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As soon as I got home, I got on the horn (so to speak) with friends and family letting them know that I was actively looking for work and new projects to tackle. I was fortunate enough to land a freelance copywriting position fairly quickly, and I’ve been using my extra time to educate myself on newer social media platforms and search out other freelancing opportunities. I structure every day so that I’m consistently moving towards my goal of full-time work in digital marketing.

If I didn’t have these clear goals to work on I’d have no idea what to do. Getting lost in my own head would be a recipe for disaster. Hitting the ground running is the only way to shove those negative thoughts out of your brain. There’s only so much a brain can handle thinking about, might as well crowd out the negativity yeah?

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I just got back last night from Ha Long Bay, where I spent Halloween on a tiny private island during a 3-day cruise.  It was one of those budget last minute holiday deals that ended up being a delightful trip.  Half the boat thought I was Zach Galifianakis, the other half figured out my pirate costume.  Good times were had by all.

Now for some bad news.  The OSX partition of my hard drive has gone wonky, which means all the posts I was working on are now unavailable.  I’m having to use the Windows partition I have for gaming as a temporary fix.  Unfortunately that means my Annapurna series is on hold for a bit, but I’ll come back to it as well as India when I can figure out the problem.

Right now I’m back in Hanoi, though I’ll be leaving for Hue this evening by bus.  Vietnam has been really fun, especially our hostel here.  These guys do it right.  Spacious lockers, private charging stations and bed lamps, great food and drink, and tons of helpful staff.  If I ever open my own hostel, I’m totally stealing all their ideas.

The food here, especially the street food, has been delicious and cheap.  Lots of pork, chicken and beef.  All the noodle dishes are fantastic, and spring rolls cost just 5k dong (.25 cents US) a pop.  The great thing is most of it isn’t fried, which is one thing that was difficult for me about the street food in India.

I’ll have more to come soon, as well as pictures, but right now I have to check out!

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Our first day on the Circuit was spent jeeping to Besisahar and then hiking to Ngadi.  The jeep ride was uneventful, beyond turning my ass to hamburger thanks to Nepal’s notoriously bad roads.  In Besisahar we ran into what would become a common sight on our hike: hordes of Israelis.  Apparently their university summer break coincides perfectly with shoulder season on Annapurna, so they descend on the trek in droves for the cheap prices that September offers.  From here you can opt to take a bus to Bhulbhule or go for the 1.5 hour hike.  We chose the hike to stretch our legs a bit after our jeep ride.  About 15 minutes into our walk the rain came, lightly at first but quickly developing into a downpour.  The buses going by were full of Israelis radiating pity.

We hit Bhulbhule right on schedule, but decided that getting a head start on the horde behind us would be better than stopping there for the night.  The next town, Ngadi, was just an hour-long hike away.   At Ngadi we got our first guesthouse experience, and were exposed to what would become our menu for the next 12 days: dal bhat, Tibetan bread, chapattis, and veg curry.  At this point Snickers bars also remained relatively inexpensive.

When we settled in for the evening I was surprised by the day’s hiking, mostly because of the scenery.  I was expecting sheer cliffs and massive rock faces, but the first day was very green, almost lush.  The landscape was covered in ferns and lots of deciduous plants.  There were no evergreens to speak of.  It felt a lot like Munnar’s tea plantations.

Day 2

Day 2 started out much like day 1: with rain.  The morning brought a downpour with it.  Jess and I decided to brave the rain, and started out early with the Israelis radiating pity once again.  We got our first real ascent of the trek on day 2, with a 420m climb from Ngadi to Bahundanda.  Most of it was done on stone stairs akin to the Inca Trail.  Not a bad start to the morning.

Following a quick break in Bahundanda we pressed on towards Jagat, our destination for the day.  The trail map was a bit deceptive, not really doing justice to the slog on rocky cutbacks that took us to Jagat, but we got there around lunchtime.  This method would become our daily routine, and we found it suited us well.  We’d usually try to depart by 6-6:30am, and finish around 12 or 1pm.  We wouldn’t stop for lunch before stopping for the day.  We figured that sitting for 45 minutes to an hour would make our legs tighten up and sap our will to press on.  This is  how we hiked for the rest of the Circuit, and I highly recommend it if you don’t mind hiking slightly hungry.

After two guesthouses I started to get a picture of costs on the trail, at least during shoulder season (September).  Most rooms were free (if you ate at the guesthouse) or 100-200 rupees.  Most places were only 100 rupees for two people.  They make their money on the food, which was simple and filling but quite pricey.  A dal bhat would run 200-300 rupees; curries similar, and extra rice would be 100.  Dal bhat was usually the best value, since you would get free refills of dal and rice as long as you could take ‘em.

