Koh Phangan and Koh Samui, Thailand

After the debacle that was Japan, we decide to head for a seaside setting. Knowing that Thailand is one of the most inexpensive countries, and also one of our favourites, we make haste for Surat Thani from Bangkok. A short ferry ride later, and we are on Phangan, famous for it's raucous full moon parties, held, oddly enough, every full moon on the south beach. The rest of the island is pretty quiet as we have come in low season, and the beach we are at is called Haad Salad, a relatively quiet beach on a relatively quiet island, making it kind of a ghost town. Unless you rent a bike or scooter, the steep hills make it a hard slog to get around, but the views of the crystal clear waters make the tough going truly worth the work. Amenities are few near the beach, but a short walk along the beach reveals restaurants, resorts and dive schools up and down the length of the small beach. They do seem to be missing a trick, however, as no one along the beach rents snorkel gear, just sells it at typically inflated prices. I suppose they don't want to take business away from the many diveshops which offer snorkelling trips all over the coast. I would really rather just paddle around, looking at the multicoloured marine life at my leisure, instead of being hustled around by buff, bronzed dive geeks. I would rather just float along, looking like a pasty mannatee who got trapped in a pair of flippers.
 The staff at the place we stay are very accomodating, but they have strange ideas about upkeep. They don't clean their section of beach, but they will restain the walkways which join everything to everything else at about 9 pm without telling anyone, or in any way taping off stained sections, so that an unsuspecting guest doesn't start strolling down the walkway, unaware that the soles of his feet are fast becoming an unhealthy shade of reddish brown. Like myself.
As usual with many of these beachfront places, the restaurant is overpriced and ok, but not ok enough for the money, and the money is actually staggering considering that this is still Thailand, but it's the fabled islands, so they charge what the market dictates, so that's whatever they like. Further up the beach the restaurants are much better, or at least on first visit. The food at the one we choose is really nice, and our boy can run up and down the beach, just being 4. An added plus is the fire show just up the beach at the neighbouring restaurant. It starts off just looking like some guy having a lark with petrol and a stick, and finishes with a pretty well executed tandem routine, spinning, tossing and generally looking cool. The evening finishes off with a fireshow in the sky, as the weather threatens to close in. Back to the hotel it is.
The next morning arrives in the usual, spectactular Thai beach fashion, and the day passes lazily. Too lazily. I'm not sure I'm really soaking in the atmosphere this time, or perhaps it's just the disappointment of Japan still lingering and tainting an otherwise pretty perfect location.
Not much doing on Phangan, so we decide to go to Koh Samui before the full moon party starts. Samui is the most popular and set up of these islands. Granted, there are all manner of more interesting things to do and see, especially if diving and trekking are not your bag, but it makes the whole thing seem less beachy and more shop-y.
As for the things to do, the sights are many, including and very big Buddha, located on BIg Buddha beach. No, seriously. Right down the road from that is Wat Plai Lem and an 18 armed statue of  Guanyin, the goddess of mercy and compassion. Set on to a lake, the Wat consists of an exceptionally beautiful temple, a very large statue of a big fat buddha (but different from the Big Buddha), and the Guanyin. Really quite breath-taking.
We make the mistake of staying in what is known as the Fishermen's Village. I had heard it was very popular with tourists, but I had foolishly assumed it was in fact a fishermen's village. It is not. What it is, is a hideously overpriced tourist trap. Everything, including accomodation and food even more expensive than Kyoto, and nowhere near as charming, making this the absolute opposite of what we left Japan for. It's very pretty on the beach, and that's all it has going for it. Forty years ago, the place was probably very much the quaint little fishing village it purports to be, but then it likely didn't have a craft mall or several tattooo shops and a restaurant every 15 feet. We Think this is a terrible idea to have come here. We want to leave. So we do. A ferry to Surat Thani, then a flight to Bangkok, and a flight to Hanoi. This episode has given us some insight into Siobhan's Asperger's and how she deals with boredom. We stayed too long in Kyoto, whiich made her feel like she was bored. We collectively made a rash decision to leave the country rather than the city, which cost us a unique experience. We didn't think about just waiting out the boredom, and realising that this was momentary. A hard lesson learned, but we had planned to come to these islands later in the trip, so we have saved ourselves an unfortunate break in the trip later on. Another lesson learned is that the better known a place is here, the more gawd-awful it will be. Please let Vietnam be a better experience.

Hanoi, Vietnam

I Always feel a little funny about going to communist countries. I suppose I buy into the cold war ideas about surveillance and repression and evil empires, I grew up in the days of Ronnie Raygun and Leonid Brezhnev, and my education about Vietnam came from Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and other films and stories about the "police action" in Vietnam. The real story was never really known by those of us who just existed on the periphery of the conflict. Vietnam had been under an awful lot of thumbs in it's pre-liberation days. The Chinese repeatedly invaded, the French colonised and were duly exorcised, and most famously the Americans, in their attempt to save south Vietnam from the domino effect of communism (their words, not mine), tried to spread their special brand of colonialism, and failed. Uncle Ho and the battle hardened guerillas of the Vietnamese countryside repelled a very insistent American force, creating the unified country of Vietnam. Today's Vietnam is not the agent Orange defoliated, bullet-ridden hotspot that memory and mystery inform of. Although the attitude towards the Americans is outwardly forgiving and accepting, a seething animosity is still just under the surface, evident in the words of tour guides telling us that they like Americans, their smiles just a little too wide, the words rehearsed and forced. Every informative film and museum showpiece and display makes mention of the war and the atrocities committed by every invading force throughout Vietnamese recorded history, from the Chinese to the French to the Americans, and how the valiant farmers and average citizens banded together every time to repel the forces of oppression, and especially how the brave members of the communist party were forced to even repel their own people when they sided with the American puppet Saigon government. For such a forgiving people, they are pretty bitter.
 That being said, Hanoi is a pretty loose feeling city, like anything goes and absolutely anything can be had for an exceptionally reasonable price. The motorcycle traffic is truly mad. There seems to be no organisation or road rules except "try not to be in my way when I come through, and I am coming now". There is a people to motorcycle ratio of 2 to 1, and with 8 million people in Hanoi, that makes for a pretty insane traffic snarl of motorcycles and scooters going every way they can go. Lanes are simply suggestions, scooters carry about as many people as your average SUV, and honking has replaced every signal and indicator that was created for traffic use, including traffic lights, hand signals, and stop signs. It takes some getting used to. For the first couple of days, you wonder if you will actually make it across the road before midnight, and by the third day you find your window in the traffic, take it, and don't look back or second guess yourself, or you'll die.
As bananas as the traffic is, I found myself really quite enjoying Hanoi. The shops sell a pretty wide variety of things, and things that I would not really expect, like coffee. Quite a few little shops sell Vietnamese coffee with names like Golden Weasel. Vietnamese coffee is served hot or cold, and frequently comes with sugar and condensed or fresh milk, making it very thick and very sweet. If you actually like the flavour of black coffee like I do, the coffee is a revelation. It seems spiced and a little sweet, its so nice just on its own. Viet food has long been one of my favourites and I had been looking forward to it the whole trip. It was pretty much what I expected, very fresh and savoury flavours, but not much heat. From what I understand, the flavours in the north of Vietnam tend to be savoury, in central Vietnam they are spicy and in the south, sweet. Siobhan found it all a bit sandy and dull, but I loved it. We only had a couple of days there before we go to Ha Long Bay, so we try to investigate what we can, including a trip to the infamous Hanoi Hilton, Hi Lo prison. The other important sights are Tortoise Island in the middle of Hoan Kiem lake, the single pillar pagoda, the temple of literature, and the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, where his body lies in state, although some think it is just a wax dummy. I have been told that Hanoi is more sedate than its southern sister city, Saigon. I can't believe that a city could be crazier than this, so I am not really looking forward to that, but there's time before we get there.
I am also told that the hotels in Vietnam take your passports because the police come every night to ensure that all tourists are accounted for. That sort of breaks the spell of comfort and ease I had been feeling here, knowing that in some way we are still being tracked and that this is still quite a repressive regime, like the communists of old. Tourists are tolerated for their money, and a hand is almost always in your pocket. Tips are the order of the day, and if no tips are forthcoming like at grocery stores, then there never seems to prices on anything so the shopkeepers can rip you off at their leisure, just making up prices as they see fit. The principle is sound, if you have more, you should be able to pay more. There is no concept of relative poverty, as no tourists sleep on the street, and no tourists go without. It makes sense to pay a little more, but when you know what something is worth and you know that you are being smiled at and ripped off at the same time, its a little galling. At this point, I should mention that this does not just happen to tourists, but also to wealthy Vietnamese as well. It is seen as culturally proper for the wealthy to pay more. In many respects I agree with this philosophy, but it feels as though this practice is applied only to outsiders. Tourists are seen as two legged wallets first, people second and if you are American, two legged scum wallets. Fortunately, I am Canadian and British, so I am simply a cash cow and not a pig.
Griping over. There's really a lot to like about Hanoi, even the supertouristy things like the water puppet shows are actually pretty cool, transport is pretty affordable if you've managed to get a properly licensed taxi, like Taxi Group. You roll the dice with taxis as many of the drivers will positively fleece you. Even the ones that have meters have been fiddled with, so that a 60000 dong ride will cost 300 000 without even noticingBut the  liscensed cabs are easy to find and very cheap.
To balance this gripe is the fact that so many Vietnamese words cause my inner juvenile to snigger constantly. Even the currency is funny. Dong. Heh heh heh. Phuc Long Dong. Surely they know how funny this is? No? This means something not filthy? Hmmm. Nope, still hilarious.
Anyway, Ha Long Bay is next for a couple of days, and later on Sa Pa in the mountains. Should be fun!

