Vietnam

 this was a post that was long overdue it was long overdue because of various reasons but let's not get into that a lot of things happened since then and now suck now let's get back to business Of this post.not recently I hadn't been good beautiful country  called vietnam. yes this country was full of surprises yet  full of contradictions, but let me tell you this if you are from especially india and going there you might have a lot of the confusing notion, butvgo there to experience 

what the country a coffee 

Day one -  bit I am little late ride to the airport and then now get a flight over to bangkok and after a very early morning arrival I need a wiait  to vietnam there was an agonizing wait to get a visa stamp and then we got into the country

 The exchange rate of the dong to  indian rupee suddenly the had over 2 million vietnam dong hey i was a millionaire 

The taxi drive cost us around 200,000 I knew this because I had a lonely planet guide with me but still the staggering explains it was over mefirst day in ho chi minh city was tiring but when we arrive from the airport all i could think was lunch so we made our  way to the hotel and then had some an interesting vietnamese lunch have some dried meat and some soup

this point on my concerns where is primarily towards my girl who was with me on a first trip to a foreign land .she settled down went out with me the first day was spent just going down the busy roads crossing it and going to the beautiful post station are post office and and the church which was to the knock down version of notre dam in paris ,after a very hard walk in the dark near me back to hotel

Strikeworks

There was a strike called by the Ruling party of this state and this is a novel attempt to explain how it works.

On the face of it all over the world people call in to protest and people willing supporting the cause do wht they are suppose to do weather it be buring tyres or shutting shops simple!!!!!!

This is India baby things have to be different but u have to marvel at how every thing comes together like clock work at such a short notice and yet with this skill we can complete other projects on time.

It all start with the haaala gulla of one of the parties roaring ooooooooooooo asteeeeeeeeee we can no longer take it .Tommorrow the f**kin state shuts down just becs i like to to seee it that way.

All the news channels are more than happy to oblige show time ehhhhh by 8PM

The next day 8AM team of tugs with the local goons spring up from nowhere .Each of them drunk with the free packet supplied by the area corporator (if he is from the ruling party that is ).Ohh the tugs they come up from no where becs until yesterday u would have spotted them skulking around near Nair's tea shop with some free fags.....

They come down meaning 25 of them and this day they are the bosses , barge into the establishment free will and say shut the doors and co -operate we will come back to check after an hour if its still open then lets say ur roof goes up all while u are trying to get ur face of the stinking breath and fine coating on Gutka directed towards u

Well well these groups makes sure they camp on the end of that road close to a tea shop with puffing those free cigrattees not BD courtesy days collection for a job well done.

This happens only in InDIA

Well wonder if we could get them on community watch program wouldn't the crime rate come down !!!!!!!!!!!

Burn la Tera y cool the lifestyle

Well

The Talk of the town or infact the whole world has been oriented towards carbon emissions and how the developing world is showing no regard to the term pollution proceeding towards development.

Development as they (developed countries) say should be a responsible one.

ok Senor point accepted although people have been a bit irresponsible when letting their business touch the sky but lets look at whts been done and whts continually done without realizing how it might contribute to our good being.

Lets take a Country such as India or even china which are on the reciving end of the argument.

Its clear the China and India are in the top five.if looked upon US of A is close second.Looking at the population in all these countries its easy to point the figure at the big daddy.How can the population of 300 million even compare to carbon emissons of 1.3billion or pollute more than India .

Is this because the latter uses more bicycles inspite of the innumerable thermal power plants.

• Electric scotters are a plenty,Convienent and cheap
• Travel by trains are subsidised hence cheap

AS Suppose to the big daddy were

• Average family owns more than one car
• Gas guzzlers are cool
• There is more packaging in the food than the eatable itself
• Airtravel is the preferred mode of transport
• Eating fancy ready to eat meals are quiet the norm

Recycling as been a recent cool term in the west .They get those fancy recycling bins upon recyclng bottles they get tax cuts which are monitered by a uber cool and Enviro pro council offices paying big salaries to a lot more people for this job

The same scenario in a devloping country has a slight twist .We dont know this as the term recycling nor do we recieve any candies from the tax man .All we know is a cycle man comes down to our place collects all the recyclables such as plastics,glass,papers even old telephones pays the money according to the wieght leaves to the main plant to resells it again .This is a business opportunity in the east where as in the west u need govt incentives ,tax cuts ,carbon footprints etc etc.

