Around the World in 110 Days!

Hi everyone,

So here is my account of Bangalore. First, it took me two days to get to Bangalore since I had to fly through three connections (Tel Aviv - Amman - Delhi - Bangalore). Once I arrived in the airport, I took a pre-paid taxi to my hostel. The pre-paid taxi is more expensive, but is a bit safer for a clueless foreigner that sticks out.

So, the first thing I noticed about Bangalore is the traffic is insane. People say China has bad traffic, but that is nothing compared to this. Basically, the lanes mean nothing. There are a lot of autorickshaws (small taxis that are sort of like covered tricycles powered by a gocart engine, could probably hit 35 miles an hour I would guess) and mopeds as well as cars and buses. At stop lights (they do obey those when they are operational), mopeds weave around cars and bunch up as much as possible. While traffic is moving, people honk all the time to warn anyone just ahead of them (like when a bus is bearing down on a moped).

Almost simultaneously, I noticed the horrible pollution. In particular, the autorickshaws spew out blue exhaust when they excellerate. Basically, when traffic is present (which is often), there is a light blue cloud of smoke on the road.

Secondly, India is probably the cheapest place I have been. My hostel effectively cost just over 2 US dollars a night. Of course, the water pressure was horrible for a shower (water sort of dribbled out). Bangalore actually has a big problem with water. Their water table has dropped 120 meters.

Third, Indians really do rotate their heads side to side (like a clock face rotating back and forth) all the time! The best I could figure, they sort of do it to indicate that they are finished speaking and waiting for an answer or unsure of the answer they are hearing.

So, due to all the excitement in Jordan and Israel, I relaxed the day I arrived and the next day. After that, I went to visit Mohatma Ghandi Road ( or MG Road for short ). Bangalore is described as the IT capital of India, and MG Road is are where the more upscale shops and such are located for the people riding the IT wave. I felt a bit more comfortable in this area as people did not give a look indicating their wonder at how rich they thought I was (cause I was a westerner) which they did in other areas. Actually, I did not take any taxis at night or to very unknown areas just in case they would take me someplace to unload my “riches”. Having said that, everyone I met was very kind. When there is such a difference in the exchange rate though, I naturally get a little nervous.

Bangalore also has some gardens which I drove past a little. Unfortunately, I did not really take any pictures of the MG Road or gardens area as it seems few people have digital cameras in India and it would be a bit conspicuous.

But I did take a lot of pictures when I went on a tour to several sites including the city of Mysore with the Maharasha’s palace. Here is a bit of a rundown of the tour with the pictures.

Here are a couple of random pics as the bus traveled to Mysore and back.

Here is a picture in Mysore. If you look down the road, you might get a little idea how the traffic works (or doesn’t) Although it is not as bad as Bangalore.

Here was a Hindu temple that I saw. Unfortunately, I could not take pictures inside. When I went inside, people were praying and doing religious stuff.

Here is another Hindu temple that I saw.

This is a fortress I saw on the way to Mysore.

Below is some sort of Hindu cow / bull god out in the country.

This is the Maharaja’s palace in Mysore!

And here is a couple on the tour that I met. They “adopted” me as their son. For instance, I ate dinner with them on the tour, and they refused to let me pay. Two of their children go to college in the US.

So lastly, I have to say that the food in India was excellent! I did not have that much, but I can saw the curry was amazing. I also had a dosa ( a fermented rice pancake folded with vegetable filling. Delicious.

So that is it for that! I will try to get out my China entry soon ’cause I know I am behind. I am actually in Seoul right now and will be leaving for Singapore in two days.

G’day mates.

Okay, its that time for another blog update. This time, of course, about Israel. So to get to Israel, first I had to get past security. Israel has some of the most though security in the world for obvious reasons. I, of course, matched the profile of a terrorist. I was clean shaven and could have been from the UK and had been in Morocco and Jordan. And who in their right mind would travel around the world anyway? (I showed them all my tickets) So, I was questioned (they were very polite) for about 10 minutes until the questioner discovered I had a number of relatives that I would be staying at in Israel. He gave them a call and they corraborated my story, so I was able to fly to Israel. One thing to note when I arrived at the Tel Aviv airport…. it’s really nice, I guess they just built it.

Anyway, my relative picked me up and took me to his family’s home in Caesarea. I stayed there for 4 nights. They showed me the Roman and Byzantine ruins near their house. See pictures below.

We all went to the Haifa film festival. While we were there, we did not see any damage from rockets ( they repair things quick). Also, like everywhere in Israel, in most public places including this festival, there is a security guard at the door that does a quick search of everyone. I think my relatives said that about 10 suicide bombings attempts are foiled a month by this. The Ba’hai have been an amazing large garden down the side of a hill. I only really kind of saw it at night, so I have no pictures, but it would be worth checking out during the day.

