picture it: new year's eve in dunedin. i like dunedin. however, it appears as though their mainstream talent pool is somewhat limited.

first though, let's start with the new year's feast put on by the lovely people at the hostel i was staying at (if you're looking for a nice hostel in dunedin, try Hogwartz!). let's just say: fresh baked bread with homemade garlic tarragon butter. are you kidding me? i heart that. of course, i overdid it, but like my journal says "I hate to miss a buffet". i actually wrote that, in pen, in my journal. rad.

so after stuffing our faces we wandered down to check out the new year's entertainment provided by the city of dunedin. it was a family event. which included the mayor singing the time warp in a royal-looking cape and crown. intriguing.

that was actually the best part of the evening. the rest of the night consisted of many skeezy outfits (painted-on leather pants, anyone?), scary neon makeup, and some classic hits. we were even serenaded by the local dame who had been playing mrs. potts in the stage production of beauty and the beast. she brought us some real golden oldies. oyyyyy.

this is me being scared:



the low point was definitely when a little scrawny blonde boy who thought he was hot shit did some david bowie covers. why. why. why. watch it if you dare.



and that's how i brought in 2007.

remember november? i do. i spent the latter half of the month pushing a vacuum around a hostel. FUN.

some other highlights of my time in dunedin:

hanging out with george and molson, the hostel kitties



eating, eating, eating



hanging out with the most awesome kazeroonie!



walking up hills and steps (buns'o'steeeeeel)





extremely cool grafitti (who knew dunedin was such a hotspot?)



seeing PENGUINS!!!!!







sea lions crossing the road



some pretty stunning sunsets





oh yeah, and having my first ever trip to an emergency room with a mashed and bloody hand. wooohooooo!

dunedin rocks!

some final thoughts on india...

first, i should credit shawn for the blog title. good one dude! (sadly i am not that clever.)

one of the things that i found so hard about my time in india was the constant assault on all senses, all the time. which is where the dung comes in. one day i actually saw a giant, wet cow patty being produced. you gotta watch out for the splash-back on that! i guess when cows eat random stuff in the street (food scraps, cardboard, etc) sometimes it goes right through 'em. anyway, you have to get over any kind of poo phobias you might have when you're in india. eventually the splashback happens to us all.

one of the funniest poo moments was when markus didn't see a giant wet patty on the sidewalk in front of him (seriously, it was at least 15 inches in diameter) and took one step into it, skidded through it, and then landed with his other shoe in it. it was a beautiful moment. ahhhhhhahahahhahahahha. sorry man.

luckily i didn't have to share a taxi with him and his shoes that day.

so, other than the cow poo: well, there's the smell of sewage. in some parts of the city it's a tad more pungent than others. sorta like in toronto where sometimes the street just opens up and farts. but this is more like hot, rotting sewage. not so nice. and there's hot, rotting garbage too, cuz if you throw it on the street then some kind of animal will come by and eat it eventually (no need for a garbage can!). and then there's the smell of BO. and diesel fumes. and spices. and marigolds. which are obviously not all bad smells, but strong nonetheless. the nose doesn't stop working, even though it's full of pollution and you feel like you can't really breathe, you can still smell it.

i can stilllll smell it!

then there are the sounds. the honking is pretty frequent, though less musical than in vietnam. it's actually not as constant as it was in ho chi minh city (where everyone pretty much just lays on the horn to let others know where they are), but it's more aggressive in india. like in vietnam i generally felt the traffic situation was rather zen. you walk, motorbikes cruise around you, you keep walking, a few bikes cruise around you, walk walk walk, cruise cruise cruise, it all works out. you just can't STOP or that fucks everything up.

but in india the traffic was pure mayhem. you think it's clear, so you step off the curb, and from outta nowhere a car comes roaring down the street aiming RIGHT AT YOU. it's like there's a whole other part of street, but he's determined to run over your toes. in vietnam i would often just follow a local person very closely. in india, that'll get you flattened. there just seems to be no good way of crossing the street. and you may not get honked at until the vehicle is almost on top of you.

right, so, noises, other than honking. there are cows mooing (and the sound of the cow splatty), dogs barking, there's the general loudness of people, but that wasn't so bad. what was more irritating was the constant quest for tourist money. i was amazed in mumbai when i was able to walk about 3 steps out of the hotel before i had my first proposition (just for a taxi ride, don't get the wrong idea here). you can't walk 2 steps in any of the other places we visited without 'madame rickshaw,' 'come into my store, just looking,' 'where are you from,' 'australia?' and it just goes on and on and on. i started out by saying my usual 'no thank you', 'canada', etc. smiling, and carrying on walking. but that seems to make it worse. eventually i learned to pretend that i didn't hear anything, because if you don't respond or look then that's where the conversation stops. which is a pretty horrible thing to do, really.

and then there are the standard noises you hear everywhere in the world, like the evil cell phone. the best was when we were camping in the desert, in the middle of sand dunes, with so many stars lighting up the sky, totally quiet other than the camels snoring... and then, beep beep doot de doot, hello, blahblahblahblahblahblahblah.

i hate cell phones.

the sights: everywhere you look there is way more than you can possibly take in. and there are some pretty unpleasant things to be seen. men peeing against whatever kind of wall is around (add that to the smell and sound list as well). mangy looking animals that appear to be rotting from the outside... in varanasi we saw a dog that had a big chunk (baseball-sized) out of his head. i think i could see grey matter in there. and of course the piles of garbage and sewage (see above re: smells).

there is beauty in the streets as well - beautiful colourful saris and scarves and bangles in the brightest reds and oranges and pinks and golds you can imagine, gorgeous henna tattoos, incredible architecture, candles floating in the lake at sunset, a string of marigolds above a shop front...


