Salve: The Big Debate

I know people are kept up at night wondering how to actually pronounce the word "salve". Well, believe it or not, I've run into many many situations where people think I'm crazy because I don't pronounce the 'l' in the word salve. In fact, I had a debate with Rachael & Elisabeth last night so I finally looked it up on dictionary.com. And...drum roll...I win! It is pronounce: [sav, sahv]. Check out dictionary.com to listen to them saying it - trust me, time well spent :)

Spam Text Messages

India seems to provide endless entertainment for me. I get these spam text messages ALL the time. Some are offers and deals, etc, but some are just plain weird. Here are a few of my favorites:

"I called u 5 times but the line is busy so come outside... Iam standing outside ur home...
my name is MOON...i just came to say good night...,ur sudheer"

"plz forward to many gud hearts like u... If anyone met with fire accident or people born with problems in their ear, nose and mouth can get free Plastic"

"Journey of life strts wid a full bag of luck &
and empty bag of xprince, The goal if to fill the bag of experience before the bag of Luck gets empty GUD 9T"

"Plz fwd dis msg 2 atleast
5 ppl b4 deleting. PLZ 'DONT DRINK WATER PACKETS'
Becoz A new virus HBF (High Bone Fever) Is spreading now, gudnt....."

"Hi I'm SUN & specialy rise through ur inbox 2 say U GooD MoRNinG Have a nice day"

"MOON has come to color your dreams, STARS to make them musical and my SMS to give you warm and Peaceful Sleep. Good Night. sweet dreams."

"I've made so many mistakes in my life, but something I did right was to have you as a friend and I definitely won't make another mistake of losing someone like you. Gud ngt.."

Now that last one is just plain thoughtful :)

My upcoming schedule...even I'm a little jealous of myself...

In 7 weeks, I will accomplish the following...

1. Delhi
   
2. Agra - sunrise at the Taj Mahal
3. Jaipur
   
4. Kerala - 3 white girls traveling in the backwaters should be interesting :)
   
5. Bali - finally a trip with Tiffany!
   
6. Japan (ok, Japan was canceled. Get this - this was supposed to be for the same conference that I got stuck in Dublin for. Natural disasters are out to ruin the events!)
   

May 1 - coming back to the states! Get ready for Indianized Gina!

Goa...both times :)

So yes, I managed to go to Goa 2 times in a matter of 3 weeks...I was ambitious!
1st Goa Trip
AnnMarie came to India and we headed for a much needed relaxing weekend. We (and the cow) enjoyed the view & beach. AnnMarie was pretty much the hit of the town and got hit on every 2 seconds. We also were able to find a little hole in the wall gambling joint and loose big time...I lost $20 :)







In preparation for the beach, AnnMarie shaved her legs with an electric shaver. She then started complaining about her legs burning and when we got home, we found out her legs looked like this...only AnnMarie could make this happen :)

2nd Goa Trip
Now on to the epic birthday trip. As you all know, the Facebook landing team has adopted me so we all decided to go to Goa for Sarah's bday. There were 8 of us: me, Vik, Dmitry, Sarah, Joanna, Aruna, and Vik's parents (yes, you read correctly). Night one consisted of my usual face stuffing followed by drinks, hookah, and dancing on the beach. A few of the crazies in the group also decided to jump into the ocean at the end of the night as well (no, I wasn't one of them). The bad news is that a few carried items such as an iPhone, which of course is not friendly with water...

Then Saturday...and the big party. We chilled on the beach then decided to go for a sunset boat ride. We were able to charter a boat, bring on some beer and food and head out. The view and ride was amazing and well worth it. After our ride, we headed off for Sarah's bday dinner. The place was amazing - it was on the beach, all white, and had SUSHI and non-Indian food! WHAT?! I also was able to a massage during dinner, which might have been the best massage ever. Since we were so awesome (read: loud), we were able to get the owners laptop to create our own playlist and thus the dance party began.