Nara, Japan

We have by decided to leave Japan for several reasons, but the main one was boredom. Now we are regretting the decision. We won't get to see Tokyo, Mt Fuji, or take a bullet train. Perhaps we have been hasty. Kyoto was beautiful but altogether too sedate, compared to the places we have been, but is the rest of Japan the same? We won't find out this trip. Maybe next time.
Nara is next. Its the former capital and even sleepier than Kyoto, but no less picturesque. Every historic building has appeared on a postcard many times over. I do sometimes wonder how they manage to get the thousands of tourists out of the shot, though. Every site is overrun with tour buses full of people, mostly foreign tourists, but the occasional busload of schoolchildren on a field trip. The kids have been learning English in school and have been given a script to speak to English speaking tourists. They have a question about food, about hobbies and about where we come from, they are achingly polite, but not overly shy. In fact, a few of them jostle for position to ask the next question in adorably fractured English. I feel mote than just a little shame at the fact that 12 year old schoolchildren have a better command of my language than I do of theirs, but its a feeling I have gotten used to, assuming the world understands me, therefore I don't need to understand them. We encounter a few of these groups and be as kind and patient as we can, trying hard to understand and answer all of their questions.
compared to north American or English schoolkids, this lot are incredibly well behaved and respectful. Makes me wonder where we went wrong. I blame hippies. Moving on.
the place we stay is again someone's home that we found on air b n b. That's a brilliant website. Of course the place is Japanese sized, so I am constantly braining myself on door frames, and my back really doesn't like the very hard beds, but the place has everything a little family needs for day to day functioning. We don't have much time, so we have to be choosey about what sights to see. We decide that the largest wooden building in the world, Todaiji-ji, will do nicely. The road to the temple runs through a park with semi-tame deer which you can feed by hand with thin biscuits sold at vendors dotted throughout the park. The deer are so used to this that there is no even the smallest hint of natural trepidation as they confidently approach you for biscuits. You hold one out and two deer come ambling ovrr to take it from your hand. Cute! You hold out another and there are 4 deer all vying for some biscuit love. You are lord of the woodland animals! You hold out another and 6 of them are advancing quite quickly. They think you could pick up the pace with the cookies. Then 7 or 8 of them are taking turns nipping at your shirt, biting your backside and headbutting your testicles. The sudden urge to throw the remainder of the biscuits at the closest deer and tearass it out of there with your newly retailored clothes and most of your manhood still intact sensibly wins out. Your place is behind the safety of a fence. You already knew this, of course.
When first approaching the gates to the temple, the first though is "When does this get interesting?". It doesn't take long to get interesting as the corner is rounded from the ticket takers' booth, and there, standing in the middle of a big green space, is a bloody great wooden temple. Its actually quite awesome, first sight catches your breath in your throat as you struggle to say " Wow!". A monster of a wooden temple houses a monster of a Buddha statue and a few others besides. Dominic decides he wants to sit in the giant wooden hand. Sympathetically we stop him as he tries to crawl under the rope. The gift shop runs half the length of the walls and runs the gamut between the tasteful and the totally unrelated. Dominic finds a pen he wants, I get a zenlooking bead thing, and Siobhan gets a few bits of cloth that she really likes the look of, but can't quite understand their relevance to the temple. The grounds are also immense and very peaceful, despite being overrun by tourbusloads of seniors and schoolbusloads of children again.
Like Kyoto, Nara is quiet and picturesque and we think that maybe it would be nice to stay in Japan. We understand the mistake we made by not waiting until we get somewhere more active. Too bad we have to fly to Vietnam. Oh well, next time.

Kyoto, Japan

Honestly, I was less excited to go to Japan than I have been to go anywhere else. Being a Canadian, 1 in 4 people I have met have been to Japan including a large chunk of my own family. It just seemed like a marginally more exotic Mexico, for all the people who have been. I know, its not a competition for who can go to the least visited place, and that the Japanese culture is both exotic and impenetrable for most westerners, but I feel that Japan has become so modernised, so westernized and frankly overexposed in the last 40 years, that much of the mystique of the place has been replaced by flashing lights, ninja and robot themed restaurants, manga and japanimation. It just feels like it has a major vein of artificially pumping its lifeblood. I am certain that if the surface is scratched, the tale changes, but there is just not the time or money to do anything but the most cursory of walkthroughs.
The city of Kyoto, former capital city of Japan and still capital city of geisha (or geiko) culture holds much of the mystery and allure that I find missing from other major cities.The architecture is a mixture of the old, venerable temple and the ultramodern. The area we stayed in is called Gion, which is one of the oldest sections of the city, and as the allies decided to give Kyoto a miss with their bombing campaigns in WWII, Gion still retains much of the feel of old world Japan. Many guides will tell you that if enough time and watchfulness is invested in the little backstreets of Gion, geiko and their maiko (the colourful trainees to the geiko) will furtively skitter by between schools and appointments. They will not pose for pictures and they will not welcome the appearance of a camera. In order to spend anytime in their proximity, one of several methods may be employed, and I do mean employed, as every method involves an expensive trip to a tea house or private back room where executives are entertained be geiko, maiko and an older woman who plays the shamisen while the alcohol evaporates faster than the contents of their wallets. The geiko are charming, witty and most of all patient, to the point where they applaud the childish antics of the exceptionally well paid and badly behaved CEOs and their VIPs. If a geiko does slow down and smile for a picture in the street, they are very likely tourists who have been dressed and made up like geiko. There are some give aways, like the way certain makeup accompanies certain hairstyles and hair decorations, and whether they look vaguely Kansas-esque are indicative of their veracity, but to the untrained eye, they are still fantastically well done and beautifully made up. At this time I should like to say that my last statement was not in any way racist. Yes, I know, people of Asian descent are born in Americas breadbasket daily, but as tourists will want to be stopped and posed with because of  the transformative efforts of the company who has supplied them with this opportunity to play geisha, they are instantly recognisable as not-geisha. Stop waving the racist red card. Its dull.
Another way to see real geiko and meiko is to go to the theatre and see them performing the annual spring and autumn dances. These dances are traditionally performed by geiko, maiko and an all female Kabuki troupe, and accompanied by older geiko on various traditional instruments, and many times their musical instructors. A kabuki performance begins the show, in this instance the story of Son Goku, the monkey god who is based on the Chinese character Sun Wukong, and whom many feel is further based upon the Hindu character, Hanuman. The cast is again all female, in fact the only male I saw on stage was a man who knelt down by the side of the stage and used two blocks of wood cracked together to make fight noises. The geiko and maiko come next, their movements intricate and make up exquisite. The meiko come first, their geiko next and then the elders of the house come on last. Eventually 17 or 18 dancers are on at once, all performing the finale to loud but respectful applause. A real geiko has been seen entering the performance, so her attempts to leave were well marked by the audience. She never showed fear or annoyance as the crowd gathered around, clamoring for photos, and as soon as she saw a window in the crowd she quickly and gracefully made her exit.
The food in Kyoto really is quite wonderful I'm told, but as the budget allowed us to either grocery shop and buy premade food from 7-11 (also very good and inexpensive), or relatively inexpensive noodle bars and places that locals frequent, so I really can't speak to the quality or flavour of the local cuisine.
Kyoto is also well known for the absurd number of shrines and temples. Most are pretty, all are calm and serene, but samey as temples go. There are a few that really stand out. Kinkaku-ji, or the Golden Pavillion, is a temple founded initially in the14th century, destroyed in 1950 by a monk who burned it down, then rebuilt by 1955. Aside from the amazing sight of this revered temple reflected in the pond in which it is situated, the most remarkable thing is the fact that the whole structure is covered in gold leaf, which to be perfectly honest, appeared like cheap paint. The knowledge of the gold leaf is what makes it remarkable, not the sight. To-ji is a very cool old wood temple that just happens to have a 5 storey pagoda parked right next to it, and Chion-in, chief site among the Jodo sect of Zen Buddhists.
Quite a few peculiarities are evident; no one ever jaywalks. Ever.
 Perfectly sensible people will stand at a crosswalk at 2 am waiting for a light to go green, even though not a single vehicle, motorised or otherwise, crosses their path. A non-conformist, rebellious few look twitchy as they seriously consider doing the unthinkable, but they take so long to make up their minds that the light changes, easing their consciences and they carry on their way, safe in the knowledge that If they really wanted, they could be masters of their own fates. A great deal is made of the number and variety of vending machines. This may be true in Tokyo (I haven't been yet, I don't know), but in Kyoto there ARE an awful lot of vending machines, but 95% of them are drinks machines. I didn't see any of the wacky things that are supposedly for sale to the unsuspecting passer-by. Just drinks. Coffee, tea, beer, juice and soda, all cold, all in cans, no live crabs, no plutonium, no bondage-in-a-box kits, just drinks.
This is, without a shade of sarcasm, the cleanest city I have ever seen. I mean so clean, I had to actually visually scour the streets to find gum dried on to the pavement. This is down to two factors: cleanliness and shame. Its true that the Japanese are a tidy lot, there's really no space for slovenliness, but most importantly there are things that the Japanese simply don't do, as it is embarrassing or shameful, bad mannered things that only westerners do. Eating and drinking as you walk down the street is not done, so as there is no refuse being made on the go, there is nothing to throw on the streets, therefore a shame-assisted cleanliness is maintained.
Sadly, we missed the iconic cherry blossoms by about 3 weeks. I'm sure it would have been a truly breathtaking sight, but there are so many pictures out there already, I don't have to think too hard to conjure an image.
We are also stunned by how sedate the whole Japanese experience is. We are now so used to jarring sounds, bright clashing, flashing colours, taking your life in your hands crossing the street, hawkers, touts and souvenir shops, that we find ourselves getting bored of the whole thing pretty quickly. I am actually shocked by my reaction to it all. I would have thought that the calm and "Zen" of it all would be a refreshing change, but I am simply bored by the calm and the brown and greenness of it all. The fact that it costs a mint to be this bored doesn't go a long way to easing this malaise. I do wonder if Kyoto was the place to start this part of the trip. We decide that the combination of loss of interest and loss of finance is a vacation killer, and it's time to move on. We knew it would be expensive, and the expense was budgeted for, but we just can't justify paying that much for the boredom. We decide to leave Japan after a short trip to Nara, mostly because we have trouble believing that we would just leave because we are bored, and want to see one more place. Maybe next year we will have our heads in a place appropriate for a trip to Japan. I hope it will get more interesting in the next former capital, Nara.

