Laos Now

After a lovely week in India we have landed in Laos and have the next week to spend here between two cities, Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng. We booked a tour tomorrow with a boat ride on the Mekong River, a stop at a local village, a waterfall visit and a 40 kilometer bike ride back. It may rain all day tomorrow, should make for quite the adventure. And frankly after a week of Indian food, we could use the exercise. Kris went a little looney this morning and started using his packed suitcase as weights:)

Luang Prabang is a sweet little town right on the Mekong River. Unfortunately we are not the only white faces in the town, which was pretty much the experience we had in Mumbai. Everywhere we went people stared at us like we were on parade. I guess that happens when you are Bollywood stars:) But, alas here is Luang Prabang have yet to be discovered, we'll give them a few more days. Our guesthouse is located right by the night market, which they have every night. It's loaded with all types of handicrafts and Beer Loa T-shirts (the local brew). I wish that we could buy tons of stuff to bring home, but unfortunately we'll have to carry whatever we purchase for the next 30 days, so we'll probably just pick one lucky item.

Surprisingly we didn't find any markets like this in Mumbai, but maybe we were looking in the wrong places (The restaurants, just kidding:)). We did make it to Namita's brother's store before we left and made a few purchases, they will be shipping it to us. He is an artist and buys hand crafted items made in India and sells them at his 3 bungalow store, on for furniture, one for textiles, and one for jewelry and small home items. Aneesh and Namita's home is mostly furnished and decorated with items from the store. The furniture is especially amazing, but way too expensive to get back home:(

India was a great experience and we'd love to go back. Jet lag hit us harder than expected and we didn't quite feel settled until Saturday and had to leave Monday. It would have been nice to have one more week. Mumbai is a crazy place with life flying at you every minute from every which direction. Aneesh took the week off and he and Namita were amazing hosts. We hit up all the hot spots, met their friends who are all really nice and pretty much lived like kings. And we did manage to get invited to a wedding in November, along with 500 other guests. Now that would be an experience.

We already miss baby Niel, who was just too sweet and cute for words. It was hard to say goodbye to them all at the airport, not knowing when we'll see them again. But we are excited to venture off on our own and see what kind of trouble we can get into.

Sorry for the mess

I have not quite gotten the hang of posting pictures, so sorry if the page looks like a bit of a mess. Hopefully I'll be able to work out the kinks soon:)

Indian Village

On Friday we drove out to see a house that Namita's parents are building near a lake about 3 hours away from Mumbai. Once you get out of the city (an hour drive with traffic) the whole landscape competely changes and you find yourself surrounded by lush green mountains. It was absolutely beautiful and peaceful, such a stark contrast to the chaos of Mumbai.

In order to get to the house you drive through a few Indian villages, which were amazing to see. The women were wearing vibrant colored saris in purples, yellows, blues, pinks and more, and many were traveling along the side of the road balancing their things on their heads. I wish we would have gotten some pictures, but it felt a bit intrusive to point our cameras out at them, so we just took the moment in. We passed by many houses that were patched together with a combination of corrugated steel, wood, straw and cow dung. Most shocking was to see that many houses also had satellite TV dishes perched upon their roofs. I guess no home is complete without TV, even in such rural surroundings.

What Does He Eat?

Today our friend Aneesh offered to take us to the gym, since we were still full from yesterday's lunch! Turns out that the gym was more like a country club, amazingly nice with several restaurants, a bar, cricket fields, badmitton and squash courts, and a gym room. We went into the gym room which had several trainers on staff who are there to help you with your work out. Once Kris went towards the weights all of the trainers swarmed him and started to chat him up and offer him lifting advice. When he went to take a water break they went up to Aneesh and started to ask all sorts of questions about Kris, mostly about his fitness and if all American guys were as built as he is. Aneesh said, no, they are not all like that, Kris just works out regularly. To which one guys said, well what does he eat?

Answer....

Yes Indian food in India is better than Indian food in the U.S. I strongly suggest coming....and yes that is all I know so far.

Live From Mumbai!

We've arrived! After over 20 hours of flight Kris and I have arrived in Mumbai and are settling in at our friends Namita and Aneesh's house. We've had a bit of jetlag, but are so happy to have started our adventures. Our friends had a baby last November and he is amazingly cute and such a happy little guy. His name is Niel and we've had a great time hanging out with him.

Today we took a cab ride into town, a gut wrenching experience, as everyone drives looking out for their own, squeezing 4 cars across a 2 lane highway with pedestrians darting in between. That worked up quite an appetite for lunch at an amazing restaurant called Khyber. Before we left the U.S. a few people asked us if the Indian food in India was better than it was in the U.S., and now that we are here we know that the simple answer is yes, definitely yes! Our plates were piled high with kebabs, palak masala, nann and chicken tika masala... everything was amazingly delicious and we are still full, even though lunch was over 8 hours ago. After lunch we wandered around an area called Colaba, looking over street vendors stands selling fruit, jewelry, purses, T-shirts, you name it. And, I'm happy to report that we were approached not once but twice to star in a Bollywood film. Apparently we have a big future here and it's tempting to stay for our true calling, Bollywood.

We also made it to the gateway of India, a huge landmark where the English first arrived in India. It's right across from the Taj Hotel, where the terrorist attacks occurred in November of last year. We went inside the hotel and walked around some. They have a memorial statue up in the main lobby in tribute to all the staff and guests who lost their lives. Parts of the hotel that were used by the terrorists while the military tried to gain control of the situation were still closed off. The media reported that around 300 people were either injured or killed in the attacks, but our friends say that a more accurate number is closer to 1,000. Pretty sad. At first the media reported that there were 20 people responsible for the attacks, then 12 were captured or killed, after which the media changed the number of people responsible to 12. Needless to say, the media is not always to be trusted, but regardless of the fact it is truly a sad memory in Mumbai history.

After that we cabbed home, which in Mumbai traffic took 90 minutes to get the 12 miles back. And cabs are supposedly the most efficient way to get around. Tonight we' re going to spend the night at home catching up with our friends and sleeping off the rest of our jet lag. We have another 4 full days in the city to explore and wander, who knows whats next:)