Italy Trip

Some of the things I write are mostly for my own documentation. Time flies and then we forget where we went and what we did.

In the Spring Break of 2024, the first week of April, we traveled to Italy.

F is into Italian architecture and art and S is into food while N is all about family. 

We started our trip on a nonstop United flight from SF to Rome. I had prebooked a ride from the airport to Roma Termini which was next to Hotel Morgana where we were staying for 2 nights. The first night was rather uneventful but fun nonetheless. S and I went out for dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant from across the street. We also bought an umbrella because it was raining in Rome that evening.

For our second day, we had booked a rather expensive "Rome in a Day" tour that started at the Vatican City. We wanted to try out the train in Rome so we took the train to The Vatican from Roma Termini. The concierge at our hotel had warned us about the pickpocketing in Rome. 

The other instruction provided to us was to cover our knees and the shoulder because were going to be on Holy Grounds. The Vatican was beautiful, especially the museum and St. Peter's Basilica. The highlight in the Vatican was the Sistine Chapel though. Imagining Michelangelo painting those ceilings during the Renaissance gave me the goosebumps. However, the crowds do take away from the experience. I would say that the crowds were still less compared to the crowds you see during the summer.

From the Vatican, we took a taxi to The Trevi fountain area. We were still with the tour guide and she showed us the Pantheon and then we broke for an Italian lunch. And that's when the pick pocketer struck. S, focused on shopping while we ordered lunch, was distracted enough that her iphone was pick pocketed from her coat pocket. The phone was turned off immediately and needless to say once it was gone, we did not waste our precious vacation time looking for it. 

Dejected but not disheartened, we continued with our Rome in a Day Tour. The next stop was The Forum, filled with ancient Government offices and ruins of the Roman Empire. It led to Palatine Hill and we eventually ended the tour at the Colosseum. We had walked nearly 20,000 steps that day.  We took the taxi back to Morgana. We ate dinner at a Ramen place in Roma Termini and called it a night.

The next morning, we were going to rent a car and head out on our road trip in Italy. We took a taxi to Avis, rented a car and started driving to Tuscany. We stayed at a beautiful AirBnb in the middle of the vineyards of Tuscany (in a town called Poggibonsi). We drove to the town of San Gimigano for dinner at a nice Italian place and enjoyed the small Tuscan town. 

Next morning, we relaxed in the vineyards before heading out to Pisa to see the iconic Leaning Tower of Pisa. We took the customary pictures and drove to Florence. Florence was an interesting experience because we were keeping the car with us and everyone who has been to Italy knows that its very hard to drive in the heart of Italian towns. We parked the car at a parking garage and spent the night at our AirBnb, that used to be a palace back in the day (in the middle of Florence). The most important thing we did that evening was a tour of the Academia Gallery, where the statue of David (another Michelangelo masterpiece) lives. N was scandalized by the number of naked statues in the galleries. We bought our own naked David as a souvenir. A note about Italian food- pasta in Southern and central Italy is mostly wheat based; however if you travel to North like Milan, risotto (rice based) starts replacing pasta as the staple food. We had a hearty dinner after our Florence tour and went back to the AirBnb to play cards and read books, after roaming around the beautiful streets of Florence at night.

Next day, we got back in the car and headed towards Venice. Florence to Venice was a long but pretty drive. It was marked with a lot of tunnels (I imagine lots of mountains were cut to carve out the path). Most people take the train to Venice but we are car people. You park the car at a garage in Venice and then you are either on your feet or on a gondola. We walked to our AirBnb first. There was crepe place next to the Airbnb that we enjoyed a lot. We walked a lot as well as shopped, and we got nice Italian dinner to close the night. A note about the restaurants in Italy; especially in big cities. A lot of them have Bangladeshi service staff. However, when you go to a smaller town, you will find more native Italian service staff. 

That first night in Venice, a crazy lady started banging our AirBnb door, which was a bit scary. I reported it to the hosts and they came in the morning to check on us and told us that a mentally unstable woman lives in the neighborhood. 

Needless to say we did the gondola next day (with Amitabh Bachchan's song playing in the background. We started the day with a good Italian brunch, then did the gondola and then more walking and gelato, ending at Piazza San Marco. And then we closed out the night. Venice is more of a tourist attraction unlike places of culture like Rome or Florence. 