Back in Bangkok

I have been looking forward to this day since the minute I left in September of last year. I have thought about the sun and the heat, the smells and textures and tastes, the atmosphere and colours every single day for 10 months. Every mouthful of food since leaving has been compared to the last one in Bangkok. Every drink has been put in the harsh light reflecting off the fresh juices to be found at 5 carts to the block on most pedestrian streets in the backpacker areas of Bangkok. Every glance at a dour and grey Church of England edifice reminds me that somewhere God likes colour, but not here. I wonder if there is an correlation between colour and ambient temperature. Every sunny day (and there are precious few in England) is shamed by a memory, knowing that at its strongest, the sunlight in Britain simply isn't going to infuse you with that sense of sub tropical satisfaction. I step out of the airplane at Suvarnabhumi airport, and I am immediately greeted with a hot breath of air so thick you could chew it. Every thought and sensation comes at full tilt, and I can remember very few times in which I have been happier.
After we returned from our trek last year, I went through a bit of a withdrawal from southeast Asia. I sulked a while, and returned to my studies, thinking of nothing but sitting at a roadside restaurant in Chiang Mai, Thailand, eating pad Thai and drinking pineapple and passion fruit smoothies, listening to the traffic and the mixture of Thai and western voices, discussing everything from English football to what to see and how much to see it by tuktuk. Friendly negotiations and the knowing dance of customer relations experts and expats. Then it was cold and grey and miserable English winter. The memories faded and the hard graft of university set in, coupled with raising a child with Siobhan, and the daily business of getting on. Siobhan notices that there are dead cheap flights to Bangkok, and maybe we should get them and worry about where to go later? It's still December and it's too far away for it to be real. The Malaysian flight disaster is a distant memory and so is the downing of the Malaysian flight over Ukraine. There seems to be a real rash of crashes and near misses, but it's still a long ways away.
Then the Nepal earthquake devastates all of these amazing sights and places between Kathmandu and Pokhara, jogging mental pictures and mini movies of places we had seen and been less than a year ago. Durbar square in Kathmandu is a pile of rubble, and the same goes for Patan and Bahktapur. I spend hours comparing my pictures of what I saw versus news pictures of what's left in abject shock. How the royal Kumari of Kathmandu and her domicile in Durbar Square survived without so much as a scratch as dozens of people were killed by falling debris just metres from her door is a potentially divine mystery. There were shops along the mountain roads to Pokhara who's back ends were supported by stilts rising out of the sheer drop down the mountainside that always seemed pretty perilous in calmer tectonic times, but now ... I wonder if anyone made it out before they just disappeared down the cliff face. The memories of these places that were just right there and I have the photos and film to prove they were there and now they just aren't and what about all the people we met there that ran coffee shops or gave us a deal on souvenirs or just wanted to practice their English or the smiling faces or those who nearly ran us over or.... it becomes too much for a minute.
It sure kickstarts the desire to get back there though, and now we're here! That undercurrent in the air of fish, the lights and sound, its wonderful! From the fire escape of my hotel I see a boy netfishing in the canal and I'm reminded that I'm the one with the unreal life. There is a rawness to life here which you will never really see in the west unless you live a very raw life as well. There are colourful temples and colourful characters everywhere. There's an electricity in the air and it's not coming from that very low slung extension cord. There's  loads of solo older guys, and regardless of why they are there, you just know that there will be a young Thai girl in his sights soon enough. That may not be true, but you think that they must be those creepy types. You're probably right. I know there are huge swathes of this city I know nothing about. I have no business in the seedier areas, and I'm just too old to satisfy lingering curiosity. I don't actually care. Its on record in books and film if I simply must know. The same goes for the very affluent areas and the bars and clubs hold no allure. I'm just happy to be in the warm air, smelling and seeing and being in Bangkok. Japan is next on the itinerary, and I'm excited but I fear for the bank account.

Benedict

We always wanted a brother or sister for our our little boy Dominic. We felt it would be very good for him to have someone to look out for, to have as a best friend and worst enemy, and to help him grow as a fully fleshed out, responsible man. For the sibling, the experience and information (like you can get pregnant by sitting on a toilet seat, even if you're a boy) that would be disseminated by an older brother would be priceless, they could lean on each other and grow with each other, fight and support each other, and really be their own little gang. Most of all, we just wanted another baby. Dominic was born quite late in our lives, I was 39 and Siobhan had just turned 41 a few days earlier. We knew that if it was going to happen, it had to happen soon. The chances of pregnancy decrease drastically over 35, and even more so after 40, so time was not on our side. We tried actively for a couple of years with no joy (on the baby front), and we had made peace with the concept that Dominic was going to be an only child. Just as well, we said, we are getting too old for the realities of raising a child, and the fact is that genetic defects become far more prevalent with the advanced age of the parents, ie. Down's syndrome occurs more frequently, the overall quality of the sperm and egg decreases leading to all manner of defects, a million reasons to make it happen, if it's going to happen, as soon as possible. One day, quite for no reason whatsoever, Siobhan notices that she has a spare pregnancy test and decides, as you will, to pee on it. She's a week or so late, but puts it down to age finally doing its thing. Not this time. She's Pregnant! So happy, so much joy! We didn't think it would ever happen again, but here it is! All the emotions you'd expect come too, the fear (how can we cope with two? how can I love another as much as I love my son? will I overcompensate with the love and neglect my boy? can we afford another?), the planning, the waiting. We tell everyone who will listen, and if they don't, we tell them louder. Oh my god, another child! How wonderful! Incredible! The reality is that sometimes we even forget the baby is in there, we had come to believe there would never be another, so sometimes the brainwashing peeks through and we forget. Of course, as soon as we notice that we are not as vigilant about making sure that the baby is the topic of every conversation, we reproach ourselves for not making the same big deal that we did last time. When my son Dominic was on his way, I was the most over-the-top expectant daddy. I spoke to Siobhan's belly all the time. I rubbed it, making circles with my hand, sometimes not even realising I was doing it. and of course, I just wouldn't shut up about it. When he first started moving, it became so real, he wasn't just a fuzzy picture on a scan, he wasn't just a reason for the changes Siobhan was going through, and he wasn't just an idea. He was my son, my first born, he was real and he was coming soon! I spent every minute of every day either talking or thinking or reading about him and what to expect. This time, we were just as excited, but a little surprised and frankly incredulous, so as a result not as attentive as I would like to have been. We are holding our breath for scan day, the day when we get to see this little concept become a reality. The questions we have are things like is it a boy or girl? Is it healthy? Does it have all it's parts? If it's a boy, what will we call him? This begins the name debate again, and the disagreements again. But what if it's a girl? Siobhan thinks it would be nice for Dominic to have a little brother, but thinks it would be nice for me to have a little girl. Her name should be Elisabeth. She knows I would positively adore a daughter and she would wrap me around around her very little finger, with love, of course. We talk about the day she brings home the young man foolish enough to want to date her, and the string of death threats he would receive when he gets The Talk (a thought I outwardly relish and inwardly polish to menacing and terrifying perfection), watching her grow from a sweet, adorable little girl who worships her daddy and just won't shut up, to a remarkable, beautiful woman who will hold the world in the palm of her hand. If it's a boy, will he look like Dominic ,who looks quite bit like me, or will he look more like Siobhan? I think Siobhan is a gorgeous woman, and a boy could do very well to take on her features. As Dominic gets older, he has begun to take on more of his mama's looks, so you can see us both in him, perhaps the next boy will do the same or look more like what we envisioned Dominic would look like with my dark hair and olive complexion. When Dominic was born we thought he would have more of my features, but the moment he arrived we were very surprised, as he was blonde and fair with blue eyes. All babies are born blue eyed, but he stayed the picture of stereotypical Aryan perfection. To tell the truth, when he was born he was a purple, rubbery ball of rage and fury. He was 3 weeks late and would have been very happy to stay there longer. Would the new one be late too? Dominic was a big boy at 9lb 12oz, would the new one be as big or even bigger? Siobhan has had 7 children, each larger than the last, and this new one threatens to be the biggest yet, and we know s/he will be the most lovely of all. Siobhan has been sicker than she recalls being for any of her other pregnancies, and says it's a good sign, but she also says that she has stopped feeling sick, so that's a relief. The big day comes. We get all bundled up as it's a cold wet day, and we explain to Dominic that today he will see his new brother or sister! We sit in the waiting room, nervously counting the seconds until we are called in, and trying to get Dominic to stop running all over the place. The moment comes when we are called in, and we can't get in fast enough. We chatter nervously to the tech, "this my second, but her eighth","we have tossed a few names around", "I think he'll love being a big brother". Then she gels up her tummy and away we go. We see a baby shaped blob on the screen. I turn to Dominic while the tech continues to look around at the little baby, and I say,"Dominic! Now you'll have a little brother or sister you can blame everything on!" No sooner had I finished the last sound, when the tech asks Siobhan if she's had any bleeding and Siobhan asks why? The answer completely shatters my life. She says "There is a baby, and it's in the right place,but I'm so sorry, there's no heartbeat." My brain refuses to hear the words. There's no way those words could have been spoken, so I ask her to say it again. "I'm so sorry, there's no heartbeat". My ears fill with blood, the muscles in my face completely give way, as does my whole world. Every wonderful emotion I had has been replaced by a crushing desire to die. I feel sick. I feel such sadness like I have never felt before, I hoped it was never possible to know this kind of grief. I know it's only week 13, but I know my child has died, and I know there will never be another. Dominic, bless him doesn't understand what has happened, but he sees Siobhan, who has been destroyed, crying and me crying and he feels sad too because we are. Siobhan can't speak for the sobbing and the tech gives us another confirming once over of her tummy, and explains that she has no idea why his heart is not beating, just that it hasn't for about a week. How could we not have known? Doesn't the body tell you about something like this? We remember that is has told us. She stopped feeling sick. She thought it was just a natural sessation of the hormone that makes you sick and she was settling into being happily pregnant. The nurse tells us about the options for the end of the pregnancy, and we decide on the natural way, to just let the baby come out on it's own. We refuse to call it the foetus. It was a baby, our baby. I don't know if we are making things worse for ourselves by refusing to depersonalise this. I refuse to do it any other way, and so does Siobhan. We spend the next 3 weeks waiting for the baby to come and crying and trying to figure out what happened and why. The nurse had been very straight with us, with very little emotionality, which I greatly appreciated. I wanted the facts and I didn't want them through the veil of sadness, which I know that despite she's a human being and she can empathise, she's also a medical professional, she sees this often enough and she has learned to separate herself from such sentimentality because she simply has to, otherwise she'd spend her very short career being a blubbering mess, so her emotions would not be honest. The truth is the honesty I need. The truth is that sometimes the baby's heart just doesn't get what it needs, for whatever reason, and stops beating, and that's it. There's no reason that I can accept. Even if it was just a genetic flaw, and something was preventing the baby from clearing the next developmental hurdle, and there was absolutely nothing we could have done to prevent it, we still feel that there was something we could have done to prevent this. The truth is that the only thing that could have stopped this from happeneing was to not get pregnant at all. So my child is dead, and now we must prepare for the day when it is delivered, because that's the way we have chosen. Our baby will be born. Dominic was 3 weeks late so why should my second son be any different? At about 1 am on the 14th of November Siobhan's waters break. Not long now. She goes to the bathroom and within a few minutes she is crying and calling for me. The baby has come out. But why is she sounding so upset? I knew she would be, of course, but she sounds shocked as well. The baby has been born whole, and I had no idea. He was fully developed. He has 5 fingers and 5 toes and a little winkie and his little tongue is sticking out of his little mouth and he's perfect. He's just a tiny little version of a complete human being. I had no idea that he would be so complete. There he is. My son, and there's not a single fucking thing wrong with him. He's just dead. Oh god I want to die again, the lump in my throat makes breathing painful, coupled with the weight on my chest. I've never known this sadness, it's worse than when we got the news because it's really real. It's here in front of me. Why does he have to look so perfect? Why can't he have some obvious defect which would explain why he's here 28 weeks early? We cry and cry and cry, then we put our preparations in motion. We take pictures so that we will have a record of what he looked like, the only baby pictures we will ever have. We wrap him in a little bit of cloth and put him in a little bed that Siobhan has knit for him. We give him the name Benedict. Soon after Dominic was born I began to sing the Beatles song "Good Night" to him, so I hold little Benedict in my hand, and sing it to him, knowing I will never sing it to him again. I barely make it through, and I break several times during the song. We bury him in a large plant pot and cover him with bulbs so he will be in bloom for us year round. I just want to say that I fully support a woman's right to choose. I believe that the only person who should make decisions regarding childbirth, unless the woman is completely incapacitated or her life is threatened, is the woman herself. It is for this reason I would hope that in the future, women are done the enormous favour of being offered a little more information about just how developed an 11 week old foetus is before she decides to terminate. It's heart beats. It has everything you'd expect of a fully formed human being. There are other options than termination. I know that many just can't bring a child to term. Rape cases and severly mentally disabled women, I understand completely why they can't do it. If you feel that it will disfigure your previously pristine vagina, I ask that you find a better reason than that. I don't know anyone who has done it for that reason, but I also understand that's a reason that has been used. You're not willing to give up your career, you're not financially prepared, you're too young and you haven't lived as much of your life for you, I get it completely, but really, in 9 months you can get right back to it, and at least in England you will get mat leave without the fear of job loss, and if you put the child up for adoption, your life will be all yours again. I just ask that you really understand what you'd be applying this procedure to, and what stage of development it's at, depending on how quickly you get the procedure done. I also think that any responsible doctor should do this, not as a way to convince you not to do it, but as a way to ensure that this is what you really want, and to ensure you have all the facts. I feel it's just due diligence, and if it's still what you want, then carry on. Siobhan begins to feel very lightheaded, and starts to bleed heavily, so an ambulance is called. She's hemmorrhaged, so she has to go to the hospital for observation. She says she feels a bit better and needs to go to the bathroom. She starts to bleed again so no argument this time. While the EMTs keep an eye on her and take blood pressure and such, I clean up the bathroom. There's so much blood. It's all over the floor and the toilet. So much. I start to clean and wrap up just as Siobhan is being taken by stretcher to the ambulance. I want to come with her so I call her son Julian to explain what has happened and to ask him to look after Dominic until I get back. He says I'll have to do better than that and hangs up. We have never spoken to him since, and not by our choice. He's decided to cut us out of his life for some reason which no one will explain, which means Dominic has no big brother, and little Evie, Julian's daughter has no grandmother. This just adds to the terrible feeling surrounding this whole thing. Imagine your child not particularily caring that you have just lost his new brother and that you're bleeding severely in the hospital. What has to have happened to engender this? I'm so angry and upset I don't have words. I want to drive over to his house, get him out of bed and give him the kicking he so richly deserves, but I can't leave Dominic, and I content myself with the thought that for once, the shit has extricated itself from my life. I do understand that Benedict was only 12 weeks old. I do understand that if he had lived and then died when he was a week or a month or a year then it would be so much worse. But I won't be told that his death was nothing to be so upset about. When he was born he was perfect and there was no reason that we knew of that he should not be alive, he should have been alive, he should be my beautiful second little boy, he should be 18 months old now, and walking and happy and playful and clever and funny. He should be here with us, and I won't be told he wasn't a real baby. I won't hear that he wasn't my son, because he was supposed to be, and I've seen him and I've held him and sung to him, and now I've buried him. A month from now is his second birthday. I think about him all the time and what should have been. On the exceptionally rare cases that I do mention him, I refer to him as my son, and that he passed very early. I'm not trying to engender any sympathy, or make anyone feel bad for me, it's just the way I think of him. Siobhan has begun perimenopause, so there will be no more babies. I have my son Dominic, and I love him so much and I am so grateful for him, but I will never have another. Siobhan, who is so good at having babies she should gone professional, is deeply depressed at the thought that what she thought was her purpose in life, to have babies, is no longer her purpose, and she thinks that maybe she no longer has one. I tell her that her purpose is to continue to be a mother to her other kids and to be mama to Dominic, but it's not quite enough. I think I understand. The saying is time heals all wounds. It doesn't, it just provides more things to dwell on in between the thoughts of Benedict. Every time I do think of him, I feel the same pain and loss and sorrow I felt then. This will never change. I don't want it to. I never want to forget how much I love him, even though he was taken from us and the only time I got to spend with him was after he had died. I go on about this a lot, and I suppose it's more than most who have experienced this. It's just that he was the end of my children, there won't be any more. Siobhan is the only woman I would want children with, she gave me my first and he'll be my last. The anniversay of his birth will always be a very dark day for us, and I suppose that I just needed to write about this because I have never spoken to anyone other than Siobhan about this, and I just wanted to get it out. I don't imagine this will make me feel better or lessen the pain, but Benedict deserves to know that even before we knew he was coming, he was wanted and desired and loved and cherished. I deserve to be allowed my pain, to never let it be lessened or dulled, and to remember him always. I'm so sorry, baby boy, I wish I had known you. I wish I could sing for you. I wish I could watch you grow. I wish I could play with you. I wish I could see what you look like. I wish I could hear your voice. I wish I could hold you and kiss you and hug you. I love you so much, and I always will. Happy birthday Benedict. Love, Daddy

