When I told my friends that I was gonna stay in India for a while, they were all shocked. Some of them were worried: “How on earth are you going to survive there with only Indian food?”; but most of them were happy with the perspective that I’d lose either some weight or my food fussiness. They know I’m scared of Indian food! When I was in Malaysia, whenever I ate out with my friends, the first thing came out of my mouth was: “No Indian food please!!”. Curry makes me cry and I hate the little monster called “jeera”. If there were 1 reason why I shouldn’t go to India, it’d probably be jeera. Its strong smell can keep me 7 hours flying away!

[Jeera gives very strong flavor which many people associate with Indian food]

So I came to Indian with that curse foreshadowing my only habit and hobby [aka “eating”], and then things got worse.

Indian food is S P I C Y!!! The worst thing is that Indians use a totally different standard for spicy food. For example, when I went to a Chinese restaurant in Pune (I’ve been sticking with Chinese food for my own safety), I told the guy who took my order that I wanted “no spicy, no chilly” food and used the body language to explain “suicide”. He nodded in sympathy: “No chilly” and brought me a plate from which I could pick out that much chilly after half an hour scrutinizing. If not for I’m in India, I’d think that he deliberately did that to murder me.

When I showed the picture to my Indian friends hoping for some comfort, they all told me the same: “This chilly is not spicy.” You’re kidding me!!! In Indian standard, it’s not spicy; but in my standard, it’s enough to peel my tongue’s skin and make my jump in pain for one whole week.

Not only that, after 1 week in Mumbai, I found my stomach craving for some green veggie. When I say “green veggie”, I mean veggie which is green by nature, and still green after being cooked. In India, they eat a lot of veggie, but most of them are bulbs, wheat and the way they cook makes it far different from the veggie I’m used to. If you are familiar with Vietnamese or Chinese food, you will see that we eat a lot green veggie like cabbage, Chinese cabbage, field cabbage, cress, morning glory, water dropwort, plus many more kinds of veggie that I don’t know the English words for them.

And my body is dying for some meat!!

Even though I’m still struggling to find what I want to do, I know one thing for sure is that I will never become a vegetarian. I worship meat.

I never thought it would become a problem one day, until I came to India – a country where, according to my friend Kranti [a vegetarian himself], vegetarians account for 70% of total population or even more. Almost all restaurants are vegetarian. Almost all my friends are vegetarian. During my 3 weeks here, I’ve met more vegetarians I’d met during the course of my life!! I started to develop a phobia against eating out with an Indian as I’m afraid that I’d end up in a vegetarian no matter what. I feel deep sympathy for vegetarians in the land full of cold-blood carnivore like me.

But I never understood the reason why would someone become a vegetarian by choice. Most of them told me that they didn’t like meat which makes absolutely no sense to me,  some of them are worried about global warming (FYI, livestock – cows and pigs – is responsible for 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas problem). And then something changed my mind. I walked by a local market and saw the most horrifying scene ever.

The chicken was still alive.

They cut its head.

And then they did like this. The legs were still trembling in pain.

Soon it was all left of a chicken

For the first time in my life, I considered becoming a vegetarian.

P/S:

1. This post was supposed to be posted 1 week ago, before I discovered Colaba! Thanks to this wonder metropolitan area, now everyone can have meat!

2. My first week in India was awesome! Thanks to Auntie Ramitha – Antoreep’s Mom, I was introduced to awesomely amazing Bengali cuisine. I love Bengali food, I love luchi, I love hilsa fish, I love mango chutney. I shall blog about Bengali food soon!

3. Question: Hindus don’t eat meat and there are a lot of cows in India, so where does all the beef go after the cow die?

Today, when I was the only foreigner on a stuffed decrepit local bus, passing by the red light street, listening to Justin Bieber, looking out to the busy trading scene on the bumpy street, I told Mai that I would miss Myanmar.

I really do.

I miss those afternoons jostling with locals around animated street markets, trying to bargain over those stuffs from decades ago. Markets are everywhere in Yangon. I love to ask the prices in Burmese and try to guess when they answer me in Burmese as well.

