Voltage Stabilizer

When we got back to our apartment in Bangalore, we found that this little monster had been hooked up to our refrigerator and placed on the cupboard above it. Before we left, the boxy thing had just been lying unplugged on a shelf in the storage room. Sometimes we'd look and it and wonder if we should have been doing something with it, but its bulk meant that we just left it sitting there.

All the thing does is what its name implies: massage the sometimes wildly varying local voltage into something more constant and easier for large appliances to deal with.

I hate the stabilizer. It extends out from the cupboard, so the doors have to stay open a little. Even worse, it makes fast-paced noises that are somewhere between noisy typing and a bug zapper that's just killed a bunch of gnats. As you can see, this model dates from long ago, and I doubt that more modern versions are as annoying.

Now I'm wondering I should have my laptop charging using one of these things. Probably I should, but since it's gone a year without one, I'm not in a huge hurry.

Back in India

So I got in early yesterday, a day in which I spent several hours thinking was Tuesday but that was of course Wednesday. Where does all the time go? Oh yeah, it goes into crossing one time zone after the other.

The jet lag wasn't too bad -- around 6 am, when I got back to the apartment, I told Don that I thought that sleep was surely just a plot by "them" to make sure no one ever gets anything done. I felt great, despite sleeping very little on the plane. (There may have been a little napping in the afternoon . . . )

I'd have gotten home a little sooner if it hadn't been for one of the things I hate the most in Indian airports -- the dreaded luggage cart.



Hidden within that herd of carts is the slowly moving baggage claim belt. When you finally see your bag, it's an adventure getting close enough to actually grab it by its handle. The carts are free, so just about everyone takes one, even people with just a couple pieces of luggage, and that means that the luggage is sealed off from its owners by a hedge of shiny, hard-to-navigate metal.

If I ruled the airport system of India (scary thought), the first thing I'd do is make the carts cost money (maybe 100 rs., with half of that refundable when you return it). Most important, I'd make the area immediately next to the moving belt a no-cart zone.

[Those signs saying "We Are Being Watched" are encouraging airport advertising, not Big Brother. We did have a lot of time to read them, it's true.)

Airport Movie Round-up

300: campy, bloody, entertaining.

Hot Fuzz: I liked it, but what happened in the middle? I think I was resting my eyes then.

Practical Magic: Nicole Kidman had pretty hair and a very large house.

Terminal 5, You Need More Fun

Hello Everybody, I'm at O'hare waiting for my (slightly) delayed flight to get going. It's not very exciting in Terminal 5 (no restaurants and hardly any stores are available after you pass through security), but at at least I'll be on my way soon. Or soonish.

Once I arrive in Bangalore, I'm looking forward to fresh lime sodas, being in India during the monsoon season, but of course most of all seeing Don again.

No Room Service

Unlike yesterday's, these photos really are from Varanasi. It's from the dining hall of the hostel we stayed at in Varanasi. Somehow I think all these times could have been boiled down a little better -- and I wish I'd taken time to avail the "Hot Drinks Time" -- all 15 minutes of it. At this place, room service would have been a problem in any case -- I don't think the stripped-down rooms had any phones.



[click for a close-up]

The hostel may not have been very fancy, but the view seemed like one of the best in town:

Octopussy Today Tomorrow Forever

As I mentioned below, I'll be flying back to Bangalore on Monday. Don's there already, taking in the always changing cable choices (Ugly Betty, US edition! Jewel in the Crown! Battlestar Galactica! A million more nature specials about tigers and crocodiles and snakes!) and getting used to Bangalore, Monsoon edition.

In the meantime, I thought I'd pull from the vault some of our classic (i.e. old) photos I didn't get around to posting last time.

Here's a sign from one of the many dreadful, backpacker-style restaurants in Varanasi Udaipur. If you stay near the ghats, these places are by and large your only option for hanging out. Handily located on the roof of a backpacker hotel, they usually feature a simple menu of badly prepared "continental" cliches like fish-and-chips and pasta stuff (there's lousy Indian too!). Still, they are a nice place to get a good view of the city around you.

Because Octopussy had scenes filmed in town, these restaurants show the movie on an endless loop at night. Some mix is up a bit with other flicks, but not nearly enough. I think a few Bollywood movies would be a good addition. Or anything, really.

[Update: Sorry, Varanasi! It's Udaipur that got the James Bond treatment.]

