Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Transnational Valentines Day

We are recovering from the most exciting Valentine's Day in the history of Alp and Ingrid's lives. A few days ago, Esin sent us off from Mysore and we sat on a train for 42 hours, hurtling towards New Delhi, with the final destination in mind being Kathmandu. However, ten minutes into our two day ride we found out that February 13th was the joyous 10th anniversary of the Maoist insurgency and they were most probably planning on celebrating the occasion with some old-fashioned civil war violence. We arrived in Delhi on a beautiful Sunday afternoon and enjoyed the perfect spring weather that the capitol enjoys for about three weeks a year while waiting for our Korean friends, the Shins, to come home. They are the most delightful hosts and we had a thoroughly tasty Korean meal at an excellent restaurant with them later in the evening. We also discovered that night that Kathmandu was under blockade and virtually no traffic was coming in from the south-east, precisely the direction we would be coming from if we took our final leg of the trip to the Nepali-Indian border in Gorakpur. The next morning we decided to scoot over to Mr. Gupta, my mother's travel agent who specializes in executing last-minute travel plans seemlessly and who also deserves to be called "Mr. Magic" for that reason. After one hour in his office, our breathless anticipation was rewarded with two (cheap!!) round-trip tickets to Bangkok Thailand that very night at 7pm!!! We squealed, we giggled, we were jealous of our own good luck! Following our fateful triumph, we made a trip to Khan Market, the expat shopping center in south delhi, and bought ourselves chocolate and cheese for Valentines, paneer tikka roomali rolls for our intestinal worms, and a Lonely Planet Thailand (though, believe us, we tried our best under the time constraints to NOT support that backpacker mafia publication company). After hastily packing and substantially lightening our packs (including tent, hiking boots, and mats our bags are 22lbs each), we made it to the airport and our flight on Myanmar Airlines went first to the sleepy airport of Yangon (formerly Rangoon), where we ate complimentary cake at a hotel and finally continued onto Bangkok, arriving here at 6am, both without any sleep and Ingrid with a headache. Blearily we made our way to a quiet residential area and a guesthouse, and slept for a few hours. We awoke and finally it sunk in~ we are in thailand, yaaaysss!
scoobydo!
ingrid

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

congratulations kids!
you have become true backpacking jetsetters! I am so proud of you... it is so wonderful to read your posts, but i must say it makes me miss you both all the more! sounds like it was a real treat to have alps cousin join in on the trip for a while, oh, and the pics are awesome. now, they would make great gallery pieces ;) Ingrid, I wanted to thank you for your correspondance, it is so refreshing and much appreciated.
i look forward to more posts, it seems that you are getting closer to australia everyday... anwyay, take good care of yourselves and i send you my love,
biz biz
marie

Anonymous said...

hey you two.
my vote for next place to go is china. i want to hear more about that colossus. But your adventures are just fine wherever you go. How exciting to read a 1st hand account of a far away land from your wonderful friends. what technology- what readily available knowledge.

-
j.son rbberson

Anonymous said...

Wow!!!! You're in Thailand!!! You have to find my host sister Supatra Techamaitrejit! I miss her so. She is the sweetest human being. Her Family has a restuarant in Bankok. I'll get you the address in a bit!

love,
miriam

Anonymous said...

Okay, hopefully you will read this before you leave Bankok. Goy's e-mail is Trejit673@yahoo.com. I think she would be a great guide. I'm so happy for you guys. How amazing it must be to wake up with no idea of where you are heading and then end up in Thailand the next day. Hurray!!
I made you a mix cd without thinking how i'd ever get it your way. So, I'll just tell ya about it. It contains tunes such as: 'What do you do with a BA in English' from the off Broadway musical, 'Avenue Q' and 'The Origin of Love' from 'Headwig- the movie'. Enjoy!

~Miriam