Back to Japan, Golden Week Adventures

Back home(?) in Japan! Recently recovered from my Indian stomach dilemma and absolutely ravenous, I cannot tell you how long I’d been looking forward to real Japanese food. I spent at least 5 hours of my 10 hour flight droolfully planning what I would be eating as soon as I arrived. I met my buddy Chieko in the airport and we headed straight to the nearest restaurant. I ordered tenzaru soba, cold soba noodles with a plate of veggie tempura at the side, oh yeess, yuuum yum yum---but wait---there was a slight problem, what was this? It was TASTELESS! My pallet had been burnt out from two months of spice laden Indian food! Luckily my subtler taste buds have since recovered and I can thoroughly enjoy my food.

I arrived to Japan on the first day of Ravioli’s week long holiday, and he was ready to get on the road. As soon as I got over my jet-lag we gathered up the tent and some road snacks, hopped in his little Jeep-like Pajero Mini and ventured south.

First stop: somewhere in the middle of Japan, somewhere
It was 3 am and neither of us could drive any longer. Sure, our island of Honshu is the mere size of California, but California is big! Exhausted, we parked in front of a convenience store at a rest stop that had high-tech heated toilet seats---tempting being warmer than the inside of the car---but no, that’s wrong, you can’t do that; we pulled the blankets from the back seat and slept in the car. zzzzzzz.

Second stop, and first real stop: Hiroshima
Arriving at dusk, we were just in time to wander about the Peace Memorial Park and eat some of Hiroshima’s famous okonomiyaki. If any of you have tried okonomiyaki (and I know many of you have since I have personally taken you all to okonomiyaki restaurants on visits) you might remember the Japanese pancakes made of flour and cabbage and fried there at your own table, correct? Well Hiroshima’s version is even better, with a slate of fried noodles underneath and they cook it for you! These things are so big, after one you will swear off food for the next week. Unless you are Ravioli, in which case you will also happily devour my leftovers.

Hiroshima okonomiyaki
We decided to stay in Hiroshima for the night and proceeded door to door in search of an available and cheap room. Believe me, it’s not easy finding a decently priced hotel room during Japanese “Golden Week” when everyone and their pet stag beetle is on holiday. The cheapest option in town was a “Love Hotel” near the park. Japanese love hotels are infamously glitzy, with a panel of pictures of the rooms at the entrance from which to select your nightly escapade. Love hotels are apparently a necessity in this country where everyone lives with their parents. And with karaoke machines in each room, mini vending machines full of interesting merchandise and huge fancy bathtubs, they are much more fun than ordinary hotels.

I wanted Ravioli to see the Peace Memorial Museum. It’s not a fun thing to do as the museum can be a little graphic, but it makes you think about things. On Aug. 6, 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped just meters from what is now designated as the Peace Park (and from our Love Hotel), destroying everything and everyone for a radius of 2km. The museum is really good; it doesn’t accuse or make excuses, but shows the history, reasons for and effects of the bomb and the stories of its survivors, and makes a strong plea for world peace. On the park grounds is the Flame of Peace that Hiroshima vows to keep alit until all nuclear weapons are obliterated, and the A-Bomb Dome, a spooky skeleton of a concrete building that actually survived the bombing. We sniffled our way back into the car out of the city to our next destination.

The red ball shows where the bomb detonated, with the city in destruction below Hiroshima at night, the A-Bomb Dome is at the left

Next stop: Miyajima Island In its glory day the whole island of Miyajima was worshipped as a god by the Shintoists, and neither women nor common people were allowed to step afoot here. It’s torii, or red shrine gate, is one of Japan’s “Best Three Views” that everyone Japanese should supposedly see in their lifetime. I had only known Miyajima as the island Chieko and I tried to visit on New Year’s Day years ago and got stuck in impossible bumper-to-bumper temple traffic for hours until we gave up and turned around. This time there was no traffic, and Ravi and I were sailing on the ferry to the island in no time. The tide was low, so our lovely view of the shrine gate was in the mud, but I enjoyed having seen my second of Japan’s Best Three. (My first was in the north in Sendai of a rocky bay swarming with tourist boats and fishing nets, a place that Dad remembers only for what he calls the best pizza of his lifetime. I personally think Japan needs to reorganize its top three lists.)

