Monday, May 31, 2010

late stories: india part 2: tundla station

tundla.  ever heard of it?  no?  really?  well, its about 12k away from agra (that's the place with the taj mahal), and i would have never heard of it either except for a little mistake in mysore about a month before.

trains in india can book up pretty easily, which makes sense when you think about it since there's like a billion people here and they all have to get from place to place somehow. and the popular routes with tourists, like mumbai to goa and banglalore to trivandrum and, yes, agra to varanasi, seem to be pretty popular with everyone, and so, reservations-wise, are especially rough going.  about five days into this india trip i had to let go of any romantic notions about "just deciding" to go somewhere and "hopping on" a train that day or the next.  this is technically possible, but practically mostly limited either to journeys by bus or by super-slow train (like one that takes 24 hours to go the same distance as one that takes 7 hours) or to those times when you're in a state of mind to be handling general seating, which is fine for short distances but on long and/or overnight trains, getting literally like shoehorned with 49 other folks into a compartment that seats 8 comfortably and maybe 20 creatively ... well, that's a little more personal challenge than i'd prefer to face unless actually necessary.

but, we are smart.  like, really smart.  we buy tickets at the railway station in mysore for an agra to varanasi train that we plan on taking about a month later.  already it is fully booked.  but i'm number 1 on the waitlist, tom is number 2, and i've got a pretty decent expectation of making it onto the train, because people do cancel and the waitlist moves, so i'm feeling confident.

flash-forward about 3.5 weeks, we're in agra, and we are still numbers 1 and 2 on the waitlist,* and all, like seriously all, trains from agra to either varanasi or nearby mughal serai are full.  alternative arrangements must be made.

so i look on an indian rail map and there's this village called firozabad which is pretty close to agra, and we buy some tickets from firozabad to mughal serai.  then we look at a different map and there's a place called tundla, the stop before firozabad, which is even closer to agra.  and so we arrange for a car to drive us the 12k from agra to tundla, figuring that (1) tundla, pop. 12,000 or so, will be easier to navigate than firozabad, pop. at least 1 million and (2) the taxi to tundla is cheaper and (3) we'll just get a general admission ticket from tundla to firozabad, no problem.

9:45:  we arrive at tundla station in plenty of time to catch the train, which is scheduled for 11:15, so everything is working great.

11:00:  one of the porters happens to mention that said train is 7.5 hours late.  everything starts to suck.

11:01: a bird poops on tom's leg. 

11:15: tom texts indian railways and gets the helpful response that "this information is not available at this time."  i scuttle around, attempting to confirm the rumor of extreme lateness.  yes, the snacks-seller-wallah confirms that the extreme lateness is true.  but there is another train, scheduled to arrive in a couple of hours, which is actually going to varanasi proper, so maybe we can get on that one.

12:00:  i go to see the station manager, a sober-looking man in his fifties surrounded by about 10 cold-war-era telephones, some that function via some sort of winding mechanism, and explain our predicament; he tells me to see the tc (no clue, still, what this acronym stands for).  the tc speaks no english, so i lead him down to the station manager and we have  a multilingual powwow; the upshot is that, i should buy general admission tickets for the new varanasi train, and when it comes the tc will help find us seats in the sleeper section.  a tiny, sari-clad woman by the station manager's left elbow winds a grey phone, he barks into the receiver for a couple of seconds, and tells me with a little half-smile that the new varanasi train is also late, so perhaps i can wait a few hours and he will tell me which train will arrive first?

12:45: we retire to a shady area with some seating.  i can see, without really trying, about 30 million flies, all too hot and lazy to stir from the dry lakes of white-and-yellow pee-stained concrete.  several folk are sleeping, with the full abandon of exhausted children, on benches; everyone not sleeping is staring at me, with a casual intensity that i am, by now, accustomed to.  i realize that i am hungry.  but my surroundings are a little too gross to allow eating.  