Southeast Asia Post Script

So, two wonderful weeks in Chiang Mai, Thailand have passed altogether too quickly. I managed to find a few beautiful big temples just out of town, drank Slurpees every day and ate pad thai all the time. We talked about coming back next year, or considering the cost of this year, maybe two years on. We spent two more days in Bangkok, and are learning to love that big, mad city too. We talked about where we went wrong, where we went right, maybe some new places to see and new mistakes to make. We got to absolutely love Thailand. We could take or leave Malaysia, although I thought it is a remarkable example of tolerance that the rest of the world could learn from. We have had time to look back on Nepal and see it in a new light. I think it was because Nepal so was so not where we thought we were going and we did it right at the beginning of the trip, so we were shellshocked immediately. In retrospect, we saw some pretty amazing things. Kathmandu is a pit. That much has not changed. But the surrounding areas and even some places inside Kathmandu are truly remarkable. Cambodia, we liked for the most part. Someplaces I could take or leave, but as far as I am concerned, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap are amazing places, just littered with things to do and see and most of it is quite educational too. Burma. BurmaBurmaBurma. Again retrospect seems to put on a rosy hue to the place, but I haven't forgotten the rotten bits. Overall though, it's very cool, and if you see it beore it gets overrun with tourists, you'll get a real sense of the place. I actually found many things to like about Mandalay, the place said I would hat. I loved Bagan so very much, and Yangon (or Rangoon) is full of wonderful places and things to see. Ten years time, and it will be all set up for western tourists, and won't be a shade of itself anymore. I so wish we had seen more of Laos, it was really unfair to the country and to ourselves to have not spent more time there. I really liked Luang Prabang, and I am genuinely looking forward to our return so we can investigate this country further. I just can't say enough about Thailand. Sure it has it's flaws, like the police will spend all their time investigating tourists and expats when a tourist is murdered, and will only invest locals when there is simply no one else to blame. The traffic is crazy and they have insects on a stick and call it food. I also learned that there is no end to the amazing places and things to see, the arts and culture, the temples and wats and chudis are the most beautiful, ornate places I have seen in a long time. I love Thai food, I so love Thai food, and there's this soft drink called Schweppes Manau that is like fizzy sweet lime juice, and I am deeply saddened that I won't taste that again for quite a while. Thailand also has more 7-11s than anywhere else in the world, sometimes so many per street that you end up looking at one while standing in another. There are no such thing as 7-11s in England, so goodbye slurpees. Goodbye to cheap food and hotel rooms and transport. There are several types of taxi in Chiang Mai, but the best is the red truck. They are everywhere and so very cheap. Flag one down and you can get anywhere in the city for 20-40 baht, the equivalent of 40-80 p. The beaches are lovely with gorgeous white sand and superclear water, it's hot, but you get used to it. It's a clean country full of national pride, and rightly so. Most importantly, I learned that the great mystical mystery that is India is in fact complete shite.I learned to despise India. Which brings us to right this minute. We are in Delhi, after having said goodbye to Bangkok bright and early this morning. I can't tell you how heartbroken we are to left Thailand and doubly for having to return here. Our flight back to Manchester via Doha, Qatar leaves from here very late at night or I should say very early in the morning on the 28th of September. So what to do here until we leave.... we are suspicious of the food, the water, the air, the people. Do we just stay in the hotel room for two days until it's time to go. A very real possibility. Maybe we should brave the streets one more time, just to say we haven't been completely beaten. Or maybe I don't have anything to prove,and I'll just go for lunch. Haven't decided yet. Soon, it's back England, and back to real life. The first year of my degree in mechanical engineering has already started and I'm late. I don't know what the house looks like. I'm sure it's fine, it's been looked after. There's making my own bed and cleaning my own clothes and making food and doing the shopping and the washing up and and and. Sigh. Had a pretty good run there, and maybe in a year or so, we can have another. Maybe. I had no idea I would enjoy southeast Asia, I had really never thought about coming here. Now all I think of is coming back, and I'm so glad I came. There aren't many places that I have been to that I would come back to. So wish me luck, reality awaits, but I'm not holding my breath for it. Sigh.