Next stop: Aso volcano and Beppu Hot Springs resort area, Kyushu
Kyushu is the southernmost of Japan’s big four islands, and Ravioli was determined to make it here no matter how much highway tolls cost no matter what the price of gas was soaring at and no matter how many hours of “California” we had to sit through. With one of Japan’s most famous hot springs resort areas and biggest active volcanoes, I was not one to complain. The weather is warmer in the south and we discovered the joys of cheap accommodation in the campgrounds. I pampered myself in mud baths and took Ravioli to hell, Beppu’s hell, that is, a neighborhood of volcanic steam vents and belching mud that the Japanese call Jigokudani, or Hell Valley.

Shannen in hell Later we ventured to a really cool and well-hidden hot springs town called Kurokawa where you can bathe in natural caves.

Cave bath Do you remember when you were a kid having those nights before something so exciting you just couldn’t sleep from anticipation? That was Aso volcano for us. We woke at 6:30am, packed up the tent and started our ascent. Aso is pretty active now, but about 100,000 years ago it produced an eruption strong enough to create a caldera with a circumference of 128km (about 80 miles). Literature calls it the biggest caldera in the world (isn't Yellowstone supposed to be the biggest caldera in the world??), and there are farms, cities, and even JR train lines inside the caldera. We drove up to the currently active peak, Nakadake, only to find out----OH NOOOO!!!!!

Untouchable Aso-san volcano---toxic fumes, no entrance. Darn those toxic fumes.

This wall mural was our consolation.

***Side note: You are probably getting a little tired reading this big trip spiel, so to keep you from dropping out just yet I would like to hint that there are pornographic pictures coming up.

Next stop: Tawaragawa Onsen
I was flipping through my Lonely Planet to Japan (a few years old, but Japan’s tourist attractions don’t really change) and noticed a fertility temple in western Honshu with a festival where they parade giant stone phalluses through town---the next day!! We rushed out of Kyushu back into Honshu (aka California, if you like) and arrived to the temple at noon, just in time to see people packing chairs and stands into trucks and driving off. We missed it! As consolation an elderly woman gave us 20 pieces of mochi (rice cake) and a couple butter cookies shaped like male privates. We took a few pics of the temple and went on our way.

Pornographic statues at Mara Kannon temple Consolation cookies

Next stop: Hagi
After the fertility temple we hit the Japan Sea coast and planned to cruise slowly back until Kyoto. At the beginning of the coast we ran into Hagi, an old castle town with the samurai and other 400 year-old quarters preserved enough to feel like you were walking around the movie set for Shogun.

Samurai house kitchen Samurai toilet (with signs pleading with people not to utilize it)

Next stop: Matsue
I had been to Matsue briefly during Golden Week about 10 years ago on the way to Oki Island to visit a friend, and had always wanted to return to better check it out. We were delighted to find an original 400-year-old spooky black-colored castle, the homes of more samurai and of Lafcadio Hearn, a famous gaijin (foreign) writer who lived in Japan in the 1890’s. Hearn was born in Greece but was educated in France and the UK and wrote many novels in English, such as In Ghostly Japan and Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. Being a fan of Japanese obake, or ghosts, I have read many of his books. It was fun reading and imagining what a foreigner would feel in those times and imagining my own flip-flops and umbrella and what-have-you on display for Japanese tourists in, say, the 23rd century. Some Matsue residents believe Hearn inadvertently saved the city from any bombing during WWII because Americans had read his books describing the city and its fascinating culture. The first picture in this blog entry is of the castle at Matsue.

We spent too much time in Matsue and had to book it back to Ashikaga (the city where Ravioli lives) to arrive before the horrific Japanese “U-turn” rush (worst traffic jams you will ever see in your life). One drove while the other slept, passing town after town---we even passed through the town of Obama!---taking turns until, EEK, 10 in the morning. We crashed.