12:53: we move to a different bench, also shady, this time further outside.  i am sitting next to about a week's supply of uncooked papadum that apparently belong to a gaggle of turbaned men waiting on the other side of the platform.

1:45: i realize that we're sitting next to a foodstand/trash heap, and that's why there seem to be more flies on my legs than usual.  slothrop accepts both the moniker "rocketman" and a dangerous assignment to recover some drugs from behind enemy lines.

2:00: i check with the station master re the status of the new varanasi train.  he tells me to come back at 4:00.  a sleek rat strolls out from underneath his chair, glances at me, and disappears underneath the office sideboard.  "hey look," i say.  "nice rat." 

4:00: i return to the station master's office.  a different man is in his place, one who has no knowledge of our predicament and actually seems to care less than his predecessor, which i did not think possible. there will be no help from the tc.
 
5:15: we are sitting on our bags on platform 2 and some other gringos show up -- fortunately for them, given the harrowing travel story they tell, they are buddhists.  they ask when the train is coming?  this is a funny question.  in retrospect, it is also funny that i mentally referred to these guys as "gringos": they are mexican. 

6:32: the train to varanasi clacks and groans into the station, and swarms of skinny men in shiny polyester button-downs and slim 1970's slacks swarm out to buy snacks, urinate on walls, and congregate in small, difficult-to-navigate-around clumps along the platform.  because its an overnighter, we can't board this train unless we're assured of two sleeper berths -- well, we could board, but if there aren't two sleeper berths, then we'll end up sleeping on the floor in the hallway next to the toilet -- so i rush up and down the platform, trying to find the man in charge of the list.

6:35:  i find him.  he holds a clipboard and he speaks no english.

6:37:  i find an anglophone passenger on the train, who talks to the list-man.  he shakes his head regretfully.

6:50: another train, also bound for varanasi, pulls into the station.  i am confused; no one has ever mentioned that this train exists.  still, no matter: a different man holding a clipboard gives me the same answer, this time with no regret.

7:30: we have scored some of the comfier seats in the station: in a nice, airy section of platform 2, close to food and water vendors.    

8:00: about a million birds show up -- hopefully to eat the mosquitos, who showed up a few minutes earlier -- and the cacophony is mind-alteringly loud.

8:04: a bird poops on my shoulder.

8:10: a bird poops on my leg.

8:33: a bird poops on my arm.

8:34: i move to sit on my backpack, positioning the pack under a section of the station that has no eaves, and, hopefully, no birds. 

9:00: slothrop's dispersal is nearly complete.  another group of gringos shows up and asks about trains.  their train is scheduled to arrive at 9:30, but it is four hours late.  one of the girls informs me that i have bird poop on me.

10:00: we do a photo shoot.  i actually feel pretty good still.  too bad you can't see the bird poop. 


tom is, perhaps, doing a bit less well.  he kind of looks ready for viking-style mayhem here, but trust me, he does not have the energy.


10:15-12:30: various tantalizing trains that are not ours pull into the station.  there is hawking of spit from windows, the sweet tinkling sound of people pissing on the tracks from the on-board toilets.  boys roam through the railpaths, scooping up plastic bottles and slipping them inside their tucked-in button-down shirts.

12:45: our train arrives.

12:47:  a one-armed man is sleeping in my berth.  feeling simultaneously guilty and entitled, i shake him awake, clamber into place, pull my birdpoop-encrusted scarf over my head, and drift, mercifully, to sleep ...

tundla, tundla, tundla ...
the station where i quite like to be 
getting pooped on by pigeons
or just smelling the pee ...  