On Sunday morning, I caught the train to Tel Aviv to go on a two day tour that covered the old city of Jerusalem, Holocaust on day 1 and Masada and the Dead Sea on day 2.

Here are pics of the old city of Jerusalem. It was interesting, but I thought it would be more visually impressive since people have been killing each other for years over it.

I did not take any pictures of the Holocaust Museum. It was very informative and, of course, depressing to look at. It was very well done though to give an account of the Holocaust history for those that do not know it.

Masada is an…. interesting place. If any of you do not know the story, a long time ago, about two thousand years, some ultra-orthodox Jews stayed in a fortress more in the south part of Israel. Rome besieged it and eventually built a ramp to the top. But before the Romans came up, all the Masadaeans (~900) committed suicide except 3 or 4. Or more correctly, since suicide is forbidden in Judaism, 10 men were choosen to kill everyone, then 1 man killed the other 9. Since technically, only the last man actually did commit suicide, and broke Jewish law, by falling on his own sword. Check out the Wikipedia entry on Masada for more info if desired. Yes, it’s a very pleasant story. Anyway, here are some pics of the ruins.

And here are some pics of the Dead Sea. I took a quick swim myself, and it is very strange to be able to float that well.

After that, I stayed in Tel Aviv for two days. I stayed right in the downtown. I went to the beach, and it was very nice. And someone was telling me that they have much better beaches out side of town, so I am sure they must be amazing. I also managed to go salsa dancing which was not too bad. Let’s see, was taking to the hostel owner, and he was saying that business was not so good due to the wars. Therefore, we need peace in this region so that everyone’s economies can recover. Here are some random pics. Oh, and so I am now in India, but when I flew out of Israel, because I had no one to corraborate my story, they questioned me for 30 minutes (people were very nice, but of course, it was unnerving) and literally search every single thing on me. But I eventually was cleared and flew by three connections to Bangalore, India! I will give y’all an account of that later. In Shanghai right now.

Hope everyone is well!

Here is one more pic to entertain.

Jordan was interesting. I had fun for the most part, but it was sketchy at one point.

I will talk about the sketchy point first as it happened as I was flying to Amman from Jordan. So, anyway, I was talking to a father and a son on my flight. The son was around my age. So we were talking, and he asked me where I was from. At this point the father had wandered off to another seat where the LCD display was working. I said I was from the US. For some reason, he then asks me if I am going to Israel. I said yes and that I was then going to Bangalore afterwards. I then ask where he is from. He says that he is from Jordan and that he is Palestinian. (At this point, I am thinking I should not have mentioned being in Israel or being a US citizen). Anyways, he states at one point that Bush is crazy (might be true) and says a couple of things about him that could be true (where were the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?) and one or two that could be false (claim 80% of Jordanians are Palestinian [my guidebook says 35-65%]). I started to get nervous though when he started raising his voice and say “you” (as in, me) about things instead of Bush or the US. At any rate, we did not talk much after that and I resolved to tell noone I was going to Israel from then on and to say I was Canadian (except at the hostels where I had to show my passport). Incidently, he liked Clinton because he helped bring peace to the Jordan, Israel, Palestinian area in 1994. And he mentioned they need peace for tourism. I picked this up from other people as well. ( I met an Australian couple in Israel that said everyone refers to Bush in Egypt as “The Bush”). ( I would have been interested to know how he felt about the fact that Clinton just said that he had drawn up plans to take out the Taliban in Afganistan, but did not because he could not get support for a base in Uzbekistan. Only after 9/11 was this given. Of course, Condelezza Rice disputes this claim… Politics….)

Anyway, I arrived in Amman at the airport and was picked up by the driver at Sydney Hostel and spent the night. The next morning, I caught a taxi to the south bus station, and from there, caught a mini-bus to Wadi Musa (just outside of Petra). Interesting thing about a mini-bus is that it does not go until there are enough people to fill up the entire bus. So I waited for about an hour before we left for Wadi Musa. I arrived in Wadi Musa that afternoon at Petra Gate Hostel. Moments after I arrived, I was speaking to the owner (who was very nice). I pointed at a guitar-like instrument (only shorter and a “fatter” body) and asked what it was. He pulled it down and started playing. He then asked me if I could play the drum. I said not really, but I could give it a go. So he pointed at a sort of larger bongo drum. We proceeded to play some tune together for a couple of minutes. After that, for 6 dirhams, he dropped me off at little Petra (no entry fee, much smaller than real Petra). Here are some pictures.