It was a wonderful trip and I have been so happy to be back in Japan. It makes me wonder, why did I ever leave? Why did I leave three times?!? Maybe I could stay again. It’s safe here, people are so nice, it’s clean, the food is wonderful…

Japan decided to remind me why last night.
At 1:30 am the ground shook. I flew out of bed in terror and stood there panicking until it stopped (what else can you do?). A stronger tremor hit a half hour later, and a few more throughout the night shaking the bed, rattling the neighborhood and leaving little peace for sleep between adrenaline rushes. The earthquakes were big but the epicenter was about 30 miles into the ocean so no one was really hurt. But now I remember why I cannot stay. No matter how safe it is, clean, etc., I just cannot live knowing such calamity could happen at any time. Maybe I could move to Hokkaido or somewhere with fewer quakes??

NEW! Picture links are back on the right. Check them out! (If you've seen them already on Facebook they're the same pics)

India in overdrive

Aaaaaah, the sweet, sweet comfort of home, of washing machines, hot showers, of abundant toilet paper---especially of abundant toilet paper. I arrived back to the US of A yesterday and have never been happier to return. After six healthy weeks in India I entered the US half zombified after catching some kind of bug from the airline breakfast. As if 18 hours of flights were not arduous enough.

But let's get back to the fun stuff.

In the southernmost and communist state of Kerala in India, in a blissfully quiet fort town of Kochi (a.k.a. Cochin) I had decided to get a traditional Indian outfit, called a salwar kameez. A sari is the most traditional attire in India but being little more than a 5 1/2 meter long piece of cloth wrapped around your body, if you don't wear it correctly you could lose your outfit with one misplaced footstep. The salwar setup is easy and practical, and once I had the cloth picked out it was tailored to my measurements in a mere two hours for about $20.

I started observing reactions from people. Would people stare less if I wore my Indian garb? Would I be treated with increased respect with the salwar kameez? The reactions did not seem to differ. Kids would equally flash big white-toothed smiles and say, "Hello, what is your good name?" (They still learn ancient British English expressions in schools). Women would smile or try not to sit next to me on buses, and men would stare or ask the usual, "Where from?" before trying their sales/beg pitch. Groups of men would gape and laugh while some men just gawked. I did discover that people reacted very differently whether I was alone or with a "travel husband". I spent the majority of my time traveling with other backpackers met on the road, many male, and was having a great time being left alone.

Until Hyderabad. Here I was left too alone, by nice people, anyway. Sure the beggars and the rickshaw drivers thought I was Mrs. Bill Gates coming to save their day, and they flocked. There were no other backpackers so I was on my own to fend them off for four days in one of the two hottest months of the year. I carried a rain umbrella to shield myself from the sun and to jab rickshaw drivers out of my path. It was so hot I couldn't move, it was between 100 and 107 degrees Fahrenheit (over 40C) everyday, but I had to cover up as much as possible. Half the population of Hyderabad is Muslim, so women actually walk around in burkas (the black capes that cover a woman from head to toe, everything except the eyes) in this heat. I have learned that many Muslims think western women have no morals showing their skin and prancing around talking to random men, and I wondered if people thought of me the same. At times groups of people would point and laugh at me sometimes in a leering kind of way. It was a terrible place to be as a solo female traveler and I have never been happier than the evening I got on the train to my next destination. Maybe I would have liked it if I had been with someone else to help me laugh off the uncomfortable edge; definately if the temperature were 20 degrees cooler. Who knows who knows.

Hard to understand Hyderabad

One day I decided to take a tour to Hyderabad's movie Mecca, Ramoji Film City. The tour cost $10 and I expected a swing around the movie grounds, but lo-and-behold the place is a Universal Studios-like theme park! I watched how movies are made and sat on rides, I secretly snickered with joy when our seats shook to the vibrations of Hyderabad being destroyed by bombs and fire on screen, and guffawed at the fake boulders and broken glass in the “streets” that didn't look too much unlike the streets of real life. I was the only non-Indian in the complex and I kept my musing under tight control. Imagine standing out like a lone zebra in a herd of horses, or the interest a cat attracts wandering around the dog park, that was me inside Ramoji Film City. Thankfully one family adopted me and I had some positive company for a few hours.

Next stop: Aurangabad. Does it sound like a place that would have orangutans or is that just my wacky imagination? There were some monkeys (no orangutans), but the main attractions are two nearby sites of massive and ancient cave temples carved out rock by hand, both World Heritage sites. There were tourists here, what a relief!!! And the temples at Ellora showed a history of tolerance that many are incapable of today, with temples from three different religions (Hindu, Buddhist and Jain) standing side by side that were used for hundreds of years without strife.