I miss pork sticks, Myanmar curry, bamboo shoot. Some people might say that Myanmar food is boring, I find it simple but delicious. I love it when Chann, Khine Thi or Mai took me around, checked out all irresistible food stalls and ate like like crazy. I love it when I just paid $1 and people brought me a full table of food. Only in Myanmar that you can eat like a King with just $1.

I miss those days cycling around completely isolated temples in the middle of nowhere. I miss it when I took a nap in windy temples, hiding away from the heat.

I miss it when a cute local guy waited in front of my hotel at 5am to take me for sunrise.

I miss the gorgeous views of sunsets in Myanmar when I can feel the last rays of the day shedding on my skin. I know I wouldn’t be able to find it anywhere in the places I used to live.

I miss the smile of Myanmar people. Just now I’m in India, when I smile at people and they just stare back, I know how warm it felt to be smiled back by a stranger in a strange place. I love it when a local guy told me that he’s Joker, and told me a bunch of jokes in broken English. I couldn’t help laughing hours after that

I miss it when I traveled around Myanmar and could recognize all tourists’ faces I had met, I love it when a local shouted my name when he accidentally ran into me on the street.  Myanmar is small. It seems like everybody knows everybody. It makes me feel like at home.

Feeling so lonely in India now

So it’s called “hitch-hiking”, not “thumb-picking” like I thought. I knew that in some countries, you can use your thumb to stop a car and get a lift, but I never thought that I could do it in Asia until I came to Chiang Mai last last Sunday.

I was there for a youth media camp which is cloistered in the middle of nowhere, about 40 minutes from downtown Chiang Mai. We were all arranged to stay in a very nice resort, with nice people.

Everything was perfect except the fact that it’s a RESORT! We all felt like we were in a 5-star prison.

There were 3 of us: Phuong (whom we jokingly call Phiona) – a cute Hanoian girl (all girls from Hanoi are cute); and Nickey – a cheerful half American half Burmese. We were standing in front of the resort.

Phiona: “I want to go downtown.”

Chip: “Agree.”

Nickey: “How? It’s very far.”

Chip: “Agree.”

Phiona: “There is no bus, no tuk-tuk, not even taxi here.”

Chip: “Agree.”

Nickey: “Let’s go back to the resort.”

Chip: “Agree.”

Then we all went back to the resort, had dinner and went to bed. Ladies and gentlemen, you just wasted 5 minutes on a non-sense story.

lol of course we didn’t do that, and I didn’t say any “Agree” word. Here is what really happened.

We were standing in front the resort. A pick-up truck passed by. We raised our thumb and to our surprise, the car stopped. We tried to tell the driver that we wanted to go downtown but he couldn’t speak English. After few failed attempts with both body language and map, we decided to just jump on the truck.

Every now and then, we had discussion like: “Where are they taking us to?”, “How are we going to go back?”; but generally, we were overwhelmed. The view was stunning. We shouted and waved at every car passing by. Some shouted back, some just stared at us as if they had never seen aliens before.

The truck stopped at a petrol station and the car driver exchanged us for 3 liters of petrol. But the lady at the station thought that we were not worth that much. She came closer and checked upon us. She asked us where we wanted to go, in English. It turned out that the driver took us here to facilitate communication. The driver was going to another direction, so lady instructed us to get down at the intersection, then take the yellow bus downtown.

Here we are, at the intersection with the truck driver and his wife. [Chip is not short, Phuong is just too tall T_T]

The intersection turned out to be a diverse pottery market, so we decided to check it out before heading downtown.

Thailand – the land of smile

I wonder if he got wifi there.

Nickey found his long lost twins.

After that, we tried to hitch-hike several times in vain, then we saw the yellow bus – “songtheo” in Thai. They have different colors to go to different areas.

It cost B10 ($0.3) each to downtown. We were immediately tempted by a wide range of street food near Chiang Mai Gate. Oii food!

Phuong tried out the salted & sour papaya salad. I already had it at Katay’s home in Laos during Lao New Year.

