paharganj

luckily i was staying in Paharganj *last* week not this... as far as I can tell, kaboom pretty much right outside the hotel I was in...

gonna party like its 1979...

timestamps coming out all wrong from my poopy camera

uploading a few singapore pics now, that it seems I took 26 years ago.

which new camera?

walked round boat quay to the merlion and then through bit of chinatown (mostly a route that I've done before but took some different roads to understand the topology of the place better); camera is really annoying to use - I realise that I'm going to have problems with framing and focus and light levels and all that. blah. so maybe I should get new one - what to get that might still let me use my gigabytes of CF cards? or must I abandon those to history?

CF success

pulled several hundred photos off my CF - turns out they didn't get destroyed like the rest of my hardware by monsoon. With free network access in the hostel, it'll take me only 10h or so to upload them all. Have discovered that the camera still takes pics mostly OK even though the back-side display is broken - time to run round Sinapore taking pics of everything I've already seen (or perhaps a nap first...)

shisha cafe

there's a shisha cafe on Boat Quay near here - been there a few times (I was there 'till 4am last night at least because I ended up playing the german-baiting game with "fünf uhr" rather than "waß?" in the middle a group of children-of-expats... (that girl was one of the hair people... another being a girl (malay? chinese? can't remember...) that the third girl (a Mahgrebi) was trying to hook me up with. There was a Krazy Korean girl in there too, who ended up sitting with me at 5am as I had spicy soup in the nearby 24h food court for SGD1.50... tasty(?) shisha in that place. Am getting seriously beer-fatigued, though - I've been out every night except one since arriving in Singapore (though I think once I was back in the hostel before 2am so maybe that also doesn't count).

This is all quite a change from india (apart perhaps from Goa).

backpackermode=clean

having washed, put on my nice new Marks and Spencer trousers and a black shirt and washed and brushed my hair, no less than three girls told me I have 'lovely hair' last night in the shisha cafe... they never say that when I'm in "dirty backpacker" mode.

trousers

went to marks and spencers and purchased trousers from a reputable dealer for once... behind various forms of alcohol, I think trousers are my most common purchase this year.

shisha cafe last night with the hostel owner and various other people, in the same strip of bars that contains molly malones and the various bars i went to on tuesday (it seems I have established a certain reputation by sleeping outside the hostel in the comfy chair that other night...)

still failed to do daytrip to malaysia.

On the metro here, "No Durians - fine $5000" - is this something from back to the future? the icon looked like some kind of spiky pufferfish.

still nocamera and nophone :-(

insomnia

at molly malones fell into company with dudes (one who used to live in singapore one who was from Sydney but had a mysteriously English accent) with who I went to 'Insomnia' (went in taxi which was hard to get at 9pm - turns out they are all on phone callout at that time but one took me if I paid him the phone callout fee even though he picked me up on the street...) inside Chijmes church themed mall/bar/cafe complex. For 18 singapore dollars entry free, open bar from 21h to 23h with a live band (which was playing "just one more song":GOTO 10 all the way until at least 02h) and lots of people. From 23h I think they made people pay for drinks but as I was tanked up enough to last until I left at 0330 (walked home, having realised once I got to Chijmes that I knews where it was and that it was in easy walking distance) - went to little 24h food court near hostel where there are lots of stands which sell only one thing, went to one which was selling some kind of soup (the choice I was presented with was 'spicy or not' - mmm spicy!).

ibook

purchased ibook. having usual laptop trouble of trying to find a place where I can get 110-230v electrical supply in the same place as wireless (so I'm blogging from the windows machines in the hostel)... free 512m RAM upgrade in addition to the inbuilt 512M...

once it is all full up of electrical beans again, I'll head to the nearby CBTL for coffee and IP.

What time is it?

Want to know what time it is where I am? Try this:

TZ=`wget -q -O - http://mundungus.clifford.ac/~benc/TZ.txt` date

deodorant

deodorant for the first time in about 6 weeks! I drunkenly made a girl sniff my arm with deodorant sprayed on it last night, she did not even run away.

day trips

looking at day trips to Indonesia and Malaysia. also today shopping in Orchard Road.