Giant Sparklers & Cake on the face













And of course you can't miss Sarah's progression of falling asleep in Vik's lap... All-in-all - pretty epic night :)

ALL GOA PICTURES (still waiting for Vik to give me the rest of the pictures...sigh)

Start of 2011

And welcome back to my blog. It's been a long time since I've written because I went home for Xmas & New Years, which was amazing. Then I made a few great weekend trips, but have been sick for the last week so didn't have the energy to muster up any witty comments for the blog. So here you go - the last few weekends!

Sankranti (Kite Flying Festival) pictures
The first weekend back was the kite festival welcoming the harvest called Sankranti. The kites are supposed to be offerings to the sun God to help that year's harvest. All weekend there was kite flying and fighting. So if you haven't read the Kite Runner, kite fighting is awesome. They make string out of little shards of glass so when you cross kites, you can cut the other person's kite loose.

My favorite chef Gnane invited me, Vik & Dmitry to his home to fly kites on their roof. It was so cute - when we got there, Gnane immediately started showing us his wedding pictures & then served us lunch. His entire apartment for him, his son, and wife was about as big as our living room, which is crazy. After lunch, we went up to the roof and experienced a legit Indian tradition in a legit Indian neighborhood (we don't really see a ton of "real" India where we live). Dmitry said it was pretty much the coolest thing he's done in India. It was pretty cool to see how the entire neighborhood goes to the roofs and everyone celebrates together. And getting those kites off the ground weren't so easy as evidenced by my attempts :) But I was able to actually cut another person's kite - very exciting! Gnane's extended family were possibly the nicest people ever and were amazing hosts.

Oh - and once again, I managed to offend most Indians by wearing a very conservative tank top. Gnane wouldn't let me on the roof or stand outside his house without wearing one of his jackets. What a scandal! It's so funny - there are ads all over with half naked women on them, but my shoulders are just too much...

Srisailam Tiger Trip pictures
I know all everyone wants to know is if we saw a Tiger. The answer is no. Those bastards are great hiders :) But, it was worth trying! We left Hyderabad at 2am to get to the Tiger Reserve at 7am, which is when they were supposed to open (and is the best time to actually see the tigers). But seeing we're in India and nothing is reliable, the reserve didn't open until 10am. Thankfully, since this is India and you can pretty much get whatever you want if you have money, we bribed the guard to let us in with our own cars (which is illegal) for our own private tour. Best $50 the 8 of us ever spent :)

We proceeded with directions from the guard and saw Sambar (Indian deer), peacocks, monkeys, etc. on the drive. Then we hit a dead end when we thought the path was a loop and would lead us out of there. Thankfully the dead end was a gorgeous cliff and ideal picture spot. So we got out, took some pictures and walked in the jungle a bit. The guys saw giant 5 foot monkeys that were unreal, but I missed out. In order to see them, you had to get about 10 feet away from them and I wasn't about that :) So we were 3 hrs into the tour when we were supposed to only be in there for 1 hour so we headed back the way we came. The guards were pretty pissed and there was a lot of arguing in Hindi, but our drivers were able to get us out alive!

The rest of the day, we went into the town to visit a famous temple, which was an experience. If you ever want to be almost trampled, you should go there. The funny thing was the biggest offenders were elderly people! They kept pushing us and cutting in front of us. What the hell?! Needless to say, we were all excited after we were out of the temple (it was about 20 min of sardine-ville).

On the way home, we found ourselves driving through a herd of cattle. Just another day in India :)

What I've been up to...

As promised, here is a run-down of what I've been up to in November & December. I'll start from the most recent since this weekend was ridiculous!

Trip to Nagarjunasagar Dam
Yeah, try saying that name...

So we started off on our day trip to the dam (about 3 hrs away) a little late thanks to our friend Vik who kept sleeping through my reminder calls. After a nice (read: terrifying) drive, we arrived at the dam, which was actually really beautiful. At the dam, you can hop on a ferry to an island with a museum and some old monk monuments so we jumped on the 45 min ferry. The scenery was great, but that's not the best part of the story....