Next morning, we took the gondola back to our car and started driving towards Terni. Terni is a small town in the region that rivals Tuscany, called Umbria. The difference between the two regions is that Tuscany is more cosmopolitan, while Umbria is more rustic. I love Rustic and I thoroughly enjoyed my day in Terni. We stayed at a very scenic AirBnb with the view of the entire mountain range of the area. We went out for dinner to the heart of Terni. While the Italian food was marvelous, one of the things that we ate was a small fish based pizza called Pizza Napoli that we hated. We walked around Terni and called it a night.

Next day, we were slated to return to Rome. The drive to the airport was great. It was bittersweet to leave Italy. We had a wonderful time but the spring break was over and we carried with us all the wonderful memories from the trip. But we were also excited to get back home because our family gets very tired after a week of traveling and we were looking forward to settling down back to our routines. Our nonstop flight from Rome to San Francisco was comfortable. Addio Italia!

Costa Rica Trip

While one can do many things with one's time, travel with family certainly takes the cake during the school holidays. This time around, we made a trip to Costa Rica. Costa Rica is one of the seven Central American countries. Central America connects North America (the southernmost country of North America is Mexico) and South America (the northernmost country of South America is Colombia). The other Central American countries are Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua to the North of Costa Rica and Panama to the south (remember Panama Canal or Panama Papers). 

You can find the detailed itinerary in this blog but I want to highlight some of the special moments and the people.

On the first day, while traveling from San Jose airport in Costa Rica to Tirimbina Lodge in the Sarapiqui rainforest, our brakes failed. The animal instinct kicked in and I veered the car into the bushes and used the hand brake to stop the car. However, the car was fully damaged. A very sweet family came out from their home and invited us over. We spent the next few hours with them, eating lunch and getting to know each other. The single mom Sandra was 43 years old and had 3 kids, Valeria (23), a boy (18), and Louis (14). They were very affectionate and we connected well with each other. Valeria is studying Civil Engineering at UCR in San Jose, Costa Rica.

Our family with the hosts

We engaged in a lot of fun activities over the trip. We did a Chocolate tour at Tirimbina Lodge that taught us all the steps involved in getting chocolate from cacao fruit. It was very immersive and we participated hands-on in a lot of the steps. The tour guides William and Jose were very entertaining. 

Nirvanh breaking a cacao fruit

The process of chocolate making in pictures

The same day we left Tirimbina, we embarked on a rafting adventure. The goal here was to spot wild animals and birds and we did, lots of them. Here is a list that I remember and the tidbits our tour guide Warner told us about them.

1. Anhinga Anhinga- a bird that can dive into water for 3 minutes and looks like a snake when it does.
2. Spectacle owl- a big owl that can eat a small fox.
3. Crocodile- no comments needed, it loves humans.
4. Little Blue Heron
5. Howler Monkeys- howl a lot. 
6. Black and white owl.
7. Long nose bat.
8. Others that I don't remember now. 

Safari Rafting on Penas Blancas River

The other fun thing we did was the Tabacon Hot Springs the next morning. Warm geothermal water was very soothing. 

Tabacon Hot Springs

From the La Fortuna area, we proceeded to the Monteverde area. Our Airbnb host Olgar was awesome and treated us to some freshly extracted sugarcane juice in the morning (we extracted it together the old-school way). We also hiked up the trails in Monteverde Cloudforest Preserve. 

The trails took us to the Continental Divide that divides Central America into two hydrographic regions- the Pacific and the Caribbean. Rain on one side of the divide flows to the Pacific Ocean and on the other side to the Caribbean Sea. 

Monteverde has a Quaker history. Quakers moved to the region in the 1950s and 60s I think. We met a 60-year-old man called Steven Smith who moved from the US when he was 7 years old and has lived in Monteverde since. His daughter lives in the LA area in California. 

Our next stop was the adventure sport of zipling. With 13 things to do, 9 regular zip lines, 2 Superman zip lines, 1 rappelling, and 1 Mega Tarzan Swing, we had signed up for more than we could have chewed. Freyjaa did all of them, including the 1.6-mile longest zipline in Latin America in Superman pose. Nirvanh did all of them as well, including the drop from 300 feet on the Mega Tarzan Swing that is almost like bungee jumping (however he was not allowed to do any of the 2 zip lines in Superman pose but was allowed to do them in regular pose). Shweta and I opted out of the Mega Tarzan Swing. 

Zip lining was a terrific experience (and terrifying too). 