i found it really hard to justify being there as a tourist and watching the extra strain we put on an already sketchy infrastructure. like, there's a drought, but don't worry, we can do your tourist laundry. and just chuck that plastic water bottle out the window, that's where the rest of them are. and then there was the amount of physical space we took up - it was a squeeze to put 2 of us into a rickshaw, but you'd see half a dozen or more locals in there. and the cycle rickshaws - that just felt awful, watching a tiny, thin man sweating and sweating trying to pull our fat white asses down the street. and the buses... we took up so many seats on the buses, which meant that the older people and parents with kids had to stand or sit in the aisle (offers to share the seat were sometimes accepted, but rarely would anyone let us give up our seats).

and then there is intense poverty. tent/tarp cities, shantytowns, children living in railway stations, girls carrying infants asking for money or food... it was one of the hardest things for me to take in, it is impossible to try and comprehend the extent of it. and i still haven't sorted it out in my head. how can someone justify spending millions of rupees to build a fort or palace or taj mahal and then see the reality of what's outside your doorstep? how does someone pay hundreds of dollars a night to stay at a 5 star hotel and look out their floor-to-ceiling glass window at the crumbling shantytowns across the highway?


those are some of the thoughts that i was left with as i flew out of mumbai. it was a totally intense experience and i would like to do a massive shout out to all the folks i hung out with there: ellie, stacey, elaine, helen, julie, abby, marnye, erin, shawn, markus and shyaam. they certainly didn't see me at my best, but without them, it would've been a whole lot messier! thanks for the laughs and the support and the kindness.

does anyone remember india? i do, vaguely. today is the day, believe it or not, that we wrap up the india portion of this blog. hoo boy. get ready. it's a big one.

so before the last break, we were in varanasi, i'd just spent an awesome day in Shyaam's village with his family and all the neighbour kids having a fantastic day playing with my camera. fun times!

and then we left.

en route to kolkata (some of you may know it as 'calcutta') we managed to stink up the train with some rancid-smelling cheese that someone bought at a german bakery in varanasi. nassssty. our neighbours were holding their noses, and i joined them. it was like, the worst foot-cheese in a hot enclosed space, ever.

when we got to kolkata, we got into taxis with drivers who had been told where our hotel was, but apparently none of them *actually* knew where to go. as we drove through the backpacker neighbourhood (which was not where we were staying), our driver looked at us, looked at the hotels, and i said 'nope, not here'. he stopped to ask directions but no one else seemed to know either. i pulled out the lonely planet and showed him on the map but he just pushed it away... so i gave him directions. and then he flipped out and was shouting and saying we were harrassing him. and that was just the beginning.

our toilet didn't flush.
the room was damp.
i tried to eat curry but couldn't.
it was not a good day.

i went out to find the travel agent who was going to re-issue my malaysian airlines ticket to get the funk outta india, but no one had heard of the place. so i wandered through the backpacker hood to find a phone place, and gave the airline a call.
kolkata? she said.
yes, kolkata.
we don't have an office in kolkata.
no, i know there isn't an airline office there, but i was told i could get my ticket re-issued by a travel agency you work with here.
no, they closed their office.

perfect.

i started to cry.

i had a flight a few days later to mumbai, which was where i was flying out from, so i pulled myself together and phoned the mumbai office.

they had no idea what i was talking about, told me i had to come to their office to get my new ticket, but only after getting someone from the airline to put in an order for them to re-issue it, and had to get there before they closed. the fact that my flight got into mumbai after their office closed, and left the country before they opened the next morning, was my problem.

and then i burst into tears.

the dude who ran the little phone place didn't know what to do with me. snot and tears were flowing all over his desk and i was doing that thing where you try and talk when you're crying but every word is divided by a sharp inhale because you're still crying and you can't catch your breath... he looked a little scared. i swore, apologized, and cried some more. he phoned his brother.

his brother came over, and by that time i had wiped up most of the snot and tears. the brother phoned someone he knew and they talked about my ticket to mumbai (it was with Jet, an indian airline) and my options for changing it so i could get there in time to go to the malaysian airlines office. he said the best thing to do would be to walk to the Jet office and have them do it.

i thanked them profusely, apologized for my mess, and headed on.

and then the wave of shits hit me.
i ducked into a swanky chinese restaurant and walked quickly to the can, avoiding the looks of the restaurant staff, dropped a few bombs (shat my guts out), and walked out just as fast as i came in.

i made it to the airline office, was able to change my flight to very early the next morning, got my new ticket, and looked at the price... which, funnily enough, was substantially lower than what i had paid for it from the hotel in varanasi. the price of which, funnily enough, kept going up while i was making the arrangements with the hotel guy. which sort of went, like, 'oooooh you want THAT flight? you didn't say that.' (yes i did.) 'well the quote i gave you was for this LATER flight.' (no, it wasn't.)

anyway. i was so beyond caring at that point. i took my ticket, went back to the hotel, whined and cried a little more, and packed up my stuff to get ready for my 6am flight.

i was so done with india. i cried when i said goodbye to my fellow travel posse and Shyaam.



nice peeps, they are.

this is ellie, who survived sharing a room with me for 3 whole weeks! way to go!




surprisingly, mumbai was actually a bit of a break from the rest of the madness. my hotel was on a pretty quiet street and there was a really nice little restaurant a few blocks away that could've been in any country in the world. there was no curry. they had chocolate cake. and it didn't fly straight out of my ass.

i wasn't up for much, so in between visits to the malaysian airlines offices i lay in bed and watched law & order re-runs and ate chocolate cake and slept. i kinda liked mumbai. my taxi driver even stopped on the highway en route to the airport so i could take this photo.



adios, india.