The Petra Gate owner, Naser, picked me up about an hour later at little Petra. On the way back, he bought a sheep from the local Bedouin and put it in the trunk to take to the butcher later! Here is a picture of it in the trunk. I also helped out Naser by talking a picture of his hostel just before sunset so that he could post it on the hostelworld.com site as a picture of his place.

The next morning, I went to Petra and stayed there about 7 hours. I was able to see the Treasury (made famous by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), the Monastary, and the High Place of Sacrifice. I had to climb a lot of steps to get to the Monastary and the High Place of Sacrifice. There were local Bedouin selling things. They were polite and only asked once. If I said I was not interested, they would not continue to ask except when I was leaving and they had horses to ride at the entrance. I also got a camel ride from the local Bedouin! And the guy was telling me that some people stay for up to a week with them in a cave. I thought that was very interesting, but maybe not for me. Anyway, the Bedouin in general seemed like a nice people. Following are pics of the various places I saw in Petra.

Panorama video of High Place of Sacrifice

That night, the driver from Syndey Hostel in Amman picked me up from Wadi Musa on his way back from a tour and took me back to Amman. There was a stop we passed through where customs was checking if people were smuggling stuff from Saudi Arabia. My driver told me that they are corrupt and the smugglers pay them off. As we drove back to Amman, as we were talking, my driver (who is not religous and was keeping a low profile smoking during the day during Ramadan [smoking is forbidden during the day during Ramadan, theoretically, the police could throw him in jail for this]) told me that he chats to woman on line looking for a wife more or less. So, I ended up helping him with his profile since it was written in english. I basically just helped him clean it up so it sounded like proper english.

So, I stayed at Sydney hostel that night. The next morning, the driver took me to the old Roman Amphitheater in Amman and I checked it out really quick. Here are two pictures.

From there, he dropped me off at the airport so I could go to Israel! He, of course, did not know I was going to Israel.

Okay, that is it! Soon I will talk to y’all about my Israel adventures!

Hi everyone!

This is probably the most exciting part of my trip maybe. The highlight of this part of the trip was the Ball der Wiener Symphoniker. I also have a pic of the Mozart concert and info on salsa in Vienna.

Well, Wednesday evening, I went to a Mozart concert where they dress in period clothing. It was rather nice, the musicians were a bit light hearted. At the end, the conductor conducted the audience in clapping. He would hang his head every so often in mock shame at our bad clapping. Here is a pic of the concert (not from the best angle).

Thursday evening, I went salsa dancing at this practice place. There were not that many salsa dancers. I guess salsa dancing is pretty young here. I checked out two other bars as well. One place had live salsa music, but no one was dancing. The other had music, but still not many people and no dancing. So the salsa scene is not too exciting in Vienna.

This is in stark contrast to the ball scene! Here is my account of the ball in Vienna. So I went to the ball dressed up in my suit that I had already rented. (see pic)

As I walked up to the city hall where the dance was being held, I took a picture.

I paid for my ticket (which was expensive at 90 euros), and went inside. To get to the ballroom, I had to walk up three long flights of red carpeted stairs like this.

On either side of each step was a origami paper crane all the way up the stairs. This had in part to do with the theme of the ball which was Tokyo meets Vienna. In line with this theme, there were Japanese people there dressed in the traditional Japanese garb. There were also selling sushi and one or two other things as well. Anyway, when I reached the top of the stairs, I received green tea in a small decorated tin.

Once I was in the ball, I saw that there was a large ballroom area where there were many tables. There was also another area (more like a bar) for salsa, meregue, and bachata dancing. Here are some pics.

Most of the people there were older and were couples. However, I still managed to find people to dance with for most of the evening. In the ballroom, the orchesta would play for about 45 minutes. They would play Strauss (Viennese waltz), slower waltzes and maybe a Foxtrot. Then the big band would come on and play swing, cha cha, and samba basically. They would alternate back and forth. This went on for the whole evening. And in the other room was a DJ playing salsa, merengue, and bachata like I mentioned. Overall, there were some good dancers there, but I actually expected many more people to be excellent dancers.

I left the ball when it ended at 2:45 am. Here are a group of nice people that I met at the ball. I walked home with them partway.

This car belongs to the girl in blue. Here car is dented on the back end after being hit be a tram!

So, in summary, it may be a little easier to come to such a ball with a date, but even so, this ball was great fun. A girl told me there that the philharmonic ball in late January is a great ball to go to. So tempting…. Also, I am going to try to get a tuxedo made in India where it is cheap!

Okay, that is it for now. My Jordan summary should be coming soon!

should be updating blog this tuesday….