Oh man guys. I'm not sure where to start.
Three weeks into India round two, and I've finally made it back to where I was in June, Aranmula. But first, a quick run down of where I've been:

Chennai - skippable city.

Mamallapuram - take all the attention you get for being a woman traveling alone in India, plus all the attention you get at a seedy beach town, and you get Mamallapuram. I left pretty quickly after spending an evening with a kid in the Bob Marley Cafe having homosexuality and murder explained to me in terms of sin and cos.

Auroville - Auroville. What the hell. This is a crazytown people. It is LOST meets Carrboro in India. It's a "universal city in the making," started by The Mother and Sri Aurobindo, a famous philospher and poet from Tamil Nadu. I spent a week there just trying to figure out what was going on, and in the process met some of the most amazing people I've ever met. ONE OF WHOM, was a french guy in his sixties who was, I kid you not John Locke. He even used is pocket knife at meal time. Also they drive around cars that look like the Dharma Initiative cars that say "The Auroville Project" Anyawy, I think it's a really special place doing some very important research for humanity, and not somewhere I can be yet. Someday perhaps.

Trichy and Maudrai - saw some big beautiful inspiring temples.

Kodaikanal - got out of big cities to see some MOUNTAINS. had the most exquisite view from my hostel. Went on a nine hour hike down the mountains and couldn't really move the next day. Oh and I was COLD for four days for the first time in SO LONG.


AND 20 hours and six buses later....Aranmula!
I think I've told most of you about what I am doing, but just in case: I am living with a family that runs an alternative boarding school out of their home. Trying to democratize learning and the family structure, they have set up a really amazing place where these kids are becoming responsible, kind and articulate people. They have two campuses: One is on their farm a few hours east of here, where they are teaching and learning through experiments in organic farming and reforestation. They other campus is here in Aranmula, where the kids are able to take arts classes with the teachers from VKV. There are ten kids between 8 and 21, the parents, and Gauthum and Anu, their first son and his wife who are in their mid twenties. So there are 15 of us in this big ole house and there is constant music and laughter and cooking. Yesterday we spent about 22 hours traveling to a city where the kids have a regular radio program. Tomorrow we are trekking into the woods to learn about butterflies and dragonflies. The father is in the process of adapting their most recent radio drama (which they wrote) into a street performance. Am I in heaven?

Ok, all for now. Love you all.

superlatives and lists!! ((long overdue))

i know this is so late, but i've been busy ya'll! 

after a 53 hour commute (yes, 53, yes, count 'em, 53 hours to get to charlotte from kuala lumpur), i have been keeping busy with long-lost things like peaches and bathtubs and bookshelves. 

BUT before all that, emily and i compiled a list of the best and worst of southeast asia, either as helpful travel advice to anyone planning a trip in the future or just because it was really fun.

here we go:

Best smart-traveler move:

Winner: taking a $3, local overnight bus from Jakarta to Solo. 16 hours as the main attraction on a bus crammed with people, vendors selling giant stuffed animals, band-aids and everything else imaginable. some unpleasant knee-groping from the creep across the seat, a pretty constant paranoia of being robbed, and a completely sleepless night, but a true traveling experience. and we saved like $20.

Best surprise:

Winner: Tadlo, Laos, a picture-perfect, not-yet-discovered by Lonely Planet, town with cheap bungalows huge waterfalls really great people and good food.

Runner-up: finding a amusement park, complete with rollarcoasters, popcorn and bumper cars (we got schooled by an Indonesian kid btw), in the small town of Solo, Indonesia.

Biggest 'should-have-listened-to-Lonely-Planet' moment:

Winner: taking the lovingly-dubbed 'scam bus' from Si Phan Don into Cambodia. It started as an uncomfortable bus ride, escalated into a border crossing where the guard (named Ouch Mean. for real guys.) piled on 'extra fees' and took literally all of our dollars, and climaxed with having to pay an extra $6 to sit in a minivan listening to a Eurotrashy hipster talking about having sex with underage prostitutes in Bangkok. pass.

Biggest 'skip it' place:

Winner: Jakarta. seriously fuck Jakarta. We spent two days sitting in traffic, seeing nothing nice or pretty, and feeling generally sketched out and unwelcome. This was about a week after the bombing, so maybe we caught it on a rough week but our overall impression was don't bother with Jakarta.

