Tiruvanamalai

I took a bus to Tiruvanamali arriving at around 1am...This night was a festival for Lord Shiva, where the people walk 14km around a mountain chanting...or at least I think they are chanting, I arrived too late at night! My Tuk Tuk driver had to go to 5 different hotels until we found one that had a room and then I apparently did not tip him enough for his effort...Live and learn...  Here are some pics of the holy temple in Tiruvanamalai...There were many of these giant structures... around the gates and inside, it is a huge complex but I was feeling a little camera shy

 

 Getting blessed by an elephant...It is a Shiva temple and Shia's son is Ganesha, the kid with the head of an elephant who is also worshipped in southern India...He removes obstacles...I wonder and assume that this is has something to do with the elephant here...

I am guessign this fellow was part of the parade at night!
 

One of the many forms of transport!
 

These guys were my neighbors in the hotel...

 This is a Dosa, a typical south Indian breakfast...it can come with some potato or other food inside and a couple dipping sauces...The hard part is to tear it with one hand!
 

Here I am with Kiran, who was the nephew of the owner of m hotel and who showed me around and helped me out!  We went on a bike around the mountain stopping at a few ashrams and seeign what was up...some famous folks have ashrams int he area and while it is a popular place I wanted to go to the Sivananda ashram to continue the line of study I am used too
 

After a rough night of getting to know the floor of my bathroom and a day of recovery I headed to Madurai and The Sivananda Ashram...

Movie Star!

On my last day in Mahabalipuram I was in an internet cafe in the morning and this man came to me and said "you're going to be in a movie today!"  I thought this was a little weird but I had met a couple of swedes the night before who said they were going to be extras in a movie so I knew it was for real.  He told me I would be with him all day and that I would get 700 rupees for my work and meals...  I asked him if I could get to Tiruvanamalai that night and he assured me I could.  Having learned from the past I made him promise if I couldn't he would put me up for the night in Chennai and that he would also get me to the bus station either way.  We shook hands and he said he would be back for me in half an hour...I hurried to pack...

The first good sign is that half and hour later he was back...actually on time!  I couldn't believe it!  I headed with him to his car at another guest house and we waited for 2 British extras to get there gear and we headed to some science center building half an hour away.  First they fed us and it was tasty, and then work started...

There were about 100 school children walking up the driveway to the main entrance and me and a British girl, dressed in our normal clothes had to walk down the other way... it seemed to be a big budget movie as all the kids had special made uniforms and it was a large production (I think)....

It turns out that it was a really big movie with one of India's most popular stars....

From this set we headed to the next one in Chennai...  Here some of us got costumes!  Check me out! I am supposed to be a scientist...  Note the padding stripes on my knees!

I got this cool outfit from the Outfit bus, it was an old bus with all kinds of clothes and a sewing machine outside... They did lots of on the spot work for some of the actors...

We waited for while outside, then got to go to an airconditioned area inside...it was in a convention hall redecorated to show off new robots...after sitting for an hour we went back out for lunch!  It was a feast!  And what a feast!  So yummy!  Best part of the day!
Then we got to wait some more and finally they were ready to shoot!  I had to walk past some exhibits and point them out to some younger Indian girls as if I was explaining things!  I had lots of fun making up what to say!  Unfortunately it made them burst out laughing but hopefully no one will notice and the scene will make the film!  Then we had to do it a couple more times, sometimes I was alone just browsing...we all had similar things to do, but the two Brits might have a closeup!In the same scene we at least a hundred kids being shown around by a guide... and many other people looking around...It must have been very hard to organize all this...apparently the kids' school gets paid for their involvement... It was also fun to be the token white guy!  It was like the opposite of a Hollywood movie....
Here is a car that was later covered with bullet holes!

 

You can see all the people trying to catch a glimpse of the star....he was not there but no one would listen...every once in a while security would push them all back and then 2 minutes later they would be climbing the fence...I felt funny being there while it was not such a big deal with hundreds of people trying to push their way in!

As it got dark I was worryinbg about catching my bus abnd they kept tellin gus just one more scene, and then I went to look for the car with my bag and everyting in it and it was gone!  I panicked that they took some of the other extras to the train and I had lsot everything...but after 5 frantic minutes I found everyone and they had jsut moved the car... The man in charge of the extras, who was super kind then said ok no more scenes and paid a taxi to take me to the bus station.... It was a fun day!  And I made about 15 dollars learnign how movies are made!

Mahabalipuram

From Chennai I headed to Mahabalipuram, which was a great destination to start in.  It is a tourist town, with many guest houses, internet cafes and white people.  Normally all things I hope to keep to a minimum around me but I really needed a few days of comfort!  The area is famous for stone carvings, many people all over making small  and large ones, and then there are the very large 1000yr old ones!

This is carved right into a rock mountain! 

There was a priest on the street doing a puja to Hanuman, who is the monkey demi god seen later below, and I watched and got 'blessed'...for a few ruppes ofcourse!

There is a fellow mmaking beautiful art...it looks like he puts each drop of flour down one at a time, but whathe has, and has to sell are rollers, height of a toilet paper roll, but much skinnier with holes around it in a design...he fills it with colored flour and then rolls it on the ground!

