things end up being more like 80-100 RMB per person. Tonight I had a meal with 12 people which costed 40 RMB per person. I have walked past restaurants that charge upwards of 200 RMB per person, and like NYC if you really want to, you can spend as much as you want in the really fancy restaurants that I won't be visiting. I'm sure there are many 1000+ RMB per person meals to be had here without lots of effort, the local equivalents of Daniel or Jean Georges or whatever fancy restaurant you know the name of in NYC. Obviously I don't know that many.

Bars are another story. At the hostel, a beer costs about 10 RMB. In the convenience stores, it costs about 5 RMB. At one bar I visited, the cheapest beer was a Tsingtao for 25 RMB. At the next, it was 45 RMB. And then at one more still, the cheapest was 60 RMB. That's like $9 USD for a beer. They go higher of course. This is where we start to see the crazy Shanghai rich people prices showing up I suppose. I saw a couple order a bottle of champagne for 1000 RMB. My friend from Anhui told me there is a pack of cigarettes that costs 2000 RMB a pack. That's not a typo. That's $300 USD for a pack of cigarettes. He said it's for high rollers (and presumably corrupt government officials) and like many things here, it's about status. It's why people drive ridiculously expensive cars and wear expensive suits and jewelry. A girl I met from Sweden says that she has seen people order two bottles of champagne, one to drink and one to spill down the sink just to show that they can afford to throw money away. This sounds hard to believe, but I liked the story so I'm including it. That girl is staying at the hostel here and returning from a trip to Beijing she developed a high fever and a stomach problem. Made me nervous a little cause I don't want to get sick, but the doctor said it was likely food poisoning. So that was good news.

I don't know a lot about apartment costs here. One girl I met lives in a one-bedroom with a living room in Pudong which costs 1900 RMB. She said the same apartment in Puxi would cost over 3000 RMB. I'm not too familiar with Pudong really. The business center of Shanghai is there, but I think a lot of is residential. She is quite far away from the financial area. Puxi has residential neighborhoods but is the center of nightlife, restaurants and that sort of thing. There is a lot of colonial influence in the neighborhoods which make for very pretty tree-lined streets with interesting architecture. I know somebody else who lives in a 4-bedroom place in Puxi for 25,000 RMB. I gather that place is larger and nicer in some relatively new apartment building, but I'm only going off of a description, I didn't see any of these places with my own eyes. Clearly prices run the gamut but it seems as if it's more than possible to get a decent place to yourself here within an arms throw of the cool areas via subway for less than it would cost for something comparable anywhere in New York. Maybe that seems obvious, but although I was sure the average costs of living in Shanghai or Hong Kong would be cheaper than in NYC, I wasn't too sure about apartments. For buying apartments I'm really not sure. There are probably a bunch of incredibly boring and speculative blogs you could find about that specifically. I'll leave that to them for the moment.

Only two more nights in Shanghai. Monday I'm going to Hangzhou to which I'm looking forward. It's supposed to be a quiet and attractive city the main feature of which is this beautiful lake everybody raves about. I think mainly it is supposed to be a relaxing alternative to its busy neighbor. I may go tomorrow to buy the ticket as I hear they can sell out quickly, but there are apparently quite a few express trains per day and it's only 45 minutes so I can't imagine it is that big of a deal. Basically all my travel details are handled now including hostel/hotel bookings all the way through to Israel. Hard to believe the China part of the trip is almost over. I think my Chinese has probably improved despite the large number of English conversations I've had here. There are just too many foreigners in Shanghai to avoid speaking English entirely. I still managed to have a lot of Chinese conversations anyway and hopefully in Hangzhou and maybe in Singapore I can have some more. I also started using an input method on my phone which allows me to very easily look up Chinese characters I don't know. This has been tremendously useful and I'm quite pleased about it. It enables me to learn from signs, newspapers and books in a way that I couldn't really effectively learn new words before. I think it will help a great deal from now on.

Now I am going to drink a beer. It's saturday night and it's raining.