TFR: The Border, Part II

(Editor's note. Sorry to keep you all hanging but Croatia is a really beautiful place and the views from the beaches are a lot nicer than the ones from the internet cafes.)

Where was I? Oh yes, we were in line, confidently walking towards the ticket taker. I handed our tickets to her and she started to punch them and let us through. Then she made an odd face, handed the tickets back to me, and pointed to a guy who wasn't wearing any sort of official uniform. We started to get upset and demanded to know what was wrong. Unfortunately the ticket taker didn't speak any more English than we spoke Vietnamese. So we moved on to the guy we'd been directed to. He looked to be about 21 years old and he spoke English passably well. Well enough to tell us that our tickets were for the train that left at 8:30 anyway.

After taking that information in and digesting it for a few seconds I said, "I'm sorry, did you say these were for the 8:30 train?" The answer seemed so obvious and self evident to him. At least it must have, given the way he looked at me and said yes. So now we have to start to deal with a little bit of panic that is slowly creeping in on us. We asked him to please elaborate further. I showed him the time on the ticket that said "9:20". In turn, he pointed to the line that said Train Number: SP2 and then pointed to the time table on the wall. Sure enough, right there in black and white it said Train SP2 - 8:30, Train SP4 - 9:15. We looked at our tickets again in disbelief. See, we had never checked the train number. The first thing printed on the ticket was the time and that's all we'd looked at. The panic had increased it's approach from a slow creep to a steady gait at this point.

Next, we tried our patented approach in these types of situations, we played dumb (easier for me than Cece). I pointed to the time and said, "but is says right here that it doesn't leave until 9:20". He looked at the ticket I was showing him, then flipped to the second one, which was stapled to the back of the first one. He pointed to the time on that one, which, sure enough, said 8:30. So that was the issue. The people at the train station or travel agency or wherever the ticket had been issued wrote the wrong time on the ticket that was stapled on top. We had never bothered to look at the second ticket because they were stapled together. I felt my face go flush with embarrassment as I stood there, thinking I was the single stupidest person on the face of the earth. Cece took a different approach. She decided to get persuasive. She told the guy it wasn't our fault that someone wrote the wrong time on the ticket. Then she told him that someone needed to take care of the mix up because we were getting on that train that was now about 15 minutes away from heading out of the station (it was a good thing she was around, because at this point I was speechless). The guy we'd been talking to apparently didn't take very kindly to her tone of voice and went into a hissy fit, which caused both of us to back up a little, then he stalked off. We sort of looked at each other with surpised faces because we sure didn't see that coming.

The next few minutes are a bit of a blur because, to be honest, the panic was starting to make itself felt. After catching up to the guy who'd walked away from us I was able to assertain that we had a couple of options. We could hop on the back of two motorbikes, fully loaded down with our backpacks, and chase the train to the next stop...a mere 40 kilometers down the road. For the briefest of moments this actually sounded plausible to us. We even went outside the station with the guy and found a couple of motorbike drivers willing to take on the job. Then our sanity returned and we thought about a few pertinent facts of the situation. 1) We didn't have nearly enough money to pay the drivers for the 40 km ride.

DRAT...time is up for now. Another to be continued!!

Tales From the Rails

(Editor's note...this is going to be an ongoing series where I pass along some amusing stories from our travels by train on the trip. So far we've taken train rides in Vietnam, India, France, and Italy. Hopefully you'll all be able to see the humor in them...even if we did almost get stranded in a small Vietnamese town on the Chinese border.)

Chapter I: The Border

You know how it is. You're on the back of a moped speeding through the streets of a small Vietnamese town on the Chinese border, going from one ATM to another because none of them will accept your bank card. Your wife is five kilometers away at the train station, trying to figure out a way to get on the last train out of town. You have about 25,000 dong in your pocket (about $1.65) and two tickets for the 8:30 train. Unfortunately it is now ten after nine and the last train back to Hanoi leaves in five minutes. I mean really, we've all had days like this, right?

As crazy as it sounds, we actually did find ourselves in this predicament just about two months ago. Cece and I decided to visit the town of Sapa in the mountains of Northwest Vietnam to do some hiking. After spending two wonderful days trekking in the shadows of Mt. Fansipan, Vietnam's highest peak, we were heading back to Hanoi on the overnight train. As we had taken the overnight train up there from Hanoi with no problems we thought we were in for an easy time. Yeah, well we were wrong.