After fulfilling our stomach, we walked around downtown Chiang Mai. This part of Chiang Mai I didn’t go to when I was there about 6 months ago.

Please do ignore the dump on the bottom left.

Love the pun

Didn’t want to miss the introduction dinner nor get lost in the dark, we left the city at around 6.30pm. We took the yellow bus to the intersection area – this time it cost B15 each, then hitch-hiked again back to the resort. Hitch-hiking this time was much easier as almost all the cars stopped right when we hailed them. However, not all the trucks passed by our resort, we had to catch, jump and stop 3 times in total. Feeling happy and relaxed, we sang all the way home. There I discovered that Phuong had an amazing voice. She’s actually a professional singer.

It cost us only B25, less than $1, each to go downtown and come back. Isn’t it amazing?

Some take-away notes:

1. Pick-up trucks are very popular in Chiang Mai. May – a Thai friend I met at the camp – told me that it’s because pick-up trucks are very convenient. People can use it to pick up people and transfer goods at the same time.

2. Thai people are friendly and very helpful.

3. Hitch-hiking in rural area is much easier than in town.

4. Thai food is amazing.

One of many weird things about Burma is that there is no licensed money changer here. You can change money at the airport, but the rate is very low. I decided to change in the city instead.

I arrived at Kenneth’s place at around 6pm. According to him, the money changer he knows is closed already. As he was cooking us dinner, I wouldn’t have to spend money. By cooking, Kenneth meant ordering fried rice from outside, and boiling the hot pot ingredients he bought in the afternoon. He didn’t even put salt into the boiling water, but well, it’s another story. I was hungry & exhausted, his courage & good-will should be highly appreciated  

After dinner, we walked around downtown. I was taking some pictures while keeping my eyes on everyone to see if there was any undercover policeman anywhere when an Indian man approached me. He asked if I wanted to sell dollars at the rate of 1 USD : 1000 Kyat. I didn’t know the exact rate so I wanted to check first. Another guy soon approached and offered 1 USD : 950 Kyat, so I returned to the first guy. I told him I wanted to change $100, and he said it’d be 970; 1000 only if I changed $200 or more. I didn’t like the way he worked, so I walked away. He called after me to say 980.

I realized that if you walk around with a camera in hand or you look like a stupid tourists, there will be a lot of men like approaching you to offer money exchange. Most of them are Indians. They work as middle men between you and black market money changers. The rate ranges from 1 USD to 950 or 1020 Kyat. This morning, as I walked out of my friend’s place, another guy approached me. He offered 1000 for $100. Kenneth asked if he’s sure, he said yes at first, but after few questions, he said that he had to ask his boss. He had us walked for about 10 minutes from our place to his boss’s place. Below is his boss’ place. There are a lot of money changers and travel agencies there.

His boss offered the rate 1020 for $200, and refused to accept $100. Another guy passed by and told me 980 but I was already sick of those middle men. I decided to go to Central Hotel to change instead. There they offered me 970. I gave her $100 but she didn’t give me kyat back. Kenneth and I thought that the money was on the way so we waited. After about 15 minutes, Kenneth decided to ask if she forgot. Her face turned red and her eyes directed to a man sitting there. It turned out that she was doing the money exchange illegally and that man was her boss, so she couldn’t do that when he was there. Finally he went up and she gave me the money. I must say, I was shocked! I’ve never had that much money in my life. Inflation is worse in Vietnam, but we have big note. The biggest note here is 5000, but it’s not widely used so most people use 1000 note. I got 97 of them. They are too big & too thick to be put inside my wallet, and it’s too flaccid to put it anywhere. Now I understand what my friend meant when he said that when he left Myanmar, he didn’t know what to do with the money so he used it to make paper planes. Myanmar Kyat is only valid inside Myanmar.

Thanks God I only changed $100. But things are not that easy for Kenneth. Debit and credit cards are no longer used in Myanmar, so Kenneth has to receive his salary in cash. Imagine that you receive 1kg of cash every month!