[to the tune of "finland" by monty python] 


*in case you're curious about one of the finer points of indian train-riding: the reason that we didn't move up on the waitlist is because we were on a different waitlist than the "normal one."  if you buy rail tickets online, or at the station from which you'll be departing, you get on the regular waitlist (code: WL or GNWL).  if you buy rail tickets from a different station that the one from which you'll be leaving, you get on the "remote location" waitlist (code: RLWL, although at least one of our tickets was coded GNWL but treated as RLWL).  i don't know how the RLWL is processed but empirical evidence (n=2) suggests that it is processed after the GNWL.  which is to say, not at all.

thai dessert: sakoo

sakoo.  yeah, it looks like sperm, which may be off-putting to some.  but it tastes like salty-sweet coconut, and the little tapioca jellyballs roll around in the mouth most fabulously.

diving koh tao

i found a leprechaun in the malaysian jungle

the socks are, um, necessary to repel leeches. 

Thursday, May 27, 2010

the penang eating scene

"what should we eat?"
"are you hungry?"
"does it matter?"

in penang, no.  it's such an insanely incredible mix of chinese and malaysian and indian foods, all hanging out together and intermingling ... i have become entirely mouth-driven -- but, fortunately, everyone else around here, especially the locals, appears to be wired similarly, so my food-enthusiasm is encouraged.  yet another one of those situations where i wish i could magically transform into a male NCAA freshman swimmer, and eat my bodyweight in noodles. 

 here is eng lon, one of penang's ubiquitous kedai kopi (coffeeshops), basically a room filled with plastic tables and chairs, surrounded by hawker wagons.  order what you want, sit down, and someone brings it to you when its ready.  this could take as much as an hour, if you order from a popular stall during the lunch rush! 


nasi ayam (chicken rice) for tom, with a lovely subtle clear soup on the side. 


for me, hokkien mee: noodles and egg and salty prawn and garlic in spicy broth, with a little lean pork on the side (donated to tom). 


perfect to combat the heat of the day: ais kacang (which i think translates into "iced beans").  shaved rose-syrup ice with salty canned sweetcorn, sweet black beans in coconut syrup,a reese's-peanut-butter-cup-shaped yet oddly tasteless jelly thingy, and chocolate and durian-flavored ice creams. 

but really, the place that stole the heart right out of my mouth is gurney plaza which, thanks to the wonder of motorbikes, we managed to eat at twice.


we were not the only ones there. 


this is char koay teow, fried noodles in dark soya sauce with chili and prawn.  tasty, a lot like pad see ew, but my fried-noodle tastebuds are still thai-trained, and i wanted something a little less subtle, a little more umami.


these fried oysters were exactly as delicious as you would want them to be.  


wan tan mee stand no. 85.


wan tan mee: noodle soup with soft-skinned, pork-filled wontons, shredded chicken, and chives.  

 hmmm .... what can i eat next?


the yung tao foo stand was, at first, completely incomprehensible, so of course i was irresistibly drawn to it.  the way it works is: either the hawker picks a set number of items for you, or you can DIY; i think (but am not sure) that only the first option is technically "yung tao foo."  choices range from fried soy crisp to various types of noodle, mushrooms, okra, pig intestines, salted and fresh vegetables, preserved bitter melon, various types of fish balls and squares and rolls stuffed with other fish, seaweeds, etc.  and then the hawker makes a sizzling hotpot of your choices in a fresh clear broth. 


this one has fish ball, fish roll (with seaweed and crab inside), bitter melon, salted cabbage, bokchoy, beehoon noodles, fried garlic, fish-stuffed okra, and eggplant.  wonderful, but massively unfinishable. 


do they really have the best rojak?  let's find out ...

rojak is like a fruit salad, except one where you've never eaten any of the fruits before and they're all covered with sticky, salty-sweet fermented prawn paste.  i'm pretty sure i identified starfruit, green and yellow mangoes, cashew fruit (yeah, i was surprised that cashews have a fruit, which i guess i shouldn't be, since they've got a nut ... it looks like a small pink bell pepper and it rocks), some kind of asian pear ... some kind of non-fruit eggy thing.  yum.  further testing definitely required. 


penang is famous for its distinctive laksa, a sour fish soup.  hard to describe.  sour, yes, but not the kind of sour i was expecting.  actually, i don't think i knew that this particular type of sour existed before i tried laksa. 