First, Draw a Line Through the Letters

I thought this article about "The Hindi-fication of a Typeface" was interesting. It's about a type designer in Australia and the font he designed for a museum show about Bollywood. The comments to the post include a couple about "ethnocentrism" and other faux pas. I don't love the typeface (the random capital letters bug me), but it's hard for me to see the harm in it.

I've got soft spot for this and other "Hindi-fied" typefaces, which seem to appear a lot in English-language signs and billboards throughout India. Obviously, they're always used in a jokey fashion, and a little of them goes a long way. The words are usually hard to read.

But it isn't just Hindi that gets this treatment. In Bangalore I also saw Chinese-ish typefaces, which mostly appeared on restaurants and on beauty parlors (there are a couple really good examples around St. Mark's Road). Seeing these signs made me homesick for the U.S., since Chinese restaurants here use similar cornball typefaces. (That's where this example came from.)

When I get back to Bangalore in a few days, I'm hoping to find a few examples of English typefaces that have been Kannada-fied or Tamil-fied. I think I've seen some, but nothing specific comes to mind. A little help? And for the grand championship, are there any non-English signs that ape typical English-language typefaces?


P.S. Here are the photos by Jonathan Torgovnik that appeared in the exhibit. They're worth a look.

Hometown

I've been back in New York now for about two weeks. Our big news is that we'll be heading back to India in about a month. Until that time you can expect a few posts, but not too many.

After getting back to the United States, I spent a few days with my parents back in Wisconsin. I kept taking lots of pictures of trees and clouds, in part because they both looked so different that what I'd been looking at in India. It also seemed very cold to me -- it was a cold spring, even for Wisconsin, but I might also gotten used to the Indian sun. The above photo was taken from my old bedroom window. My parents are farmers, and you can see where the fields start behind the backyard.

And below is the town square of my hometown of about 2700. It's grown a lot since I've been gone, but most of the newcomers live in developments on the other side of town. Anyway, it looks a lot different from an Indian village of the same size, that's for sure. For instance, no cows, and not too many people just walking down the street.

More Stuff Soon

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."

G.K. Chesterton, "On Running After One's Hat", via Terry Teachout

Film City, so far away

We've both been back in the United States for about a week at our respective families. One has no internet, and the other has dial-up only, so expect slim posts for a while at least.

In the meantime, watch the above video for Basement Jaxx's song "Romeo." It might be old hat to some of you, but I was amazed when I saw it for the first time yesterday. I found it when looking up stuff on Ramoji Film City, the film studio/amusement park outside of Hyderabad where the video was shot. Part of the fun is seeing how all the Indian musical number conventions mash up with a very western song. For more on Film City, here's the New York Times's take.

Howdy

A hearty welcome (as they say) to everyone visiting here from Boing-Boing. As the tagline says above, we're a couple of Americans staying for six months a year a while in Bangalore. I'm a travel writer, and Don works in publishing. While we're not working, we're usually traveling, trying to cross the always-busy streets here, inviting stares, breaking things, buying tablecloths, eating dosas, that sort of thing.

Here are a few older posts you might like:

• Chicken à la Kingfisher
  
• As Many Arms as Vishnu
  
• Monsoon Cooking, or My Big Fat Indian Dinner
  
• At the Beach
  
• Some Notes on the Office
  
• Not Cuckoo for Coconuts and Counterpoint: Coconuts Are Great!

(Mango pic from 2006 -- haven't gotten any yet this year.)

Drum Machine

Drum Machine.JPG, originally uploaded by jrambow.

I thought this was really cool. It's a drum and bell machine I saw at Bangalore's Bull Temple. You can see the motor to the left and how it's connected to the drumsticks. It wasn't going, unfortunately -- would be fun to see it at work, and to see how you adjust the speed of the drums and bells.

As you can see, the machine was in a cage to prevent curious people (and monkeys!) from getting a rhythm going at the wrong times.

If some hipster band in Brooklyn or Berlin or Rio knows what's good for them, they'll try to get their hands on one of these ASAP and use it on their next album. Maybe someone already has . . .

Flying Ants on M.G. Road

Here was a sight that made me a little scared. This is a huge billboard in front of the Vijaya Bank building on M.G. Road. All those specks are flying ants! I managed not to run for my life and instead just kept on walking. Maybe I shouldn't have been so scared -- now that the bees are abandoning their hives because of cell phones, we can look to the ants to take up some of the slack and start pollinating.

