I am going to be so fat by the time we leave India

Hello from New Delhi! Aarti and I are at her relative's place in Delhi and it's been great so far. We arrived around 2:30am on the 28th and met up with the relatives at the airport. They gave us a ride back to their house where we were given tasty treats and soda and talked for an hour or so before going to bed at 5am. Ended up sleeping til about noon the next day. Kind of threw off the whole adjusting to a new time zone thing, but I think we're good now.

3/28- More tasty treats for breakfast, and then a lunch which consisted of eating til we were full and then being given more food. Haha. It's hard to say no. Hung out with Aarti's mom's friend and her son. They took us to a temple and then a market. The mom helped us buy purses for around 4 USD. Good deal. Then came back home for large dinner. I'm pretty sure my stomach is stretching out here..

3/29- Woke up early and caught a tourism bus with an "aunt" and her adorable kid. ..After another large breakfast :-P Went to all the main Delhi sites: Lakshmi Narayan Temple, Qutub Minar, The Lotus Temple, Gandhi Smriti (the place where he was assassinated.. I want to read more about him; this place was a little intense to visit), Red Fort, Rajghat (where Ghandi was cremated), and Humayun's Tomb. Lunch break in the middle of course. Tried dosa. Very good. Then went to Dilli haat (I think that's how you spell it), a handcrafts/food market. Ate sooo much dinner. They ordered a bunch of random things and we had to try it all and there was so much and it was so good we couldn't stop. Hours later my belly still feels full. And a recurring theme of all this eating is that even though the food is really good, it's a little spicy. I'm fine with eating it and only sometimes does my mouth feel too hot, but my nose always ends up running. They love to laugh at me every time I bring out my tissues. I try to be secretive about it but they always see and think it's the funniest. Soon enough though I think I will be able to eat it like them, ha.

Ok, going to try to upload some pictures I think. We'll see how that goes. There's a lot and the internet isn't that fast.

Overall, having a wonderful trip but know that whenever we stop long enough to have time to think, I'm thinking of all of you! Miss everyone!!

xoxoxoxoxoxo



Ok, fail on the pictures. USB ports not seeming to work. Maybe later. Sorry!

Hi from Hong Kong!!

Sorry I am only just updating this now.. been too busy with only one week in HK to use the internet. Here are the highlights:

3/21- got to the hostel around 9pm, checked out all the other hostels in this one giant building (ChungKing Mansion) and got to see in person the places we'd been looking up online. switched into a different one for the rest of the week where the two ladies running it were real real nice. and it was very clean. a combo shower/bathroom is an interesting thing.

3/22- met up w/ Mahalia in Mong Kok (lucy, we totally approve of this area, very full of stuff to do and seems pretty safe.. we also have a restaurant recommendation for you: Yoshinoya). later in the day we met up with Edwin Tang from SEG and he helped us negotiate prices at some night markets and then treated us to some Hong Kong food. I now have a really cute present for my baby cousin.

3/23- went up to the peak on the peak tram. the tram was pretty cool; very steep. too bad it was a little foggy. walked back down and then went to a tea appreciation class which was really good actually. sampled a bunch of teas and bought some to bring back. you'll all be drinking it with me stanford people! then wandered around some more and had thai food near the lan kwai fong area (happening night spot)

3/24- met up with a friend of mahalia's friend(s friend?), kayi. despite it being a distant connection, she was extremely nice to us! we had dim sum with her and her mom, who helped us order (basically we all just pointed at stuff that looked good), then had lunch somewhere else, shopped around, had dessert (custard treat), shopped around some more (didn't really buy anything.. with all this shopping i'm really just talking about looking around), then dinner, then more dessert? really it was a crazy day of eating. very good and verrrry tiring. by the end of this day i was starting to feel how much work traveling can be! oh, and we've also ridden almost every form of transport in hk: airplane, bus, tram, MTR, ferry.

3/25- we took it easier this day. slept in a tiny bit, met for lunch at a place recommended on openrice.com (hk's yelp?), then journeyed a little farther to the chi lin nunnery. this place was soo pretty and peaceful and it made us actually feel like we were somewhere foreign. thus far, it's mostly felt like being in a very large chinatown in the us. lots of tourists, english, easy to navigate and pretty western. oh, and after the nunnery we went to a taoist temple. lots of incense and this thing where you shake sticks with numbers on them to get your fortune. very colorful and some cool statues. we might put pictures online now or later if we have time.

3/26- had to switch hostels this day because kyoto guesthouse was booked (the one with the nice ladies where we'd been staying).. except we wanted to leave to see big buddha before the checkin time of our next hostel. the ladies watched our bags for us for the day (nothing too important inside and they'd previously watched them, so it was all good). we took a ferry, another ferry, and a bus, then journeyed up the 280 stairs or so to the big buddha. who really is quite big. had lunch at the top, came back down and went over to the thai fishing village which wasn't as exciting. had stilted houses though.. then we went out that night for dinner (the yoshinoya place.. basically healthier asian style fast food chain?) and stopped by an irish pub where there was live music (but i was pretty much just trying not to tip over from being so tired, so this didn't last very long). then to bed.