Day 3

Our first day with no rain!  The weather cooperated and we had a beautiful blue sky as company.  We were planning on at least Tal for the day, but ended up pushing past it.  Our final destination was Karte, which made for about 6 hours of hiking and a gradual ascent of 570m.

The views today were considerably nicer than what we had before.  We ended up in slot canyons lined with waterfalls and steeper cliffs, and the trail wound its way along these.  The trail was still much greener than I was expecting, but we started to get some peeks at the rockier stuff that awaited us.  Following a nice series of cutbacks right before Tal we were greeted with wide-open vistas and excellent photos.  Looking back you could see the entire valley we had been in all morning, and looking ahead you could see Tal, which was set in a flat valley with a river and peaks surrounding.

These were the first photos I’d taken where I really felt like I was in the Himalayas.  Luckily for me, the vistas only got better from here on out.

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The city itself is bustling, but it doesn’t have the feel of India.  There are almost no buildings taller than 4-5 stories, and in the backpacker ghetto of Thamel they all loom over the narrow streets and alleys.  You can find Buddhist prayer flags strung up everywhere, and most accommodation is dirt-cheap.  The city’s main tourist attractions are Durbar Square and the Monkey Temple, though I found wandering the markets and bazaars with a camera just as enticing.  There are plenty of hidden courtyards and alcoves that contain small temples and shrines just waiting to be discovered.

The food there is filling and tasty, with my personal favorites being the momos (steamed or fried dumplings) and thukpa (thick vegetable stew).  You can find just about any international cuisine you want in Thamel, but be wary of any place offering “Mexican” specialties.   You can also find any western grocery staple you want at one of two big grocery stores, and they’re perfect for loading up on snacks before heading off to trek somewhere.

Jess and I met up here before heading to Pokhara and the Annapurna Circuit, and we spent a few days acclimating to Nepal / being bums.  Kathmandu was a good place to chill, but after one or two days I felt like the big attractions had been exhausted.  It felt like one of those waypoint capitals that people spend a night in before heading off to greener pastures.

If you really are set on spending time here, the best stuff I found to do were the Monkey Temple at sunset for photos, Durbar Square for the architecture, and anywhere around Thamel for shopping or food.

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Hyderabad itself is pretty modern, at least compared to the places I’d been visiting before.  Andrew had booked us on an Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (APTDC) guided tour, on the recommendations of some of his Indian coworkers.  His buddy Steve from Microsoft was tagging along as well.

Our first stop was flying to Vizag, which is a coastal “paradise” that came highly recommended.  We hired a driver to take us around for the day, and discovered that Vizag is actually a barren wasteland of fun.  The beach, described as having “peace, quiet and solitude” was actually run by a roving band of beggar children who had set up Mad Max-esque road blocks to demand rupees from anyone that passed.  The actual beach was covered in sculptures that were inside the tidal line, so they were in various states of disrepair.  The most popular one was nothing but a mermaid’s torso, lacking arms or a head.  Perfect for posing tourists.

Our hotel was also quite drab.  I should mention that at a cost of roughly $150 for each of us to go on this two day tour that my expectations were a bit high.  I’m a budget traveler by nature, so I’m usually fine with the cheapest accommodation I can find.  However, if I’m paying a higher price, I expect better levels of service.  I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be disappointed when you ask for bath towels and are handed bedsheets instead.  The Indian tourists we were with seemed to have no problems with the tour whatsoever.  I don’t think there was an expectation of service associated with the high cost, which was interesting.

Here’s a quick rundown of the rest of the tour:

• A day at Araku Valley with no activities planned, essentially meaning we had the 1-day tour but with one day tacked on.  We ended up watching 80s action flicks in our hotel room all day.
• A museum tour that took all of 10 minutes, with a strange mix of tribal and modern clothing on the mannequins.  No photography was allowed, as I imagine anyone that saw what was in store for their tourist dollars would run the other way.
• A traditional dance held in the parking lot of our hotel.
• A communist party demonstration, complete with burning of an effigy, that held up traffic on our bus for 45 minutes.
• A cave tour that actually rocked.

As silly as all of this was, it was actually a hilarious tour.  Andrew and Steve were just as incredulous as I was, so we spent the weekend laughing at the absurdity of it all.  It was one of those trips that was horrible during, but makes for a great story afterward.  I still wouldn’t wish an APTDC tour on my worst enemy though.

