Fruits are my best friend in India

It’s been two weeks now that I have been in Pune and finally I am feeling a little more settled than the first week. I have to admit that I still feel somewhat tired and maybe that has something to do with the heat and humidity. Even though I get about seven hours of sleep a night, I don’t feel 100% energetic especially in the afternoon. After lunch at Vinaya’s place I feel so tired that I often do nothing other than resting underneath the fan in her house. This has been going on for two weeks now. It doesn’t sound much of an exciting vacation right? But hey, that’s the nitty-gritty reality of living in India for you. Having only traveled during the monsoon, I know it’s best just to stay indoors in the afternoon and not to go outside when it’s raining. The only time I venture outdoors is to go off for a swim in the morning from 8:30-10:30am and then walking back and forth from my place to Vinaya’s. Even then, you’ll be surprised to see how tan I’ve become and that’s only due to two hours of exposure in the Indian sun--thankfully it hasn’t been direct sunlight otherwise I guess I would have been baked beyond recognition. 

Swimming has been really a life saver for me here in India. It’s the only form of exercise that I get, hence I’m very grateful to have the privilege of indulging in swimming this summer in this 50 meter pool which is close to where I live. It’s like a five minute on rickshaw and less than 1.3km away. I don’t like walking because the roads can be dangerous with all the traffic. Fortunately for me, it is only one of two pools in the entire city that is this big. 

Due to the hot, oily, and spicy food here in India, it’s pretty easy to put on a lot of weight and because India is such an overpopulated country it’s hard to get any kind of exercise whatsoever, and so the majority of Indian people are very fat. Men, women, and children. This unfortunately is the sad reality of India. The only ones who are skinny and fit are laborers, maids, etc. Everyone else is fat, fat, fat. The sad thing about it is that they know that it is not good for them, but because their country is so overpopulated they have a hard time changing their lifestyle. And it’s not that Indian people eat more than me..it’s actually the other way around. I can eat twice as much as someone who’s twice my size, but I burn off most of what I eat maybe from my high metabolism or from my swim. Whereas most Indian people don’t do enough physical exercise that’s why it’s  too easy for them to put on weight. 

I’ve also grown somewhat tired of eating Indian food; my palate is growing a little bored with it’s taste. I went out to eat with my friend Vaibhav and we had some pretty delicious veg food but it wasn’t something that I would crave for more. Whereas in Vietnam I wouln’t think twice about eating the same dish a second time (which was exactly what I did)--come to think about it, I would be very happy to have Vietnamese food in India. Vietnam has somewhat of the same humid tropical weather as in India, but due to a diet that is heavy in fresh greens, many dishes that are watery broth-based, and not so much emphasis on oily food, Vietnamese are leaner. I didn’t see too many fat people in Vietnam whereas here in India fat people are such a common sight that the feeling of disgusts and repugnance often comes up. Sigh. I am grateful for Indian philosophy and it’s rich culture, but almost everything about modern India just put me off and the problem again is due to overpopulation. India’s future does not look bright--rampant corruption and it’s sluggish mindset makes it hard for me to believe that it will ever change fast enough to tackle its myriad social problems. And the problems simply are staggering due to the crazy population growth. 

Fruits are my best friend here in India, especially bananas. On Wednesday I thought I came down with food-poisoining but luckily it was just eating some very spicy veg dish that I stupidly bought at a Bar-Restaurant for dinner. The restaurant looked clean enough from the outside with a lot of people but beware of any “bar” sign in India. It will most likely mean a place for men to smoke and booze indoors! I could hardly breathe inside and waited for my food outside. Vinaya’s nephew, Pushkar, told me later that food in bars are a lot spicier than regular food and so they must be avoided at all cost. That entire night, I slept so poorly that I thought I was done for. I felt like throwing up but resisted the temptation because I didn’t like the gag feeling. My stomach was literally burning and probably my intestines too. I was feverished that entire night and my whole body was aching. I woke up in the morning with bad diarrhea and had to use the bathroom twice. Thank god for the internet, I did some research on traveler’s diarrhea and found out that I needed to eat a ton of bananas and drink lots of fluids which was exactly what I did when I found out that it was probably not food poisoining but the heavy use of green chilis that they caked in the veg-meat balls that I ordered. I lost all my appetite that whole day and went to Vinaya’s house to rest and told her about my ordeal in the morning. Thank god, I regained some of my energy by 5pm and was strong enough to go to my yoga class at 7. The only thing that I missed that day was my morning swim. Only one day was ruined so far in this entire trip due to bad food--not bad right? 