Runner-up: Pulau Perhentian. beautiful islands off the coast of malaysia, which sounds like a no-brainer until you realize you're about to see many easier-to-access, cheaper, more beautiful islands. also, there was a tsunami warning while we were there. downer.

Best example of globalization:

Winner: talking with a group of young monks in Luang Prabang about the death of Michael Jackson.

Most enigmatic injuries:

Winner(s): Emily's month-long Cipro-resistant dysentary and Jaki's persistent 2-month-long sprained ankle. we don't know what kept emily sick or how jaki sprained her ankle. weird right?

((ps my ankle is STILL swollen. wtf ligaments))

Most kickass, generous foreigner:

Winner(s): TIE between Vincent, who hooked us up with every theatre in KL and saved Jaki from a lot of fulbright redtape, and Yasmina, who let us live in her perfect Bali apartment for 3 weeks for freeee.

Best faux-celebrity moment:

Winner: relaxing on the beautiful beach in sanur, taking off our sarongs only to be ambushed by 10+ (fully-clothed) balinese teenagers who insisted on being photographed a minimum of 25 times with our bikini-clad white-skinned selves.

Best pretrip purchase:

Winner: steripen. despite jaki using it incorrectly for a solid 2 weeks, it saved us many a time from the sickness that only took us down once.

Worst food:

Winner: DURIEN DURIEN A THOUSAND TIMES DURIEN. there's no way to describe how awful this 'king of fruits' is, despite its hyper-popularity in all of seasia. it's like rotten melon and cheese and garlic and mostly, hot garbage. there's a popular saying about durien, that it 'smells like hell, tastes like paradise' because it really smells like garbage and everyone realizes it, but what they're not admitting is that actually it smells like hell and tastes just as bad.

Runnerup: cuttlefish. i'd take a cricket to that nasty crinkly dried sealife any day.

Best food:

Winner: everything else. special shoutouts to seasian fruit (mangosteen, mangos, rose apples, lychee, rambutans, pineapples that will spoil u.s. pineapples forever), and the amazing indian food in KL.

Things we wish we'd known:

1) If you go to Indonesia, learn some Indonesian because everyone expects you to speak it

2) That Emily is both number-dyslexic (chica can't handle the 00's ya'll) and has a zero-tolerance policy for being hassled, catcalled, or anything of the sort.

3) Most importantly: that having white skin makes you a lot of things. It makes you mostly really funny to everyone, it also makes you interesting and intrinsically sexy to a lot of people so get ready to be talked to by everyone, and have your picture taken, and stared at ALL THE TIME. really

Special section: Catcalls, best of 2009, Southeast Asian edition

1) setting: drinking guinness in jakarta with a bunch of futbol players from cameroon (right, wtf?)

the line(to em): 'Is it possible to love you?'

the line(to jaki): 'I have a house near Bali, will you come away with me?'

response(from both): 'No.'

2) setting: zooming at 60 km on our beloved motorbike nusa dua, a man holding a baby and riding with his friend swerve up and drive next to us

the line(to jaki): 'How is it that you are so beautiful?'

response: confusion.

the line: 'Are you available?'

response: glance at baby, 'Are you?'

3) setting: walking to the beach

the line(to em): 'hey sexy'

em(simultaneous with his line): NOT OK!

4) setting: walking through some insane mall

the line(to jaki): (said very earnestly btw) 'I UNDERSTAND YOU.'

response: 'you do? i mean...i've been looking for a guy who understands me but who would have thunk i'd find him here!!'

ok guys, that concludes our best of seasia volume one, i've got to go watch madmen with my housemates (seriously, i am so acclimated)

seasia is so fun. you should all go. we should go back.

em's going to keep this blog because, while i'm over here illegally downloading music and wearing earrings, she is still in India!!! so keep reading.

lovejaki

 

BLOGATOGE

seriously guys, i just have to tell you how horrifically the trip ended.* i mean, i don't even want to get into it. let's just say jaki was really really terrible to me for the nine weeks we spent seeing the world. now we're not talking. it's shocking i know. we fought fought fought and eventually we just stopped talking. c'est la vie. did she make it home safely? boy i hope so. kind of. **







*jk it was awesome
**this blog entry will be replaced by a real post telling you guys about my adventures in India if darling jaki ever posts our final blog we've prepared. to get you all excited, we've got superlatives.