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That said, Varkala, a sleep beach town in in Kerala, was legit.  Sleepy and cheap with lots of hippies wandering around.  It’s not a big “beach” place like Goa, since it’s set against red cliffs, but it’s definitely plenty chill.

After gallivanting around so much for the first part of my trip this place was the perfect tonic.  No people, no worries.  I spent 3 days here eating seafood and reading books.  Bliss.  This was where I parked myself each morning:

I’ve found over the years that I prefer sleepy beaches like this to big party ones.  It’s part of the reason I’m avoiding the south of Thailand on this trip in lieu of more trekking.  Any place where I can lay down for hours and do nothing but read books is cool by me.

At the end of my few days there, I ended up like this:

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To give you an idea, I’ve bounced from Chennai to Pondicherry, to Madurai, to Kodaikanal, to Munnar, to Varkala.  That’s a lot of bus rides and not a lot of time to see things.  But I am going to chill in Varkala for at least a few days.  More on that later.  Of those mentioned above, Munnar was far and away my favorite spot:

The whole area is a lush, verdant green.  It’s quiet and idyllic, and everywhere you look you’ll find meticulously cultivated tea plantings climbing up the sides of the hills and mountains.  They form really intricate patterns, almost like massive brain corals across entire swaths of the horizon.  It’s an incredibly lush and vibrant place.  Two of my favorite things to photograph are geometric shapes and bright colors, so Munnar was like Candy Land for me.

I stayed in a brilliant little lodge just outside the main town, and was lucky enough to eat the two best Indian meals of my life right down the road.  I’ve never had butter chicken or chicken masala like it (sorry Mo!).  And both meals only set me back 100 rupees  (~$2) apiece.  The food so far has been fantastic.  I’m surprised I like it so much since I’m an avowed carnivore, but the breadth of flavors and spices that they use for their vegetarian dishes blows away what I had back home.  I love it here.

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My journey into the city itself was an adventure, since I took the local subway for 6 rupees.  Very cheap, and very crowded.  I loved it.  Ended up talking to an old Irish man that was on my flight, and we got a spot near Egmore station.  Explored around and quickly noticed the contrasts and contradictions in India.  Young people in smart business casual and older folks in saris, modern buildings right next door to hovels, a spotless train station on the inside with piles of trash right outside the entrance, etc.  It’s intoxicating.  I can’t wait to experience more of it.

My 2nd night there I met up with a group of Couchsurfers from Chennai, and had a wonderful time speaking to them about India and my own travel plans.  Although a great gal named Sharon nabbed most of my attention (she has 3 tattoos and loves Star Wars, she had me at hello…) everyone there had interesting stories to tell.  After my day around Egmore, (a cheaper area), the spot where we met up was a complete 180.  Our spot was a tapas restaurant called ‘Zaras’ that had a big mix of young professionals and expats, and Sharon told me it’s the only real watering hole in the city.  Fascinating place.

I’m now in Pondicherry, though I’m heading to Madurai later this evening.  Going to try and update more as I go along, and the next time I have stable wifi and a place to plug in my laptop I’ll upload photos!

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1. Bounce Bounce

• I’m in Seoul until August 2011.  My 2nd year began in  a drastically different manner than my 1st, since approximately 80% of my close friends have since left Korea.
• Papa Kub came to visit in August.  He was enamored with almost everything, up to and including soju, which I find ridiculous.  Plans to open a 찜닭 restaurant in Asheville.
• Visited the Philippines over 추석 and logged some fantastic diving.  Great break from the hustle and bustle of Seoul, and the seafood in Bohol is fantastic.
• Took 3 months of Korean classes.  Now I have the approximate vocabulary and speaking abilities of a toddler.  But less cute.

I think that sums up the last few months.  Now for the future:

• I’m heading home for Christmas.  I’ll be in NC from 12/18 until 12/31.  I won’t be out with my friends, but somehow I think spending my New Year’s Eve on an airplane is oddly appropriate.
• Two options for my winter vacation days are India and Malaysia, but I’m leaning towards Malaysia right now for Borneo and diving.

And that’s it!  You’re all caught up!

PS- If you’re reading this and worried about North Korea, join the crowd.  My workplace is about  a 10 minute walk from the US embassy, so I’ll either be one of the first ones out of Seoul or one of the first ones vaporized when the bombs fall, depending on how positively or pessimistically you view the situation.  C’est la vie!

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