Flight to Kolkata

Our first real taste of India came on the flight to Kolkata. The plane was filled with probably 95% Indians which made for an interesting couple of hours. One of the things I had heard about Indian culture is that personal space isn't something they're really into. This became quickly apparent as the lady next to Huyen more or less cuddle up next to her and went to sleep. No kidding, she ended up taking up about 25% of Huyen's chair. Behind us, about four Indian guys crammed into the three seats once the plane took off (although I don't think before the unfasten seat belt sign went off). The guys played cards behind us and weren't exactly not kicking my chair every thirty seconds.

However, the most telling example of how Indians aren't into following rules (blogs on littering, driving, etc. coming soon) came when the plane landed. Seemingly as soon as the plane touched down, nearly every Indian person jumped to their feet and began grabbing their bags from the overhead compartments. The Air Asia flight attendants got on the loud speakers and told everyone to sit down until we got to the gate. However, nobody listened. The flight attendants than basically went through the aisle and pushed people back into their seats. I really felt for this one flight attendant who looked completely dumbfounded and frustrated as she tried to get people to sit down; clearly this was a daily experience for her.

And with that, we begin the blogs on India...

Airport Scare

(PICTURE: Imagine me sprinting down those moving escalators.)

After checking in at the airport, we had about an hour and a half to kill...which left me just enough time to drop a Phuket curry off in the Bangkok airport bathroom. While I went to use the facilities, Huyen went to spend our remaining Thai Baht on some snacks for the airplane. We made a plan to meet at a very recognizable point in ten minutes. Well, after ten minutes I came back and Huyen wasn't there yet. I figured maybe she was in the bathroom or was really trying to stretch our remaining Thai money so I took a seat, opened my computer and watched a live stream of the Boston Bruins in the conference finals. After a couple of minutes of Huyen not showing up, I started to get nervous. However, the Bruins were on so my nerves were able to stay somewhat in check. After thirty minutes, I full started to panic.

If you've ever been to the Bangkok Airport, it's quite a gigantic place. I figured the worst thing I could do was to run around looking for Huyen considering there's probably 10,000 people in the International terminal at any one time. I decided the smartest thing to do was to go to our gate, thinking perhaps Huyen had gone there. Our gate though was the farthest one in the international terminal. I'd say it was a solid half mile from where we were supposed to meet. I got there pretty fast though since there were moving sidewalks all the way to the gate. However, of course Huyen wasn't there. I took a deep breath, maintained my composure and started jogging back to the point we said we would meet. Going back was harder since none of the moving sidewalks went in that direction. Just when I had gotten almost back to our meeting point, I saw Huyen. Initially I had been angry at her for not meeting where we said we would but that immediately went away when I saw how scared she was. It turns out, she went the wrong way in the airport and was waiting in section F, not section E. Huyen, who has never had the best sense of direction, got turned around when purchasing our snacks. Lets just say it was quite scary for both of us!

While waiting for Huyen/watching the Boston Bruins, I had checked my email. My friend Alex had emailed me a couple of times asking for help with our friend Brett's wedding speech. I told him that I didn't have time at the moment because I lost Huyen at the airport and our flight was leaving pretty soon. He wrote back, "Is this how the screenplay ends?" I thought that was pretty hilarious as it did feel like a very cinematic moment. Luckily, it had a happy ending as we found each other and got on our plane in time.

Check In Weirdo

(PICTURE: Air Asia flight attendants.)

