Efficient travels to Budapest (pronounced “Buda-pesch”)

Night train "Couchette"

While I was pretty excited to rest after the Amsterdam trip, I decided to hop on a train to Budapest for St. Patty’s weekend after one weekend of resting in Munich. It was my first time going on a night train and actually the first time ever traveling/touring a city alone. If you’re a heavy sleeper (like myself) and can fall asleep on any flat surface, I totally recommend taking night trains to travel through Europe. 1) Less hassle: I prefer traveling by trains over planes – usually drops you off in the heart of a city and no heavy security checks. 2) Night trains are so efficient – I was able to go to work for a full day on Friday, go home and pack, go out to dinner, watch a few episodes of how I met your mother, and still make it to my train and arrive to Budapest first thing on Saturday morning. 3) Sometimes night trains can even save you money – the train was basically my hotel for Friday night and Sunday night. I got to spend all day Saturday/Sunday exploring Budapest and saved a night of accommodation costs.

View of Buda from Pest side

Background: Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is a beautiful city, at least on the surface. It actually reminds me a lot of Paris with its grandiose buildings and its multiple bridges. The city is separated into Buda (where the hills and caves are and the nicer, more residential part of the city) and Pest (a more touristy side of the city, and where I think a lot of the businesses are) by the Danube river - I feel like every major European city has a large river running through it (which makes sense as I imagine commerce usually happened around these areas).

I started the trip w/ a free walking tour of Budapest. If you’re a college student, I definitely recommend taking free walking tours of city – it’s a great way to see a city and get the low down about the inexpensive places to party/get alcohol and which days/how you get into sites for free.

Afterwards, I had lunch with a fellow Microsoftie at a Hungarian restaurant and got the local and economic viewpoint on the country. While the touristy areas seem pretty clean and all seems well in Budapest, the country’s economy is actually in terrible condition and unrest is on the rise. The extreme right wing party has the majority in the gov’t (I think?) and in general, the country is becoming fairly nationalistic with some anti-Semitic sentiment. A lot of major companies have left Hungary, resulting in rising unemployment and poverty rates – apparently, once popular restaurants and areas are fairly empty now a days. However, I do think tourism to Hungary is still alive and well. It helps that the city has an efficient transit system, is inexpensive, and is seen as one of the few places to travel to in Eastern Europe.

Went to mass @ St. Stephen's Basilica

Inside of St. Stephen's Basilica

Overall, I didn’t do too much during the trip; the more I travel in Europe, the more European cities all blend together – really, most regions have distinct characteristics, so if you’ve gone to three or four of the major cities in any one continent or region, I feel like in terms of sites and architecture of buildings, it’s all the same. What’s more interesting to experience, I think, are the culture and local food. 

Budapest Parliament building



Some things I noticed:
1) I found people to be quite friendly in Budapest: strangers helped me without being asked when I looked clearly lost, staring confusedly at a map; an old lady offered me a slice of her orange in the park; I helped a different old lady cross the street – good times!

2) Maybe it was people catering to tourists or maybe people were very well educated or a combination of both? Either way, it was pretty easy to find English-speaking people and quite easy to get around Budapest – the trains and buses are rickety but it gets you around. The city is also fairly small and walkable.
3) Music must be incredibly important to the Hungarian culture. Many restaurants and a few nicer cafes seemed to have live music and there were plenty of piano bars for entertaining. Even the street musicians were fantastic!

Gorgeous Bookstore Cafe w/ $2 cappuccinos and live piano music - NBD

4) Hungarian food is not fantastic – actually, I find most Central and Eastern European food to be quite heavy and salty. Stews are fairly common in Hungarian food and hefty servings of meat and potatoes – maybe it comes from living in a colder climate and poorer nation where stews keep you warm and fill you up?