Here is an old temple bythe beach...While there were many poeple swimming, after thailand this beach was very unappealing...one reason is that the locals use it as a toilet... Im also spoiled bywhite sand and aquamarine water!  (That seems like a funny expression, as if I am describing water twice with the word water... as if saying the pea was a greeny greenish green)

A funeral ceremony in town... I thought it might be a wedding, there were instuments and dancers in the small parade!

Another carved hillside at the 5 Rathas

Met some friends upa hill, they very badly wanted me to take their photo...

Just at the top of town a huge park filled with ancient carvings!

These elephants are lifesized...

Mahabalipuram has many yoga studios and massage parlors and I had one decent class there.... Just after I arrived most of the 'master' teachers headed to a certain region to celebrate a Shiva festival...so I realized I should head off...I was planning on going to Tiruvanamalai as there is a Shiva temple there but I got sidetracked!

India

Greetings from India....

Flying in to India was great, I had 2 flights one better than the next.  The first one was from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur.  While I didn't get to go the the Malaysian rain forest at least I got to see lots of it!  Most was beautiful, you can see winding rivers and imagine all the life below!
The next part was lots of clearcuts. Huge! Giant!  Sad!  But we like our forest products...
Leaving KL for Chennai, India they bumped me to business class.

This was quite swell and I lived like a king for 3 or 4 hours!  My chair turned into a bed, they brought food and drinks every 15 minutes and my TV screen we pretty big...

When I landed it was already 10pm and I had no idea what to do!  Coming out of the airport there are thousands of peole waiting for arrivals with signs of all sizes and shapes....I exchanged some money and got a cab.  I had a man from the company walk me to the cab and he really wanted to carry my bag. I figured this was a service and said OK.  When we got there he wanted a tip and all I had was a 50 rupee note...My 25 minute cab ride was prepaid at 250rs so I had to tip this guy a lot of money....
I had the name of one hotel I found online and asked the cab to take me there.  When I arrived I found it more expensive than it was advertised and found another spot.  The next morning my adventures began.

So far I had no problem on the trip without a guidebook or any city maps...Most hostels had maps of the local town and there were always people around to help... In Chennai it was very different! I didn't even know what part of the city I was in...nor how big it was...I thought I was flyin into a small city, not a giant busy 'metropolis'.  I headed out not knowing where I was going or what I was doing, but it was exciting!  New sights sounds and smells all around....  The idea of lanes in the roads are slightly different than what I am used to and cars and Tuk Tuks go everywhere while scooters and bikers weave through them... Being a pedestrian is a good challenge and son to be part of the Pan Asian games!

There were so many food stands and restaurants and I wanted to visit them all...but how many breakfasts can you have in one morning?  If you read that as a rhetorical question than you have misread.  The answer is three.

Breakfast in south India is usually a Dosa, this is a large thin pancake often with some potato curry inside and one or two dipping sauces as well...A red one and a white one made from coconut.  You use your right hand to eat and it is hard to learn to tear the pancake with only one hand!  But it is apparently a learnable art as millions of people succeed at it even as you read this!

I noticed some guys staring at my yellow Crocs so I went to say hello and we spoke for an hour...

 

He is putting something akin to chewing tobacco in his mouth...

I wanted to find the MRTS, I didnt know if it is a subway or a train but either way it passed not far from where I was and not far from where I wanted to go..(according to the internet)

So I went about asking folks where the nearest station was.  One man very surely told me to walk 10 minutes in a certain direction and I would be there.  I did so and when I arrived I asked where it was.  Someone else pointed back the way I came and said 10 minutes that way.  Then the next person said go two streets and take a left.  I did and was introduced to a dead end....Apparently this is about as fast as you can get around in cities here!  So I hopped in a tuk tuk...3 wheel taxi and headed to the Sivananda yoga center for a class....  This helped ground me but the teacher was tough and did things to my body that I felt for the next 3 days...  He did not adjust me gently...

The folks at the yoga center we very kind, maybe they noticed my unease at ebing in the city... They fed me and then suggested I head to Tiruvannamalai, a nice town on the beach with some ancient temples and carvings and this is what I did the very next day....

Hong Kong

Of all the places int he world to visit I never put much consideration
into seeing Hong Kong.  I like nature, clean air and and not a fan of
the banking (mainly the lines suck) and I like to see the open sky (unless it is blocked my huge mountians). So when I realized I was going to go to Hing Kong I had surprised myself.  But I have been known to do
weirder things in the past and will hopefully continue to do even weirder things int he future.
Here is the bag a lucky kid had on the plane!

And the sky!

 

The Hong Kong airport was very polite, just like the rest of the area!

A friend I had met in Thailand, Shani, had said I am welcome to visit
her in Hong Kong if ever I wanted, and the more I thought about it the
more it seemed like a good idea.  How often is one able to pop into
Hong Kong?  With out taking into consideration that going to HK on my
way to India was like someone going from Montreal to Toronto on their
way to New York, I was off!

And what a place..

