Chillin' in Chennai

Monday May 13 2013

We arrived in Chennai at 8pm Sunday night and went straight to our hotel, that N had wisely booked very close to the airport, and crashed.  We slept really late, which was lovely.  

As Vijayawada had been about a thousand degrees we decided to forfeit seeing all the awesome sites we had planned to hit and just have a mall day.  Chennai has something like the second biggest mall somewhere...India, Asia I don't know.  It's pretty big and quite nice.  

Unfortunately, as we encountered last year in Mumbai, all the shops are like high end and designer so it's not very good shopping.  The mall had quite an excellent food court though and my favourite Cafe Coffee Day, which is India's big coffee chain.  

Once we got bored eating we went and watched a movie.  $8 total for two movie tickets, pop and popcorn!  Best date ever!  We went to The Croads because it was the only English movie playing.  It was cute.  No national anthem before the movie, is time.  The chairs were like big leather recliners, that didn't recline.  Some were even together like a love seat.  You prebook your seats but sadly we didn't know about those couples couches.  Funniest part of the watching a movie in India:  Everyone who comes in late uses a super bright flashlight on their cell phone to find their seat, there is an intermission, before the movie and during the intermission commercials play so loudly that you can not have a conversation and best of all when something funny happens the audience claps as they laugh.  We rushed back to pack and flew out that night.  

 Cafe Coffee Day

Latte art makes me happy!

This is the washroom in the movie theatre...a little over the top.  The toilet seats were even heated...ick!  Haha one extreme to the other here in India!  It's weird looking at the photos for the last blog and this one side bye side!

Training in India

Sunday May 5 2013  2:00pm

Long day on the Train

We flew from Singapore to Malaysia and from there to Chennai, India last night.  We arrived around 5:00pm and took a cab to our hotel.  India felt so familiar in so many ways even though we have never been in that area before.  

We realized on our way there that the hotel that N had booked back at home did not have AC and about five minutes in the +35 heat told us we wouldn't sleep at all without it.  By the time we arrived at the hotel we were both soaked with sweat.  Fortunately an extra $4 will get you AC in your room.  Unfortunately all the ATM machines near our hotel were out of order be N sent over n area wondering around looking for a spot to draw cash.  He had no trouble finding something mysterious look and deep fried treat tied with string in a newspaper so he was not upset about the excursion.  I think I must have blocked out how nasty the hotels we stayed in last time were because I was pretty grossed our by the place we were staying.  I won't go into detail on that subject though.  

We went to bed early because our train left at 5am this morning.  I had it in my mind it was a 5 hour trip which seemed fine.  It was actually closer to 9 hours in a nonAC car so it has been a pretty long and sweaty journey.  We had pleasant company, at least which makes a big difference.  Two men from Chennai on the way to visit family and a young couple and their very sweet one year old daughter.  The couple spoke almost no English but their little girl provided ample entertainment.  

I said to N,  it's amazing how calming the familiar is.  There are lots of challenging cultural things, for us, about India but looking out the window and whizzing past the rice fields I feel very at ease.  The route has been quite scenic, and minus the heat and duration enjoyable.  I don't find India a particularly relaxing place to travel but it is good to be back.  We are less than an hour from our destination in Vijayawada.  I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone at the Mission, again!

This is sort of a random little story that I didn't know where to add in:

I woke up from a nap, just now, to witness an androgenous gendered prostitute, dressed as a woman trying to procure my husband. Stubbled face with bright pink lipstick, she wore a bright green sari and lots of gaudy jewelry that jingled as she walked.  The prostitute was nodding at him suggestively, turning her body and clapping.  Fortunately I don't think my darling man really understood what this person was requesting.  The prostitute left him alone, once I was awake.  We have seen people like this in the train station before but never interacted with them.  

We are within an hour of the Mission now no very eager to get there!

Saying Good Bye to Singapore

Saturday May 4 2013 12:30

In the airport on the way to Chennai, India, via Malaysia.
We spent the morning in the little India quarter if Singapore.  It felt very authentic and was thus a very fitting transition to the next phase of our journey.

I really enjoyed Singapore!  It felt like such a crazy awesome mix of everything.  It's pristinely clean and super interesting at every turn.  It has very cool varieties of food and great shopping.  N was very happy that we did not have any room for me to be able to buy anything.  The heat/humidity was a bit to get used to but that is going to be the case from here on in.