India Pt 5

I knew that there was one thing I needed to see before I left the filth and graft and disease of India far behind. Everyone say it with me, the Taj Mahal. I mean, who comes here and puts up with everything this place throws at you and doesn't go to the Taj Mahal? Even if you've been to India before, you still want to see it again. It's as close to a pereect building as you're likely to see. The symmetry, the way that the four towers line up in relation to the main building to the apex of the arches of the massive entrance halls, everything about it is so close to perfect. The intricate carving on the walls, the inlay of the Islamic prayers inside the memorial hall, the way that if you hold a flashlight to the marble you can almost see right through it, it's of such fine quality. There's the remarkable echo inside the main hall, personally I would want to be around when there is someone singing prayers in there. There's the immense gates on all four sides of the grounds, and they even line up with the Taj Mahal itself. There's the iconic reflecting pool outside where so many photographs have been taken. With everything I have said, plus the pictures you have no doubt seen, assuming you haven't been there, how could this part of the trip be such crap too? It starts, as always, with the hotel. The name of the hotel is Ray of Maya, an offshoot of the better known hotel Maya, right next to an entrance to the walkway leading to the western gate of the Taj Mahal. It really is ideally situated for an early start to the great monument if you want to see it by sunrise. It is also at the end of a two foot wide mud path which is raised and runs between two construction sites. This path begins at the gauntlet of autorickshaw drivers and runs past a hotel and restaurant before it gets to a vacant lot littered with garbage and rusted, decrepid buildings. Next stop along the path, we pass a new hotel being built adjoining the Ray of Maya, and then past the hotel gym, which is actually an unfinished underground parking lot, filled with one tank for water and one tank for septics until the sewer line is completed. We arrive quite late, so I get one of the hotel staff to show Siobhan and Dominic to the room while I do the check in. Hotel checkins are really rigorous in India. They want to know where you've been, where you're going, how you got here, how you're leaving, when you're leaving, have you got a phone number, have you got an email address, have you been to India before, why are you here anyway? Then there's the stuff you expect, the passport and visa numbers, names and home addresses. They are even more suspicious if you're staying in a town near the Pakistan border. I finish up and get to the room. Then the banging starts. Faster and Faster, louder and louder, and for those dirty birdies reading, we had no neighbours. No, it's coming from the construction site next door. Once again angry ( this happens a lot lately), I meet a fellow resident who wants to know if I'm going down to Find out about this banging. Actually he asked if I was going to ask about the f***ing banging to which I replied "abso-f***ing-lutely". The man on desk said he'd find out. The banging stops. It's 1 am. We want to be up for 5 am to catch the sunrise at the Taj Mahal. The banging starts again, only this time faster and louder with no breaks for a breath. I am going to kill. No really. It's time for death. I go back downstairs and I am assured it's only going to last another 5 or 10 minutes. So you know about the banging. Yes. Is he one of yours? Yes. DOES HE KNOW WHAT F***ING TIME IT IS? Yes. So sorry. Die. Everyone should just die. Back to bed. 5 am comes. I don't care. 5:15. Fine. Let's get up. 5:30. Crap. Getupgetupgtup! Outside we see that everyone else has had the same idea. Supercrap. We get in the slowest moving electric autorickshaw we can find and get to the Taj Mahal. There are metal scans and bag checks. Siobhan has to empty her bag. Bloody nuisance. Fine. Let's go. We start walking and are promptly set upon by guides. How the hell did they get in? we were the first lot through the gates. Surely they don't work for the monument? Annoyed. We get to the reflecting pool, and photographers are there taking pictures of the tourists sitting on the stone bench. Seriously, how do they get in before we do? Do they sleep here? We get up and try to take our own picture when we hear a photographer say "shoo!" like we are dogs getting in his shot, and he's the only one allowed to take pictures there. I know that shouting loudly at the locals on the site of a world monument is not done, but this little pissant just tried to shoo me away. I'm so shocked all I can do is verbally and loudly abuse him, knowing I look like a dick. I don't care. I hate India. The skies open up. The weather has closed in. Rain hurls itself down with such ferocity the huge gates can't be seen from the monument. Fortunately we are only steps away from the entrance, but we still manage to look like wet dogs by the time we get inside. As I mentioned earlier, the inside of the Taj Mahal is almost as remarkable as the outside. The intricate carving, the jeweled inlay on every marble panel which is every surface on every facet of every wall, the ebony arabic prayers, set in the marble and runs up each of the six corners and around the top of the mausoleum. The tombs are in the centre, walled off from approach. A hall runs the circumference of the Taj Mahal and again every intricately carved wall with it's floral motifs is carefully inlaid with garnet and lapis. Just from a strictly architechtural standpoint, it's a truly incredible achievement. Apparently engineers have done several surveys of the structure, and the towers and main buildings line up almost perfectly, to within a few centimetres on either side. The towers are actually angled out slightly, so that if an earthquake happens, they will fall away from the mausoleum. Simply an incredible feat of engineering and aesthetics, and quite likely the most beautiful building I have ever seen. I like to think I have seen many all over the world. We walk past the main entrance to the mausoleum which looks out over the main gate, and there's no one there. it's been open for an hour and the usual masses of people are trapped under the eaves of the massive gate as the rain thrashes down and shows no sign of abating. A few brave souls decide theve've had enough standing around and say "rain be damned" as they head out into the maelstrom. Once the first lot start moving, others soon follow. In moments, the grounds are swarming with tourists. It's time to go. The museum doesn't open for another hour, and we're not standing in the rain just for this, so we go back to the hotel for some rest. Mission accomplished, we head out for some dinner. The hotel restaurant is actually across a busy road. Genuinely, even little annoyances like this are becoming enormous rage starters. I can't seem to find the little happy things anymore, which I find very troubling. I am always the one trying to find the good in everything, whether it be the food in the restaurant or the facades on the buildings or just the water pressure in the shower, but I am having real trouble finding anything to feel good about and now I'm actually looking for things to gripe about. I don't have to wait either. There's always something to be angry about now. We just want to get to Delhi now. One step closer to Thailand. The train is an hour late, which for a three hour train ride takes some doing. Or not doing as the case may be. We arrive eventually, and go to our hotel which is on Connaught Place in the outer circle. It's upstairs in what appears to be a little hole in the wall. The walkway to the hotel crosses a hallway which has "Do Not Enter" signs painted on the walls. Eeep. A door at the end of the murder hall opens up to a really quite nice, if not small, lobby. Freshly painted, the whole place smells like paint and chemicals, but it's a very modern looking place with all new beds and appliances. A very welcome change. There is hope that things might actually work as they should here. There is crap internet in the first room, so we get another. I'd like to say that things like internet shouldn't matter because we are not touring the internet of the world, but everything is done on the net now, and if you say you have good strong internet, you really ought to. So we move. The room we go to is smaller but the internet is marginally better. We need laundry doing so we try to find a laundry service, and find none save the hotel's own. This is gonna cost. And it does. We make an inventory of what needs washing and do the math on what it should cost. It's one of those places that charge by the item, not by the kilo like we are used to. We go out to have a look at the area. Connaught Place was built by the British, it's a large circle with an inner and outer ring, lined with shops all round and small streets running fron the outer ring to the central park. I'm sure the place was really lovely once, but left to the devices of the Indians, the place has become filthy and stained with betel nut spit and smelling of feces. People are sleeping under bits of cardboard and legless people shuttle themselves along on bits of plywood with casters on the bottom. It's almost cartoon poverty, it's so prevalent and obvious. There's no attempt to help the beggars other than to give them a few rupees, and this help comes from passersby, not the government. There's no income tax for the average people, so there's no money for civil services. The way to get anything done is through bribes, not bids, so a greased palm gets you what you want. It seems that what's wanted is personal advancement. There's no thought about the people who actually spend their lives living in the rubbish heaps of the big cities, scavenging what they can to sell for scrap or even feed their own.It really is such a shame. A lot of money went from Britain to India in the way of aid and investment. They spent the money on building a whole new section to the city of Jaisalmer and other towns like it. Then the locals moved in and the shiny new construction, within a year, looked like four walled crap. It seems like an incredible waste of money and time, trying to help those who just treat their cities and towns so poorly, and considering where the money could be going in our own country it's doubly galling. But western guilt says we must help, and so help we do. Maybe it's best not to know where the money goes, so we can feel like we've done some good without knowing if it's good or not. There's an underground market on the outer circle called Palika Bazaar. An escalator leads down to 3 floors of shopping. There appears to be only 4 or 5 shops, just repeated over and over. The sari shops, t-shirt shops, cosmetics shops, jeans and jacket shops, and sunglass kiosks. The standout is the number of tattoo shops. They seem to share the same flash and picture books, and frankly none of them appear of an better quality art than you'd get from a high school art student. Again, trying to shop is pointless, you're given a second to actually look at the wares, then there's always someone waving their product in your face and trying to get you to come spend money in their shop. There must be enough tourists come through there that they know that's not how you get a westerner to spend money. As soon as I see someone coming at me with tat in hand, I try my best to go in the opposite direction, even if that means I end up nowhere near where I want to be. Siobhan wants to go to the Bahai temple, also known as the Lotus Temple, so named because it was built in the shape of an enormous silver, white and stone lotus blossom. There's longest line I've ever seen to get in, but it moves very quickly so the wait isn't that long. It's really a very striking structure, very cool to look at but exceptionally austere inside. They only allow total silence in the temple, very difficult thing for a three year old to maintain, but Dominic holds up admirably. Next is the ISKCON temple, or Hare Krishna temple. I really have no truck with the Krishnas, but Siobhan is happiest with them, she loves the temple and being around the music and clothes and dancing and people and is actually quite taken Krishna himself and is herself an ex-Krishna, and the boy just likes the look of a blue guy with long hair and a flute. We go through the light and sound extravaganza, which is really just lights flashed on statues and very loud talking and music with various sound effects for punctuation. One of the cheesiest things I've ever seen but still kind of fun. Dominic is a little frightened by the noise, so he clings to me. Awww, poor little man. The temple itself is lively, with a small band playing traditional instruments and repeating the Krishna chant over and over to a jaunty little tune. There are several people dancing and singing, with devotees giving blessing by placing a bowl on peoples' heads. I don't know, don't ask. The atmosphere is festive amongst the people sitting crosslegged on the floor, everyonne singing, chanting, clapping or just happy to be there. It's about the nicest place I have been in India, and when people come up to talk to you, it's because they are interested in you, not for any sales purposes. They don't even do the in-the-street book sales anymore so there's none of that either, It's mostly just curiosity about what would bring a caucasian family with a little boy here. The shops have samosas and muffins, cakes and other nibbles, but as they don't use onion or garlic or any spices which could inflame your passions and their baking uses no eggs as they are strict vegetarians, the takes on western foods are a bit flavourless, but the samosas are delicious. I feel happy here too, there's no harrassment or people in your face. I love a good haggle, I truly do and I think I'm ok at it, but I don't want to haggle here because no one is trying to rip you off or over charge you here. It's what I'd hoped India could be, and don't really want to leave. I'm not a Krishna, I'm not interested in being one, and I think they are all just a little bit barking, but they are genuinely nice people, and when I have to go back to Delhi before we fly home, I will make a beeline for here. We get back to the hotel and I ask for my laundry. I wasn't just telling you about my laundry earlier because I thought you cared about the state of my trousers, I was actually going somewhere with it. We have been charged about 200% too much. I look at the bill and see 9 shirts, 2 housecoats, 2 jackets,3 suits, and I truly don't remember sending these things to be washed, mostly beause I don't have any. Half the clothes are still filthy, they have charged for my son's little clothes what they would charge for big people clothes, and they have bleached a pair of my son's trousers. They completely missed the stained white things with the bleach, but manage to get it all over my son's trousers, ruining them. Last straw. I want out of this bastard country. Now. Everything since I have got here has gone horribly wrong, everything is filthy, diseased, or both and tends to give you the trots, everything has fallen apart, popped stitches or just failed to work, everyone has tried to rip us off or outright steal from us, and then treated us like it's our fault. I hate it here,and Siobhan agrees completely. Luckily we have only one more day before our flight back to Thailand. I am leaving India and going back to the place we all felt happiest for our last couple of weeks before we have to return to reality. I can't adequately express my joy. If my son gets sick, there are actual doctors with actual licenses practising everywhere. There is food which doesn't make me purge. There is a system of civil services which means there are no animals feeding on garbage in the streets. This I think will be my last missive, as I don't think you really want to read about my days being passed happily and idly, visiting temples and seeing the sights with my son. I'm sure you don't want to read about Siobhan's myriad massages or our lovely meals or purchased souvenirs, so I will leave you here. I hope I haven't bored you overly, or put you off travel to these palces, there are so many wonderful, amazing things to do and see in this part of the world. Perhaps I have given you something to think about, and maybe some things to watch out for, both good and bad. If nothing else I hope you have been even marginally entertained. If not, why are you reading this? If so, Thanks for reading this, I have enjoyed writing it, and this will help me remember our trip as well as the pictures. I don't know how or even if I can put pictures in this, so I haven't. If you ask me nicely, maybe I can send you some. Thanks again and take care, Love to you all, Colin, Siobhan and Dominic. PS Dominic's skin is much better now.