If you've flown Air Asia before, you know that they are famous for having very beautiful flight attendants. In fact, I'm pretty sure they hire girls from modeling agencies to just walk around the Bangkok airport in Air Asia uniforms. I kid you not, there were a dozen Air Asia girls walking around the check-in area like runway models. Anyway, the girl who checked us in for our India flight was not one of those girls. She could have been very attractive but she was wearing a clown-level amount of make-up (I guess it is easy to get a complex when all your coworkers are hot). For me, paint-level amounts of make-up is an immediate sign that someone has some issues, probably not so hidden. This was confirmed when Huyen and I checked in. The girl took our passports and examined them for like five minutes. She did this in not so much a this-is-my-job way but rather a I'm-stoned-out-of-my-mind way. With bug eyes she looked over each page and after a couple of minutes said, "Your name should be Benjamin April because you're born in April." I smiled at her and I think said, "Well my father is born in August." Then she began to stare at our passports again and said, "You're going to India?". We nodded. She then looked completely perplexed, as if contemplating the creation of the universe, and added, "What's there to see in India?" I thought about handing her my guide book or a copy of Slumdog Millionaire (which I still think is over rated) but instead said, "I'll tell you next time I see you." To this she added a, "Yeahhhhhhhhhh."

After another couple of minutes she handed us our boarding passes and we backed away from the counter. Huyen and I both immediately turned to each other and started to giggle and slightly mock the girl. Well, perhaps we shouldn't have mocked her because for the first two weeks or so of our trip we basically hated India. Sure we had fun because we're together but both of us keep thinking that maybe we should have taken the clownish Air Asia girl more seriously.

I'm writing this post at the halfway point of our trip and my fingers are crossed that things will get better. For now though, bare with me on some slightly negative (and hopefully funny) posts.

Late Taxi

To be able to be on time for our flight to India, we had to take the earliest flight out of Phuket. Our flight was around 6:50AM so we had arrainged for a taxi to pick us up at 4:45. Huyen and I left our hotel room at 4:30 and walked to the lobby. As we were walking, a Thai hooker came out of the hotel room a couple of doors down from ours and walked a few feet behind us. She clearly wasn't a rookie as it seemed like the guy behind the front desk knew her well. Oh, Thailand.

Anyway, per usual, I was early for an appointment. However, the taxi driver was no August and showed up a solid 25 minutes late. Naturally I started to panic that we were gonna miss our flight since the airport was 50 minutes away. The front desk called the taxi company and they said the guy was on his way. Clearly we woke the guy up because he showed up in a wife-beater, looking like he had gone to bed within the hour. Yeah, not exactly the guy you want driving you to the airport...especially when he now has to speed/run red lights to get you there on time.

Luckily, we made it to the airport on time, checked-in were able to eat a quick breakfast (which the nice 4 star hotel had packed for us) and then jump on the plane and say goodbye to Phuket.

Huyen and I had fun on the island but it's definitely not my favorite spot in Thailand. If for some reason you're reading my blog and trying to decide which Thai island to go to, I'd skip Phuket and head to Ko Phanang.

Agoda

(PICTURE: Sunset at a Karon Beach.)

Before arriving in Phuket, I had emailed the owner and asked if he had wifi. He said no but that we could use the wifi from the resort next door. When we arrived, I asked him again about the wifi and he told me the only place to use it was in the shower house (the bungalows had shared bathrooms).

So after being totally screwed over by the owner/restaurant we immediately headed to the bathroom to search the web for a new hotel. F irst I should mention that the wifi was very very weak. At most, I had one bar -- more on this later. While doing my research on Phuket I came upon the hotel website Agoda. If you're not familiar with it, check it out. It's awesome. Immediately upon doing a search, we found out that the 4 star resort next door was offering a deal which made it just $5 more than our zero star bungalow. We thought about just moving next door but then we'd end up having to use the same dangerous/dirty beach. Instead, we decided to look for a place at one of the more famous Phuket beaches. We ended up finding a deal at a 4 star hotel called Diamond Cottages Spa and Resort. With tax, we paid $35 a night. That was over and 80% discount from what the hotel is listed as. Yeah, it was a steal. I tried to reserve the room just as a huge thunderstorm swept in and messed up the wifi. After spending nearly an hour and a half searching, we couldn't book our hotel.


(PICTURE: This gecko was next to us while we stole a resort's wifi signal.)

The next morning we awoke early and basically sat in front of the neighboring resort's entrance to use their wifi again. The signal was much stronger and we booked the hotel in about five minutes. We then had breakfast at our garbage site and ordered a taxi to take us to our new place. The taxi cost as much as the hotel since it was about an hour's drive. However, it was worth every penny.