CBTL

found a branch of Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf just down the road

dial-a-coke

came across a real life "dial a coke" machine - send SMS to some number, get billed on phone and coke falls out of machine. if only I had a working telephone, my constant craving for cola could be satisfied so easily.

In Dublin fair city...

All customers within Molly Malone’s are VIPs as far as we’re concerned. However, there is a particularly elite group known as the 100 Pint Club. Drink 100 pints at Molly Malone’s Irish Pub and you get to be part of this happy and select group. You will also receive a limited–edition 100 Pint Club Rugby jersey from Canterbury and members’ names have place of honour in gold lettering on The 100 Pint Club plaque within the pub.

Well, I'm here for 10 days so just maybe...

mmmm beer

issued with beer and cup-a-soup at hostel. mmm.

have third contactless travel payment card of the year - almost empty already after the trip from the airport into the cityk, but I expect it can be recharged somehow.

tired tired tired... maybe could sleep...

HK

this city reminds me very much of Hong Kong - mainland china composed with Japan composed with England... 999 and double yellow lines, funny ideographic labels on signs, cool tech

some kind of cultural snobbery or just lame?

the PCs in Pacific Coffee Co. have only English input method, none of the other exiting ones that windows comes with... this seems quite a surprise to me as I'm used to traveller internet cafes which have pretty much everything enabled...

plane

to my left, a man who fell straight asleep and then started suffering right arm spasms, at one point knocking a glass of water all over himself and me. alas the stewardess did not offer to wipe me down. to the right a man who within 2 minutes of boarding asked for painkillers from the staff and then spent the next five hours squirming in his seat. in front of me, an in-flight entertainment system that provided two principal forms of amusement: for the first hour or so, berlitz interactive language tutor which taught me fluent japanese, russian and greek; for the remainder it provided The Best 80s Album In The World Ever very loudly. passport details sufficiently memorised to be able to fill out landing card without reference to it; singapore immigration lady asked if my parents liked me having long hair but let me in anyway. there are many shops here. one of the first signs I saw when leaving the jetway was a big blue "more shops ->".

I wonder if I am in the southern hemisphere yet?

a strange feeling of being at home far far away

got through customs in singapore and there outside was a Pacific Coffee Company, which I used to lurk in a bit in Hong Kong (they have free internet both there and here)... strange how that made me feel at home

ibook

maybe I will buy an ibook instead of an x41 - substantially cheaper so it will not be so painful when it breaks after 1y...

6 months!

6 months (+ 2 days) since my RTW ticket started! ooOOooo! so 6 months (- 2 days) left on that same ticket...

SOAP

The room I have rented for my final night, in Paharganj opposite New Delhi railway station has a shower with hot water. I have washed myself with soap! Much of my suntan washed away into a trickle of black water. Now I feel all light and fluffy.

22%

my google usage capacity has been stuck at 22% for months... surely someone can send me some porno mpegs or something? I feel like I'm wasting my remaining 210 crorebytes...

railway protection force

The Railway Protection Force became suspicious of my short excursion to Agra - I was dirty and unwashed and claiming to have been staying in Agra overnight despite the fact that I carried no bag. I was searched; revealed was a large toilet roll stuffed into one pocket, a Japanese phrasebook and wads of various foreign currencies (mostly Dong and Yuan). They confiscated none of it and said "you are free to go now, dear".

@agra

have seen the taj mahal. was nice, but expensive - Rs750/- to get in, plus Rs5/- to get into the wee little museum and Rs3/- tip to the people who looked after my mobile phone (as those are not allowed in, even if they are all fucked up by the monsoon); will stay here for the night (had dinner on hotel roof with pretty spectacular view of the town, and only Rs100 for the room - watched the Taj go from sunlit to dusky to illuminated only by the cameraflash of tourist to illuminated only by the torch light of security guards throwing everyone out)

agra

I think once I reach Delhi I'll ditch my big bag and head straight to Agra, staying there one night (20th-21st), before returning to Delhi for my final night in India (21st-22nd)... then my only trouble will be talking my way firstly into the star alliance gold lounge and secondly into singapore dressed as I am as a dirty goan beach hippy.