The evening started out smoothly as our bus from Sapa to the town of Lau Cai (home to the train station) arrived in plenty of time. We got to the area around the bus station just before 8:00 and our tickets said we didn't leave until 9:20. So we sat at a little cafe with other travellers and talked about our trekking adventures and about the details surrounding a death of a foreigner that had taken place while were in Sapa. We all watched as three Scandanavian girls argued with the shuttle bus driver after they found out their tickets were booked for the following night's train instead of that night. "Wow...glad that's not happening to us" I said to Cece as I rechecked that our tickets had the right date on them. Sure enough, right there on the front of the ticket it said Sunday, April 23, 21:20.

After walking around a little we decided to head up to the train station. We got inside in time to watch the last stragglers for the 8:30 train go through security and head to the train. A few minutes later the 8:30 pulled out of the station (short by two passengers as we were soon to find out) and made its way to Hanoi. A couple of minutes later the rail station staff opened up the doors and started letting people get onto the 9:15 train. Now, I had noticed when we first walked up to the train station that there was not a 9:20 train. Instead there was an 8:30 and a 9:15. I just assumed (I know, I know) that the train's time had changed or the people at the ticket office in Hanoi had just written the number slightly wrong. So, as we made our way through the line, we had no idea that anything was wrong.

To be continued...

A Little Help Here People

Okay, not that either of us are overly superstitious or anything, but today is June 6, 2006 (6/6/06) and we are flying from Delhi to Bombay tonight on Air Deccan Flight 666. So, if anyone would like to offer up a prayer that our pilot's name isn't Damien, we'd certainly appreciate it. Thanks and have a great day.

I'm Melting

Okay Bangkok, you have officially been usurped as the hot, hot, hottest destination on the Sharp World Tour 2006 by...North Central India! Congratulations go out to Delhi and Agra where we have been cooked by temperatures ranging somewhere between the boiling point of mercury and the surface of the sun over the last couple of days. At breakfast this morning our butter was melting in it's dish...inside with fans blasting. And I don't mean "slowly getting soft" melting. I mean, "we could have tossed in some asparagus and sauteed it up" melting. So you could say we're looking forward to the expected temps in Europe when we get there Thursday morning. Except that I saw the weather report for Germany this morning on BBC World and it was only 44 in Dusseldorf and 48 in Cologne. Can't we get some moderate temperatures here people???

Quiz #2

Okay, time for another quiz to see who all is checking in with us out there. And just so all the goodies don't get shipped off to beautiful upstate New York, previous winners (ahem, Shoemakers) are not eligible to win (don't worry, we haven't forgotten about you guys...a postcard from India is on the way).

So, our favorite place in India so far (by a mile and a half) was the tiny village of Hampi, located in the central part of the state of Karnataka. This was a cool place to chill out for a few days amid the ruins of the Vijayanagar Hindu empire that ruled in the 13th to 15th centuries in Southern India. The town is centered around a large temple with a 50 meter high entrance gate that dominates all the views from town. Can you tell me the name of this temple? Also, there is a World Heritage designated site around another temple, this one in ruins, near Hampi. Can anyone tell us the name of the ruined temple. I'll give you a little hint. They both start with the letter V.

Good luck!

Taking Stock at the Halfway Point (two weeks late)

Okay, so I know it's June 1 and the halfway point was actually May 14. I fully intended to write this post back then in Chiang Mai, Thailand but several conspiratorial forces combined to thwart my attempts. Chiefly among them were a power outage and a drunken Scotsman named Mickey. So, without further ado, let's get some stats going here. And just so you know, I'm counting all travel up to this point.

Countries Visited: Nine
New Zealand
Australia
Singapore
China
Hong Kong (we are counting this as separate from China)
Vietnam
Thailand
Cambodia
India

Capital Cities Visited: Seven
Canberra
Singapore
Beijing
Hong Kong
Hanoi
Bangkok
Phnom Penh

Plane flights taken: Nineteen
LA-Auckland
Auckland-Sydney
Melbourne-Hobart (RT)
Sydney-Cairns (RT)
Sydney-Singapore
Singapore-Beijing
Beijing-Hong Kong
Hong Kong-Bangkok
Bangkok-Hanoi
Hanoi-Danang
Danang-Saigon
Saigon-Bangkok
Bangkok-Phuket (RT)
Bangkok-Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh-Bangkok
Bangkok-Bangalore

Airlines Flown: Seven
Air New Zealand
Jet Star
Singapore Airlines
Air China
Thai International
Pacific Airlines
One, Two, Go!