Lamb stew w/ mac and cheese - very paprika-ey

5) Not sure what the hype is about bathhouses? The outdoor swimming pools are great (it’s heated and you can just enjoy the sun and buy a half liter of Stella for two euros), but the indoor pools are just filled with people sitting in warm water. Kinda gross.

Szecheny Bath House



Outdoor swimming pool - inside the bathhouse

All in all, a great trip and a great city – I’d recommend Budapest if you’re looking for something different in terms of culture, but I hear Prague is your better option (I have differing views on Prague since it was cold and rainy during my Prague trip).


If you’re still reading til this point, here’s a quick update on Munich life:


In a cave below a beerhall in Munich

Singing/Dancing on tables

Work has been keeping me pretty busy with conferences, team dinners, and planning for next year’s revenue targets. I went to a few beerhalls (I feel like that’s all I do here) and the real starkbierfest was great – a lot of dancing and singing on tables (German and American songs). The weather has been amazing; something I love about Europe is the culture of sitting in the sun no matter where you are. Restaurants all have outside seating (even if it’s on a random-no good view-sidewalk) and people randomly park themselves outside buildings. Alrighty, that’s the update on my life.

Next blog, Greece and Istanbul! Have a fantastic Easter!

Blast from the Past

Apparently I can’t stay still…after everyone left Munich, I got a bit antsy and decided it’d be a great idea to go to the Netherlands and revisit some old stomping grounds.

Revisiting the stranger turned friend: I flew in Thursday night and actually stayed with Anne – the Dutch woman from three years ago who saw me wandering hopelessly with a ton of luggage in hand trying to find my Rotterdam apartment. While I hadn’t spoken to her in years, I thought it’d be a nice gesture to come visit and bring a few gifts to show my extreme gratitude for her kindness and family’s welcoming me with open arms when I was a student. We didn’t do too much: caught up on life (in the past two years, Anne wrote a book and her husband started his own catering business and a new job as a counselor), played w/ her two daughters (one who can understand more English than I do Vietnamese probably – made me feel really dumb), hung out and ate vegetarian food (if I had their family cooking for me every day, I would seriously consider turning vegetarian). Loved seeing them again – they are truly some of the kindest people I’ve ever met! They even packed me a take-away meal, complete with Capri-Sun on my way out.

Weekend adventures in Amsterdam: So I met up with Dan for the weekend in Amsterdam; we somehow managed to really only do things I had never done in Amsterdam. It’s weird going back – it is definitely dirtier than I remembered (maybe it was the cloudy weather or that I am just more aware of my surroundings now?). It’s still a beautiful city full of canals and great restaurants; definitely still one of my favorite cities in Europe, but I now see why the city is known for its sex and drugs – literally saw “coffeeshops” along with other drug shops and sex shops everywhere!

Of course, there’s so much more to the city than that though. Dan and I were able to tour the Heineken Brewery – it’s super thorough, interactive, and high-tech (even had a Kinect at one of the stations)! I highly recommend going if you are ever in Amsterdam. One cool thing I learned there about the Heineken logo is that the “e”s are “smiling.” Take a look for yourself in the next time you drink a Heineken!

Side story: for the past few trips, Dan and I have a theme of saying “Hell yeah, f*ckin’ right,” which is just a line from a song. Anyway, we decided to put that on our commemorative bottles and I definitely got chastised for imprinting “swear words” on my souvenir Heineken bottle – hah.

Other than the Heineken brewery, Dan and I went to a couple of markets and parks and the museum quarter – pretty typical touristy things. The only other real highlight of our trip was our decision to go to a massive rave on Saturday night in Utrecht (Energy: The Network - apparently, the Netherlands is one of the best party scenes in Europe) – a Netherlands city 45 minutes south of Amsterdam. We left our rooms at 11:30pm and didn’t get back until 7am…imagine a giant warehouse full of drug-induced randoms from teens to 50+ in age. The music was unreal, and I was roughly 20 feet away from DJs Tiesto, Hardwell, Eric Prydz, Sander van Doorn – it was insane! Tiesto and Sander van Doorn below.