What We'll Miss

Don and I are both due to fly out of Bangalore and back to the United States next Friday. If this time is anything last the last time, I predict that next week will be light on posts and high on silence. Although I intend to keep posting even when we're out of India, at least for a while, I thought it would be good to start thinking of some things I'll miss when I'm gone.

• fresh lime sodas
  
• people who are friendly and patient even when you don't speak any of India's mother tongues
  
• clothes that are all at least 25% more vivid than anything in New York City. It's going to be hard to go back to black, grey, and black.
  
• A dialect of English that didn't always make sense to me but was always interesting. Here, you always "avail offers" rather than take advantage of them, and have "power cuts" rather than "power outages" (we had about five yesterday, so it's on my mind). And why say just "OK"? Say "OK OK OK" instead. And if something (like power cuts!) is hardly worth mentioning , you can say "power cuts are there."
  
• paan
  
• high purchasing power. Obviously, having dollars and the large amount of rupees that they buy has made for a better time.
  
• cable TV and the amazing channels inside. One favorite right now is the Udaya channel, which broadcasts in Kannada. They have a great cooking show, in which housewives come on and make a dish and are then given a sari for their trouble. We would love it more if we knew better what they were saying/making, but it's already fun the way it is. There was a guy on it once, too.
  

Next time, some of the things we won't miss so very much.

Don't Trip

Over the weekend we went to the wonderful Jain basti (temple) in the town of Sravanbelagola. More about that later, but first here's a shot of the enclosures that covered some ancient inscriptions on the hill. We thought it all looked like some sort of Dutch or German art installation -- the red and blue parts sticking up hold summaries of the inscriptions. And those are German tourists in the background, so it all fits.

The Mysterious Pre-Monsoon

In my year in India, the monsoon remains just about as confusing as it was to start with. We've had a couple rains since we got back to Bangalore at the start of the month, and one of our acquaintances said the unusual rains were something called the pre-monsoon. They would have to be very "pre", since the monsoon won't arrive in Bangalore until June.

The storm today was impressive. All the afternoon was hot, and the skies kept getting darker and darker. Finally by about 8 o'clock lightning began to spike down. We were up in a restaurant on the 10th floor, so it was fun to watch the lightning appear to the west. And finally the rain came. Standing water appeared in the roads almost immediately, and the temperature dropped way down.

The rickshaw driver who took us home from the restaurant said that all this rain was because of the tsunami. Wha? There is a tsunami in the South Pacific at the moment, but that doesn't make any sense. He must have meant the deadly and terrible tsunami of 2004. What could that have to do with it? I have no idea.

And that's why I keep asking people about monsoons and the weather. Just about every answer is interesting.

Gaur!

We just got back from a big road trip that included several days at the Jungle Lodge's K Gudi camp, south of Mysore. We didn't see any tigers, but we did see a leopard, lots of deer, and many gaur, the world's largest bovine. The bulls are hilariously big -- the cows are the size of blown-up brahmin dairy cows. My favorite sighting were five wild elephants swimming in a small lake. Here there are exiting the lake after deciding they had had enough of all our photography.



And here is a gaur, looking shy but muscley.

Hyderabad Hot Spot

Now's the part where the blogger apologizes for light posting, except I'll just skip that and say that I'm in Hyderabad at the moment, working on a travel guide. I'm dusty and sleepy and a little bitter that my hotel isn't as nice as either of the two Taj's I toured this afternoon. Of course, I'm not exactly paying Taj prices, either. (Note for rich people out there: the presidential suite in the Taj Krishna is really amazing [your own pool!], but only you can decide if it's worth $1200 a night.)

I love exploring cities, but sometimes I really wish I could skip that part of the learning curve where I flounder around trying to figure out how to get from point A to . . . just about anywhere. Hyderabad has what might be a unique water feature -- an enormous tank (water reservoir/lake) separating Hyderabad itself from its suburbanized twin, Secunderbad. from the newer suburban town of Secunderabad. I spent lots of time today walking along the eastern edge of the lake, Hussain Sagar, thinking I'd reached the southernmost point, but actually nowhere near. Luckily there's a big 50-foot Buddha near the south, so in the future I'll be desperately keeping Buddha's head in sight if ever try to walk anywhere in this very hot city again. Walking is NOT very popular in the parts of town I've been in so far -- it was basically just me, the beggars, and a few random students. Undoubtedly the old city part will be a little different.