Seeing Singapore

Friday May 3 2013

We wanted to just get a taste of daily life in Singapore so K took us to:
- Park View Square which is an enormous old hotel that has now been turned into office space.  It was raining on and off all day, so we had umbrellas with us.  the rain is actually very pleasant in the heat but we didn't want the camera and stuff to get so wet.  When we came into any public building from outside they have these skinny little umbrella bags for everyone to use so that they don't drip water everywhere.  Outside they have all these bronze statues of random famous men throughout history. So in one section we saw Plato, Dante, Dali (as in the artist Salvador), and Lincoln or Newton, Churchill and a Chinese politician I didn't know.  It just looked super arbitrary who they had together.  It was pretty entertaining to say the least.
 It has a restaurant inside that serves wine and cheese in the evening.  We didn't get to see this in action (because we were there in the afternoon) but we saw the evidence...they have this huge tower of very expensive wine and they have a harness for a woman dressed as ferry zooms up the tower and gets your bottle and then flies down with it for you!

- We checked out the fancy, fancy Raffles.  You can pay $10 000 per night!
The gift shop was selling $1300 wallet! So needless to say we bought all our souvenirs there, not.

- Next we went to see St. Andrews Cathedral aka the sugar church.  The white plaster on the outside of the building is made from sugar, egg white, lime (not the fruit).  It creates a very beautiful white effect.  N reported after a lick though that the resulting plaster was not sweet tasting, as we had hoped.

- Fort Canning Park was a lovely gardens that we Moises through.  Unfortunately the Mosquitos and ants were rather unwelcoming hosts so we didn't stay as long as we might have liked.  Kind of random but I thought interesting, there
Also used to face ocean now cannon shoots into city

- Lunch at Boomerang an Australian restaurant N and I had kangaroo pizza.  It was delish!

- We went to the Fullerton Hotel that used to be a post office. mot was beautiful inside!  It had a very funny elephant-unicorn sculpture inside.

- There are Starbucks all over the city, which made me very happy.  So we got frappe chinos before heading to Merlion Park.  On the the way to the park we passed a number of bizarre sculptures including a bird with giant feet and a tribute to Isaac Newton by Salvador Dali that was kind of disturbing.
The Merlion is a national symbol of Singapore.  It is half lion, half mermaid.

- To finish off the day we headed to Orchard Road which is a large series of shopping malls.  They have every store imaginable.  There are tons of designer brands (Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci) but then they also have lots of familiar stores from home (H&M, Levi's, Mango).  Sadly we have no space in our luggage for me to get to shop.  Very cool to see.  In the middle of it all we saw a couple getting wedding photos, outside.

- Went to Cafe Rouge, for dinner.  It was delicious French food.  Although seeing a meal for $6 N ordered something more local that was very interesting looking and tasting.  I had to laugh at him.  My meal came with coffee and not wanting to stay I asked for it to go.  They gave me a styrofoam cup in this interesting bag-carrier.

 Over all an awesome day!

 Randomly bridal photos in the middle of a shopping centre

Super Trees in Singapore

Thursday May 2

We arrived in Singapore at noon.  Our friend K and her little boy met us at the airport.

We dropped our bags at their apartment.  It's a cute little (by Canadian standards) two bedroom place.  It's a very comfortable size.  They have a lot of visitors and were all set up for us.  We even got our own room. K has fun decorating style and has made the place feel very homey!

K is at home with her son.   D works long days.  So K and little S were our tour guides around Singapore, and excellent ones I might add!


The main thing I wanted to see was the super trees I'd read about that we're just finished.  So we went to them first thing was go to the Gardens by the Bay.

On the way there were several fountains that provided great entertainment for the little guy in our company.

The super trees did not disappoint!  I do not fully understand them but they are these enormous metal trees, I think there are five of them.  They are metal with plants growing out of them horizontally.  They have solar panels all over them, I think.  They are supposed to be fully sustaining as in they recycle back all e energy they use or something.  I don't really know, just google it if you're interested (haha). What I do know is they're super cool to see and Eco friendly and I loved.

They also have two domes right next to them that are sort of like the Mutart Conservatory, in Edmonton x10.