India Pt 4

The train from Jaisalmer to Ajmer was relatively uneventful, but the arrival in Ajmer was quite jarring, not because of the train, but because of the horrorshow outside. Humans piled on top of one another trying to get off the train, and the red clad porters try to walk off with your bags and bring them to taxis run by their mates, taxi drivers compete with one another for fares, and more people try to get on to trains than trains can safely allow. No one bats an eye but us. It's the craziest I have ever seen a train station and I am sure it gets worse in bigger cities. It takes us ages to figure out how to get out of the station, every gate is locked and door is closed. We finally find a muddy path leading to a parking lot, and then another muddy path leading through another parking lot, which seems to lead to the entrance to the station. We must have gone the wrong way as we got off the train, but I couldn't see another way. Regardless, we trudge on trying to find the fixed rate taxis when we walk past a man asleep on the ground. The man is missing a foot and half his fingers on one hand, and he is, on closer inspection, covered with flies. Is he that drunk that he's passed out at the mouth of the train station and doesn't even notice that he's playing host to dozens of these little black pests? Even at my most seriously passed out, I'd have noticed that eventually and tried instinctively to brush them away, but this man doesn't move, doesn't even twitch. His hands and face are covered with sores that the flies are congregating around. I remember a bird or other small animal had got trapped in the attic of our old house, and had died. As it decomposed, big blue-black flies started showing up around the house. I must have bashed dozens of them, until there were no more, and these flies were very reminiscent of those flies. We wonder if the man has died? Why has no one tried to help him? If he has died, why had no one moved him? We keep walking, wondering then why we have done nothing as well. My first thought is that if no one else has helped him, I am most certainly not. I suppose I am just another western dickhead who thinks he's too good, too clean to touch this man. Maybe so, but I simply wasn't going to, and I made peace with that. That thought makes me uncomfortable to think about it now, but at the time... We find a taxi to take us the half hour to Pushkar, which is situated by what I am told is a lovely little lake with bathing gats all the way around it, scads of temples throughout the town, and overall, just a very cool and relaxed vibe about the place, a sort of backpacker haven. What I see is another filthy, hectic town full of tourists and hawkers, cars and motorcycles, cows and dogs. Siobhan assures me that when she was here last, it was no where near as bad as this. The traffic has doubled, the garbage has spawned more garbage, and the rain just put a grey, muddy wash over everything. We thought that this being monsoon, low season for tourists, we could just wander into town and have our pick of places to stay. Siobhan had been in contact with a relatively expensive place the night before, but we opted to take our chances when the owner said he'd send a taxi to get us from the station for the bargain rate of 500 rupees. That's not actually a bargain, incidentally. It cost us 300. That's where our luck ran out. There's literally no room at the inn. Crap. So we contact the hotel we'd passed on earlier, and they said they'd come get us from the restaurant we called from, now that we are in town. How nice. What he meant was he'd send someone to show the taxi driver how to get there. Whatever. We get to the hotel, which is a real haveli (not hovel), and it's surprisingly really lovely. That was as good as it got. The power kept going out, it was nowhere near anything, except conveniently a taxi stand to get us out of there. We spend the rest of the day deciding on whether to carry on to Udaipur because we are just being too hard on India and it will get better, or to get to Delhi as fast as we can because we are concerned that if places like Jaisalmer and Pushkar have gone to hell, what are the chances that Siobhan's second favourite place in India has not gone to hell too? Finally Siobhan decides she'd rather remember her favourite places like Udaipur, Darjeeling and Orchha as they were and so we make the decision to leave India after just 6 days and book a flight from Delhi back to Bangkok, leaving in 4 days time. We decide to go for dinner in the hotel's rooftop restaurant. We place our relatively simple orders and wait. My relatively simple drink of soda water and lime juice is naturally quite wrong. They didn't actually bother with the lime. OK, can I get some lime for this like I will doubtless be charged for? A tall glass with half a teaspoon of lemon juice arrives by the hand of the surliest staff member who slings the glass down loudly and sulks off. This is a joke, right? OK, I don't really care that much, just bring our food and we'll stop inconveniencing you. My food and Siobhan's food shows up, but where is my son's food? I am assured it's in the oven and will only be another minute. 20 minutes later I have fed my son half of my dinner and I am still waiting for his food. I realise he hasn't even put it in the oven. I have never been so angry so frequently in one country before. Everything is wrong or falling apart or disease ridden and the only ones who have noticed are us. I tell the cook that I'm really pissed off about this, and he should put the food in the fridge and heat it up for my boy tomorrow. I then go downstairs to tell the manager/ owner about this nonsense. He actually has the nerve to tell me that they have to make it from scratch so it takes a while. Could no one tell me this when I said the food was for a little boy? I should mention the food in question was pizza. How long does it take to make pizza, even from scratch? 20 minutes? Half an hour? I have worked in pizza restaurants in my life, and 40 minutes was unforgivable. So an hour? I told him that his excuse was crap and he knew it. He was the one who told me it would only be another minute and knew it hadn't even been put in the oven. Raging now, but it's bedtime. We decide we've genuinely had enough of Pushcar and it's time to go. In the morning we ask the owner if he could arrange train tickets for us, and I won't go into details about the different schedules for paying for tickets, it's a little complicated, but we asked that he use the tourist rates to ensure that we get on the train. He assures me that the new software his contact is using will ensure 100 percent cerainty that we will get the tickets, but it will cost more. Of bloody course it will. Fine. We are told how much more. I choke. I pay. Out of curiosity we check the train website to see how much they actually cost. A red mist of rage descends. We have been ripped of to the tune of 2700 rupees. This will not do. I storm out and demand our money back and tear an enormous strip off him, calling him a thief and criminal, and that's the repeatable words. He first tries to tell me that they charge commission for services like this. I am prepared to pay comission, but not 200% commission. I rip in again, and I won't say the words used, but they were indeed salty. He says he'll let me take the amount he cheated out of us, and use it to pay for the room. I should mention he wanted 2000 rupees for the room, but we turned to leave so he charged us 1500. Still too much for the room, but we were out of options at the time. Anyway, we get everything square but I am just raging angry and I still have a few choice words for him. We leave and go across the street to the taxi service and arrange a taxi to Ajmer to get on the train to take us to Delhi. On the way to Ajmer I find out why the owner of the hotel wanted to settle with us so quickly. As I check the tickets, Siobhan notices that we were charged for the general rate, not the tourist rate, so as a parting gift we were ripped off of a further 500 rupees. We briefly debate turning the car around so I can go turn the thieving bastard upside down and pull the money out via his arsehole, but it's too late. We won't make the train if I go kill him. I am growing to truly hate India. It's not a full blown hate yet, but it's getting there, and it wastes no time in filling that hate gap for me. Another overnight train, this time direct to Agra and the Taj Mahal.