Tomorrow will be devoted to sight-seeing. I'll be the one taking pictures of the admission windows and their ticket prices, asking people questions about opening hours, and rushing through the things on view.

China Leaves the Simpsons Full of Holes

While we've been in Delhi, we've started making it a habit to start the
morning out right, not with the tedious Anderson Cooper or the slightly
less boring BBC News, but instead with the Simpsons, which appears on the
wonderful Star World at 8:30 AM. Star World is the expat American's
friend -- it's got the OC, American Idol (current season), and a slew
of other prime export-quality shows.

Anyway, yesterday's episode was titled Simple Simpson.
In it Homer becomes a kind of pastry vigilante/superhero, getting back
at bad people by throwing big fat pies in their face. It's all going
wonderfully until he's caught by his boss Mr. Boss, who discovers his
secret identity and threatens to reveal it unless he only pies people
Mr. Burns is against. Girl scouts, that sort of thing.

But the episode's ending was confusing -- Lisa was introducing someone
on stage, Homer was getting ready to pie whoever it was, and then
suddenly Homer had a change of heart and gave up. At first I thought it
was because there had been sloppy cuts because of ads or something, but
then Don remembered that it's the Dalai Lama who's about to get a pie.

And that's when it made sense -- Star World broadcasts in China too,
and the cuts were probably made to get past the censor there (See the
above link for more). Sad that it also means a censored episode here in
India as well.

[Update: the linked-to article claims without a citation that the Dalai Lama cut was done "to appease the predominantly Buddhist viewers of East, South, and Southeast Asia with regards to any view of mocking the Dalai Lama." Not sure which theory's right.]

Monkey Washing in Assam

Despite the important-sounding name, the Asian Age is a low-rent newspaper, as you can see by what they chose to include on the top half of their "Newsmakers" page (19 March edition). The caption reads: "GOOD DEAL: A monkey cleans the utensils of a shopkeeper in exchange for two bananas at Tezpur in Assam on Sunday. This monkey comes frequently to the shop and helps the shopkeeper by cleaning the utensils."

The hell? How is this at all likely? What do they mean "frequently"? And what do they mean by "clean"? Most monkeys I've seen make things dirtier than before. On the other hand, this monkey looks especially obese, so maybe it's remotely possible that he's given up his happy wild life of terrorizing anything he thinks is weaker than him and instead decided to work for bananas rather than steal them. But I just don't think so.

What gets me is that surely almost everyone reading this Indian paper has had at least some interaction with monkeys -- enough to know that they're cute at a distance and evil up close, with large teeth and an inclination to steal anything that looks interesting (just like this blog?). It's no more likely that monkeys would start cleaning things than that people would spend their days walking along each other's balconies, stealing water bottles, and mating on roofs.

For a more realistic approach to monkeyshines, I think you only have to look at the inside of the door leading to our balcony at the cheapo hotel we stayed at:

The Mughal Gardens

And the day after the Haus Khaz rose gardens, we remained on a flower rampage. We headed to the Mughal Gardens, part of the Rashtrapati Bhavan (the President of India's house).

This was an amazing place -- a complex of about five gardens laid out in the late 1920s by Edwin Lutyens, who designed most of the "New" infrastructure in New Delhi. The best and biggest garden was like a typical Mughal-style garden, with small streams of water forming a rectangular pattern and meeting near the center. The garden is only open for about 5 weeks of the year, and I was glad we had a chance to go.

Given its location more or less in the center of India's government, it's wasn't too surprising that security was so tight. And the sign above explains why I don't have any pix of the amazing, huge zinnias, or anything else. The government had put thought into more than just security. There was bottled water available, as well as a handy supply of bathrooms and even "lounges" (covered tents) for getting out of the heat.

The lines moved fairly fast when we arrived in mid-morning, but when we left around noon they were much longer. Clearly, visiting the gardens is something that lots of families do as a tradition. But what people evidently don't do is stop and smell the roses -- we got lots of funny looks when we did so. And with rosewater such a common ingredient in desserts as well as perfumes, this seemed especially surprising.

Wi-Fi: A Highly Selective Delhi Guide

In the Greater Kailash area, the only public place I've found that has Wi-Fi is the Cafe Coffee Day in GK-2 market (that's the M block). If you ask your server, he might say it doesn't work, but look for the Airlink signal. You'll have to pay via credit card, not by buying one of those cards. Also, it's expensive at 45 rupees an hour or so, but since it evidently has a monopoly for a large portion of South Delhi, I can't argue.