Being in Hong Kong is like being inside an M.C. Escher painting
crossed with a melting pot of society.  Roads, building,s and
escalators criss and cross and zig together (I didnt notice any
zagging) You can drive up to a building, with the road on the ground,
and be at the tenth floor and the elevators go down.  When you go down
you emerge again on the ground.  There are certainly some laws of
physics being broken but as there is no physics police Hong Kong gets
away with it.  There is an 800 meter long escalator going up or
down...you can go down until 10am then up the rest of the day, and too
much more to describe.

As traffic can be deadly there are helpful hints all around!

The buildings area  whole other story that
will have to be described my pictures to save me thousands of words.(actually you just need to see it for yourself)

 

  

  

 

These are during the nightly light shows!  These lights are not fixed and move to the music!  Every night at 8pm...

The people are a whole other story.  I used to think Montreal was
multicultural...Now I know what multicultural means.  Hong Kong seems
to have a representative from every corner of our round world.  It is
fascinating.

What is similar to Montreal is a mountain in the city that you can go
up and presumably see the whole area from.  I did not get to do this
as it was very cloudy and we saw lots of water vapor.  Occasionally a
building would wipe the water from its face and we would be able to
glimpse the windows and a blurred shape.  Fortunately on the way down
we were seated on the top floor of a double decker bus and actually
had an amazing view.  Possibly to most exciting bus ride I have been
on. I saw round towers, and square ones, some that were a bit of both,
there was a building on stilts, and other unimaginable
constructions...

Every time we went out we happened to go by Hong Kong park... This is an interesting place in the center of town.  The is an aviary, with hundreds of cool and interesting birds,

its a giant screened in multi level area...you start in the canopy height and slowly wind down, also cool plants on the trees...

There are some interesting fountains and a super veggie Dim Sum/Tea house.  Everyone has to order a tea and then the waiter comes and does the proper tea ceremony for whatever you ordered!  It can get quite elaborate, and it was all served with a smile!

Shani is a chazan in a reform shul and I went for Shabbat service. It was great to see a non sexist (in my opinion...some people think putting women in the back because it is the man's job to pray and the woman's to raise kids as not sexist...if you think so tell me why!) services.  Also a woman chazan with a great voice!  You can barely get me into a synagogue in Canada but put me in Hong Kong and the Payis is already growing!
After too short a time I was off to India!

Ko Bulon

Greetings!
I have fallen behind and will now attempt to catch up some....

Leaving Surin I headed back to Kao Lak for a night in Pak Bara, and then in the morning headed off south to get to Ko Bulon, an island a German man had recommended.  This was to be my last venture in Thailand before taking off.  I spenf one night in Pak Bara, the port town and took the ferry the next morning.  3 tour operators wanted to sell me the boat ticket all at different prices and after buying the cheapest one I went to sleep.  In the morning I noticed there was also a ticket booth at the marina  selling the ticket for 50 baht cheaper...  Such is life!

Pak bara is a fishing town...

The speed boat headed to the island and met local boats to transfer us to shore.  You pay 50 Baht for this.  It must be a way to increase local profit.  I went to a place called Jungle hut which had a super friendly staff and said I could stay in a tent for 50 Baht a night.  They thought I wanted one of their tents and when they saw I had my own said I could stay for free!  Super kind people.  Of course for this reason I ate plenty at their restaurant so everyone won.
The island is divided in 2 parts with a giant hill in the middle and a 15 minute walk to the other side.  The other side is where the snorkeling was so it was good exercise.  Right at the top was a bar called the Bong hut or Bong bar and it had a couple Rasta Thais who were of course always smiling and happy to see you.  It made for a nice stop before going down the other side.  The place smelled like a concert and no one seemed to mind.

After 3 nights I moved my tent to the other side on the beach but had to walk 200 meters for a toilet.  It was well worth it to see the sun rise!













One f the coolest things about the island is the hornbills!  Giant birds with giant yellow horns!  I saw one in a tree and one on the ground that then took off.  I missed the exact moment of takeoff as something was scratching me inside my shirt which i shook out...then scratched my arm and pulled a very weird and scary looking caterpillar thing out of my sleeve.  By then the bird had just spread its wings and started up.  It was a great sight... It almost made me forget to shiver about the weird thing that was with me for who knows how long!
Some activities I engaged in at this island included lying in my hammock, sitting in my hammock, seeing if I can find knew ways to lie and sit in my hammock and sitting in my hammock while reading, listening to music, and finding knew ways to sit and read and listen to music in it.  After all this work and excitement I was lucky to have a hammock to relax in!  I also went swimming and snorkeling and walked up and down the ill a few times a day.  I also learned world history (audio books are great) and stood on my head.

The island is not to exciting to talk about but it is a great place for the above mentioned activities.  The reefs are not as beautifuil as the other places but it is much more quiet and relaxed.

On the last day I hopped the boat back to pak bara and then took a bus to Phuket, where IW as flying out of.

Phuket treated me well, but I did not have time to explore the beaches, I only saw the city proper.  It is now full of resorts and fance stuff, and I probably would not have gone to see it if I had the time.  I had one last foot massage and got on the airport shuttle.

The flight to Hong Kong had some beautiful clouds....