India Pt 3

We opt to stay in a hotel just outside the fort rather than in the fort because the hotels are supposedly nicer with fridges, and pools and all the things you want in a room. We will pay for this decision. Siobhan wants to stay in the more characteristic fort, but luxury wins out. Another overnight train gets us to Jaisalmer in the morning. We almost missed the train because we know that each train has it's start and end points written on the side of the train, but unless you know which cities are the start and end points, this information is not useful. So the train that we were waiting for was actually right behind us the whole time, and it's only because I decided to ask someone where this train was going that we managed to get on it with 2 minutes to spare. The ride is uncomfortable, and Dominic keeps trying to roll out of bed, so Siobhan and I are up all night putting him back in. A fair amount of work from the bottom bunk, but I am in the top bunk. We actually put our big bag just to the side of his bunk, so that when he rolls out, he'll hit the bag which is maybe 6 inches below him, rather than the floor. He does roll out at least once, so that was a good idea. More than once I get out when I see his legs over the side of his bunk, like he fell asleep sitting up. The bathrooms on the train are just disgusting, as you'd imagine. There is a western style toilet one side and a squat toilet on the other and the western one is far filthier than the squat one, as effluence has farther to travel when standing, and they do stand. For everything, seemingly. Wear your shoes is all I can say, and try getting more comfortable with squat toilets too. They are apparently better for making the poos, and closer to the hole where the poos go, so less to slip on. Anyway, the hotel had managed to find out what manner of transport we used to get to the city and actually came to the train station to collect us. This bodes well for our stay. The hotel itself is a very modern take on a pre-raj era haveli. The room we are given is on the first floor. It a very spacious affair, with two window seats large enough to make a bed for the boy, a large bathroom and two twin beds. Pretty amazing what $15 dollars will get you. We unpack and the boy settles down for a nap just in time for the monsoon rains to begin. Within minutes, the the filthy, muddy street outside is a filthy muddy river, and the rains come down so hard you can't even see the other side of the street. Surface scratch number one; the windows were never fitted properly and not sealed, so the water start coming in the sides and bottom of the windows in small rivers of their own. Soon the boy's bed is soaking wet, and because it never occured to us that the windows would be unfinished, the water almost soaks all the way through his mattress before we realise what is happening. Our clothes are soaked. The bedding is soaked. We are using the towels to soak up the water, but there is more rain than towel and the job is not getting done. We are incredulous, as this is something we had just not seen coming. A new room is in order, so we get one, this time with a fridge too. We decide to get in the pool after the rains stop, so we change into swim suits and head outside. Almost immediately Siobhan notices a smell of sewage around the pool. Dominic and I have already got in the pool, and because the smell is emanating from the poolroom which is at the far side of the pool, we didn't smell it. Another thing I don't smell is chlorine. This is a worry. We get out of the pool, and I go talk to the hotel staff about the stench and the lack of chlorine. They assure me that the smell must be coming from the filter because the pool is constantly being self-cleaned and the insect carcasses must be beginning to rot in the heat and humidity. I've not heard of the pool that doesn't need to be cleaned by hand, so I am suspicious, and my fears are borne out, when by nightfall, red blotches have begun to form on Dominic's face around his eye and behind his ear. We agree to take him to a pharmacy in the morning and by that time the red spots have spread across his forehead his cheeks and arms, and the existing spots have got much worse, crusting up his eye and cracking and bleeding behind his ear. I am just furious. How is the hotel allowed to get away with this? The trip to the pharmacy is not enough so we find out where a good clinic is and go immediately. To their credit, the manager offers to take us in the hotel van, but they don't offer to pay for the doctor visit or the medication. In India, it's actually possible to buy your medical diploma and license online after having passed the most cursory of exams. Fortunately where we are taken is a fertility clinic, so we feel more confident about the medical staff's abilities. A sign on the wall states that sex selection is illegal. Sex selection actually involves aborting female foetuses because boys are more desirable. I knew this existed, but it's jarring knowing that you're in a place where this is even considered, never mind practised. The doctor orders blood tests, which are performed immediately on site, and Dominic is a trooper, never making a sound. I think it's because of the promise of chocolate, which again the hotel manager supplies, free of charge. I think this man is genuinely remorseful, so I am a little more gentle with him. I am less so with the rest of the hotel staff. The diagnosis is an allergic reaction to the filth and bacteria in the pool water, and an armload of creams, ointments, powders and syrups are prescribed and purchased. Just furious now. We decide to go to the fort, which is still occupied and operated as a village. Its a very cool place, with it's streets exactly as you'd imagine they'd have been 200 years ago. Only the contents of the shops are different, with tourist souvenirs and internet cafes filling the retails spaces and hotels with rooftop restaurants taking up the remainder. A little shopping for things to bring home for family is what we planned, but the sales technique is relentlessly pushy, so we run from most every shop. Siobhan is terrified of the dark. If it's too dark, she actually begins to panic and scream, explaining it feels like the dark has mass, and it closes in, weighing on her chest and blocking her breathing. So naturally the power goes out at about 9 pm. It's so dark and the sky is overcast, so there isn't even any star or moonlight to break up the blackness, and Siobhan begins a serious freak out. It might have been helped by a cool breeze, but the night is deathly still, stifling with heat, humidity and darkness. Fortunately I have the torch (thanks again Wade), so we're relieved of total darkness, but the batteries won't last all night, so I try to get some candles from the staff. They find some for us but again the candles won't last. Where is this back up generator which was advertised in the listing? I'm told that everyone has one, but no one puts them on. Not good enough. They offer to give us a room on the roof which is cooled a bit by the slight breeze, and we accept. It's actually a nice room, a shame we can't really appreciate it. I have no fear of the dark, and it seems very strange to me that a full grown woman would have a fear of the dark, but a phobia is more fully fleshed out than just a fear, and it doesn't care if it's unreasonable. I have done what I can to make Siobhan feel as comfortable as I can, which is only marginally better, because I can't make the wind blow or the sun rise, but she falls asleep eventually and the power returns. As it happens, the power authority can be bought off to turn the power back on. They had turned it off due to the rains, but rupees can buy back the light. It goes off and on intermittently throughout the next day. We visit the fort again for dinner, having made the decision to move on the next day. The restaurant has 5 staff members that we can see and only one other table, but it still takes an hour for them to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Just not happy, and getting less so by the minute. We leave and try to find an autorickshaw back to the hotel, but the drivers are mostly drunk by this time, we can smell the booze on them and they are beligerent. Not getting in that, we decide to just walk back in the dark. The streets are not so much streets as piles of broken asphalt and rubbish, with livestock sleeping in the middle of it, so we go slow and finally make it to the little lane on which our hotel is situated. A family of pigs is snacking on a large heap of garbage about 50 feet from the hotel. Really, just appalling. The manager has offered to take us to the train station which is good of him. I'm learning to hate India, and we have opted against going to Jodhpur which is another big, filthy city. I hope the next place, a little town called Pushcar by way of Ajmer is better. I can't wait to leave, and we begin discussing whether we even want to stay in India or go back to Thailand for the remainder of our trip. Dominic still needs to be cared for, and his caboose has been a little loose, and with everything he's been put through, we'd just rather be nearer to competant medical care. We'll see what Pushcar brings.

India Pt 2

Siobhan repeatedly tells me she hates Jaipur. She says it's a big filthy, overcrowded, chaotic mess of a city and she hates it. She never misses an opportunity to tell me that she hates it and can't believe she's going back there. So naturally I have high hopes. Jaipur is known as the pink city, as the city has a pink theme if seen from the walls of the Amber fort. The fort is a little ways out of town, and is a great big museum. There's not much in the fort itself as the fort is the museum piece. There are a few rooms with lovely mosaic or faded painting on the walls, but for the most part it's a pretty sparse affair. There is a long wall around the area of the fort, which could be easily confused for the great wall of China if you didn't know the locale. The views of the town and the countryside from the high points of the fort are pretty spectacular, but everyone says the fort is breathtaking, and it's just not. I suppose I have seen enough forts throughout Europe and North Africa to compare it to, and to me, it's just a fort. There are actually 3 forts on 3 separate hilltops all right next to one another, that's a pretty cool sight, especially with that great wall running up and down the hills between them. There is the mirrored hall, a room which does what it says on the tin, with typical Mogul architecture and design throughout. There are also the touts who seemingly understand enough English to give you a guided tour of the fort, but not quite enough to understand the meaning of the word "no". In fact there are touts almost everywhere in India, ready to give you guided tours of everything, autorickshaw trips everywhere (via their cousin's shop, of course), sell you everything you want or not, get you hotel rooms in places you don't want to be, etc. They almost ruin every site with their persistance and sheer number. As soon as you've said no to one, there's another with the same offer, like you've been passing up all these other offers because you've been waiting for him alone. It's difficult to enjoy seeing much of anything with the constant annoyance and pushiness. There's no refusal as far as they are concerned, it's just a matter of finding your price, and they will find it if they have to follow you throughout the whole site. You could admire the desire to make a sale if you weren't so pissed off. Jaipur itself really is quite revolting, again the garbage, especially when it rains. The rain seems to wash all the garbage and filth, cowshit and scabby rats up to street level. I have a natural fear of disease and the word cholera runs through my head with alarming regularity. I am glad that Dominic is either in his stroller or on my shoulders, because I don't know what that water that fills the streets is carrying, but I have a fantastic imagination. There is a relatively new temple in the city called the Narayan and Laxmi temple, and it's a really lovely building with a very relaxed atmosphere about it, a very welcome break from the craziness of the Jaipur streets. Again it is white marble with beautiful carvings of gods and philosophers and even Christian saints and Jesus himself puts in an appearance on the exterior columns.The inside is again quite large and sparse with great big full colour statues of the title gods, and smaller, less significant deities dotted throughout. The big draw to the city other than the amber fort is the Hawa Mahal, an enormous screenlike building designed to allow the women of the royal household to look out to the street and enjoy festivals and such without being themselves seen. his a remarkable example of Mogul architecture and seemingly quite out of place in this city. I recommend having a look at some pictures of it, it seems like a big honeycomb. Another major attraction is an outdoor observatory, the Jantar Mantar ( no, really), a series of big outdoor astronomical tools built from stone and marble, and used for telling the earth's position in the solar system, the time of day using a colossal sundial which is apparently accurate to about 2 seconds, an enormous sextant, and various devices still used for divining the best days to get married. The city palace is also close by, a fortified series of buildings once used by royals, now another tourist draw and fantastic shopping opportunity, or so they would have you believe. All of thes attractions are in the old city, right in the middle of a series of small shops which line both sides of the streets, in parallel and perpenicular directions. So many shops in fact, one can't imagine there could be anyone living in the old city. But there are inhabitants of the old city. Whole herds of cattle roam the streets, in most cases just slowing traffic, making everyone drive around them, but sometimes there are so many of them just lying in the middle of the road that they completely stop traffic and have to be gingerly moved along. Those are the animals you expect in India. Noone said anything about the ridiculous number of dogs of wandering the streets. Most are harmless, but there's always one mean one who barks at you and startles the boy. there are also great big goats, quite the largest goats I've ever seen, and a good number of them too. I wasn't expecting the pig walking down the street like he owned it though. That was a surprise. Once again, the city had offered up everything there was to see in a day and a half, so we book out of there as fast as we can, having had more than enough of the overpowering rubbish and refuse. The next stop is what I am assured is a small, picturesque town with a living fort called Jaisalmer.