Ever since that ordeal, I have been pretty cautious with any dish that has even a slight trace of spiciness in it or at least to counter the spice by eating one entire watermelon. Not sure whether it does me any good but my philosophy is that eating fruits here in India can’t hurt. However I stay away from apples and oranges, apples because of the heavy use of pesticides and oranges because of the prohibitive costs. I think they import their oranges from the US and so it gets costly. I mainly eat bananas, mangoes, figs, and just the last few days started eating one watermelon a day. Their melons are small and probably a quarter the size in the US and cheap. It only costs me about 30 to 40 rupees for one, which is about 80 cents. Since I’m a little too lazy to ask for a refrigerator for my apartment, I am somewhat forced to eat an entire melon everytime I cut one which is fine. Eating it solves all kinds of dehydration problem in India. However figs can’t be heavily indulged because I read that eating too much can cause tooth decay which is probably true since I felt some senstivity in my mouth after eating too many of them. Whereas mangoes I can easily it more than four a day and bananas, well, I eat so many of them that I won’t get offended if you called me a monkey. HAHAHA!! I love them..delicious and packed full of energy. I love eating them before my swim, during my swim, and sometimes after my swim. 

Settling in Pune

It’s been just a little over a week that I have arrived in Pune and surprisingly it took me around five days to really get over my “jet lag.” I’m still getting up a little too early more than I would like to even though I usually go to bed by 10. Since I don’t have any pressing traveling plans this time around in Pune, I feel very free. 

Vinaya with the help of some her of friends found me a very nice apartment which is about 10 minute walk from her place to mine. It is a lot quieter than her place. The apartment for three months rent cost me 33,000 rupees which is close to $600. And because India is truly a dusty country (I don’t know why), every morning when I get up around 6, I spend a good half-hour to an hour doing my laundry, sweeping, and mopping my place with an old dhoti that I have. It’s a good routine and I’ve been doing for a week now. Afterwards, I would have two alfonso mangoes and two bananas before I leave my place for Vinaya’s with my stuff, drop it off at her place, and go off for a swim at an Olympic size pool from 8:30am-10:30am. The pool is actually freaking awesome--outdoor, clean, and dirt cheap. I only pay 850 rupees for a monthly membership which is ~$15. The pool is actually quite clean now that I think about it even though at first I thought it was dirty, the visibility under water, however, is no more than five feet--not sure why that is so. My only pet peeve about swimming there is that from 8:30-9am it can get somewhat crowded and with no lane regulation, hitting people while swimming is a pretty common occurrence. But it really dies down from 9am-10:30 when kids go off to school and other people go off to work and so I have pretty much most of the pool all to myself. Time to learn how to do the butterfly stroke and be good at it during this two months that I will be swimming there. 

After my swim, I head home to take a shower, eat another mango or so, and then head to Vinaya’s place again for a simple home-made but delicious lunch that she prepared in the morning before she go off on her morning walk. We generally have lunch at around 12:45. And since I was still too tired to do anything the first five days in Pune I rested after lunch. Vinaya also helped me sign up for a yoga class that is close to where she lives and I started a class on Friday evening from 7:15-8pm. The class will be Monday thru Friday in the evening. She also found me a philosophy teacher who I will probably take lessons from three to four times a week. I still want to learn Pali but unfortunately the teacher who was supposed to teach me is reluctant to because in the summer she is affiliated to this organization called AIIS (American Institute for Indian Studies) where scholars, and PhD students from America come to India for a period of three months to study Sanskrit or other Indian studies intensively. Vinaya on the other hand is reluctant to find me other teachers because she said that she doesn’t want people whose interest is only to make money from me which is true. I wouldn’t want any teachers whose intention is to cheat me. I’ve already had one the first time I traveled to India and I wouldn’t want to make that mistake again. However, I already told Vinaya that I will not wait three months for this Pali teacher to finish teaching at AIIS before she gets time to teach me. Living in India taught me NEVER to wait for anything. If I want something to be done I need to demand for it immediately otherwise nothing will ever get done. It’s just the way how Indians do things--of course it’s not very professional but what can you do. Vinaya knows that it would be a very big financial loss for this teacher if she loses me as a student because like Vinaya, this teacher doesn’t have a regular university position and so she has to depend on teaching privately. And Vinaya insists that this is the ONLY teacher that I should have for Pali because of her sincerity and knowledge. 