or koay is sort of a salty creamy taro paste, formed into squares, and topped with fried crispy things and chilis.  i had thought that the taro itself would be fried -- sort of like those awesome turnip pancakes that you get at dimsum sometimes -- but it was not so.  slightly more towards the interesting side on the interesting -- good spectrum. 


now, these little guys are definitely snack stars.  take a few warm noodle-cylinders -- made from steamed rolled-up layers of thin rice dough -- chop them into bite-sized pieces, drizzle them in darkly sweet prawn sauce, top with tiny bits of fried fish and toasted sesame seeds, and add a dollop of deep-red spice paste.  chee cheong fun, we shall meet again. 


ok, and of course we need dessert.  this one is nonya kuih, not sure what its made of but seems to include coconut and rice and, in the middle, some sort of bean paste.  a subtle taste, not too sweet or even overtly rice-y or coconut-y, but with a fun chewy texture.  there are other rice-based desserts that i like better (like the one cooked with durian and coconut sugar, which is far less photogenic but eminently swoony).


o.  o.  i still don't know the name of this one.  i've been trying to find out.  the top layer is a slippery sweet-with-a-tiny-perfect-hint-of-salt coconut cream, the bottom two are water chestnut gelatin, with little chunks of water chestnut suspended in them for surprising crunch.  i brought one back so that the guys running the guesthouse could tell me the name, but although i had a rousing discussion with the no. 2 guy, about where to find the best laksa (he says on air item road, just near the kek lok si temple), he couldn't remember what this little darling was called. 


well, breakfast has to come sometime.  and it can come as much as it wants when breakfast is fresh roti canai with egg.  it's so cool to watch the guys make this kind of roti: while the dough is stretched, but uncooked, he throws a raw egg in the middle and folds the raw dough over it, then the whole thing is fried on a wide cast-iron griddle, and the egg is all fluffily-cooked on the inside, with the roti all crisp and perfect, hugging it.  


i have missed indian chai, but now there is teh tarik, made with condensed milk poured (technically, "pulled"; that's what "tarik" meas in bahasa malaysia) back and forth between the jar and the teamug.


it is frothy and creamy and i love anything made with condensed milk. this particular lady added a new dimension by putting a little scoop of chocolate milo (like quik, i think) into the teh.  


motorbiking around pulau penang (the island is really small), we came to balik pulau, famous for its distinctive laksa, made with slivers of pineapple and sprigs of mint.  


not as sour as the asam variety found in georgetown proper.  the no.2 guy at our guesthouse said that something was "just not right" about the way that the balik pulauans make their laksa.  he sounded just as particular as a couple of lawyers that i know, discussing the relative merits of a cappucino made at the embarcadero center peet's vs. elsewhere. 


but the real revelation for me here was fresh nutmeg juice with sour plum.  i love nutmeg but i guess i'd never really thought of it being a fruit before it turned into spices.  you can definitely taste what one thinks of as "nutmeg" flavor in the juice, but there's something more ... a freshness, wildness, light-sweet-sour at the beginning, and a dryness, almost bitterness, right at the end of the sip.  and then the sour plums, suspended thumbnail-sized bombs amidst the ice cubes, turning the surrounding nutmegginess just a hint more sour than the rest.  


we even got to try some guinness special foreign extra, which is only sold in malaysia.  big time score.  (although, regular guinness is better.)


our local night market, just a few blocks from the guesthouse, had more than food and guinness to recommend it  specifically, it has karaoke: songs like "moon river" and the one that has "babylon" in it alot, performed by a woman draped in a miss-universe-style sash reading "red market RM 100" and accompanied by two middle-aged dancers, both absurdly bewigged, the man sporting a luridly-patterned sateen shirt, gold spangled sash, and fu-manchu moustache and goatee.  

tom's duck rice did not compare, in terms of entertainment value. 


now excuse me, i think i need to go for a run!!!! 