My body thoroughly hates me for the abuse I put it through - stayed in Munich the past weekend to recuperate!

From Desert to Winter Wonderland

What an insane two weeks it has been – February has truly been non-stop. After coming back from Jordan, I went on a work team offsite skiing and sledding on the Austrian alps. It had been snowing for two weeks nonstop, so the snow was incredible!

First time sledding: Don’t go without goggles, gloves, snow shoes, basically the full gear as you basically eat snow going down - a ton of fun when there is a chairlift that takes you up – steer by digging your heel into the snow with the leg in the direction you want to turn.

Skiing in the Austrian Alps near Ehrwald, Austria: Amazing views; great long runs that weren’t too steep. Know “alles good” if you’re going to tumble down the mountain and worry non-English speaking strangers as many times as I did – in all fairness, the snow was fairly thick and uneven, so it was SUPER difficult to ski without the wider skis meant for the fresher, unmanicured snow. Luckily, I escaped without my team seeing any of my falls!

Woods walking-tour: BE ON TIME in Austria; we were roughly 3 mins late (which we warned them that would be the case) and they went ahead and started the tour without us…luckily we still made it to the end where there was hot wine (a Bavarian specialty called gluewine) waiting for us.

Driving on the highway: You don’t see the speedometer reading b/c we were going over 200km/hr (roughly 115mph) on the highway – amazing non-existent speed limits on many Germany highways! It’s only great when the cars on the road are all BMWs/Mercedes/Audis (ubiquitous in Germany) and can actually all travel at that same speed so there’s no traffic – it turned a regularly 2 hr drive to 1.5 hrs including 5pm traffic. INSANE!
Aside from the ski trip, there was Fasching aka Fat Tuesday in Munich – a public half-day holiday that I definitely celebrated (me with modern art). Strangely enough, it’s like Halloween here in basically all the cities in Europe – people dress up in costumes and party it up; full on drinking and debauchery in the streets!

Finally, last weekend, I had quite a few visitors to host in Munich. Brenna, a college friend’s sister, came to visit along with two friends and Dan Davis. The weekend started out phenomenally with probably the nicest day I’ve had thus far in Munich – we walked through the English Gardens (a giant central park in the middle of Munich), and went through the Olympic Park (where Munich hosted the Olympics about 30 years ago) and the BMW Museum.

We rounded out the day by participating in the annual tradition of Starkbierziet (“Strong Beer Season”). Long ago, one could not eat during Lent and as a result, the Monks created a strong beer (some with the content equaling 16 loaves of bread) that has about 9% alcohol compared to the normal 5% alcohol. The strong beer is only brewed during this season (4 weeks of the year) and is similar to a mini-more-local Octoberfest. Men and women walk around in traditional lederhosen and dirndls and you are expected to drink half-liters of strong-beer at these events – due to the strong beer, the beerhalls close at Midnight during this season.

Would love to tell you that was the end of my night, but we actually went out to a Munich club, Pascha…here’s a picture of the table we got front and center of the DJ Eric Prydz

Apparently, you can be a disaster even after graduating college…I woke up feeling horrendous from Friday, and had to let Brenna and friends go tour a Munich brewery by themselves. I did pull myself together and went with them to Dachau – the only concentration camp to have been operating throughout the 12 years during WWII / Nazi reign in Germany. The concentration camp was massive and recounts of the stories and suffering were horrific – it’s incredulous to think this happened only half an hour away from Munich 70 years ago and to know that similar mass genocide still exists today.

We searched for happier tourist options for the rest of our trip – I tried to recreate my Jordanian experience by taking everyone to a Middle Eastern restaurant for dinner. Dan and I agreed the food really just didn’t come close to the food experiences we had in Jordan – but I think our expectations are a little high. The night ended in partying at Neu Raum -- a giant club with at least five dance floors – I learned from Friday night though.

