around the world

I've been making notes in my journal so that once I finally sit down in front of a computer, I can remember what I have to say about my various experiences. So our journey begins a few days ago, back in the states...

LAX

Muffin drove me to the airport and saw me off with much love and good advice (he's an experienced Southeast Asia traveller). There's this whole bizarre procedure where you have to get your checked luggage screened before you check in at the counter, so I waited in the wrong line for a while. Then M arrived at the airport, we determined which lines to stand in and in which order, and made it to our gate shortly before our flight started boarding. Our first flight was the longest, 14 hours, and thanks to the valium I borrowed from M, it was heaven. I think I slept for 8 hours.

Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, Taipei, Taiwan

We landed at around 6:45 a.m. local time in Taiwan, where we had a very brief layover before getting back on the same plane and heading to Malaysia. We walked around a bit, used the bathroom, and sat in a little airport restaurant drinking a Heinekin. During the flight from Taipei to Kuala Lumpur, I read Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, which was recommended to me by my dear friend R, and which I found bizarre, engaging, and enjoyable.

Empress Sepang Hotel, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Our otherwise incompetent travel agent managed to get us a free hotel room for our 8 hour layover in KL, so we had a free curry lunch, showered, and lounged around in air-conditioned comfort for a while before returning to the airport. M was beside herself with happiness when she discovered a Yankees-Red Sox game on the TV in our room.

Chennai, India

Our arrival into Chennai went smoothly. By the time we were ready to board our final flight, we'd been awake for a while and were both quite sleepy. Exacerbating this was the fact that we each consumed nearly a Schefke* at the KL airport before boarding. Needless to say, we slept through the whole flight. We don't even know how long it was. We did notice, before we passed out, that we were the only white people on the plane. The upshot of this was that the majority of the people on the flight were Indian nationals, so the "Foreign Passports" line at immigration was quite short. The kind woman who stamped our passports was very concerned about the two of us travelling alone, and very relieved to find out that we were meeting a male friend in Chennai.

I've only spent about 13 hours in Chennai so far, and a good half of that was sleeping. We met up with E the night we got in, chatted for a while, and went to bed. When we got up we had a traditional Indian breakfast (something called Puri, which is a sort of curry-esque potatoe and onion mixture that you eat with lightly fried, puffed-up flat bread. Yum. And it cost less than 50 cents (it cost 18 rupees; $1 = 45 rupees). After breakfast we looked at a couple guest houses in the area to find one better than the one where we'd stayed that night. Then we took a taxi to the central bus station, where we boarded a bus to Mamalapuram, a coastal town just 50 km (30 miles) south of Chennai.

Mamalapuram

Anyone who has travelled in a developing country will not be surprised that it took nearly 2 hours on a bus to get to a destination 30 miles away. We've been staying at a charming little guest house here, hanging out on the beach, watching World Cup matches on what seems to be the only TV in town (located outdoors at an establishment right on the beach called the Bob Marley Restaurant), and sampling the various restaurants in town. I'm still having a bit of trouble with jet lag, but I'm working on it. The ocean is a perfect temperature: whereas it's usually too cold in California (and certainly in Oregon), and it was a bit too bathwater-warm in the Gulf of Mexico, the Indian Ocean is about the temperature of tap water--warm enough to be inviting, but cool enough to be refreshing.

There's more to say, but this post is rather long already, and the ergonomics of this computer are set up for someone much shorter than me, so I'm going to go before the cramp in my shoulder gets worse.

*1 schefke = 4 beers. Definition courtesy of B.