From Monteverde, we proceeded to Bijagua for a stay at a very unique accommodation called the Bitzu Dome (hosted by a nice gentleman called Alex). We did a couple of activities there as well. We hiked up to the Mirador Point to look at the Tenorio Volcano. One of the highlights of that area was chilling out at a roadside dhaba-like place they call sodas. 

Bijagua was a unique experience

Our final leg of the trip was to Nicoya Peninsula, one of the few blue zones of the world, where the longevity is 10 years higher than the rest of Costa Rica on average. We visited Playa Del Coco which is Del Coco Beach. It is a happening place, very boisterous and party-like compared to the rest of Costa Rica. 

Gelatos, sunset, and snacks were the main attractions at the Blue Zone beach of Del Coco. 

We were staying close to the airport in Guardia at an Airbnb with a nice host called Jose. We met another family staying at the same Airbnb- Kevin, Cory, and their two children Fiona and Calvin. We had some fun chatting with them before we retired to our cottages. 

The next morning, we flew back to SF on our nonstop flights from Liberia. Needless to say, it was one of the most fantastic trips of our lives. It was so good that Shweta told me half-jokingly to sell my trip (which I planned and executed by myself) to others. Since I am not going to do that, I am putting down the self-planned itinerary for free below :). Have fun and plan a trip to a very sustainable and biodiverse country. 

Our broad itinerary with lots of details removed

A short trip to the Tahoe Region

We have the utmost privilege of living in the Bay Area, where there is an abundance of natural beauty.

Every now and then, we make trips in the direction of Lake Tahoe. Hence, this Labor Day, we rented an Airbnb in the middle of a forest in Camino, CA for a couple of nights.

One of the highlights of this trip was a hike around Jenkinson Lake in the Sly Recreation Area. It is a 4-hour loop but we only did the 1-hour portion of it. For the rest of the time, we hung out by the lake.

We also heard about a waterfall around the Kyburz area called the Bassi Falls that requires a 1hr 30 minutes (4 miles) of hiking out and back to access it but we did not end up going there.

What we did instead was that we drove to White Hall. We used to regularly lounge on the rocks by the river there but this time we just took a short walk in that area. There is a favorite motel of ours called Kyburz Motel (now called Sierra Inn) that we used to go to often because it is by the river. We went there to check it out and on the way back, ate excellent food at a new Korean restaurant called Moon's Korean Kitchen in Silverfork, a town that is next door to Kyburz. 

Earlier on Sunday, we had lunch at the Apple Ridge Farm because our Airbnb was in the Apple Hill area of Camino. 

On Monday, we took an hour-long walk in the hills/forest on Copperton Road. It was a fabulous walk.

This place is in close proximity to towns like Fresh Pond, Pony Creek, Pollock Pines, and Placerville. The Airbnb itself had so much to do. There was a zipline for the kids and a play area as well. 

All in all, we had a great relaxing time on this vacation. 

Documenting family history

I probed my dad today, asking him questions on my grandfather's and his journey during the mid and late 20th century times.

My dad was born in December of 1951 and moved to Dhanbad in 1952. They lived in Dhanbad until 1958 and moved to Muzaffarpur thereafter where my dad attended a convent school for a couple of years before moving to a Government school in 7th grade. 

My dad's family moved to Chaibasa for some time thereafter.

My dad has the fondest memories from the Chaibasa days. They used to go on tours with my grandfather (Dadu) to different places like Jamshedpur. When in Jamshedpur, they used to spend some time with Bade Nana (my mom's uncle) and his family. My dad sang songs for Bade Nana who appreciated my dad's singing skills. They lived in a big Government bungalow in Chaibasa.

After Chaibasa, they moved to Patna. My ancestral home in Srikrishnapuri was built in 1965 after the land was bought in 1964, on the insistence of one of Dadu's colleagues. The house was rented out until the early 70s since Dadu still moved around a bit. BTW, our famed Ambassador car BRR73 was bought by my Dadu from Bade Nana in 1965 for mere Rs. 9000. It was a 1958 model. For the record, we kept it until 2012 (nearly 50 years).

When they were in Patna in the mid-60s, my dad and his two brothers started frequenting Bankipur club on Saturday nights, where my dad performed on stage and collected a lot of accolades doing the same. 