Peaceful Jain cave temple

Arriving back to Mumbai the day of my flight home, it was as if I was arriving to an entirely new city. Last month Mumbai seemed a chaotic third-world city; after seeing more of India I now found Mumbai to be the modern metropolis touted in the guidebooks. I ran into a traveler I had met in Aurangabad on the street, and then we soon ran into another we both knew. What are the odds with a population of 16.4 million...!

Scoping out western girls in swimsuits...?!

I could go on forever about India. The country is as deliciously overbearing as its food and my stomach as well as my brain and all my poor overburdened senses really need to stop and take a rest.

Tomorrow I'm off to Japan for the summer!

Gastronomical experimentation in Southern India

Hello all! I sniffed my t-shirt the other day to see if it needed washing yet and alas, it smelled like curry. So here it is, my excuse for smelling funny when I get home, my long awaited (I hope) entry on Indian food! Some is great, some strange, and most my meals have been under $2.

March 16
Veggie Biryani $1I was on my first train in India and still pretty freaked out about all the strangeness of everything, so I had decided to take the nicest class of train, an air-conditioned sleeper. The cabin attendant (there was an actual attendant!) came into my hideaway asking if I would like to order lunch. He had a list of three vegetarian options and two "non-veg" ones. I pointed randomly at one of the veggie choices and at noon he promptly appeared with my meal.
Biryani is a rice dish so packed with herbs and spices I swear on the Kamasutra that my brain was tingling afterwards. The white sauce at the side is yogurt (called "curd" here) and onions. Not bad for a buck.


March 18
Paneer Tikka Masala (maybe) $1.50
Nan $.50Now I'm not actually sure if this is an actual typical dish or a misunderstanding. I went to the restaurant hoping for that sweet tomato-ey sauce that I remembered from Indian restaurants at home. I suspect the waiter had no idea what I was talking about but wanted to please, thus all the tomatoes. I think the sauce was even laden with ketchup. I have since found out that I wanted "masala" sauce and that masala sauce does not have any tomatoes in it anyway. The nan (bread more typical from Northern India) was good.


March 19
Aloo Mattar $1.50
Rice $.50
This was the first plate of food in India that I really really liked---YUM! Aloo are potatoes and mattar are green peas. Sweet and not too spicy, wonderful!


March 20
Kashmir dam Aloo $1.00
Chapati $.50
Do you remember what Aloo is? Potatoes! (ok, I don't expect you to learn Hindi for my benefit) This plate had the same delicious sweet masala sauce and the potato was stuffed with cheese. Yum yum yum yum. Chapati is just like nan bread but round. There must be some difference but it looks and tastes the same to me.


March 22
Tibetan Momo $.75
This is not Indian food but I just had to try. There are tons and tons of Tibetan refugees in these parts, and their food can often be found on menus. Momo are steamed dumplings stuffed with veggies served with a tangy sauce, delicious.


Same day
Navaratna Kurma $1.10
Chapati $.50
Navaratna are cashews and kurma is a spiced-up sauce. This particular dish had not only cashew nuts but also potatoes, pineapple and bananas in a hot curry full of spices, truly strange.


March 23
Veg. Dosa $1I have found heaven in India! Dosas are a crepe-like pancake filled with whatever you want (usually masala curried potatoes). Mine was with masala flavored veggies (like the inside of a good samosa) with a yogurt sauce to boot. I have since eaten dosas everyday whenever I find them. Cheap good eatin'.


March 24
Thali $1.50Thalis are all-you-can-eat plates of whatever they give you served on top a banana leaf. They usually come with chapati (nan-like bread), a papadum (delicious giant potato-chip), rice, and little metal bowls full of strange and interesting curries and soupy spicy things. Once I was really hungry and decided to splurge and pay 20 cents more for the "Deluxe Thali"---and had 10 little bowls on my plate! You are supposed to eat thalis with your fingers, right handed. (pic: I can do it now!)


April 2
Keralan ThaliI'm in the state of Kerala now, one of the southernmost areas in India, right on the tip there on the map. Kerala is famous for its delicious food and I could not agree more. Today I am taking a private cooking class from a woman in her kitchen, hopefully I will be able to reproduce this wonderful food at home!