3/27- moved out, got food and batteries at the grocery store (so much cheaper here!!), and now quickly using internet with our last bit of hk monies, then heading early to the airport (kind of rainy here today and not much to do with all our bags on).

ok, that's it. i will try to blog more often in the future! yay for indiaaaa!

I feel like I'm turning in the most intense final project of my life

I am printing:
1. airline itinerary
2. emails from the hostel manager in HK with directions on how to get there
3. train confirmations for India
4. hostel confirmations for HK, Agra, and Jaipur
5. maps of HK, India, and Malaysia (both zoomed out and zoomed in on every section that has things we want to see.. not lying when i say this is over 50 pages)
6. keys to those maps (addresses relating to each icon with info about what it is)

Still to print:
7. our intense planning document "aa2011" with information about basically every aspect of this trip. has to be at least 15 pages by now
8. the money document "$aa2011$" with information about who has paid for what so far and who owes whom

so thick

2 days..

!!!!!!

Also I just checked the weather and it should be pretty consistently a high of 90-ish wherever we go. And the flight to Hong Kong is going to be about 15 hours. Of non-stop flying. Yikes.

And lastly, I'm done with school! I'm not a student anymore!

Too many thoughts going on.

Oh and the epic journey of getting the rest of my malaria medicine has finally come to an end. I went when they said it'd be ready but they were trying to do the whole "you can pick it up on the 31st" thing again. And I was like "Ok, listen, I'm leaving the country in like 3 days. I'm gonna need this now." And then bam, malaria medicine.

Discoveries

Apparently I already own:
1. 9 loads worth of powder of single use detergent
2. .475 oz of 100% deet spray
3. 8 towelettes of 25% deet
4. 2 travel sized shampoo bottles
5. 3 travel sized conditioner bottles

and the best discovery...

I have no idea why I would own this, but apparently I have an adapter that goes from whatever to American. So now I can charge Veronica's phone (that has Indonesian charger) and test it out. If only I can figure out how to turn it on.. (Thanks Veronica! and Lucy!)

And I just bought another 4gb memory card for my camera for $6.47 on Amazon, with free 2 day shipping. Awesome. Yay Amazon Prime. Where the cheap nerds hang out, apparently.

India: The Route

GoogleEarth file of route

Picture of route

New Delhi: Mar 28-31
Agra: Mar 31-Apr 1
Jaipur: Apr 1-5
Mt. Abu: Apr 5-8
Mumbai: Apr 9-12, 20-21
Goa: Apr 13-19

Still Planning

Things we've been doing:
1. We are mostly done with mapping things we want to see in HK and India. We've been talking to a couch surfing host in HK about meeting up and going to a couch surfers gathering. Looking for a host for the first night when it's just me and Aarti. That'd be ideal, but I guess if we don't hear back in the next day or two we should just book one of the Chungking Mansion places: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chungking_Mansions
2. Finally have all our train tickets for India. Aarti's mom's friend's son did it for us. Turns out it's way easier from India with a non-international credit card.
3. We now have hostels booked for two cities in India: Agra and Jaipur. Looking at Mount Abu now, but most of those places aren't on the usual hostel booking internet sites, so it's a little difficult.
4. Trying to pick up malaria medicine. Never knew it could be so hard..

Step 1: Go to the pharmacy the day it should be ready. Try to pay. Price is way higher than it should be.
Step 2: "Shouldn't I be paying just a copay?" "Oh, sorry, we don't have an account set up for you, can I see your insurance card?" I show him the card and he says it's not the right one. I need some sort of "pharmacy card".
Step 3: Call my parents and ask about this supposed "pharmacy card." They tell me such a thing doesn't exist.
Step 4: Call insurance. Because I now live on the west coast, things close earlier at 5pm EST. Nobody to talk to.
Step 5: Talk to different pharmacist. He hooks me up with the right price. I buy the medicine!
Step 6: While waiting for my new medicine consultation, I realize that they only gave me 30 malaria pills. Because you need to take one pill before you go into the malaria area and 28 pills after you leave it, this is only enough for one day. I ask about this. He says I need to come pick up my refill later on once I finish that bottle. I explain that this might be difficult since I'll be in India.
Step 7: Helpful pharmacist man calls insurance and says I need the medicine sooner. Tells me to come back the next day for the rest of the pills (~16 more).
Step 8: I return the next day. First pharmacist tells me pills won't be ready til March 31st, when I'll already be in India. I feel like there is a serious miscommunication going on between me-pharmacists-insurance people.
Step 9: Pharmacist calls insurance and again explains that I leave on the 20th for Asia and cannot come to Palo Alto then to pick up some pills. They say they can let me pick them up on March 16 (random?).
Step 10: I will go pick them up on March 16th and hope for the best.

Super fun!

Planning

Things we've been doing:
1. mapping out the things we want to see and other important spots in each country (train stations, hostels, etc) using maps.google.com
2. trying to book train tickets for india.. surprisingly, VERY difficult to do. after many hours still no success using https://www.irctc.co.in/ and http://www.cleartrip.com/trains
3. choosing hostels

Next up:
4. packing list
5. which credit/debit cards to bring and how much cash
6. malaria and travel sickness prescriptions
7. bug spray!