Eventually, my dad moved to the hostel in Patna College in 1969/70. He continued with his interest in music and visited Bombay in 1971-72 with a bunch of friends to sing at a friend's wedding. He had also visited Bombay with his brothers in 1971 and stayed with Mohanjee Prasad. After he came back from Bombay, he visited Bade Nana who asked him to visit Girija Samanta (Shakti Samanta's brother) on his next trip. He got several letters from Dadu's contacts via an Ex Income Tax Bombay chief and visited a host of actors like Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor on his next trip to Bombay. He started working for Shakti Samanta as the assistant director in movies like Ajanabee, Amanush, and Charitraheen. He also appeared for a couple of Pune Film city auditions (once in Delhi and once in Mumbai) around this time where the likes of Jaya Bahaduri suggested that he pursue singing instead of acting. He never pursued singing and returned back to Patna in 1975. 

Back in Bihar, he started a string of businesses. First, he dabbled with the "Glass tinting" business in Patna and then with "Varnishes and Paints" in Dhanbad and Patna. In both the Patna operations, his older brother was his business partner. 

In the late 70s, he started Pizza Hut, which ran until 1984. After Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984, everything was shut down for a month and he lost his staff, which prompted him to close down operations.

He thereafter also started a dairy/milk business in Patna, Bihar Sharif, and Koderma, with my mom which he ran for a year. 

This was a brief summary to capture the first 35 years of my dad's life. He is nearly 70 years old now. 

Read to your child

You can start reading as early as 6 months. No need to stop.

E-reading, while better than no reading has lower retention because of physical stimuli absence and distractions.

Audiobooks while better than no reading still misses the visual cues. We have 200:1 visual to auditory nerve endings in the brain.

Closed Captions are thus helpful. An interesting idea is to watch TV with no volume and closed captions on.

TVs have some small advantages for young watchers. It can improve their vocabulary. However, after 10 years of age, there are no advantages. The main problem is what is missed while the hours are spent on TV. Hence, the research recommends not more than 10 hours of TV for kids 2 and older, and no TV for kids younger than 2. Another idea is to mandate no TV on weeknights or TV with no volume and only captions.

The Defining Decade

Some key lessons learned from the book- The Defining Decade- Why your twenties matter and how to make most of them now.

Work:

Build identity capital. Identity capital means skills, experience, and connections that establish the foundation of a strong long term career. It is not impossible but much harder to do this later. There is more long term satisfaction in building a good career in the 20s than frittering time as if the time in the 20s doesn't matter much since everything is happening later in life these days. 

Love:

Be intentional about finding a partner. Understand "The Cohabitation Effect". Don't move in with a person with whom there are no strong commitments. Living together without marriage makes sense only if both of you are somewhat committed. Otherwise, living together leads to the Cohabitation effect with a lock-in and people end up marrying these people even when their personalities are too different and later this ends in a divorce. WHAT YOU WANT is less important than WHO YOU ARE (OCEAN personality type) when it comes to finding a partner. A personality match is the number one indication of a marriage working, more than what you externally think you want in a marriage.
For eg, there are 5 personality traits- OCEAN. Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism. One can be high, low or average in these 5 categories. The only deal-breaker is if someone is highly neurotic (extreme). Otherwise, most other personality differences can be bridged with hard work on the relationship.

Overall Satisfaction:

This has to do with future orientedness. People who are future-oriented with plans and goals tend to be more satisfied. Yes, being future-oriented means more sacrifices and more hard work but that tends to give more meaning to life so that when you look back at life, you tend to feel more satisfied. An example the author uses is starting a family. Having and caring for a child is not easy (and is not for everyone) but it tends to give a lot of overall satisfaction to life. Fertility peaks for women at 28 and starts declining rapidly after 35. Before 35 is the time to have a child since, after that, a lot of medical interventions are needed which have low success rates and are expensive. Despite IVF and Inuterine inseminations, the safest time to have a child is pre 35. 

Adventures in Africa

There was a Masai boy in Kenya, who wanted to be a warrior. He was guarding his family's cows one night when he heard the sounds of rainfall, out of the blue. He suddenly realized that it was not raining, rather, it was all the cows peeing at once.

A Masai boy knows when that happens, it happens only when the cows can smell or hear a lion. The lions were pretty smart. They were two of them. They figured that the wind was blowing from East to West. There was a lion on the West and one on the East. When the wind carried the aroma of the eastern lion to the cows, the cows started running towards the West, recognizing that the lion must be on the east and thus they were captured by the western lion. Game over!

Such is life in Africa.

Africa is a great continent. Even though it has gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to modernization, it is extremely blessed with natural resources.  