checkout

checked out of hotel (porters so eager to help me to a taxi, which suggests that I have been overgenerous with the baksheesh); dropped bag at mumbai central station clockroom, after fighting my way through hoards of touts desperate to show me where the ticket office was [i) I could see where it was ii) I did not need to go to the ticket office]; then took suburban train to the beach and sat in a branch of a bombay chain of coffeeshops (there are a couple of chains here -- maybe getting big enough to be purchased and rebranded by the mermaid with the nice titties?). On the way I walked through a little shanty town that had grown up by one of the suburban railway stations - lots of little kids for saying Hi to but they also want backsheesh... I can just imagine what would happen if I started handing out rupee coins in the middle of fully populated plastic-sheet city... at least there aren't the crazy mountains (well, car-sized heaps) of rubbish that I found in Calcutta.

sneeze

seem to be sneezing rather a lot. maybe run down healthwise (私は元気じゃありません) or maybe just sleeping under an airconditioner that blows cold air on me all night...

amelie

Started the day with another dosa-in-bed whilst watching «Amelie» (with subtitles thank god, not dubbed like the unfortunate rendition of „Lola Rennt” that I viewed in Puri dubbed in terrible deutsch-american accent). Maybe I will go to the beach this evening.

extravagance

spent almost one pound sterling on breakfast in bed - a pot of tea and a big cheesy masala dosa (mmm) whilst watching some film on TV - just like being on holiday!

kebab!

found a kebab stand! with delicious kebabs! that are even made of cow! mmmm

next train is

to delhi (which I still think I will still dislike as everyone else I've met travelling in India seems to also dislike it) on 19th overnight arriving 20th. The end is nigh! Singapore beckons. Blogger keeps losing my posts - grrr... I wrote one about all the gay men that have been chasing me in India but I suppose you'll all just have to guess what was in that.

victorian

hmm. bombay seems to be the most post-victorian colonial city that I have visited so far. all these brown people everywhere but they speak english as primary language, dress like americans and sit round in coffee shop chains that try to be like starbucks (bright, clean, poncy drinks menu with plain coffee hidden way in the depths, 802.11b). In fact the whole city is clean - only once have I almost stepped in crap. There were a bunch of people playing cricket on one of the Maidans earlier - at one point I even picked up the ball and threw it, and even better it actually arrived on target... luckily they did not chase me down to play, otherwise my secret would have been revealed.

equipment report

Electrical stuff still all wonky... maybe it will need replacing in Singapore. Bad monsoon - no biscuit. However, not all bad - I stumbled out of the monsoon rains towards the nearest place that looked like it would sell me a cup of milky chai and fell into company of a nice girl from Southampton called Victoria.

molly malone

Not sure why but I've developed the habit of singing Molly Malone to myself over the past few months... travel-madness setting in?

i have one belt.

I have purchased a belt for my nice trousers from vietnam have unfortunately stretched around the waist; I've been dancing in Goa for the past three days in most awkward fashion as I've basically had to keep one hand in pocket the whole time to hold them up (or drink loads of water and bloat my stomach out but then I need to pee the whole time). This belt should alleviate that. However, I'm led to believe that New Zealand Customs are not fond of people bringing in fake brand names to their country (this thing has a 'Diesel' buckle on it and as I brought it from an indian street stall for not much I doubt it is entirely genuine). So maybe they will be angry at me when I get there in ~2006-01.

Also I have put most of my clothes in for laundering - what started out in April earlier this year as 10 complete sets of {tshirt underpants pair-of-socks} seems to have got rather skewed over time - 10 tshirts, but only 6 underpants and four and a half pairs of socks. plus a smelly towel that does not taste good any more.

bombay

arrived at Bombay Victoria Terminus / Mumbai CST and in a pretty nice hotel (City Palace) nearby. small rooms but I opted for air conditioning for once (its humid here compared to Goa).

disabled SIM

as punishment for not adding money to my Hutch SIM for the last 30 days, it has been disabled until I add more. the disablement doesn't seem to have affected SMS delivery though which is mostly what I've been using it for. slightly annoying as I had been making an effort to spend all my money before yesterday's disablement so now do not have much left (and cannot recharge as I'm not in Delhi...)

wet and dry

got sunburn and a chill within 8h of each other in the same bar on the beach here. ook.