Unfortunately, we didn’t end the party soon enough as we still didn’t get home until 4am with alarms going off around 6:30-7am to go to Neuschwanstein Castle (King Ludwig II’s castle that the Disney Castle is modeled off), two hours southwest of Munich next to the German/Austrian alps. I had no clue it was so close to the Alps, and even though I was told it was snowing, I didn’t realize there would be snow/ice on the ground…yeah, I didn’t quite wear the right shoes for walking up and down hills in snow and ice. Needless to say, I was a bit grump-grump all day Sunday – I definitely slipped and fell towards the end of our hilly climb to the Castle.

Finally, the weekend came to an end – loved having visitors and have so many great not appropriate for public blogging stories to share.

A Trip of a Lifetime

Background on Jordan: Apparently, Jordan is not quite as close to Munich as I originally anticipated; the flight definitely took over six hours, but the experience was unreal. Not quite sure what I had expected of the Middle East as I had never traveled anywhere (culturally) similar to it, but I came to find out it is an AMAZING place (or at least Jordan was for me). Jordan is extremely mountainous, quite developed in terms of roads and other infrastructure, pretty clean and well preserved, and people were pretty open and welcoming (as long as you were respectful of the culture and customs of the country—yeah woman were definitely more oppressed than other cultures, but that is probably the case in many non-western cultures). Lastly, the food is UNREAL! I think it was some of the best food I’ve had in my life – I definitely stuffed my face with olives, hummus, grilled meats, falafel, pita bread, etc. the entire trip!
Dan met me in Amman (capital of Jordan) where we met up with one of my oldest and closest friends, Grace, who is currently teaching English in Jordan on her Fulbright fellowship. Grace had a palatial apartment that she shared with two other Fulbright-ers (Jen and Hannah) that is roughly 10 times the size of my Munich apartment. We started the trip with shisha (tobacco that we proceeded to smoke from a hookah every day for the next five days there—I think my lungs are still coughing up smoke); it’s a Middle Eastern cultural experience that we obviously had to partake in religiously.

Our first full day there started with a delicious brunch followed by a dip in the Dead Sea – the lowest point on Earth! It’s insanely salty, which keeps the water buoyant and resulted in the inability to sink.

We followed our dip in the Dead Sea and mud treatment with teaching English to Sudanese & Somalian refugees in a Jesuit Center. Interestingly enough, Amman is a safe-haven for quite a few refugees as it has the resources and is fairly welcoming; Grace, along with other Fulbright teachers and volunteers, teaches English to children and adults who are in the process (sometimes decades long) to obtain a visa for a more developed nation. It’s incredible how important it is around the world to have a strong command of English – everyone there was so appreciative of the lessons. Our three hour lesson ended with a double dose of schwarma (grilled meats wrapped with tomatoes/tatziki in pita bread).

Day two began with Dan and me exploring the streets of Amman successfully without being scammed – never undervalue a good guy friend who can not only protect you from random men but can also mimic accents like no other and be confused for a local.

After our adventure filled with falafel and shisha smoking, Grace joined us for a four hour drive south to the city of Petra, an ancient city (established in 6th Century BC and was once the capital for the Nabataeans people) that was once a mecca of economic activity -- we experienced Petra by night [read a race to make it to this night show where Bedouins (nomadic Arabs of the desert regions of Arabia and North Africa) played a flute and some other old-time instrument]. The scenery along the ride was unbelievable – think rolling mountains vaguely similar to Southern California.

After much needed rest, we filled day three with Petra by day. Imagine scaling mountains (we really did climb hundreds of steps up and down giant mountains and ruins) and falling/tripping over and almost dying several times to get these great shots of us at different vantage points.

Of course, the trip didn’t end there; we continued our shisha tour of Jordan and headed off the next day back to Amman on the Dead Sea Highway. This time around, the “White Visitor” (female form of giant white dust/sand storms that blocked anything beyond fifty feet of eye view) wasn’t around and we got GREAT views of the Dead Sea and Israel right across the water.