I love immersing in different cultures and I do a lot of research before I embark on a journey. After reading a few books and watching some documentaries, I booked the four of us tickets to Kenya, with a stopover for a night in Doha, Qatar. 

We even crossed over to Tanzania for a while and saw a single stone as a marker for border crossing!

We spotted all popular wild animals, except for Rhinoceros. You can see The Lion King!

The trip was extremely eventful and the kids loved every bit of it. The people were very warm and the safari in the Masai Mara Reserve delightful. It's a great reminder to step outside our comfort zones and explore different cultures. It binds humanity closer together and makes this world a better place to live!

The True North: Travels in the second largest country

What comes first to your mind when you hear Canada? A couple of decades back, for a lot of my Indian friends, I am sure it would have been the most interesting and funny pronunciation itself "Kaneda".  (Yes, in early grades of elementary school, my conscience used to debate on how it was pronounced because my exposure of the world was limited to Doordarshan and old Indian cinema. The word sounded like Canada but the authoritative Punjabi characters on the TV insisted on Kaneda)

But now we live in the era of Connected Cows and Connected World, hence people know something about a lot of things these days, thanks to the ubiquitous articles and snippets on social media. However, the best way to find more about a country is by reading books (notice I did not say magazines or articles), traveling to and the best of all, "living" in that country.

Hence, after a decade of living in the United States, we decided to visit Canada for a week for our ninth wedding anniversary, with an eight year old Freyjaa and a year old Nirvanh in the tow.

Beautiful Trails in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada

The trip started with an unexpected twist. We wanted to visit British Columbia and hence I was looking for tickets to Vancouver. However, mistakenly I had bought our onward tickets to Victoria (an island not too far away from Vancouver) . I realized about the mistake only after the pleasant lady at the Delta counter announced that she was feeling sorry to let us know that the flight to Victoria has been delayed and they were willing to put us on other flights going to Victoria or "Vancouver". I pounced on this opportunity and booked us on the flight flying into Vancouver, leaving an hour later.

Canada is a very pleasant country and you gauge that as soon as you disembark at the airport. Most Canadians in British Columbia have accents similar to Americans on the West Coast. However, people seemed to be in less rush than folks back home in California.

View From The Top After Taking The Sea To Sky Gondola Ride in Squamish

We covered White Rock, Vancouver, Squamish, Whistler, Pemberton and Lillooet on this trip and the vast lands with very little population density enamored us.

I highly recommend Nita Lake Lodge in Whistler as an excellent place to station yourself and explore The Pacific Province. It is on the expensive side during peak seasons, however they make your stay very interesting by offering free kayak, boat and bike rentals. It is situated on the Nita Lake where you can paddle and offers beautiful trails in the mountains nearby. Another outdoor adventure spot is Squamish, with its famous Sea to Sky Gondola ride, where you walk on a Suspension Bridge when you reach the top. For a sleepover, I recommend the sleepy town of White Rock, very close to the US Border if you are driving up from the US Border. It has excellent Oceanside accommodations where you can enjoy the vistas if you are in a mood to relax. If you want to go very rural, check out the aboriginal history and lifestyle in Lillooet; stopping at a ranch for a horse ride in Pemberton. Last but not the least, Stanley Park in Vancouver is an urban jungle and is highly recommended. I particularly liked walking on the waterfront in downtown Vancouver.

There are more fun things you can do which I have not recommended in this trip report. Hit me up if you need more info. One interesting fact for my Australian friends and their neighbor Kiwis- Canada has bilateral agreements with you guys and you guys can get easy work permits to work in Canada for the summers. Sounds like a fun idea to spend your idyllic summer in the wonderful outdoorsy British Columbia. Go figure!

Notes From Almost An Island

Cabo, Baja California Sur, Mexico – Day 1

Baja California Sur captures you instantly with its tropical charm. It puts you under a spell of nostalgia; childhood memories of a tropical upbringing resurface. The place feels like India in the Western Hemisphere.

We disembark the sexy virgin we rode on from San Francisco (I meant the Virgin America flight, perverts!!!) and proceed towards immigration. The nice “Mujer” at the immigration counter called herself Viktoria and refrained from giving us much trouble. The next step was customs, which was very customary, but highly unnecessary; given what it involves is denying a series of alleging questions and pressing a red button which ironically means that you are green to go.

