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2
Aug

Kolkata part 1: Shocks on the face

   Posted by: Chip Tags: , , ,

***For more pictures, you can visit my Facebook here

Kolkata – the commercial and financial hub of eastern India – is far from what I’d always thought of India. I knew that as a part of India, it’d be dirty, busy and cheap, but I couldn’t imagine that Internet would be that scarce and getting a SIM card would be that hard in a country that accommodates so-called Asia’s Silicon Valley. And once you’ve become used to it, it’s even harder to realize that the city that symbols that poverty of India is actually home of many respected intellects – 2 (+1) Nobel laureates and a lot more of writers, poets and filmmakers.

Bird-eye view of Kolkata from the plane

Bird-eye view of Kolkata from the plane

India in my mind was always the heaven of tourists due to its cultural diversity and a wide range of travel products come at a super cheap price. However, I could hardly spot any tourist on my flight to Kolkata, and welcoming me to India was an old & cranky airport. I mean, really old and cranky, even more than Yangon airport.

Welcome to Kolkata

Traffic in Kolkata is another shocking story. Being born and raised up in Vietnam, I used to tell my friends in Malaysia and Thailand that if they are upset by traffic jams in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, come to Vietnam and they’d love their countries. Now I have to say that if anyone in Vietnam is mad at notorious jams in Vietnam, come to India and you’d feel proud of our country. Everybody is honking. Jams everywhere. Drivers never care if there is somebody crossing the road or not. Cars can hardly move faster than 20km/h. I chatted with a friend of mine who once spent 8 months in Vietnam.

Chip: Traffic here is crazy, much much more crazier than in Vietnam. My head can’t stop popping.

Friend: What!?? Crazier than Vietnam? Unbelievable!

Having spent a huge amount of my life blending into startup community in Southeast Asia, I have heard amazing tales about Asia’s Silicon Valley in India. As a matter of fact, I expected to see wifi, if not everywhere like in Vietnam or Singapore, but at least in most important buildings & restaurants. It turned out that wifi is a strange definition here. Cyber-cafes are expensive and hard to find outside tourist areas. Even though India is famous for its mobile startups, getting a SIM card here is super complicated and takes up to several hours to go through all steps. Thanks God that I have Asenla and her husband, Longchar with me, else I don’t know how I’m a foreigner would be able to handle with all those stuffs.

With Asenla

But the most shocking thing about Kolkata, as what Anuradha already warned me in advance, is the presence of poverty everywhere. It’s not coincident that Mother Teresa’s work about the destitute and poor in this city was given a Nobel prize.

Some other images about the city

Kolkata won't be the same without those super cute yellow taxis. They can be found everywhere through out the city

And crows as well

Where did they find that many people? :(

I have never seen that many banners in my whole life

Antoreep – my host in Kolkata – read my draft and told me that I seemed upset about the city. Hehe I don’t!! In fact, I’m amazed by Kolkata in particular and by India in general. Everything here is so extreme. Everything here is happening so fast. Walking on the street, I don’t dare to blink as I’m afraid that I would miss something interesting. I savor every moment I spend here, and yeah, I think I should go out instead of staying at home blogging in such a beautiful afternoon like today. My host Antoreep and his brother are taking me around the city. I will blog about how Kolkata is the cultural hub of India in my next blog post, soon!

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7
Jun

Monkey fight on the isolated island

   Posted by: Chip Tags: , , , , , ,

Every kid has his/her own imagination of a dream holiday. Since I was young (wait, I’m still young now :P ), I have dreamed about camping on a beautiful isolated island with blue water, white sand and people whom I enjoy being with. I wasn’t able to do it for many reasons: no money, no time, no companion, no island, or more precisely, no “beautiful & isolated” island. However, my dream finally came true when I visited Kota Kinabalu last weekend.

Last Saturday, we, a bunch of beautiful, energetic & fun young people AND I, went to this island and did crazy stuffs there.

This island is called Sulug, about 40 minutes away from Kota Kinabalu by boat. It’s beautiful, yet isolated. Just few minutes away is Manukan island, heavily commercial but not more beautiful. Papi John joked that it’s because Sulug island is haunted. I think that it’s probably because the sea floor there is a little bit rough with a lot of coral & rock which makes it not good for swimming but perfect for snorkeling.

The gang on the way to the island:

Because we were fresh off the boat and poor, we decided to collect rubbish to trade for some money. Some people actually went further than that, they forced me to take pictures of them posing in cleaning position to send to the Prime Minister in hope for some sponsorship. We managed to collect about a dozen of big fat bags full of rubbish.

And then something interesting happened: a group of NINE healthy, well-educated young adults got into a fight with ONE MONKEY over FOOD!! A hungry monkey appeared from nowhere and tried to steal our food. I still don’t understand why my friends didn’t want to feed him but tried to scare him away instead. The monkey was pretty scary, he attempted to attack some of us with his vampire teeth. Rabies alert!

Finally the monkey backed off and we could went on snorkeling. Let me explain why being able to snorkel is so important to me. The first time I went to the beach, I was almost drown. Since then, my body developed a stupid phobia against water. I’m freaked out whenever water touches my face. I remember one time when the shampoo girl accidentally scattered some water on my face, I reacted so strong that I almost hit her and she thought that I was being paranoid. But that time, I did it. Marsha, Lester, Esther and all are professional divers and they were very patient with me, encouraged and instructed me carefully. The underwater world is amazing! I decided that I’d have to overcome my phobia, learn to swim and learn to dive. I’ve never heard of any traveler or explorer who can’t swim.

After we all got enough sunburn and looked like lobsters without shell, we headed to Manukan island. We decided to take all the rubbish with us to dump it later. Everyone at Manukan’s jetty was like: “What the hell are they doing with those bags of rubbish” and tried to take pictures of us.

 

We had lunch and drank on Manukan island. As I said, it is heavily commercial so there isn’t much to see and everything there is expensive compared to other parts of Malaysia, $5-10 for a simple dish for 1 person. We couldn’t do much on the island because suddenly a the rain poured down. We were stranded! All of us were carrying digital stuffs like phones, cameras, notebooks so we didn’t want to risk going back on the small boat. At about 5pm, the boat owner told us that we couldn’t wait anymore since it was getting dark. We had no choice but to wrap our belongings with plastic bags and jumped on a boat. Surprisingly, right from the moment we saw the boat, our fear was gone! Everybody started shouting & cheering instead. If we replaced the motored canoe with a piragua, I’d think that I was on a hunting trip of an indigenous group somewhere in South America. The boat suddenly ran out of gasoline half way in the ocean which caused a short dead silence among us, but we managed to get back safe and sound, else I wouldn’t be able to entertain myself with this blog post now.

P/S:

1. My camera is not water proof so I couldn’t take picture of snorkeling & raining session.

2. Ever wonder what happened to the rubbish after we left it on Manukan’s jetty because of the sudden pouring rain? Great question ‘cos we have the same concern!! It was probably swept back to the sea or collected by a kind gentleman. Well, we are not really proud of it though.

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