If I've missed any Wi-Fi spots somewhat near GK, please let me know.

Springtime in Delhi

Summer is about to take over and make everything dry up in Delhi, but for the moment the city's parks are full of flowers. Zinnias, roses, marigolds, salvia, poppies, huge dahlias, and a million others kinds I don't know. The weekend before last we went to Hauz Khas ("Royal Tank"), a large park surrounded by a schmanzy neighborhood in South Delhi. This tank (water reservoir) was built around 1300 for Siri, the second city to exist within what is now New Delhi.


As in many other parts of Delhi, Moghul monuments and tombs are scattered here and there, in various states of repair. In fact, Delhi has so many that I wish they could lend a few to Bangalore -- they'd really perk things up.





The rose garden in the park was huge. And very well kept up. I suspect that there's a lot of non-city money going into keeping it like this.

After the rose garden, we headed to the Deer Park, which actually does have very obese deer behind cyclone fencing. Even better, there was a peacock. I wanted to taunt him into displaying his feathers, but I didn't know how to do that. I suppose you need a peahen.




The lake itself was a lot prettier than I thought it would be. I thought it would just be a big puddle, but there's a lot of water here. It might have been helped by the relatively large and unseasonable rains we got a few days earlier. Isn't it eerie?

Smiling the Smile

Smiling the Smile, originally uploaded by jrambow.

And here's a slideshow of photos from our second day at Angkor Wat. That was when we covered the Ta Phrom (overgrown with jungle) and Bayon (full of creepy smiling guy) Temples. They were both splendid. Do you think the Smile wore off on Don?

Maggi Ketchup Horror

It's on the shelves of supermarkets and little neighborhood stores alike. It's on the table at lots of restaurants, especially the mediocre and the mid-range. It comes with your fish and chips, it might come with your pizza, it will probably even come with your samosa or pakoras as a kind of chutney. Worst of all, it's usually thrown into Chinese food and tomato soup as a main ingredient, giving a simple, sickly sweet taste to everything it touches. I'm talking about Maggi (and to a lesser degree Kissan) ketchup. The two of them sometimes seem to have all of India in their sticky paws.

Between the milk-sweets and all that tea, it's no secret that most Indians have a sweet tooth. But it's still surprising that a majority evidently wants their ketchup to be even sweeter than the corn-syruped-up American classic. Where American Heinz has a pleasing vinegar/tomato bite to counteract all its sugar, Maggi just has more cloying sweetness. The stuff even looks gooier and shinier from all that cane sugar.

But there are signs of a little change. We were excited a few months ago to discover that Heinz is available here. I've tried Indian Heinz a couple times so far, mostly at fast-food joints, and to be honest couldn't tell if it was A) Just as Bad as Maggi, or B) Slightly Better. It still didn't seem as tangy as the ketchup back home, but it's a step in the right direction.

Related: a Stylestation post about a Malcolm Gladwell article about what people want in ketchup, and why there aren't a million different kinds on store shelves. I'm still amazed that Heinz hasn't made more inroads in India -- according to the blog post, it's been here since 2000. I guess sweet ketchup is a winner.

Causeway

Causeway, originally uploaded by jrambow.

Here are a bunch of photos from our first day in Siem Reap. These are all from Angkor Wat, the major temple there.

Phnom Penh Take 1

When we arrived in Cambodia, we ended up having to spend a while getting our visas. A big German tour group was in front of us, and that held up things a bit. We'd known about the eVisa, but hadn't gotten our act together and applied for them. I'm not certain that they would have saved much time -- the single line for them was kind of slow-moving too.

We stayed at the Foreign Correspondents Club, a slick bar and restaurant that also has a few very nice rooms. Their marketing is so clever that the New York Times' infamous article on Phnom Penh bought into its roving-reporter shtick. For the record, there are no feverish writers working on their next Pulitzer there, or at least no more than anywhere else. We liked the place a lot, but we thought the game was given a way a bit by their cool t-shirts, which cost $15. That's about five times more than I'd expect anything like that to cost in Cambodia. (I still want on, though.)

Here's a picture from our room window. The beat-down mansion in the foreground will probably be fixed up soon -- one exactly like it a couple doors down is now owned by the United Nations, if I recall correctly, and they have clearly sunk a lot of money into it. In the background is the National Museum.