Bombay

ticket (hopefully) booked for Bombay tomorrow morning 0930 from a town about 25km away - all day on the train, arrive in Mumbai late evening.

camera still b0rk

less broken that yesterday but still not usable

poop

and after all the wetness that I struggled through to get to the world famous weekly anjuna fleamarket, they had all packed up and gone home because it was raining too hard. then I was too soggy to hang round until serious partying was meant to start at 23h-ish so I went back to Baga and (after a failed attempt to go to Club Cubana - also closed due to rain) ended up back in my usual (i.e. I've been there once before) Bar Mambo until 3am... at least its easy to get to bed from there (a hundred metres walk or so).

monsoon ate my camera

:-(

"It looks as if it was put in by an Indian."

my shower has an in-shower-head heating element, so it has a cold water supply all the way up to within an inch or so of where the water comes out. there's a 240v mains wire, therefore, running from a socket mounted in the bathroom wall out along the pipe and into the shower head. its a little scary and makes me want to wear rubber boots and stand in a bucket as I wash. also, the electrics are such that as I turn the cold water supply on and off, the lights in the room dim and brighten and the ceiling fan gets slower and faster. Prince Phillip would not approve.

stickydel

in same internet cafe as yesterday. different host, but has the same stickydel effect keyboard :-(

defect of the day

Defect of the day with the PC I am using is the old classic "sticky delete key". (Once a long time ago I ran a computer club at lunchtimes in my secondary school and saw some kid lose an hour's worth of work in Hollywood-style character-by-character deletion. Sucker). At least the connection is fast (maybe even ADSL).

BBC World Service in Stereo

'Tin Tin' cafe/bar/partyplace where I had my breakfast this morning had decided to enhance the dining experience by playing not only BBC World Service Television on their three televisions but also BBC World Service radio (covering approximately the same subject matter in similar accents) loudly over the sound system. The effect was bizarre.

i am finding much use for the white LED torch from Tiger beer that the barmaid Tien in Sai Gon got for me - so many scary dark alleyways and paths that I find myself wandering around in.

Yesterday I discovered that the short path from vagator to little vagator (connecting two clusters of bars) was disrupted by the collapse of a wee little footbridge; in the day time, it was easy enough to clamber across the ruins, but after two pints and nightfall I found I needed to return to my hotel and not wanting to take the several-kilometre long road route that I'd taken the day before found myself climbing the ruins of the footbridge again, slightly drunk, in my $1 flip flops from Beijing, trying to see where I was going with my little torch.

moved

moved from Vagator about 5km down the beach to Baga which is described as the original 1960s goa beach that is now overdeveloped and overcrowded. However, as I was finding the idyllic paradise of Vagator rather on the quiet side, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Vagator

I am staying in Vagator. No one has tried to sell me any Es yet, but plenty of people trying to get me to hire a moto.

goa

in goa, using dialup again. space bardoesn't work properly... most annoying.

got off the train about 50km away, went to the info deskto ask how to get here and they told me to get back on the same train and carry on another couple of stations. the man in Kochi didn't tell me that, but he was using a timetable that was a year or so out of date (surely one cannot expect staff at the station to actually use the latest timetable?)

Ihave a hotel which has hot water supplied to the shower which is a first for me in india. To celebrate, I purchased some soap. Now I just need some deodorant.

Sat watching the waves and the fog for a few hours this morning - the rickshaw driver dumped me by the beach when I was unable to specify which guesthouse I wanted to go to. Lots of adverts for beer and wine- I hope I can find a nice bar -I have not been to a decent one since Allez Boo in Sai Gon.