From Goa to Hampi, India: Still laughing

Indian man enjoying the beaches of Goa

They say the only way to enjoy India is too expect nothing and just go with the flow. If you don’t keep your humor you will go crazy in this country.

After five days on the beaches in Goa I was ready to head inland for some Hindi temple ruins in the town of Hampi. I bought the best bus ticket I could find, an "air-conditioned sleeper" in a bus. The picture showed smiling tourists leisurely reclining in plush reclining seats with a level of blissfully sleeping travelers above in beds. I was to be one of those blissfully sleeping travelers---though I really couldn't imagine how a bus could have beds in it. The travel agent reassured me, "Very nice, very nice."

I had met a Brazilian backpacker in Goa and we decided to go together. This was very fortunate because he ended up saving me from two potentially horrible experiences. And I saved him from one horrendous one. Read on.

We had to wait an hour for the bus to arrive. I had noticed a vendor of Indian sweets and decided to get a box to try. I asked my friend if he’d like to halve the first sweet and he was keen. I broke the first sweet in half (middle left one in picture) and there it was, the perkiest piece of black pubic hair standing straight up from the middle of the sweet almost like it was saluting me. I showed the vendor and he gave me a different one, but had my friend not agreed to share it with me I'd have probably been pulling pubes out of my mouth. Sorry, I know it's disgusting and I hope your computer's anti-virus and parental controls accepted this blog entry. Now I learned especially in Bolivia to pull the accidental hair out of my food and still enjoy it, but not this time. I couldn’t touch the things.

Sweet, anyone?

Now the bus appeared, and drove right off without stopping. Was this our bus? Upon enquiry at the office they sent us running 200ft away to where it was parked, shouting, "Hampi wait! wait! Go quick quick. Bus go go.”

Take the oldest Greyhound you can imagine, make sure it hasn't been cleaned in at least 10 years, add a row of crusty horizontal seating, then put the bus driver on drugs and set him off onto a two lane pot-marked road. This was my bus. The "bed" seating was so narrow that my companion and I were stuck together---imagine if it were a stranger!!! This is where he twice saved me by just coming along! The a/c didn't work and the door was left gaping open and India dangerously whipping by. After three hours I really had to pee and there was no toilet onboard (this was probably a good thing judging by the cleanliness of the bus). I convinced the bus-driver-on-speed to stop and everyone had five minutes to utilize the, er, dark parking lot. Once the driver shouted, "Go! go!" the bus was off, but my travel companion was nowhere to be seen. This is when I saved him from being stranded in the middle of nowhere with not even his wallet or passport at hand. He caught up running, thoroughly angry and very freaked out.

Arriving in Hampi at 7am groggy after the bumpy ride, we were mobbed by rickshaw drivers and hotel touts. “Rickshaw, madam, rickshaw?” The drivers swore that if we didn’t take their rickshaws to their specific hotels, “the people of the town will throw eggs.”

Huh?

Unfazed, we decided to walk, pondering over what kind of people would throw eggs at tourists for no reason. What a story.

But alas, there were broken eggs in the street. Then a mob of wet screaming kids and men covered in colored powder came dancing and shouting, bottles of color in the air. I was soon to find out that today is the Hindi Holi festival, a celebration of the first day of spring where people douse each other and everything in colors and water. And eggs. And I was not left to merely observe.

You never know what to expect in India. I have never seen or experienced anything like it and can only laugh when things go wayward. When I stop laughing I will know to take the first ticket home.

Colored powder vendor This kid actually checked me into my hotelDancing in the street, wee this is fun!

Noone and nothing is exempt from Holi madness
Still laughing

Getting more used to India

So far so good. I have decided that I will use toilet paper and I will continue to eat with my left hand and I don't care what people think of me. (Ok, weird start, if you are confused please read previous post)

I took my first Indian train 11 hours south to Goa. I used the nicest class "2AC sleeper" which means that there are only 2 tiers of bunk beds instead of three with air conditioning. It was pretty dirty but empty and I could close the curtain and create my own nest-on-rails. The most wonderful thing I discovered in these 11 hours was the Chai vendor. For about 12 cents you get a piping hot and cinnamon clove spiced cup of delicious Indian chai tea. With a cup of chai in hand I realized, yes, this is why I came to India! The next 10 hours were spent stalking the chai vendor...