Sunday, May 23, 2010

making merit in chiang mai

i love buddhist temples.  i love being in them, i love thinking about them, i love looking at all the stuff in them, and i love watching people worship in them.  i've started to think about myself as buddhist, and sometimes say yes when people ask me whether i am.  which is strange, since i've never specifically identified myself with any religion or spirituality that has a name, but also perhaps not unsurprising, given the meditating and listening to zen lectures and reading of buddhist books over the past years, and particularly the past year.  that said, i find the rituals at thai buddhist temples -- albeit beautiful -- fairly incomprehensible.  so when al and katae and kim took us to doi suthep, overlooking chiang mai, and katae explained what i'm supposed to do ... perfect. 

circle around the center of the temple three times, clockwise.  pray. 


light incense.  pray.


place flowers on offering plate.  pray.

light candles.  pray.  

stick coins to sticky rock.  kim is doing the honors here, dressed up in her traditional thai finery.

i still had some rupees left, and this seemed like a good place for them.


ring bells.  the sound prays for you.

find the stick-forest that corresponds to your eastern zodiac animal (e.g., horse, dragon).  put some money in the appropriate forest.  pray!

scoop up some flower scented water in a tiny silver bowl, and pour it over the buddha.  and ... pray!

Saturday, May 22, 2010

rockclimbing in railay

my first attempt at rockclimbing, on rai leh beach (near krabi), thailand.  i knew that rockclimbers were insanely fit and strongwilled people, but i had no real clue until i tried it myself.  it is exhausting.  it is exhilarating.  i love the feeling of being like, can i get up there?  i'm not sure.  and then just trying it.  and, incredibly, making it.  and then doing it again.  the human body has so much more to give than we usually give it credit for ... and not just the bodies of overpaid superstar sports freaks, either.  regular human bodies, like, for example, mine, are fully capable of awesome stuff.

choices

(a) herbal grass jelly beverage
(b) winter melon drink
(c) kickapoo joy juice (could this be as wonderful as it sounds?)
(d) wheatgrass beverage
(e) incomprehensible chinese drink
(f) bird's nest drink
(g) water chestnut drink
(h) less sweet soy beverage
(i) regular soy beverage
(j) aiskream soda
(k) sarsi soda
(l) boring old sprite 

Friday, May 21, 2010

late stories: india part 1: train toilet

on the train from varanasi to bodhgaya, i have to pee.  ok, no big deal.  unlike buses, trains at least have toilets, even if they look like this.  i'm not too picky these days -- my definition of "dirty" has radically shifted.  so i woozily make my way to the toilet part of the cart ... woozy because i'm running a little bit of a fever right about now, and we're saving cash by traveling sleeper class, which means no aircon, so i'm semi-pleasantly light-headed.  my business complete, i turn the handle to the door out.

nothing.

i jiggle it.  still nothing.  i work the door gently and cleverly back and forth.  nothing.  i shake the door violently and ... nothing.  i can't imagine how this could have happened.  maybe someone accidentally latched the door from the outside?  side note: i fundamentally disagree with rooms in public places that can be locked from the outside, and not unlocked from the inside.  maybe i am missing something?  i am a little out of it, after all.  but i don't really want to scream for help if there's some totally obvious way to unlock the door.  i have one of those crystalline moments, like: this is my life. and i am trapped in the toilet of an indian train

so then i notice that there is a little grate at the bottom of the door.  (i actually took the above picture on the train from bodhgaya to calcutta, but just pretend for a second.)  it's not very big, definitely narrower than shoulder-width, and not too tall.  maybe the size of a computer monitor?  but it is passable.  gross, but also excellent.  i shimmy through.  i verify that i was actually trapped -- the rattle of the train must have shaken the outside latch down over the door.

rejoining tom on the train:  "hey," i say.  "i just got trapped in the bathroom."  "really?"  says tom, looking up from his book.  "yup."  and that's really all there is to say about it.