I still need to figure out what I will be doing in the afternoon since I generally have that time free. In the eveing, Vinaya and her brother Amod do not eat dinner so I usually have to order a take out at some random restaurants. I need to find out more good places to eat since the dinner that I had yesterday was pretty crappy. Only in the morning am I really busy when I have to clean the apartment and go off for a swim. Otherwise life has been really good, eating good home-cook meals at Vinaya’s place and sometimes being invited to eat at other people’s house. That’s the one thing that I cherish the most, home cooked food, it is almost always better than the food found in restaurants. 

continuation of Bangkok tales and off to India

We set out on Thursday to MBK mall (Mahboonkrong) in Bangkok and we both thought that we would have to search a lot to find an iphone 4s battery for Mako and a charger for me but surprisingly in that mall there was pretty much every electronic items that you can possibly want. It was like having an actual and physical ebay mall. It was so simple and straightforward, and since I thought Mako was in desperate need to get her battery, we bought it immediately at the first shop that had it without bargaining for a better price. Mako ended up paying 1000 baht which is about $33. For my charger, I got a better deal though. The person was nice enough to knock 250 baht for me. The longer I stay in Thailand, which is really not long enough, I really appreciate the Thai’s people hospitality. Thailand is such a beautiful country and I wish that Vietnam will someday be as developed as Bangkok. After a couple of hours of charging the phone and making sure that it was a battery problem, we settled for sushi at an all you can eat sushi buffet for 660 baht around $20 for the two of us. It was a bargain and it is the first time ever that I was completely stuff after eating sushi. In the late afternoon, we headed back to our guest house and worked on our blog at the restaurant where we were staying for the rest of the evening while I soaked in my last evening in Bangkok. Suprisingly taking a cab in Bangkok is not too expensive, a 15 to 20 min cab ride only costs around $3-4 dollars which puzzles me because I always thought that the price of gas always makes driving more of an expensive option. 

On Friday morning, I was picked up promptly at 9am to Suvarnabhumi airport for my 12:30pm flight to Delhi. I booked with a budget airline and really expected cram seats but for some reason or another the flight agent always give me great seats that are right next to the exit doors--there’s plenty of leg room and I actually felt kind of bad for the other 180+ passengers who didn’t have enough room. One dude who was sitting on the aisle had to put his leg up to the arm rest. At first I thought it was a nice gesture from the flight agent, but then I realize it was probably more than luck when my second flight from Delhi to Mumbai I had another seat that was right next to the exit again, I guess there must be something more to it. God knows why the flight agent likes foreigners so much that they give me one of the best seats on a budget airline. Is it because I’m American dressed in a traditional Indian garb? I have no idea. 

From Bangkok to Pune which is only separated by one and a half hour time zone took almost 18 hours of traveling time. My flight departure from Bangkok was at 12:35pm and I reached Delhi at 2:30pm India time. I had to wait until 8pm from Delhi to Mumbai--I could have saved myself a ton of time had I been able to fly directly from Delhi to Pune but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I reached Mumbai at 10:30pm and took a while to get oriented to find a car stand where I booked from KK Travel cab that takes me to Pune. I didn’t reach Vinaya’s home until 3am in the morning and by then I felt like I was again jetlag and tired. I slept for four hours on Saturday morning from 4am-8am and now it’s been close to a week that I’ve been here in Pune and this time around, I already feel that this trip unlike last year will be more enjoyable. As I adjust to living in India, I will keep you folks up to date. 