I am currently in Panjim (also known as Panaji), a town in Goa state. This area had been colonized by the Portuguese so there's an interesting Latin air about it. My broken Portuguese has amazingly come in handy here.

I was remembering Central and South America and comparing them to India, and I realized that I feel a lot safer here in comparison. There are so many people everywhere I feel safe even out at night. I met a Dutch couple who had travelled through the Latin Americas and they agreed. Whew!

I will try to put up pics soon. Until then!

First Day in Mumbai, India

All these crazy rumors of India being such a frenetic place, putting you into sensory overload, people groping you on the streets and all that? It's TRUE.

My first day in India I had to take regular breaks of quiet in my hotel room. The smells of Mumbai (new name for Bombay since 1996) are new, everyone is wearing something different, so many kinds of people, so many potholes in the sidewalks to watch out for! I would walk past major architectural wonders without noticing them and have to turn back. Then I would pass them again after being distracted by something else. Then I would go to the hotel and take another break.

I discovered two major drawbacks to my great India adventure, both of which I had heard about, neither of which I had realized would be oh-so-very important.

1. People do actually wipe their bottoms with their left hand. There is usually a spray hose next to the toilet and the seat is always wet. Then there's a bucket usually full of water with a cup in it. What do I do with this stuff?? I'm too embarrassed to ask someone for step by step instructions so I sneak my paper into the room and sneak it out (so as not to clog the toilet)...sorry if I have given you too much information here, but this has been a serious complexity for me!

2. Because people wipe their bottoms with their left hand, there are many rules how to avoid using your left hand in society. These rules, such as eating with ONLY your right hand (without utensils, by the way, but directly with your fingers) are totally impossible to this un-ambidextrous south paw. How will I eat?!? I desperately and boldly decided to eat with the supplied spoon with my LEFT hand and maybe I was paranoid but I was sure I could hear snickers throughout the restaurant the whole time I was eating. I may need to do take out and practice with the right hand in my room for a while. Ahhh my room, my sweet dumpy little safe-haven from all that is crazy and unfathomable outside those doors.

Ah, and let me add a Major Drawback Number 3: Everyone speaks English but with the accent I don't understand a word anyone is saying to me. I'm used to nodding and smiling without understanding a word but in my own language?! Hope I pick up on the accent soon.

I went to bed early because I couldn't take anymore for one day.

Today is day two, I'm starting to love the craziness. More later, maybe with pics.

West Coast Mayhem

I was in such bad shape leaving North Dakota that I did not notice when they forgot to tag my luggage. Now instead of detailing the one-margarita-too-many excuse and anguish involved spending four days of my life in heated phone calls to airline customer service agents in India I will just tell you that I finally did get my bags. Folks, just some advice to you all, even if you are feeling a little under the weather make sure they put the white baggage tag on your stuff before they throw it on the belt to no-man’s land, ok?

Never fear, after that all has been happy and fun.

Hawai’i
Honolulu Diamond Head from the airI mentioned in my last entry that I was working on applications to grad schools, one of those schools being the University of Hawai’i. I don’t know if I’ve been accepted or not yet (I’ll keep you informed), but Dad and I took the excuse to fly over so I could meet some of the professors. Oh yeah, and to hang out on the beaches and relaaax. We stayed two days on Oahu Island at Waikiki beach and then flew to the Big Island of Hawai’i for some volcano action.

Last time I went to Hawai’i you could walk over active lava fields and actually see red hot lava pouring into the ocean. And last time my sister was with us and we took turns wearing her mullet wig around. This time no mullet or lava, the lava had shifted and wasn’t visible so the main excitement was now record levels of sulfur dioxide in the air. You can drive around the big crater but you can’t stop or open your windows or you could pass out...aren’t volcanoes cool? Dad and I did a two hour hike across the smoking Kilauea Iki crater (upwind from the sulfur vents). The floor of the volcano is warm to the touch and it is pretty creepy to think that you are really walking over the dried crust of a giant pool of lava. I left a lei in the crater as an offering to Pele, the volcano goddess, to thank her for letting us cross alive.