As soon as you exit the airport, you get into a party mood. The weather is captivating and loud celebratory music is playing. There is a bar right there outside the gate and we indulge with a tropical mango drink for Shweta and a banana to alleviate Freyjaa’s untimely hunger. The waiter is a good looking young guy nomenclatured Diego. I confirm with him if he is the honorable Diego from San Diego and he blushes, giving me the assurance that I made his day. He is a product of a French father and a Mexican mother and lives in Brussels, Belgium. He has come to Cabo for a visit and by sheer happenstance, landed this job at the airport bar and somehow finds it too enticing to leave. This gives me a reassurance that I might see a familiar face in this strange land next time I visit its shores. I hand him seven USDs, five for the drink, one for the paltry banana and one for keeping him even more interested in his job; purely for aforementioned selfish self-soothing reasons.

The Fox Rental Company has a shuttle waiting outside, which we obligingly board and reach a Master bathroom sized company office. Cabo, like any other tourism hub, is a highly commercial place. Everyone is competing for the tourist’s dollars and sometimes ethics take a backseat in the due process. I had booked a rental car to drive to my hotel in Cabo San Lucas and had decided to buy Mexican Liability Insurance upon my arrival there. However, I had inquired over the phone about the rates and was told it was going to be $14/day. Not surprisingly, the decent looking poker faced Roberto decided to offer me $22/day for the same level of coverage. I reassured him that I might not be a rocket scientist but I knew my numbers; upon which; he decided to take $16/day. And that was the sign that Cabo will be a place where haggling will encompass a good portion of human affairs. It also shows that if humans are not bound by rules and regulations, they are very likely to cheat, given no consequences of faltering.  A human mind is wild and unless you tame it a little bit, societies become interesting but very unpredictable. Author Taleb, a big proponent of antifragility suggests that we should seek out unpredictable chaotic living if we desire to keep ourselves from breaking with fragility but I beg to stay fragile. I would like to live in a somewhat predictable society and don’t mind adventuring into unpredictable lands only for short durations. All of us know that life itself is highly unpredictable and there is value in embracing its nasty yet interesting turns and twists. I am all up for embracing but not convinced about living that way for eternity by seeking out such long term opportunities on purpose.

After this initial education, we reached the next step of looking at the car I was getting. It was a Volkswagen Gol and had a Manual Transmission. Here was my opportunity to show off my fancy folder with all travel related papers filed away in almost an obsessive compulsive way. The paperwork clearly reflected my conviction and my lack of audacity about reserving a stick shift car on my maiden visit to a new country. He tried convincing me unconvincingly and with lack of evidence in abundance that his system shows my enthusiasm for using a clutch again in my life. The conversation turned almost into a brawl since he demanded more money for automatic and I refused to budge and raised my voice far beyond my usual equilibrium levels. He budged and gave me a FIAT convertible. The earlier education has already helped.

The convertible had a horribly small trunk space but the family got together and pulled a “BRR73”. BRR73 was the number of my grandfather’s 1958 Ambassador which our joint family used for many unthinkable number of years. Our grandfather loved to take us to wedding parties and the party of seven would load up in the average sized car for five on several occasions. Hence, I was good at the art of loading up and into a small car. The car was fun to drive and the road and scenery induced a feeling that I was driving from Delhi to Faridabad. We pulled over at Dominos for a late lunch and ordered a medium pizza and two drinks for a paltry sum of 237 Pesos ($13). Post the late lunch, we headed to our Hotel (#1 Bread and Breakfast according to Lonely Planet) in the downtown Cabo San Lucas area and we were charmed yet again. It is an enchanting B&B, tucked away from the all inclusives and has a wonderful welcoming feel. The manager incentivized me to pay in cash (Pesos) by reducing the boarding charges by hundred dollars. I obliged and promised him the sum once I withdrew it from a local ATM.

We had booked a Honeymoon suite, honey being our sweet Nirvanh and moon being our beautiful Freyjaa. Both of them make this honeymoon of sorts complete. It was time to get fresh, grab dinner, relax and call it a day. I got some fresh, same day caught fish from Neptunos after withdrawing cash from the Santander bank and came back to my honeymoon suite, where I lay down on my hammock, swinging back and forth; while my mind swung back and forth between progress and nostalgia, risk and security, love and fear and all other such mesmerizing dualities of life which make this truly non-dualistic life worth living in the worldly way. 