PLan is to rest in Goa for about 4 or 5 nights then head to Mumbai.

chicken

had good coconut/masala chicken last night, in a french restaurant near an almost-deserted synagogue. this morning found maybe the first really decent cup of coffee (I ordered a second cup) in India, better even than the stuff in Pondy (which was mostly cafetiere (?sp) brewed rather than drip filtered so funny tasting).

kochi

got the ferry over to fort cochin (Rs2.5 on the way, Rs3 on the way back - an extra 50Ps for the privilege of being deposited at an inconvenient pier). pretty nice - no one hassling me to buy anything (actually thats mostly true for all of this town, but in this particular case it was because all of the shops for most of the way I walked were rice-and-spice wholesalers who had obviously worked out that the white-man tourists did not want to buy 15kg bags of their produce). Later today, after I get my train ticket to "somewhere in Goa" I'll probably go back and walk the other direction from the ferry pier.

Cochin

here I am in Cochin, having got a 0530 train with no reservation so took unreserved sleeper class -- turned out for most of the journey to be less crowded than the usual reserved AC carriages that I have been travelling in.


Annoyingly my mobile ran out of power and there was no charge point in the Rs50/= dorm that I was staying in, so I had no alarm clock; instead I had to rely on the clock inside my camera which is set to UTC, luckily realising that I had mistaken the conversion amount by an hour before I went to bed. So every half hour i had to wake up, power up the camera, perform time conversion and then suspend for another half hour.

Train got me here at about 1pm, rickshaw driver was desperate to sell me prostitutes even before he tried to sell me drugs, an ordering that i've not seen before in this country. I checked into the YMCA where I have a nice clean room with private bathroom with western toilet for Rs350/=.

Probably will stay two nights here giving me all of tomorrow and the morning of the day after (as well as the rest of today) here before I wander off to Goa.

kaniyakumari (?sp)

here I am at the southernmost town in India! I thought the train would get me here about noon, but I was woken up by "hello boss" and thrown out of the train at 0630 in the post-dawn light. not much stuff here, and not much of it is open yet.

more pondicherry

still in pondicherry. I've booked (I think) a ticket to the southernmost point in mainland india; the plan is to stay there a day, then start heading north again up the west coast, through Kerala, Goa, Bombay, then inland to Agra.

I've also got a few photos uploaded (mostly vietnam, but also some of India) through a global network of CD burners, CD readers, parents, loopback filesystems and international postal services. Start here.

cliff

I went to l'Espace cafe (2nd time) and had pizza and two beers. It is associated in some way with the hotel that I am staying in - the two people in charge at hotel also seem to be in charge at this place (in charge == they speak french and english in addition to some indian language(s)). One has misapprehended from my passport that my name is 'Cliff' and greets me as such every time he sees me; the other misapprehended from my passport that I live in Sai Gon, though I corrected that over breakfast the other day.

There are many millipedes in this town.

In Russia, and again here, I have found use in the 10^n-(1/inf) method for ATM withdrawls; instead of withdrawing 10000 rupees, instead withdraw 9900 rupees - that way, one gets a wad of change, instead of all stupid large notes. Not so much use in countries such as the UK or US where all the banknotes from an ATM are about the same value, but good where the available banknote range is sometimes from 500units to 10units.

I'm back in coffee.com - they play the same two fucking songs - wake me up when september ends and don't lie. they really are MTV.

My package that I sent in calcutta last week by surface mail, expected to arrive around Christmas time, has allegedly arrived in the UK. The recipient has even correctly described some of the contents so I'm reasonably confident that it really has. CD of photos should be online in a while - vietnam and india pics, I think.

Today I saw 5 groups of tourists (including me) in one place - not seen that many for a week or so.

Last night's dinner (after exhausting my money mostly hence today's ATM trip) was a Rs14/= pile of fried things from a street stand, that turned out to be pretty good - one was half a boiled egg in batter, the other was some black stuff like squished-roach in batter (I hear they are vegetarian in Tamil Nadu (although I am technically not in that state) so hopefully any roach content is purely ambient) - I feel a bit silly standing at a street stall selling 8 different kinds of fried battered object picking out things to eat as if I know what the things are).

Not sure how to get to next place, or even where next place will be. Hmm. Maybe I'll just go to the railway station and see what is on offer.