We stopped off at a castle that was once used to protect the city of Karak during the 3^rd Crusade and ended the afternoon with a panoramic sun-setting view of the Dead Sea atop giant cliffs, eating ice-cream and sipping hot chocolate of course. Alas, my trip came to an end with more amazing Middle Eastern meals and sweets – I think I ate enough for two people on this trip – and shisha smoking.

Can't wait for what the next adventure holds!

Start of what is sure to be an absurd six months in Europe...

Trip to Munich: After nearly sleeping through my flight (thank God for awesome roommates who will wake you up and drive you to the airport at ungodly hours!), I landed in NYC seven hours later to have dinner with a group of college friends at a Mexican restaurant that was apparently in the middle of nowhere (but uber convenient for me to get back to the airport :)). NYC Dinner @ El Parador Cafe

My flight routed me through London Heathrow (it was my first time there, and I hope I never fly through Heathrow every again – it really is the most confusing airport I have ever had the displeasure of walking through) and then finally to Munich. SO GLAD my flight was on Saturday – apparently it started snowing on Sunday in London and half the flights were cancelled – another reason to never fly through Heathrow, it shuts down with just an inch or two of snow.

Living in Munich: So I’ve only been around for roughly two days, but I’m already in love with Munch. Aside from the fact that German food is just as terrible as I remember it from my Berlin trip, the weather is literally ten degrees or lower here right now, and I speak absolutely zero German, it’s great. Typical German meal (had this on Sunday at a beerhall / restaurant):

My apartment is roughly two feet big – please come visit, you can stay in a hotel , kidding! The location of the apt, however, is amazing (except it’s roughly 45 mins away from work) – within a block is a Tacos y Tequila restaurant as well as other cafes. Luckily Munich is fairly international regarding cuisines so I won’t starve for the next six months. Apparently, a number of Vietnamese people live in Munich (I go to Vietnamese restaurants so that I can read the menu and know what I am eating), so I’ve made friends with a local shop-owner who offered to have her son (who conveniently has a lot of time on his hands and happens to be 22 yrs old. Haha) take me around if I got bored or needed a guide.

Touring Munich: I expect there will be many more posts regarding Munich and its surrounding areas, but here’s a first glance. Stumbled across Marienplatz after going to a Catholic mass in German that lasted for 30 mins (short and sweet, and apparently anyone who is religiously affiliated has to pay a tax to the Church here); picture below of Marienplatz, the center of Munich:

Tomorrow, off to Jordan to see Grace!

Work hard, play a lot harder

Let's start where I last left you, back in Gurgaon (where the Msft Office is located, just outside of New Delhi).

Funny story of the week (pretty embarrassing but had to share):
Basically, my team has learned just how absurd I am. One day after eating a very large dinner, I thought it'd be nice to walk on the treadmill at a slow pace to help with not feeling so full. [Side note, apparently you shouldn't exercise after dinner as you need all the energy/blood you have to help with digestion.] I brought a good book along to read while on the treadmill and over an hour had passed before I finished my workout. By this time, it was around 10pm and the fitness center was completely empty except for me. I had just witnessed the maid coming to clean the area and close the door behind her and was ready to leave the gym myself. I grabbed my stuff and headed toward the doors. There were two large glass doors. I went to one and started pulling and pushing with no luck. I thought how strange it was that the door was locked and proceeded to the next door to pull and push, again with no luck at actually opening the door. Afraid I was going to break the door had I pushed or pulled any harder, I looked around frantically for a phone and could not find one. At this point, I was getting a bit mad and started swearing like a sailor, thinking how absolutely ridiculous it was that the staff would lock the gym doors with me inside. Luckily, the hotel restaurant looked right into the gym, so I pulled up one of the curtains and started tapping furiously at the window toward people at the restaurant and/or anybody who could see me. I waved my arms around like a crazy person, all the while basically swearing towards the hotel/hotel staff. This carried on for five minutes until a hotel guest left his dinner and walked to the gym doors and so very easily just pulled the door open. Yeah...needless to say, I felt like an idiot.