After this quick visit to Phnom Penh, it was on to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. After we checked into our hotel, rented bikes, got our $40 passes for Angkor Wat, and actually arrived, it was lunchtime. This turned out to be a blessing, since we missed a quick but powerful downpour.

Math is Hard

Don and I loved this totally complicated sale going on at Kalpana, a local clothes shop. According to the ad, women who walk in wearing the official International Women's Day colors can get up to 9% off -- 3% for each color worn. I don't know who judges whether or you're wearing purple or just dark blue.

And then the confusion starts, because you get a bigger discount based on your age, should you "dare to bare" it. You have to add up the digits in your birth date. If I were a lady, for instance, I'd get a total of 30% off (27 Feb. + '73 = 21, + 9% for the green, purple and white outfit I'd scrape together).

What I love is that the discount is totally random -- it's not as if there's any pretense about giving you a bigger sale if you're older.

Those lucky girls born on 29 Sept. 1999 are probably in high demand as dressed-up shopping "friends" today -- but their sisters born the next year are being ignored.

More Wats

The next day we went to Wat Arun, a temple that was handily right across the river from our room -- you could see it from the upstairs part of our really cool hotel room. We took a boat across the river: a very quick trip.

As you can see, the central tower is mammoth up close:


And all those brilliant designs are made from broken-up china:


After Wat Arun, we took a taxi south to Wat Prayun, a temple with a great sideline: a pond full of turtles that can be fed. The grounds of Wat Prayun itself were busy with 100s of monks all listening to a lecture, so we didn't nose around too much.

Here's one of the snappers eating a banana on a stick. Buying a plate of over-ripe bananas and a stick was one of the best 10 baht I spent in Bangkok.

Surrounding the pool is a manmade hill with a steps that lead to a Reclining Buddha shrine. The lights inside gave it a nice eerie glow.

Shiny Bangkok

We had a great time on vacation in Cambodia, a visit that included a couple days in Bangkok at the start and the end. The flight from Chennai was a killer -- it took off around 1 am (it was delayed), and then landed at an indeterminate point in the morning (time had no meaning at that point). In the seats in front and around us were Indian Rotarians who pushed their seats back all the way, laughed and talked constantly, and fussily demanded whiskies and anything else they could think of from the long-suffering crew. This cut down on the funtime factor for the rest of us by about 35%, I believe.

After we landed at the huge new Bangkok Airport, got to the hotel, and left our luggage, it was time to see Bangkok on no sleep at all. (We visited last year too, so we didn't feel as if we have to see everything.) This time we were close to the Royal Palace and Wat Po (a temple), so it was easy to do these. Here, for instance, is Don contemplating the Reclining Buddha's nipple:



We were very impressed with the super-fancy buses parked on the streets around the Royal Palace. There's nothing like these buses in India, or maybe in most other places. Some of them were even karaoke buses! What a way to head down the road.



There were lots of tourists at the Royal Palace. I was so sleepy at this point that it started to seem like the best policy to see what everyone else was taking a picture of and to look in the same general direction.



We did make sure to check out the scale model of Angkor Wat. It's just sort of lying there sandwiched between amazing temples and palaces and shrines, but it's one impressive carving. And accurate, we'd soon find out.



After slowly going haywire from the heat and all the crazy, gorgeous designs everywhere, it was time to call it quits on sight-seeing for the day, take a nap, and then just go wandering.

Delhi

We got into Delhi last night. I'm hoping to stay put for a while, although we also do want to take advantage of being in India's north and visit some places nearby. Compared to Chennai the weather is just wonderful. It's 73°F(23°C) and dry in Delhi at the moment, compared to 86°F(30°C)and humid in Chennai. The Delhi temps mean that many men are wearing long-sleeve shirts and thin sweaters while I'm wearing shirt-sleeves and not sweating (for once). I forgot how nice it can be to walk down the street for an extended period of time.

The guest house is OK -- good location, very old/strange furnishings, and non-functioning but imminent Internet -- pretty typical of our experiences elsewhere.

I don't know much about the Greater Kailash neighborhoods we're part of, but it's clear much of it has been planned. Markets and stores are grouped around several central small parks, and addresses are fairly regular once you know the system. It all makes me a little giddy -- all this regularity. Last night Don and I took a walk around and managed to end up back at the guest house without expecting it -- we'd been walking on a street that curved back onto itself. It was surprising to end up home sooner than you thought -- almost always it's the opposite.