India, Pt 1

The wonder of India, the mystery of India, the magic of India. The wonder, for me, is "I wonder how I can get out of India", the mystery of India is "how did they manage to get so many people to want to come to India", the magic is "it must be witchcraft that allows all these cows, pigs and goats to survive on street strewn garbage alone". I wanted so badly to love India, to feel that oft spoken spirituality, to have it inhabit a corner of my heart, mind and soul, and never leave me all my days. Siobhan has happy, happy memories if India, the places, food and people. She has said she's been killing time, waiting to come back to India. Even this trip, she's lost interest in the places we've been, knowing we wil be in blessed India soon. I hate India. I truly hate India. I wish I didn't. I wish that the places could be such an undeniable draw that you couldn't avoid going. I wanted to love the place. I knew it would be filthy. I knew the roads would be chotic, and I knew that I'd be overcharged and lied to about prices and shops and hotels. I'd be told to go buy train tickets over here because the official ticket office is closed today, even though you can see the official ticket window is open and busy. The guy with this helpful information is getting a commision on every ticket bought through this con. Taxi drivers tell you the hotel you want to go has burnt down, but they happen to know a hotel that has rooms, it belongs to his cousin. Of course it does. They all want to know where you're staying, how long, where you're going next, and it all goes to formulate a way of getting more money out of you. Noone talks to you because they are just being friendly. Every word is designed to get you to come shop, come buy, come to the hotel, come to the restaurant, part with your money. Even waiters in restaurants know a guy with a shop. Taxi drivers know lots of guys with shops and will take you to them whether you want to go or not. Hotels have treks and tours and constantly ask you if you want to go on a camel to the desert. The all say that they are not touristy at all, so many say that in fact that the touristy treks must be completely vacant and completely untouristy. They actually get annoyed with you if you don't go on these treks and tours. They say that they are not affiliated with the taxi and autorickshaw drivers congregating outside their front doors, but they know every single one of them, and don't do much to move them along. The first stop on our trip is one night in Paharganj, Delhi, before we go to Amritsar. Paharganj is the backpackery, touristy area, filled with shops, money changers and hotels, restaurants and barber shops. The garbage and filth is unbelieveable. I don't understand how they can live like this, in so much garbage. The streets are full of garbage, and livestock, and livestock eating garbage. Can't they see it anymore? Nothing is clean, every toilet seat has been pissed on, and most have footprints on it, because they are used to squat toilets and haven't figured out that they have to sit on the seat, not just perch up on it like a bird and do your business. They actually have signs telling people not to stand on the seats, not to spit in the drinking fountains, that urinals are for peeing. Every wall outside has at least one guy standing and pissing on it. Some bushes have people crouching down taking a dump. They seem to have made some perverse peace with the filth and effluence, the disease and death. Unbelieveable. If you do need to exchange money, be very sure that the bills you get are in very good shape and are not worn or torn or written on as shops and restaurants won't take them. we found this out the hard way while trying to pay the bill at a restaurant. Fortunately, the restaurant manager sent a waiter with us back to the money changer to get fresh bills, so we didn't have any problem getting better conditioned money. In fact, we had so little trouble, it became very obvious that the sly bugger knew precisely what he'd done and had been caught out. Shapes of things to come. They hotel itself had been refurbished, it had been painted and reworked, new western toilets installed and beds, and bedroom furniture, but another trend emerged that the surface must never be scratched and the products must never be tested, as the spell of clean, shiny, new and functioning will be horribly shattered. Mold in the bathrooms, suspect colours remained on the sheets, an unidentifiable smell, not uncommon on the streets but unwelcome in the rooms. We only had the room for a few hours when we had to leave to catch our overnight train to Amritsar. Foolishly, we asked the folks at the front desk how much they wanted for a taxi to the train station. One comedically extortionate quote later, we are out the door, bags hurriedly thrust on backs and in arms, trying to find a cab at the last minute. I had to get everyone to stand outside a shop and wait while I charge down the road looking for a taxi. Taxis aren't actually marked as taxis, or at least not in any way I would recognise, so I feverishly ask anyone who'd listen about where to find one. Luck is on my side as a man with a van says he'd do it, and for a fair price too. We pile in and inch down the main bazaar road to retrieve the family and luggage. Time is running out. I try to keep optimistic, but it's not easy when they say it's a 25 minute ride and you have 20 minutes to get on that train. Some how, the ride takes 15 minutes. I manage to carry all the luggage I can, leaving Siobhan to handle the boy, a two handed job if there ever was one. With seconds to spare ( I exaggerate, it was about 5 minutes) we get on the train, and we are on our way to the holiest site in the entire Sikh religion, the Golden Temple. The train ride immediately gets off to a rocky start when we find our seats have been filled by an entire Indian family, from grandma to baby. You have my sympathies folks, but my family needs to park it too, right here in fact. The issue remains unresolved until the conductor comes along and checks tickets. As it happens, the family all have berths spread out all over the car. My sympathies again, but these are ours, so beat it. They manage to switch enough berths so that they can chat to each other all night long. At top volume. Sigh. At 2am I start getting annoyed, and I ask them to be quiet. No one speaks English. Sigh. They must have understood the meaning, because the volume came down a bit. 3am comes, and the lights go on. Bright lights and loud talking. I am raging. I throw myself over the side of the bunk, which, as I am on the top bunk, in perilous, and with great volume and prodigious swearing, demand to know what the problem is now, and why they can't sort out that everyone is trying to sleep. It's a group of Indian soldiers. Awesome. In for a penny, in for a pound, so I tell them to shut up and turn out the lights. After about half an hour they do. Amritsar comes far too soon, so off the train and into the scrum of porters and taxi drivers. I wasn't sure if they still allowed that in train stations, as there were no porters and drivers inside the airport, so I hoped against hope, and it turns out hope is a bastard. We wade through the masses of people saying "where do you go" and "where you stay" and taxitaxitaxi tuktuktuktutktuktuk, and we try to find a few feet to speak to each other with out being stood on. The Indians in particular do not understand personal space. Perhaps it is because the country is so overcrowded that if you do not claim your space, you'll lose it. There's no such thing as a queue, an idea abhorrent to a Brit. There is a heaving throng all trying to get served next, get on or off first, get their hands on the thing first. It's frustrating and infuriating and all you can do is point out where the line should be and people tend to fall in quickly. Taxi drivers do not. They move back about 6 inches. We settle on a driver with what we think is a fair price and go. When you don't know what a fair price is, it becomes what you're willing to pay until you know what a fair price should be. The other drivers hurl abuse at him for undercutting them, but he gets the fare and they get each other. Knowing we're being taken for a ride literally and figuratively we arrive at what we think is the hotel. It's actually a traffic police road block, allowing in only electrically powered vehicles, due to the proximity to the golden temple. Sigh. The driver in his very broken English gives us very loose directions to the hotel, which we very loosely follow for quite some time. Frustrated at our inability to find the hotel, we stop briefly for breakfast at a McDonald's and discover that it's vegetarian, again because of it's proximity to the temple. So curried veggie patty McMuffins it is. We carry on wandering the streets and lanes and eventually find it tucked away in a little side street. The lane empties out into a major street some 10 feet away, and we realise we have walked right past this hotel about 3 times. Sigh again. We plan on staying for a few days, so we unpack and get settled and almost immediately a hotel staff member just waltzes in the room, then says oops he didn't know we were in here. Naturally we don't think much of it. We go out for lunch to a little place recommended in the travel guides, and the food is pretty good, so satisfied we go to the temple. It's a beautiful big complex made of white marble. Everything is white marble. there is an enormous moat/holy water/bathing site surrounding the Golden Temple itself, which is connected to the complex by a bridge. The marble, while lovely, does not mix well with the water and makes walking a little dangerous. We make a slow trek around the whole complex, then cross the bridge to the temple. It's surprisingly small in size, but there are so many people packed in, praying and receiving the holy water from a trough at one end of the temple, that it might just seem smaller than it is. People are actually drinking the water which comes from the moat, so I get in line, put some on my head and even venture to taste it. Not the worst thing I've had in my mouth, but I wouldn't let more than a drop in. We make another lap of the complex and then leave, feeling pretty pleased that we've managed to see something that many immigrants in my home country of Canada would consider to be a very holy and important thing. Back to the hotel, and find that someone has been in the room. They turned off the AC, which most hotels don't like left on, but that's not the point. Someone has been in and invaded our space. I don't like this and go tell the staff so. An hour later the same staff member who came in before comes in again, this time saying that it's the wrong room and he didn't mean to come in this one. Siobhan tells me he had come in earlier while I was out buying an Indian SIM card. Officially pissed off, I go down to reception and explain that this guy has been coming in, and if we see him again, we are leaving. He spends the rest of the day slinking past us with an accusatory look, like we could cost him his job. His job is not to come in my room, so maybe he needs to retrain. The next day we need a late check out as we've had enough of the filth and chaos of Amritsar. Aside from the temple, there's nothing else to keep us here, so we decide do move on to Jaipur. Siobhan says she hates Jaipur, but there's a few very cool things to see, so we agree to go. They girl at reception tries to charge us a thousand rupees to stay an extra four hours, so we decide to check out then. Our room has been repeatedly invaded, and they can't throw us a bone to say sorry? A call comes from the front desk, this time it's the actual manager saying we can stay for free. That's a little more like it. So to the train station and on to Jaipur.