[love you jax.]

A Day in the Life

Hello. We had a dream that Bali would be nothing but doing yoga and eating well and sleeping and reading in hammocks. Did ya'll know dreams come true? And maybe even more than true? Proof:

7:30 - Emily wakes up, reads in the hammock
9:00 - Jaki wakes up, reads in the hammock
Breakfast happens. It's either oatmeal we make at the bungalow or fruit salad and yogurt from the villas next door.

.....some hours disappear. maybe we go to the beach on our motorbike, maybe we read more and write and talk about dumb things like trying to remember the phrases "motorcade" and "intellectual property law"

sometimes emily has to go on the computer and do homework. but mostly that means typing up pages from her journal. and blogging.

4:00 - we go to yoga for 90 - 105 minutes at the yoga barn. it's really funny. we try not to giggle, but people take this stuff SERIOUSLY. so seriously. we are trying to be zen, and strong, and flexible, but as we watch teachers in training behind us chanting om shanti shanti shanti om while they propel themselves into the air on like three fingertips, it's hard to feel like we are any of those things. also, the place looks like pictures you see of yoga studios that the yoga studios never actually look like. we are in a loft that smells like heaven looking at a statue of ganesha who is covered in plumerias and hybiscus which overlooks rice fields where kids fly kites. and the people there look like the just stepped out of "eat pray love" the movie. so that's yoga. it's nice.

6:00 - dinner, usually at Bali Buddha. It is full of western cuisine, which is kind of the only thing our stomachs can handle at the moment (we might have dysentary, ya'll. don't worry, parents.) But also Bali Buddha is just delicious. Like tomato soup and bagels and things you wouldn't think you'd miss but oh how we've missed.

8:00 - ride on home. up the hill. we have playing cards and fancy cigarettes and invites to bars that should probably be used during this hour, but they haven't yet. we usually read and get snacks and then...

9:00 - bedtime for jaki. reading time for emily. we're not sure why jaki is sleeping so much. it might be a power nap before coming home or it might be her body catching up after a few months of insomnia. or maybe she's just turning into a slug. who knows. so, emily reads and misses jaki's presence. eventually she sleeps too.

Tomorrow, we're taking a "vacation" to the beach for emily's birthday. 21 yall! 2009 best year o my life!

xoxoxo

ya'll

google ubud, bali.

thats the place we'll be for the next 2 weeks. it really looks like that.

Hi Folks,

We made it to Indonesia.

First there was the airport. We didn't really know so many obligatory lines could exist in one building. But they did, and we almost missed our flight, until we found out that our flight was delayed so we had time to get a doughnut. AND right next door to doughnuts was a huge candy shop full of free samples. So, feeling adrenal from the airport sprints and with sugar high from the free samples, we boarded our two hour flight to Jakarta, in airplane with the word AMAZING plastered across it.

Jakarta is pretty much everything you imagine. Hot, crowded, chaotic, essentially the least charming place we've ever been. We pretty much sat in traffic in tuc-tucs and drank iced coffee the whole time we were there. OH and we went to the biggest night club in Jakarta called Stadium, which is what a nightclub at Hogwarts would probably look like. It was magical. Emily wore a yellow onesie. Jaki was actually cute. Then we boarded an economy train to Solo. 12 hours in economy. Any time we told someone where were going there would be a lot of snickering and we could hear the word "economy", so we knew we were in fo something.

[By the way, if you need an ego boost/want to feel like a comic genius, just go to Southeast Asia. The fact that you are white is SO FUNNY. Someone says hello to you, and whether you respond or smile or ignore them, you will be laughed at. This is mostly funny, only sometimes a little obnoxious. Emily would be a really bad celebrity. Jaki might do a little better, she's more tolerant. ]

Back to the train - just getting on this train was the most "oh-yea-i'm-traveling-through-seasia" feeling possible. There were confrences of people trying to get us where we needed to go, jumping from one car to another with our luggage, turning around, jumping off (losing my darling Sigg in the process), and then eventually realizing that we were supposed to be in different cars - but one sweet security man(boy?) made sure we sat together. At first we were pleasently surprised by how empty it was, but by 1 a.m. there were people sitting on every square inch of the train.