Chennai

The past couple days have been a slow process of flying from Cambodia to Bangkok to Chennai, which is where we arrived this afternoon. Tonight we're probably going to visit Pondy Bazaar and buy some clothes -- after all that running around, most of our stuff is dirty and dusty, and it will be another couple days before we can get it all washed.

Tomorrow Don's going into the office a bit, we're picking up more luggage there, and then flying to Delhi. This time, we're staying in the thrillingly titled "East of Kailash." Kailash is where Shiva lives, but in this case we'll presumably be near the "Greater Kailashes", of which I think there are three: GK 1, 2, and 3. But maybe there are more, and maybe "East of Kailash" is WAY east. Hopefully all will become clear once I can get my hands on a street map.

Phnom Penh

We're back in Phnom Penh after lots of Angkor Wat adventures, of which more later. There's something about Cambodia internet cafes that doesn't jibe with thoughtful posts, at least for me. First, I'm too lazy to upload photos from them, so no eye candy. And then there's the pleasant chattering I'm overhearing (but not understanding) between the middleaged lady owner and a Buddhist monk. Then there are the many, many geckos on the ceiling (way more than India -- maybe a dozen?), which are very entertaining. And then there are the guys next to me planning a very detailed flight itinerary. So it's a little hard to think.

Tomorrow we spend most of the day here in PP, then we fly to Bangkok tomorrow, then we fly to Chennai the day after, then we fly to Delhi. You might wonder why our plans are so drawn out and messed up. We wonder that too, a bit, but it's just kind of worked out that way. Anyway, we both have some luggage in Chennia, so now we're locked into it.

In other news, the New York Times continues to copy our vacation plans. They just wound up their Cambodia coverage by sending their reporter to stay at the $300-a-night Hotel de la Paix in Siem Reap. That was exactly 10 times more than we paid for our hotel, and ours was pretty fancy too! Admittedly, no one baked us cookies. but I'm still trying to account for a $265 difference.

Angkor Wat

Today we flew into Siem Reap. Angkor Wat was amazing. I don't have anything smart to say about it at the moment, but if you have to chance to visit, you should. It's worth all the heat, etc., and there's enough to see for weeks, let alone days. More later, including pretty pictures.

Bangkok Time

We're having a great time in Bangkok, visiting temples, eating great street food (the sticky rice wrapped around banana pieces and chicken "drumlettes" on a stick have been a big hit so far), shopping for cool clothes, and even feeding turtles. One temple -- Pyongyang? I think -- had a pool around a small shrine. For 10 baht (about 33 cents) you got cut-up pieces of banana or meat and a long stick. You then could feed the snappers and red-ear sliders without fear. It was incredibly peaceful and entertaining -- even turtles get to eat their "street food" on a stick here.

Tomorrow evening we fly to Cambodia. Although I understand there are now ATMs there, tomorrow we are going to exchange a bunch of Thai baht for US dollars, which is a major currency in Cambodia.

Handmade Signs

Thanjavur Art Gallery, originally uploaded by jrambow.

One of the nice details about India are that almost all signs are handpainted. They may not always be accurate, but they're usually pretty.

The art gallery, by the way, was amazing, and it made me wish that my knowledge of Chola bronzes wasn't so sketchy. The gallery is part of a palace complex, and by the time I'd reached this point, I'd gotten tired of paying my "foreigner" fee and my camera fee at every little exhibit. They have really got to get it together here and have some sort of ticket that includes everything. As it was I saved my 30 rupees and decided not to take pix of any of the amazing art inside. But why didn't I buy the "English book"? I bet that was good too.

Kibitzing

Kibitzing, originally uploaded by jrambow.

These Brahmin priests and others had the right idea at the temple, getting under a little shade.

Cambodia Here We Come

We're off to Thailand and then Cambodia tomorrow night for a week of temples, chi-chi restaurants in the so-called "Next Prague, and, er, I'm not sure yet. Posts will be light to nonexistent, but we'll do the best we can.

Lady Rickshaw driver

Lady Rickshaw driver, originally uploaded by jrambow.

Excitingly, my rickshaw driver in Trichy was a woman, more commonly known as a "lady" in India.

After taking countless rickshaws in a fair number of cities, this was a first, so I had to get a picture. She was nice, smiling a whole lot more than any other rickshaw driver I've had. (She was still tough on bargaining, though.)

She didn't wear a sari or a salwar kameez, she just wore the standard simple brown rickshaw-driver shirt and some light-blue pants that she rolled up.