My great big GUNGULA!

So I arrived today in HK, a bit later than originally planned, I switched my flight to one a little later in the day. So I arrived here a few hours back and took 2 buses to my hostel. HK is beautiful at night, the little I've seen of it. My hostel is on HK Island and the airport is on Lantau so it was about an hour away. It is so awesome - my hostel is on the top of a peak - it took 10 minutes to wind our way up to mountain and it is the only building up here, with a great view of the city lights and some water - not sure exactly what it is yet! I'm exhausted so I'll write more later. My last day in Bangkok was great too but I'l save writing about it for later. Take care and goodnight all.

Hi Everyone Last night I went out and had some fried rice at the street food market with some girls I met in my dorm room. It was nice. This morning I woke up early, at 6am and had quite a long day. I went on another tour. This time to Kanchaburi, which is a 2 hour drive west of Bangkok. We visited a WWII cemetary, which had Thai graves as well as POW graves. We then visited the war museum and the bridge over the River Kwai. During WWII Japan invaded Thailand and wanted to be able to move northwest into Burma, so they recruited workers from Asian and used POWs to build a the railroad. It is now called Death railway because several thousand people died working on it as a result of diseases spreading and also because the Allied forces bombed the brindge over the River Kwai several times (and Japan forced POWs to stand on the bridge in hopes that this would prevent it from being bombed...to no avail). I'm no history buff but all that stuff was pretty interesting to me. Apparently there is an old movie called "The River Kwai" so I'll have to check it out when I get home. After that we went to some waterfall nearby - not an entirely impressive one but it was nice to get my feet wet and climb on the rocks Then we had lunch and went for a ride on the Death railway and saw some of the countryside. I also saw tapioca growing (I had no idea it was a plant...I'm a moron!). The last stop of the day (not counting the jew factory which we had to stop at again..) was the Tiger Temple. It was a strange place. It is run by Monks and it started as some sort of place of refuge for injured and orphaned tigers and now it is set up so that you can go walk around these grounds and there are all kinds of animals just roaming around (chickens, deer, horses, water buffalo, elk). Then there is a place down in a canyon where there are tigers. I think they must have been sedated because they were just laying there all groggy. Then guides took you out one by one to pet them and have photos taken with them. At one point the guide had me sit down by one then to my shock me lifted the tigers head onto my lap. The photos tell all - my face was like "What the hell do you think you are doing?!?!?" Yeah intersting. After we got back, I went out for dinner with these 2 nice Aussies I met. We went to their hotel before going out. They are staying at the tallest building in Bangkok so I got to go up to the top floor, which revolves and look at the city! It was very cool! We got some curry and then went out roaming around at a night baazar. I didnt find anything but thats just as well, I have no room to carry anything more! We had a drink at a big outdoor pub area there while we listened to some horrible Thai version of the Backstreet Boys peform on stage! Altogether it was a really nice day!