So aside from embarrassing stories, work has been good. It's been pretty busy as I'm wrapping up any loose ends before I leave, since surely no one will care to respond to me after I'm gone.


This past Friday, I went to the Kingdom of Dreams to watch a Magic Show (ironically with an American magician). It had to have been one of the worst shows I've ever seen...the magician showed mostly promotional 80's/90's videos of himself performing huge tricks and had very obvious slight of hand tricks. I think my mind could actually figure out what he was doing half the time (yes, it was truly that bad). Apparently, you can watch him in Atlantic City...though I would highly recommend against wasting an hour and a half of your life. On the bright side, I did get to ride a camel in the middle of the street for two bucks.

Aside from the camel riding, my team and I found this great ex-pat brewery where they brewed their own beer. The beer is pretty light and fragrant, just my type of beer. It tastes a lot like a Sam Adams...it's yummy! We had our fair share of beers and shots on Friday night, all leading me to head to bed at 2:30am....


Yeah, a little over two hours later, I was up again for my trip to the Taj Mahal. Totally hungover, for sure! It's interesting that even though the roads in Gurgaon are pretty modern with highways and interstates, etc, just a ten minute ride away from the city, you get pretty bumpy dirt roads with tons of potholes. However, in the middle of the fields, we managed to find smooth paved highways...does this make any sense? No, not much in India makes much sense to me. Four hours later on the road, we reach Agra, the city where the Taj Mahal is located. It's funny that herds of cows and goats in the middle of the road are no longer shocking to me. After almost being scammed by our driver (he said his friend could help us - for no charge - navigate the Taj Mahal lines as it's not safe and yada yada yada to which we said no thanks...note, do not ever accept 'free' services in Asia...nothing is free in Asia...the tip you will have to pay will likely be much higher than the cost if you had paid for the services elsewhere), we headed to breakfast at the ITC Mughal and then to the Taj Mahal. It's a beautiful site indeed, probably more beautiful had I not been so stubborn and turned down every "guide" that approached us, thinking I should be able to find an even better guide inside the gates. Epic fail, we had to go without a guide due to my stubbornness. My co-workers were not too impressed with the Taj, but I thought it was pretty cool! It's symmetry is incredible! The area that surrounds the mausoleum is gigantic (probably a bit excessive for a dead person's resting place).

Here's my fave picture of the Taj (we found an awesome bench under a tree with a great view!):


After the Taj, we went to the Red Fort (another cool Agra site) and the Oberoi Hotel for lunch. From the hotel, you could see a great view of the Taj...actually, you could see the Taj from basically most places in Agra...that's to give you an idea of how massive the Taj Mahal is!

So to finish up my weekend, I was able to bargain my way through Dalihaad, an "international" market (read, a market where every stall had the same trinkets/scarves, etc.). Afterwards, I met up with an old friend and teammate, Kiran, from a class I took while in Holland on Indian culture/business world. We hung out in a park in Delhi center-city. How crazy is it that I was in Delhi literally at the same time that she happened to be in Delhi for just five days!



Now back to the real world...and onto Singapore next weekend!

Corporate Yuppie - Indian style

WOW! I've had many adventures since my last post and have not posted any of the stories into this blog.

Here I go again, being seriously ridiculous around the world, though a little more business than usual.

Takeoff from Seattle: Unfortunately, I missed my "St. Practice Day" celebration in Seattle, but no fear here, my layover happened to be in Chicago where I could meet up with Brie and Lauren (no accident for sure). To appease my liver (read, further destroy my liver), Brie brought some Jameson for the car ride (NICE!) and we proceeded to an Irish pub for some drinks and lunch. Of course I had to eat a giant steak seeing as it's illegal to kill a cow in India, thus no beef for me for the next three weeks.