We arrived sleepless in Solo with swollen ankles and empty bellies at 8am, and man, has it taken care of us. We are staying in Mama's Homestay, with an overexcited and incomprehensible host, a huge room, and delicious breakfasts and tea. As far as we can tell after a day here, it has a very lively arts scene - with festivals and performances in public squares advertised everywhere. Last night we went to see a wayang-orang (dance-drama) performance. The theatre is attached to an amusment park. I'm talkin bumper cars and rollercoasters and corn on the cob. Can we live here please?

Tomorrow we are going on a bike tour, then going on to Yogakarta before heading to Bali!

We miss and love you all!

KUALA LUMPUR CUT A GIRL SOME SLACK

hiya

we're in the capital of malaysia, kuala lumpur, right now. the city is amazing, so diverse and not in a buzzword way but in an actual, no-one-looks-the-same way.
you walk down the street past a woman in a full black burka then a chinese girl in white face powder and a miniskirt then past indian women with bindis and white guys in tennis shoes.

we saw a dancedrama performance and 1) it was AMAZING, 20x cooler than 90% of the stuff we've seen in the states 2) the people working on it were unreally nice and talked to us forever afterwards giving us the scoop on KL's happening arts scene 3) a bunch of people took our picture afterwards and we're pretty sure we're in the newspaper's art section now.

so, we're basically spending our days dreaming up ways to get the fulbright to give jaki a bunch of money so we can come back here and study theatre.

also KL is IMPOSSIBLE to navigate. all the roads are crooked, its an 'anti-grid' infrastructure. you can't walk 2 blocks without getting lost. honestly.
and it isn't just farangs who have this problem. we tried to get a taxi driver to take us to the tourism centre, a huge building, to see a show, and he drove us to a ditch next to an abandoned volvo dealership. REALLY?

to illustrate, here are google maps directions of how to get from chinatown, where we're staying, to Aswara, an arts academy:

1.Head northwest on Jalan Petaling toward Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock
2.Slight right at Jalan Tun H S Lee
3.Turn left at Leboh Pasar Besar
4.Turn right at Jalan Mahkamah Persekutuan
5.Turn left to stay on Jalan Mahkamah Persekutuan
6.Turn right at Jalan Raja
7.Turn right to stay on Jalan Raja
8.At the roundabout, take the 1st exit onto Jalan Parlimen
9.Turn right toward Jalan Sultan Salahhudin
10.Continue straight onto Jalan Sultan Salahhudin
11.Slight right to stay on Jalan Sultan Salahhudin
12.Turn left toward Jalan Tunku
13.Turn right toward Jalan Tunku
14.Slight left at Jalan Tunku
15.Turn left at Pesiaran Carruthers
16.Turn right at Jalan Tunku Putra
17.Turn right at Jalan Nusa
18.Turn left to stay on Jalan Nusa
19.Turn right at Lorong Nusa Satu
20.Turn left at Lorong Nusa
21.Slight right at Persiaran Duta
22.Persiaran Duta turns left and becomes Jalan Khidmat Usaha
23.Turn right to stay on Jalan Khidmat Usaha
24.Turn left at Jalan Ibadah
25.Turn right
26.Turn left
27.Turn left
Destination will be on the right

27 STEPS?! ok great thanks google we'll do that.

in a couple days, we're flying to jakarta (decided to skip singapore because its mad expensive and it takes a 40+ hour ferry to get to indonesia from there) then we'll be making our way through java and onto BALI! the plan is to stay in bali for about 2 1/2 weeks at a friend-of-a-friends apartment and take balinese dance classes and go to the beach and feel stupidgood.

also, in case you didn't get the email, there are some big logistical changes.
jaki's flight is all fucked/shes having fun so she's probably not coming home the 10,12,15,20, whenever-you-thought-she-might-be, but instead hopefully the 24th, or maybe the 27th.
emily's also delayed. until january. because she's going back to india and not returning to ch for the fall. instead shes going to live at alternative arts-based boarding school in kerala and help a friend on a rural ecotourism project in tamilnadu. CRAZYWORLD.

loveyouall