Modes of Transport: Ten
Airplane
Boat
Automobile
Train
Motorbike
Rickshaw
Tuk Tuk
Zorb ball
Elephant
Bungee cord (it might have only been a 150 foot trip, but it counts!)

Buckets of Alcohol consumed: Three
All three consisted of rum, coke, and Red Bull. It's all Melissa's fault.

Towers of Beer consumed (same night): One
I suppose I should take parital blame for that one. But the accountant in the group (Cece) made us finish it. And by us, I mean me.

Toilets puked in (that night): One
And it wasn't me!

Total pukings: Four
Each of us owe one to the demons of alcohol (see the comment about the drunken Scotsmen above) and I've had two heaves because of not having enough food with my anti malarial medicine.

Elephants encountered: Three
We rode one in Thailand. We avoided one at a Buddhist temple in Cambodia. And we got blessed by one at a Hindu temple in India.

Monkeys spotted: Countless
We've seen more monkeys on this trip than anyone should ever have the pleasure of encountering. From Thailand to Cambodia to India, the monkeys have made their presence felt.

Drat...my hour is up. More to come.

Storm Looms Over Goa

That was the front page headline in the English language newspaper in Goa the day we arrived. The picture that accompanied the story was of a huge shipping freighter which had been beached by the storm. The next story on the front page was titled "Margao Prepares for Flooding". Take a wild guess in which city we got off the train (which was two hours late because of all the rain). We got dumped on running from the train to the station (which was dark because the power was out). I got soaked to the bone waiting to get a taxi. Then we proceeded to spend the next hour driving from guest house to hotel to resort looking for a place that wasn't trying to charge through the nose for a flooded, rat-hole of a room. It took a while because of the torrential rainfall and all the downed trees and power lines we had to avoid. All we wanted was a few days at the beach to relax...was that too much to ask?

In the end we found a decent beach resort that had by far the cleanest rooms we'd seen and was reasonably priced. Of course the electricity was out (and according to today's newspaper it still is...three days later) so we carried around our little flashlight and used candles to light the room after dark. We found a really good vegetarian restaurant for lunch and a little bar full of Englishmen where we downed a few cold beers to pass the time. To borrow a phrase from Mr. Costanza, 'the sea was angry that day my friends. Like an old man trying to send soup back at a diner'. We spent about ten minutes standing on the beach watching the frothy water whip back and forth as the wind blew the coconut palms halfway to the ground. We dipped our toes in the Arabian Sea as images of calm water and sunny skies danced in our minds. Then the Indian lifeguard started blowing his whistle and yelling at people to get out of the water (no one was more than knee deep and this guy was going nuts shouting at people). So we made our way back to our room and read some more.

So, among the lessons we've discovered on the trip so far we'll put this one near the top: this whole "monsoon season" thing they always talk about in Asia isn't made up. Monsoon is derived from a Malay word meaning wind. It should come from a word that means "never-ending downpour that drenches Western tourists who show up during the wrong time of the year". Actually, in our defense the monsoon wasn't supposed to start until June. It just kicked in a few days too early.

Well, now that our beach vacation has been tossed aside we're trying to make our way up to Bombay to continue our journey. Hopefully we'll get on the overnight train this evening and arrive in Bombay sometime tomorrow morning. I say hopefully for a couple of reasons. First, we're on a wait list for our tickets. We did the same thing on the train from Bangalore to Hampi and it worked out fine. We just have to check with the train station this afternoon to see if our number has come up due to cancellations. Second, the train has been running a wee bit late the last few days due to the rain. In fact, yesterday's Konkan Kanya Express (the one we want to be on) which is supposed to leave Goa at 6:00 PM was scheduled to leave around 6:30...this morning. The guy at the reservation office said they hoped today's delays wouldn't be nearly as long. Ironically the morning trains are only running a couple of hours behind. So if we don't make it off the wait list on tonight's train we might leave just a couple of hours later on tomorrow morning's train instead. Ahh, the joys of travelling in India.

Stay tuned for the forthcoming story of our exciting train journey from Hospet to Hubli. I'll leave you with this teaser. You know when you see those headlines in the paper that say "Commuter Train Wreck in India: hundreds dead, 10,000 injured"? And you think to yourself, "10,000 people!!?? That's a small city, not the number of people on a train". You're wrong. They do fit that many people on a train. We've been part of it and Cece even had to pull our little French travelling companion onto the train as it started to roll out of the station.

Until next time...