Bangkok travels

The last two and a half days in Bangkok has been truly a wonderful experience as I got to hang out with Mako, my former philosopohy teacher twelve years ago when I was a student at city college. We shared many of our travels and it was delightful hearing many of her stories about India and all the other countries that she visited after her six months visa expired. Mako is one of the of the most resilient person that I know and despite seeing extreme poverty in India, she did not feel dismissive but felt completely at home. I have said earlier that India is really not for the faint of heart--the dirtiness found in this country of 1.2 billion people will shock and repulse western minds into disbelief. The spiritual India that I thought I would find on my first trip was displaced by the unspeakable suffering of an overpopulated country struggling for its daily existence. And being cheated on my second trip, I became extremely jaded with the people but despite all of the difficult experiences of the previous year my love for Sanskrit and Buddhism make me want to only come back for more. Among the people who’ve taken me for a fool, there are also a lot of good people here who have sincerely helped me. Not only have I grown mentally stronger, I know that I am extremely fortunate to have a Sanskrit teacher like Vinaya whose simple honesty will help me on my path to mastering this language. 

Thailand in contrast to India is quite a fascinating country. I don’t know what to say about Thai people other than their friendliness is simply unrivalled in this part of the world. Here is a country that exemplifies the notion that you don’t have to speak the language to be friendly towards foreigners. There is a lack of aggressiveness and  assertiveness that I see too often in India. Mako and I stayed in a guest-house that was right on Khao San road which is a strip that is half a kilometer long filled with restaurants, hotels, and massage parlors catered to westerners. There are probably more westerners here than Thai people. And after exploring the nearby premises on our first day, I pretty much concluded that there was really nothing here that was interesting. The one thing that struck me was that I lost all sense of time when we were there and I don’t mean that in a good way. Every night was like a Friday night, there were lots of boozing and partying and local singers performing at a number of restaurants. In that stretch of block, around 7pm music would blast until after midnight. There were a lot of westerners and what really annoyed me the most was that there was a lot of smoking and as a health freak, I hated the smell of cigarettes. But on a positive note, Mako and I spent quite a bit of time talking about our travels and experiences that I lost all sense of time--two to three hours went by so quickly--I guess that naturally happens when you’re having so much fun. 

On Wednesday evening Mako realized how her iphone battery was not taking charge and with my 3G Ipad we were able to find out information on where to go and find her a replacement battery. We had a horrible wireless reception in our room so I couldn’t use my laptop. We found out that we needed to go to a mall close to downtown Bangkok and decided that Thursday will be spent at a mall where she will get her battery and I will get a new macbook charger because for some reason or another the voltage here in Asian countries completely destroyed my other adapter that I bought on ebay two months prior to my trip.  

My advise for my fellow travelers is to always have technology when traveling. It will pay off in leaps and bounds because traveling has been made so much easier in this day and age with the power of smartphones and tablets. Imagine being able to use skype, facebook, or google using 3G everywhere in the country that you are traveling in--on the roads, in small towns, and in the countryside. However, in India it’s really a bitch to get what you need for your iphone, ipads, and 3G for your laptop. The sim is close to impossible to get if you are a foreigner, so you need someone to vouch for you and then there’s a ton of paperwork to fill out. This useless bureaucratic process is very typical of India and it’s what really makes it so damn frustrating to travel in. The airports have free wifi for 20 mins complementary provided you have an Indian mobile number. What they don’t take into account is international travelers who don’t have Indian mobile numbers, I swear this is almost very typical of India--whoever runs the country don’t really think things through before setting on a course of action and so whenever they are finished with building something it is completely rife with problems. I mean this has never been the legacy of India at least not in its philosophy. Indians, in my opinion, have always been great thinkers and navigators of the human mind. Just what the hell happened? It was never this hard to get a sim in Vietnam or in Thailand. In both of these countries I was able to get it in a matter of minutes whereas in India, it sometimes would take days, weeks, and even months. 