Day 2 Thailand. I woke up at 6:35. My tour van was scheduled to pick me up at 6:30. I threw on my jeans and ran out the door. I felt like a total slob, and looked like one too. The van finally came at 7:30. I was a bit stressed starting the day thinking I got totally ripped off by the travel agent but then they came and the day started to go much better. There were 10 of us of the tour and everyone spole English and all were friendly (a nice change after my Goa tours!) It was an extremely educational day (not that I'll remember everything but here it goes...) We drove past salt fields on the way to our first stop. I guess it is made from taking the salt out of the sea water. (So I've seen where your salt comes from Grandma!) I also learned that Bangkok has over 4000 temples in it. Most of them are Buddist temples. I tried to learn more about Budism from my tour guide but she was a bit difficult to understand! We stopped at a place where they make sugar and massage oil from coconuts. Then we went to the floating river market. People line the canal with their flat boats and then you can shop from a flat boat. It was quite unique. The merchants here don't hassle you as much as in India, which is also a welcome change. I had some fried coconut milk pankakes there and tried coconut water (for the second time) and actually liked it this time. (Are you catching a theme here...COCONUTS! They are everywhere...umm yeah anyway...) Then is was off to a snake show. The most memorable part of which was the pre-show during which some guy walked aroudn holding out a snake while the announcer said again and again (insert broken English Thai accent here) "Snake haaa 2 penis, 2 time the fun!" Yikes! Then we went to a place where merchants were making and selling intricate wood carvings. There was everything from full size elephants to small carved boxes. We then had a buffet lunch and then went to a place called the Rose Garden. There was an Elephant show there, and obviosly rose gardens. The last thing was a Thai culture show complete with traditional dancing, a wedding ceremony, Thai full contact wrestling and sword fights. Oh wait my bad...last stop was....another jewelery store! It is a huge scam, not supposed to be part of the tour, but all the drivers go there so they get free gas. This time we even had to sit throw a video about the sapphires and rubies of Thailand. Yeah anyway, so I'm tired now and another girl is waiting for the computer. More tomorrow...another tour...yikes!

Wow. I'm in Thailand. I got about 3 hours of sleep last night and then flew in here. I got in at 10:30am, waited in line at immigration for abuot an hour and a half then got ripped a new one hiring a cab to take me to the hostel. I showered and then got ready to go exploring. I got a map and started walking around. It was really hot outside and I had no idea what I was doing. Then some man started talking to me and informed me that today is some huge tourist attraction day that the government was hosting in order to vamp up tourism after the tsunami. Umm ok. So that meant that I got to hire a rickshaw (here called a tuk tuk) for about $.50 and the guy drove me around all day and waited for me whenever I got out to look at the temples and all the sights. Awesome! The only catch was that I had to get hauled to some export shops and pretent to be interested for a minimum of 5 minutes so that the tuk tuk driver could get his gas for free. Really wierd I know. So for 5 minutes I was fascinated with a pair of star sapphire earrings. I got to see several Buddist Temples and statues. Very interesting stuff. Very glittery and decorated with small pieces of glass and a lot of gold. I was starving because I had no lunch and the driver, who didnt understand English very well kept taking me to one more place and one more place. Finally I got him to drop me off at Khao San Rd which is like the biggest hippie hang out ever. It was pretty cool. I ate some pad thai from a street vendor and watched some talk show being filmed in Thai and browsed all the clothing and jewelery shops. I must say, I did more today than I thought I'd do. Thai people are extremely friendly and there is a nice atmosphere here. Anyway, I'm geting eaten alive by the bugs in the cyber here so I'll be going now. I booked myself for a few tours, tomorrow and the next day. I hope they are easier to understand than my tours in Goa! Ok, love you all, bye

It has already been nearly 4 weeks since I began this Gungula. It seems like more and yet less. "Time flies when you are having fun" and have no sense of of it. It seems to me that it is July or August, not January because of the climate I am in and also the fact that I'm on holiday not working or in school, so it feels like summer to me. I was looking at the pictures on my digital cam last night and was surprised, actually kind of shocked, by all that I had seen and done in the past few weeks. (I'll try to get them up here soon, I'm a step closer, I have them on CD now...anyway...) It doesnt seem possible that I did all that in that short of time, and that I did it recently. It seems like I was in Dubai over a year ago when really it was only 2 weeks ago. My memory is sort of a mystery to me and my memories of the order of things are even stranger. My sister for example could probably give you a run down of everything she ate and did and in the correct order, of a trip that lasted a month, I on the other hand can hardly remember what I had for breakfast this morning. (You can understand the importance of a journal now?) My memories are in feelings mostly. Corny I know, but there is a saying, "People may not remember what you did or what you said but they will remember how you made them feel." If nothing else, I will remember, journal or not, that in India I felt alive.
Tonight I leave for Bangkok. I'm really excited and have no idea what to expect....