The one we went in was called The Cloud Forest.  Inside there was this mountain of plants with a waterfall coming off the front.  You take and elevator up and then walk down this spirally ramp.  It has beautiful plants all around it.  Cloud forest are a special kind of ecosystem that is at great risk with global warming and apparently takes 200 to 300 years to mature.  It had a very interesting assortment of crazy awesome plants. I loved it.


We had dinner in the Arab quarter.  We at a restaurant call Alaturka that served Turkish food for dinner. Yum!  You can get pretty much any food imagination or in Singapore.  And it's awesome!

Beijing - Forbidden City

Wednesday May 1 2013 1:30 am

Jet lag and excitement about seeing the Great Wall today are keeping me awake.  

Yesterday (April 30)

N wandered around the street our hotel is on and found a cool little bakery.  He got this cool breakfast sandwich type thing and a loafs of raisin pineapple bread for quite cheap.  They were very tasty.  

It proved quite difficult to book a trip out to the Great Wall due to the language barrier so we decided to hold off on that and opted to check out Tiananmen Square.  

We walked and took the subway there.  They have a very sophisticated subway system. 

We spent the day exploring Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. On our way we accidentally stumbled upon quite a cool little fruit  market and managed to buy some fruit there.  

The  Forbidden City was packed because of the Labour Day holiday, that wasn't really a big deal though.  It quite cool for the first 2/4 km in but about half way we realized that every phase was virtually the same.  I came out with over 150 pictures of what look like all the same building.  It was very pretty but maybe four hours of walking  was a bit ambitious for our first day out.  We were pretty blistered, burned and  beat by the time we got back.   It was a lot hotter than we'd thought (about 25-30*C) so I ended up with a nasty sunburn on my neck.   

The smog in the air is different than I expected.  You might not notice it if no one had said anything to you.  It's just that the air never feels fresh.  And when I got back to the hotel I had a few coughing fits.  It just sort of sticks in your throat and you can't get it out.  

We are really enjoying Beijing.  The people are kind and friendly, but almost no one speaks English.  We feel very safe on the streets, which makes travelling so much more enjoyable.  

Today we plan to leave early (as in normal waking hours 6am...not the middle of the night which it is now) and bus to the Great Wall.  We are hoping that by going early and going to a further away and less touristy parts of the wall we will miss the major mobs and maybe even get a seat on the bus.  It's about a two hour bus ride.  

The Great Wall

Thursday May 2 2013 12:00am

Sitting in Starbucks I am immediately transported home: the coffee, the smells, the music, it's all exactly the same.  And for  brief moment the familiar is so lovely.
We are in the airport, headed to Singapore.  Our schedules are all out of wack.  I've been hardly eating during the day, I have just not been hungry at all during the day but now I'm ravenous.  

We spent yesterday at the Great Wall and it did not disappoint.  Again reaffirming our theory that if something is a major attraction there is usually a reason why.  Surprisingly though, considering what a major site it is, this Wall is not easy to reach.

We had just assumed you could easily book tours through the hotel and get there on a single bus, easily booked.  Turns out not so much.  So a 20 min cab ride, 2 hour bus ride another 20 min in a cab later we finally arrived.  We left the hotel at 6:30 (and nearly left the battery for the camera in the room charging) and didn't get back until 2:30pm.

The wall seems to go on forever. Which makes sense because the Frommer's guide book says it spans an estimated 5000 km.  it was build during the Ming Dynasty to keep out the Mongols, which it unfortunately did not accomplish.  it stands 26 feet high, off the very high hills.  we actually had to take a gondola (aka cable car) up.  The wall is 30 feet wide.  It's very impressive.  Almost equally as stunning though is the mountainous landscape that surrounds it.  The craggy hills that the wall runs along look just like an ancient Chinese ink painting.  It's breath taking (partly because I was way too out of shape for such a long height and then also in the normal sense of the phrase, that the beauty makes your breath catch) .

We chose to hike a section of the wall a little less popular, probably because it is a lot steeper, but said to be more picturesque.  It was exhausting but totally worth the view.  Although at certain points I was unsure I felt that way after climbing mountains of uneven steps.

The whole time we were there we just kept saying to each other, "we're on the Great Wall!" It was a very surreal experience.  I don't think my descriptions really do it justice.

We are so glad that we made the trip through Beijing!  It was totally worth it! I did a cart wheel on the Great Wall of China, so I can cross that one off my bucket list.