I have probably been ranting a lot about India in the last couple of posts, but after arriving in Pune safe and sound at 3am on Saturday and seeing Vinaya finally after nine and a half months, I once again feel a strong affection for the honest and simple people who are living in this corrupt-ridden country. Now it's just a matter of settling down here in Pune and taking life very slowly day by day--studying Sanskrit, yoga, swimming, and traveling around the state of Maharashtra with my teacher. 

Some observations of Vietnam

I’ve spent my last two days in Vietnam in Saigon swimming at a small 25m pool, and taking a stroll with my aunt and cousin at a lotus park close to where my hotel was. The last few days was also spent eating a ton of delicious food and figuring out what we’ll do when I come back in mid-August for my second stint of Vietnam before I fly back to SF. Vietnam is truly a robust country with plenty of developments happening. I hope that in a period of ten to twenty years the country will be even more developed like some of its Southeast Asian neighbors. There are two metropolis in Vietnam: Hanoi in the north and Saigon (i.e. Ho Chi Minh City) in the south. The streets to my surprise are very clean for big cities like this. While there is somewhat a lack of garbage cans, people put their garbage out responsibly and there are collectors who pick them up throughout the day. The only problem that I have seen so far is the amount of traffic in the city. There are too many two wheelers on the streets which can cause bad traffic congestion during rush hour. While the pollution is nothing compared to India or China, many Vietnamese are aware that they do not want to be breathing in fumes and so you will have a lot of people wearing face masks when they’re riding their scooters--personally, I’m not too sure how effective they are. Vietnam now is also building overpasses which I hope will alleviate the congestion. What I would like to see more are buses and investments in mass transmit. 

As far as I know, the food is hygienic. Vietnamese for some reason are concerned where their food comes from and what kind of water they are drinking. My relatives are not a fan of the Chinese food industry and I don’t think that Vietnam import much food grown from China due to our fears that it might be contaminated. I read in the news a few months back that officials found 16,000 dead pigs in the Shanghai river and just a few weeks ago some people were arrested for lacing rat meat into pork to maximize their profits. Vietnamese are aware of all that, hence when I was in Vietnam I preferred to eat more of seafood than pork. In terms of water, we don’t have crazy water shortage like there is in India. I took at least six showers a day in order to cope with the high humidity--that’s a luxury that is not available at all when I stay in India. In many parts of Pune, water supply is cut off after 10 in the morning and will not come back again, and so most residents have to fill up a 20 gallon tub of water that will last them for the entire day. 

Vietnamese people get their drinking water from 10 gallon bottles that are distributed from water companies, rarely will household use tap water due to the fear of contamination. Our rice fields and the green vegetables that Vietnamese grow abundantly and used in so many of our dishes are probably organic too. I guess it’s what you would expect from countries before the whole agro business industry that changed and distorted the mindset of people and their relationship to food. It was somewhat strange to see chickens ranging freely since I’ve been so accustomed to seeing them in cages in India. The chickens that I saw were small to medium sized and come in a variety of different colors and not the plump and sickly varieties that are all pale white found in India. But the one thing that I am concern about is the fact that we have too much pork in our diet and I didn’t see any free-ranging pigs--heck I didn’t see any pigs at all for that matter.  

The one thing that I don’t like so much about Vietnam is the way how we construct our houses. I’m sure there are better ways to build houses so that it doesn’t trap the heat and make it feel completely stuffy and unbearable. The vast majority of the houses are build as if it is a slim tower with lots of depth, but lack all sense of spaciousness. It’s hard to describe the actual structure and to add insult to injury, Vietnamese are obsessed with building gates and fences as if robbers are going to break into their house and steal all their possessions. But I’ve seen some really beautiful mansions too, hopefully that will be a sign of what’s to come. I’m very excited about Vietnam’s potential in the future. On this trip to my homeland, I feel more connected to the country than I did last year. What ties me to the country is the shared language and the delicious food with its subtle differences in different parts of the country. People are friendly to each other but a little reserve when it comes to foreigners, unlike Thailand which is probably the friendliest country that I have been to. In many ways it was simply amusing to hear people making witty and sometimes sarcastic remarks about life and other people. It was such a relief to observe my countrymen taking a very light-hearted approach to living.