Our new hotel was AWESOME. We had a gorgeous room (with AC) and were right between two nicer beaches. On top of that, the hotel had two fantastic pools. If you read my blog the other day, Huyen and I were now Category 1 travelers. We spent the next 48 hours as happy as could be. We went swimming in both beaches and pools and enjoyed lots of food that was overpriced but still tasty. Changing hotels, yeah, it was a great decision.

Thai Food

(PICTURE: Huyen on our isolated beach.)

I love Thai Food and couldn't wait to have some in Phuket. One of the features of the bungalow was that it had a supposedly pretty good restaurant. After going for a walk on the beach, Huyen and I had an evening meal. The food though was just okay. I've been to Thailand a few times (and Thai restaurants hundreds of times) and this place just wasn't anything special. I really wanted to love it, especially since it cost more than you would expect a bungalow's restaurant to cost.

Because of this, the next day Huyen and I went out in search of some better and cheaper food. We found just the spot about a ten minute walk from our bungalow. You see, as we had driven in the day before, we saw a handful of food stands by a construction site (they're building a new Holiday Inn near the bungalows). We went to the stands and ended up eating breakfast and lunch there. The food was quite good and totally authentic. The only problem was that it was next to a construction site and more or less a garbage dump. You know, besides the garbage it was great.

Here's the thing though, I felt a little guilty not eating at the bungalow especially since we were the only people staying there! There was another couple the night before but they checked out on our first full day. The restaurant was staffed with three girls who clearly had nothing to do except to cook for us...and we chose to eat elsewhere.

In the afternoon, we decided to have a little picnic and took our papaya salad, chicken skewers and Thai iced tea to the beach. I think the owner was a little peeved that we weren't eating at the restaurant because as soon as we sat down, three of his dogs basically jumped on us. We ended up having to walk quite far down the beach before the dogs would let us eat in peace.

Now all that said, we had planned on eating dinner again at the bungalow restaurant that night. I had specifically asked the owner what time the restaurant serves until and he said just to place our order before 9PM. Well, at 8PM we went to the restaurant and it was totally boarded up. This was a problem since we were starving and the construction site was closed. I wasn't too happy about this turn of events and wanted to say something to the owner who lives in a bungalow next to the restaurant. As we got close to the bungalow though his dogs starting to bark quite fiercely at us. The light was on inside his bungalow so we started yelling his name. And yup, he ignored us.

This was quite stupid on his part because we had planned on paying for two more nights and instead decided to check out the next morning...

Mai Kao Beach

(PICTURE: This was about as close to the water as I got.)

After doing a bunch of research, I found a place on Mai Kao beach that was supposedly the last beach side bungalows on Phuket. This wasn't exactly true considering that there was another beach side bungalow place down the beach; besides that though, we didn't see any others. The place was called Seaside Cottages and is run by a British expat named Malcolm. The place definitely lived up to its billing as bungalows by the beach and was exactly what we wanted..except for one thing -- the beach.

We arrived around 4PM and immediately dropped off our stuff in our bungalow and headed down to the water. I had planned on taking a nice sunset swim but was put off by how violently the waves were crashing at the shore. I went up to my thighs and could feel a very strong undertow. Where we were was very isolated but we could see quite far down the beach where there are four and five star resorts. There were a handful of people out and about down the way but NOBODY was in the water. Frankly the water was too scary to swim in for me, let alone Huyen. We ended up spending two nights at this place and didn't go into the ocean once. Upon leaving, I asked the owner when the best time to swim is. He said, "I don't know. I can't swim." I shit you not, the owner of a beachside "resort" can't swim.

The second problem with the beach was that it was FILTHY. It was as dirty as any Vietnamese beach I've ever been to. I asked Malcolm if this was because of debris from the tsunami a few years back and he said no, it was always like that.


(PICTURE: Beach trash.)