Notes from Small Islands: Travels in South-East Asia

Yes, the title of this post sounds familiar. Yes, it is similar to Bill Bryson's book's title "Notes from a Small Island".  That was the intent. Having read so many of Bryson's books and having paid money for buying them, I see no necessity in offering him a royalty for borrowing a similar name for the title of my nondescript blog (which I only share with my Facebook friends)

Despite the similarity in names, the content is widely different. When he refers to "Island", he is referring to a gloomy, rainy island which had wisely refused to adopt Euro as its currency, had ruled over a good part of the world for few centuries and is now struggling to keep its economy going. Despite all the problems, it still has one of the presumably finest cities in the world- London.

When I refer to Islands, I refer to the happy go lucky Islands of Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore (not too sure about "happy go lucky" here) where people say "mail pel lai" which is a Thai way of saying "Don't think much". This will definitely offend Descartes who firmly believed in "I Think Therefore I AM" (People go so crazy about this Descartes uttering that they even start companies on its name; when I was graduating from college, a company called ITTIAM Systems came looking for heavy thinkers from IIT).  The point I am trying to make is that Thai people only think with their working minds; they only think as much to get the job done which is a way of saying they don't worry a whole lot (keep their worrying minds powered down!). And you can get this vibe as soon as you land in Thailand.

In December of 2011, we had a week long vacation in South-East Asia. I do feel that a week was not enough to capture all the calming vibe of this region which means that I might visit again. We spent some time in Singapore, Phuket (an Island in Thailand) and Bintan (an Island in Indonesia). Singapore is a nice hub for good  jobs, finance industry and the  money minting which helps tourism in countries like Indonesia and Thailand going.  Of course, due to overcrowding, only a small percentage of people own cars in Singapore, hence cabs are the way to go. Cabs are excitingly cheaper than cabs in the US (a good example to illustrate this point would be: In my 7 years of stay in the US, I have taken a cab just ONCE and in my three days in Singapore, I must have taken the cab at least seven times)
Singapore has a great Buddhist temple, a flourishing Chinatown, a Little India (who would not have guessed that!) and enormous hotels. My most memorable part of the Singaporean trip was relaxing in the Buddhist temple and hogging at a fine Indian restaurant in Little India. Another interesting artifact of Singaporean government is that visas are easy to get. I sent photocopy of our passports to our friend Manish in Sinagapore and it hardly took him a few days to get our visas. (no interviews needed, no need to part with your passport for indefinite amount of time).

Manish had planned an interesting trip to Phuket from Singapore and the rest is unforgettable. Again, just like a great Asian country, getting a visa was extremely simple; it was actually on-arrival. They click your picture, charge you some money and stamp a visa. And the cherry on the top is that Freyjaa (holding a US passport) did not even have to get a visa for either of the two countries. These are some very important aspects of travel, especially if you have experienced the amount of paperwork you need to do to get a US visa. We stayed in the Patong beach area of Phuket, roamed around in the streets, encountering shady massage parlors and Lady Boys once in a while (signature trademark of Thailand, no wonder expatriates to Thailand are called sexpatriates) . That does not mean all massage services in Thailand are shady. At Karon beach, we got an inexpensive massage by the beach, lying down in the shade, sipping coconut water and listening to the waves (this would made a perfect travel magazine/brochure advertisement picture). There is a lot of culture to explore in Phuket as well. On our way back to the airport, we took a residential route, passing Thai natives sitting on their front porches and Hindus worshiping their deities in small neighborhood temples. Thailand was very much like a home, marveling us with its inexpensive comforts and tantalizing our hearts to live closer to home and family.

The last leg of the trip was Indonesia. We took a ferry from Singapore to Bintan, Indonesia. Bintan is a resort island. You cannot much get culture here but you can definitely get luxury of resorts and peace and quiet of an island. Visa was again on-arrival (can you beat that?)  but this time Freyjaa had to get a visa as well (US passports don't get you too far in Muslim countries, haven't you watched Argo?). We stayed for a day in a resort (don't remember the name), had great food, rented E-bikes and rode around the island. This island is unbelievably beautiful and strikes a lot of similarity to Hawaiin Islands (I have to agree that Indonesian people are some of the sweetest people). If you ask me, going to Bintan should be a "must-do" if you are visiting Singapore. But, beware of sea sickness if you are taking the ferry. 

I might go back again to this great tropical area but even if I don't, I have soaked up the entire experience in my skin and soul and will live these memories for the lifetime.