2004 Kilauea Iki with mullet2008 Same crater, no mullet1959 Same crater, I don't know if mullets were invented yet
Vancouver, BC
Vancouver skyline Arriving back to Seattle, I drove up to visit my buddies Max and Sanae in Vancouver. We played Nintendo Wii (fun!!) with their friend Katsu and then they introduced me to Chai, the best restaurant in the whole wide world. Chai, as the website explains, “offers delightfully tasty Ayurvedic food in a relaxed and exotic atmosphere.” I don't know what Ayurvedic means, but we had a buffet of Persian, Middle Eastern, and Indian food, mostly vegetarian and every single item (except maybe the unconventional desserts) was absolutely amazing, with live Indian sitar music and cool ambience. If you are ever in Vancouver and like Arab and Indian-type food you have to go to Chai!

I also had the chance to experience the ultimate Canadian event, a hockey game. The teams were semi-pro, the Giants (famous for fighting) vs. the Rockets. Now I had always thought Canadians to be our more mature and enlightened neighbors, but I don’t know about that anymore. I have seen the dark side. If the puck wasn’t in play the punches were guaranteed to fly. Sweet child spectators shouted for more fighting. And the food---ooh the food---made American state fair Elephant Ears seem healthy. I wasn’t too keen on the fighting but I secretly enjoyed when the players smashed into the glass partition. YEH! Thanks Max and Sana for everything!

The "Dark Side" of Canada: fighting Broken glass partition

What’s Next?
What’s next, you ask? After two months of recuperation the travel bug is back. I just got my visa today and will be dedicating my next month and a half to the vegetarian cuisine of southern India---yippee! After that I am going to Japan for Golden Week through summer, and then I’ll be starting “real life” in August, whether that be school or a job. I will blog more from India, I promise.

In the meantime, check out Ravioli’s YouTube, he put our Peru/Bolivia/Chile photos to music and they’re pretty fun to watch. He calls himself Laberinto Records. click here to see

Take care and until next time!

North Dakota, fur sure, you betcha

All right, you've guessed it, I'm not in Aruba anymore. I am in Mandan, North Dakota. Oh for nice.

I flew from Aruba to Venezuela to Chicago. I was so excited to return to the States I got a little too tipsy on little red wines with the 60-year-old Venezuelan woman sitting next to me. She was celebrating Chavez's defeat in elections the day before, the Venezuelan people actually voted down his socialist constitutional changes, WOW! It was peaceful, no riots, and the president took it well. Though they say he is planning new elections.

It snowed in Chicago, and even more in Milwaukee. Then it snowed more in Milwaukee. And then a couple more times in Milwaukee. I was the only person in the state who was happy about this, it was wonderful to see all the family and be able to shovel snow together.

As soon as I returned to my hometown my boyfriend "Ravioli" came for a visit. It was his first time in the United States of America and the poor thing comes to Bismarck, North Dakota. People are nice, oh yeah, for sure. You betcha. The difficult thing was explaining HIM, he looks Japanese, speaks Spanish...but he smiled a lot and got along just fine.

As per American tradition, we tried to fatten Ravioli up as much as physically possible on cookies, snacks, Christmas food, Taco Bell, all-you-can-eat buffets, and of course my favorite A&B Pizza. We took him to all three A&B locations so he could decide for himself which one made the best taco pizza. He loved the visit, hopefully because he got to see me and not as much because of the food. He didn't gain too much weight; I did.

After Christmas we drove to Montana for snowboarding and Yellowstone. On his last night Sister Sam and her hubbie and friends took us to a real cowboy bar, the Lonesome Dove, with a real cowboy band. They said it would be a crazy experience but I kind of thought it was like all the other bars in the area. We had fun watching Sam try to teach Ravioli the two-step. The day I took him to the airport to say goodbye (sniffle) we found out his flight had been cancelled and he couldn't leave until the next day. I swear we were the only happy people in line.

Ravioli has since left and I have dedicated my time to composing heart-warming compositions for graduate school applications and entertaining Mom's farting bulldog, Irma. The plan is to visit Seattle in Feb., travel a few months this year, visit Japan for a few months, and then hopefully start school in August. Fingers crossed!