So apparently, in India, if you're white and wear sunglasses, EVERYONE things you're a movie star or something. With 2 white guys, 1 white girl, & 2 obviously American Indians, we were mobbed by people wanting to take our pictures as soon as we got out of the car. But by far, the best part of the trip was when we got to the island. As we were pulling up, there were a ton of people waiting to catch the ferry. We told Dmitry to wave to see what would happen and the crowd erupted in applause! It was the most insane thing I've ever seen! You HAVE to check out the videos. This one is of them cheering as we got to the island and this one is of me walking up through the crowd. I had to turn off the video because people kept asking for my photo. A few guys even asked to take a picture of us shaking hands with them - like we're some sort of government officials! It was literally the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. We kept joking that we had to keep our sunglasses on no matter what because otherwise they would see that we weren't famous and we're just frauds :) And after all of that, we were exhausted! I can't even imagine being a real celebrity and dealing with that every day!

Start of the dam pictures

Indian Wedding
So now that I'm an honorary Facebooker (sorry Google!), I tagged along to one of the Facebook team's weddings. My first Indian wedding! I think the highlight for me was the saree. It look about 15 minutes to get on (thanks to Aruna!) and is basically one 20ft piece of cloth that you bunch and tuck together. The wedding was Parsi, which is a very rare religion in India so the wedding wasn't what you would normally find (aka - it was only 2 days instead of 3-4). We ended up crashing the food/dancing part and had a blast! We ate off of banana leafs and the food was super yummy. And we pretty much started the actual party by hitting up the dance floor - go figure! All in all - awesome time.

Start of the Indian wedding pictures

Ridiculous Indian "Rave"
So one night we ended up getting out of dinner really late so ended up following people to an after party. This was supposed to be the cool place to go and is open until 4am. The actual set-up was pretty cool since it was big and by the lake, but there were pretty much zero people there. Good thing we found some amazing dancers to entertain us :) Sarah and I pretty much danced for 3 hours straight and just mimicked what these crazy dudes on the dance floor did. In India, there are a few differences with dancing: 1) it's all guys on the dance floor - we were the only girls and 2) any movement that you can do with your body is considered dancing (think Elaine from Seinfield). There was a lot of fist pumping and jigs to keep us busy all night. Sarah and I even tried to make up a ridiculous dance to see if others would start doing it. We started jumping up and down and flapping our arms like birds. Yeah...that caught on in a matter of seconds. Need I say anything more?!

Start of dancing pics

Thanksgiving
The Facebook landing team and I are buddies now (if you didn't know) and the good news was that Facebook was going to pay for a nice Thanksgiving feast! My contribution was my last 3 bottles of delicious imported wine. Pretty sure I drank more than 1 bottle, but that's another story :) Anyway, we made a list for the caterers consisting of every possible Thanksgiving dish and sushi and wonton soup. Random? yes. But come on - we all miss sushi!!! The sushi was actually pretty good once they brought us soy sauce. They somehow remembered wasabi, but forgot soy sauce! And of course, they said it would arrive in 20 min so we all decided to wait. About 30 min later, it was 10 minutes, then 10 minutes later another 10 min. I told them I didn't believe them anymore. The food ended up being pretty darn good and only a few dishes were really bad or weird. We had a great time drinking real wine, eating loads of food, and having a cucumber fight. Pretty great Thanksgiving :)

Start of Thanksgiving pics

Vietnam & Thailand

Vietnam
Vietnam is beautiful and amazing and I would love to share our hundreds of pictures with you, but unfortunately, they're at the bottom of Halong Bay thanks to a kayaking accident. How did this happen you ask? Let me tell you (sorry Riki!)

We were visiting Halong Bay, which is beautiful and has amazing caves. After lunch on the boat and the cave tour, we went out kayaking in the bay. It was a beautiful day and we were snapping pictures. We got one of Will in the other kayak then Will offered to take one of us. I sat there as Will rowed over to us. I turned around to talk to Riki, only to find Riki putting the camera on his oar and reaching it over the water toward Will. That same moment, the camera fell in the water and I knew it was gone. Riki dove in after it, but had a life jacket on so couldn't go deep enough. After that, we went to shore to ask for snorkel gear. Being islanders, we assumed they would have equipment, but all we got was a seriously old and ghetto mask. Enough for us to try! Will made many attempts for about 20 minutes and I tried for about 2 min (this is when my ears when crazy with shooting pain & the double ear infection started). Either way, it was pointless since the water was so dense and you couldn't see a thing until you got to the very bottom (20 ft down). So it was a total crap shoot. Then we offered a reward to the locals of $100, which could feed a family for a year there! We prayed they would find it and ship it back to us - apparently this sort of thing happens a lot there. But alas, they never found the camera - or claimed to find the camera. Will did have a weird interaction where they said "We didn't find the camera, but we might be able to mail you the memory card". How that makes sense, we don't know, but our guess is that if they had the camera, they just decided to sell it :(