So I climbed onto my nonstop flight from Chicago to New Delhi a little buzzed for sure. Apparently, it's American Airlines' longest nonstop international flight, and probably not good for my health that I only got up twice the entire flight. The plane wasn't as filled with Indian families as I thought it would have been; there were quite a few tourists on the plane. Anyway, as soon as I sat down, a man approached me expecting that I switch seats with his wife since I was traveling alone and he wanted to sit next to his wife. Obviously, properly asking me to switch seats was just an afterthought...oh Asian manners...

After landing in India, I tried to purchase a SIM card, which would not work on my phone. The SIM seller was pretty mad at me as he had already activated the card. It's also interesting to note how often phones are used in this country; during the work hours, people's personal phones are just ringing blatantly and being answered no big deal.

Aside from randomness in the airport, work has been pretty good. It’s definitely exhausting as you’re with your team from morning to around 8:30/9pm. Working in an office away from main campus also requires you to work on Redmond time – I’ve had to take late night calls for meetings with managers, etc. and work around their time. Other than that, it’s not too bad. I work in a conference room with 6 other people, so it’s nice to be focused and not goofing around reading the news and such. After work, we usually go out for a pretty big meal. I think I’ve had every single Indian dish I’ve ever wanted to eat. Lots of kebabs, lamb, naan, and random food filled with yogurt and lentils, etc. Funny enough, my favorite food so far was from a Lebanese restaurant. Here are a couple of pictures:


Aside from Gurgaon, I went to Mumbai (Bombay) for the weekend. It was nice to get away from Gurgaon but I’m pretty exhausted. Traveling as a tourist in India is incredibly tiring, especially if you don’t have your own car/driver. I am constantly being scammed by the cab drivers! Of course, we couldn’t leave Mumbai without seeing an elephant for a ride on the highway…


Our trip began with a stop at the Gateway of India, probably named that because it’s a pretty large commercial port.
In going there, I was able to view the beautiful green Indian ocean water. Seriously, this country is probably one of the most polluted countries I’ve seen. Granted, I’m here during a dry season and probably did not expect as much smog and pollution everywhere since my benchmark is my last Asia trip, which was during monsoon season where the rain probably helped clear a lot of the pollution away.

Gateway of India wasn’t very much of a site, so Marissa (my coworker who is on the trip with me) and I had lunch at the Taj Mahal Hotel, which is incredibly nice, where we were able to once again have a great view of the waters (note the sarcasm, the waters are gross). Funny enough, Marissa and I ended up having dinner at the Taj as well. I think India is a little too insane to be doing much else…it’s just far too chaotic and without someone local, all you can really do is see the main touristy sites and hang out at your hotel.

Aside from the Taj Hotel, we went to the Elephanta Caves, which is an uncovered site Hindu gods’ faces carved into the rock slash side of the mountain. On the way there, I had a fun brush-up with a monkey. Note: Never dangle your camera around a monkey….bright, shiny objects tend to attract monkeys, surprise! Luckily, my camera was not stolen by the monkey, but here’s a fun picture of a monkey taking a sip of mango juice from a bottle.


At night, Marissa and I toured some local markets, full of bangles and patterned scarves. Basically, the usual trinket/tourist trap from any large city. We also found a beach near our hotel that was quite a wild celebration of sorts. Locals were celebrating Holi, a festival where one smears all types of bright colors on each other marking the beginning of Spring. On the beach, people were celebrating by having a bonfire and then running around the bonfire in circles, while also throwing colors on each other.

Before leaving Bombay, we also managed to go to Juhu Beach, where Marrisa and I were the only two not covered in bright colors, making us pretty obvious targets for Holi. We opted out of being Holied as we figured the planes would not let us back on covered in multi-colored powder (that incidentally is extremely tough to take off).



More to come next weekend!