Unfortunately Will forgot his camera and I didn't take any pictures on mine since Riki's is nicer. But I guess it's good that we had a camera at all for our Thailand pictures... Also, Will got a few pics on his camera and they're here.

Ok, on to actual Vietnam:

Phu Quoc Island
Riki and I had some alone time before meeting up with Will. Phu Quoc is a cute little island that really isn't touristy at all yet. It's like a different world. On one hand, the underdevelopment is really nice b/c you ride along crazy bumpy dirt roads and see local towns. The bad thing is that they haven't built up many touristy things to do like an easy way to go to the top of the island for amazing views, etc. Unfortunately Riki and I didn't get very good weather and it was a bit rainy and chilly, but it was ok - we wanted to just relax and spend some quality time together. We also had a great resort and found a really cute wine shop in town. This is also where I convinced Riki that Schafkopf is actually a fun card game :)

Hoi An
On to Hoi An, the famous tailoring town on the mainland to meet up with Will. The town was so cute and had such character. We also ended up buying a ton of custom clothes (suits, jackets, etc). It was amazing - you go there in the morning, order the clothes and then in the afternoon go for a fitting. Next day, they're done! We ended up buying the boys' suits at a shop called Mr. Xhe. The employees consisted of 1) Mr. Xhe, a gay guy who pinched Will's nipple moments after walking in and called Riki's stomach hair his love hair, 2) a girl who was obsessed with Will and kept saying the reason Will didn't have a girlfriend was b/c he was too picky. When we went to go get our measurements taken, we didn't do it at the shop, but instead we peddled a bike with Mr. Xhe on the back to the work shop a ways down the road. Obviously unique and awesome experience - especially the nipple grabbing and love hair :)

I also got groped by a shop-owner. I was bending over looking at scarves in her shop and she commented how lucky I was to be traveling with 2 men. She then proceeded to slap my butt. I was shocked and didn't move. Then she continued hitting each cheek and saying "One for you and one for you". Then she famously said to the boys "You hit that every day?" Will said my face was priceless and I would have to agree. And of course, this quote was used constantly through the rest of the vacation.

The rest of the trip consisted of massages, cafe sua da (iced Vietnamese coffee) and bumming around town stimulating their economy. Here is also where we discovered the amazing Vietnamese sandwich (Bahn Mi) that are about 50 cents and are seriously soooo delicious! At one of the food stands, Will got in a pepper match with the cart owner and downed an entire Thai chili...that was pretty fun to watch :)

Hanoi
Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and the 2nd largest city. When we arrived at our hotel, we went up to find a room barely big enough for 2 people and a 3rd bed crammed in the corner. We would have been really nice and cozy in that room! The hotel guy was really nice and mentioned that they had a sister hotel that wasn't as noisy and was bigger. So I hopped on the hotel guy's scooter to go check out the other room. Gotta love random scooter rides in these countries :) We ended up moving, which was an awesome choice.

It's a really cool city and we had a great time bumming around, seeing the sites, and eating a TON of pho on the streets. I think the entire Vietnam trip, we ate at 2 restaurants and voted to eat at the little stands on the street. The food was amazing and stuffing yourself of pho and having 2 giant beers would set you back about $2. There was a stand right outside the hotel that was awesome and had really cute ladies who didn't speak any English, but thought we were funny.

Will got sick here (cold from China, not from the food or anything) and took it easy and Riki and bummed around town. I'm having a hard time thinking of everything we saw, but there were really cool street markets, a nice lake in the middle of the city, and a great rooftop restaurant with views of the entire city. This is one of those cities that you could live in.

We did a day trip to Halong Bay (story is above) and then Riki and I set off for Thailand a day before Will.

Thailand (pictures)
Throughout Vietnam and Thailand, everyone thought Riki was a local and most likely Will and my tour guide. Poor Riki always had to carry his luggage while Will's and mine were taken immediately from us. And at the hotel in Bangkok, we went up for drinks and she double checked 2x that we needed the table for 3 (looking at Riki the entire time). And people kept saying - "same same?" to Riki to ask him if he was also Asian. The Thai massage ladies were also confused but did call him a handsome Asian in their language :P) With all of this, we started calling Riki our local "fixer" and "tour guide". Ahh...good times!

Bangkok
Bangkok is a really cool city with tons to do. Unfortunately we didn't really see anything outside of our BEAUTIFUL hotel room. Riki found a deal on Jetsetter and we booked this place for 2 nights. It was a mansion and to top it off, since we stayed in a suite, we got free food and drinks all day at one of the bars overlooking the city. The first night Riki got sick (bad fever, etc) so I just went up there and chilled. Then the next day when Will arrived, I wanted to go see the sights, but the guys wanted to drink for free :) So we stayed and enjoyed the perks.

Koh Chang
After a 5 hour bus ride, we arrived at Koh Chang. We chose these islands b/c they had all of the activities but aren't as touristy as Phuket and Koh Phi Phi. Good thing too since Phi Phi was affected by the flooding. Our hotel looked really nice and we even splurged for a bungalow instead of a regular room. To our dismay, when you order a 3 person room, what that really means is a small 2 person room with a cot. There was no way we were going to be able to stay there so Will & Riki sent the closer in (aka me). I negotiated with the hotel and was able to get us upgraded to an amazing room that was HUGE! India is making me a much better haggler :)

In Koh Chang, we rented scooters and bummed around the island and checked out beaches. We had a pool/water day which consisted of us stealing a kid's ball and playing "head ball" then going out to the ocean to play paddle ball. We also went elephant trekking and were able to feed the elephants. That was seriously awesome! I even got to ride on the neck of the elephant! After the elephants, I saw a little monkey who you could take your picture with. I thought "When in Rome!" and went up to him. He then started picking through my hair looking though bugs, which was interesting... Then Will went up to him and the monkey went crazy and started biting Will's arm. The guy working said that the monkey didn't like Will. After that, Will pretty much freaked out saying how the monkey "broke skin" and how he was really nervous. First of all, the guy said the monkey had his vaccinations so Will was fine. Secondly, the monkey DIDN'T break skin. Will had a red mark for a day. What a baby ;)

The other excursion we went on was a 1/2 day snorkeling off of a speed boat. It was really awesome and we ended up going to one of those beach areas that you see in movies - so gorgeous! And I love speed boats - so awesome! On the way home, a boat crew member suggested that Will sit on top of the very tip of the boat and dangle his legs off. Of course Will and I climbed up even though in the states people would freak out if you did that! I love 3rd world countries - they let you sit on an elephant's head and on the tip of a speed boat. No biggie :) The rest of the day was spent in the ocean playing paddle ball and watching the beautiful sunset sipping fresh coconut shakes. Now that's the life!

At night pretty much every night, we bummed around town for a bit, got a Thai massage, then ate some really yummy Thai curry. Will also often got whistled at by transvestites, which are insanely common in Thailand. I really wish we had more time on the island. Even though it was 4 days, it really felt too quick :(

Overall, this trip was amazing and I totally fell in love with both places. Vietnam is much less westernized than Thailand and is obviously a poorer country. But that's what I loved about Vietnam - it was truly authentic.

Quotes from the Trip:

"You hit that everyday?" -Vietnamese lady referring to Riki & Will hitting my bum
"Nothing goes better together than a cup of coffee and some cock" -Will just being Will
"Ripcord!" -Riki inventing a word for Will where if said, you are allowed to stop what you're saying since it is coming out as non-sense.
"You could fry me like a chicken!" -Will referring to the amount of oil the masseuse used on him