Now u can tell me the Developed world .What rights have you got to curb our devlopment !!! rather you have shed money from your pockets to bring in Renewable energy revolution in this part than just saying do it while u guzzle away the oil deposits.

Health and Hygene part 2

Again this topic is off travel but then what the heck .I am off to educate my western peers about health and hygiene in India.

Well there are 2 parts or 2 elements of ultimate cleanness and here are the definitions

Warning - Caution trying these in ur western homes!!!!!

1. Maade or Madie(Kannada) :- This is the stuff associated with everything pure .No, no dont go deep into cleaning stuff but stuff that is holy for Example if u touch ur newly washed clothes without taking a bath then that cloth is highly and invisibly infectious meaning Mailege (Mai-lee-gee) explained later.

2.Mailege :- Anything impure meaning destroying the Maade or breaking the invisible barrier .If u are familiar with ur grandmother's saying "ayyo nan madee hal mad da" (oh he destroyed my madee) it means ur grandmother is mailige .So she has to take bath again pray again etc

Now for the complicated stuff, if you are familiar with a Chief Chef(Batta/Battru in Kannada)
A batta is ususally the head cook/chef or chief cooker!!! wht ever u would like to call him usually refered as Anna or Bab- anna short for Babu anna or he might also be call Bab- naa when yelled at .Ok lets not go off tangent here

This batturu has magical powers He is the outmost personification of Maade and thus performs all the functions equivalent of a Head chef with out any regard to health and saftey.He is such a personification of cleanness that even if the sweat from his arm pit which when dissolved in the fuming kitchen where the average temperature is 40 c is considered ok to eat.Just becs he as a sacred thread called a Janvara which acts as the ultimate cleaning agent.

Oh yeh its ok to have a BeDe(equivalent to roll on cigarette) in one hand and a ladle in the other wht the heck the janavara will take care of it

Saying all this my western peers dont we have a stonger gut than u !!!!!

Now the west is saying ur body stops producing anti/aunty bodies if there are no harmful germs. Its time that you learn a thing or 2 from us But not the Sweaty bit lol.

I didn't realise how much of this we as Indians take for granted.Recently my french friends came down to visit me where in i realised we ate the same food but our bellies reached quiet differently .This even after taking extra care not to even eat mangoes sold on streets becs they use chemical powder which would be safe even after washing in water!!!!!!!

Isn't that how mangoes taste the best just out of trees!!,Well thats when i taught about our upbringing and how much kids in the west miss out when they go around with PSP and hoodies.

Try this mate i can assure u its fun!! Ok after the delhi belly

Nasladanu (bye)

Forgive forgiving ourselves

Hello all

The long silence has been due to various reasons

My homecoming was a aftershock of the reverse culture shock .There was massive culture shock which took some time to get adjusted to, but what i taught as any man coming back was ,WOW i am back its great to be back is wht i told myself.

• No more second looks at the immigrations
• No more dirty looks just becs a brown guy is checking into Raddisions
• No more i will just be back while i scan your passport please requests

The first time i came back this is wht i told myself when i had just seen smooth traffic virtually no people in the countryside.This is India there are a lot of people here and its a big country unlike France or Belgium which have tons of money and small so its easy to complain and moan .

The next time i came back from Brazil where i saw superb road network, smooth flowing traffic. Wait a minute its a developing country just like India but then i told myself yes this is a developing but rich country in terms of natural resources and population explosion is unheard term in this part of the world.

I looked at China , Its very similar to India in terms of problems faced. OK, i give in its a communist country blah blah but when a project is started its finished at an acceptable time yes there is corruption and everything but yet there is development there is to see.

But here this is wht I see

when u walk on the roads of Bend-kal-Uru all i see is empty barricaded sections with no work what so ever going on with boards saying courtesy NAMMA METRO

GO
SLOW
MEN AT WORK

I read it as GO , Slow men at work

They have termed it as soil testing, well any sensible person would not take most part of 2 yrs to do it .Majority of the construction is on hold becs the plan is clashing with some f****er Underpasses take a best part of 3 years to be made and yet there are no Traffic signals on the exit roads which cause commotion and accidents .

Plans are made according to the corporater and the some one else wims and fancies .Muti storey car parks are still not a reality , Parks, lakes and other public places are open urinals

Ok i have been a bit of a cynic but I like Bangalore and want a Bangalore i grew up in .Were trees were plentiful ,rains were pleasant ,people were caring and some child going in and open drain was a story heard in fiction novels.Worse still his body not being found after a massive search was unheard

I openly agree everybody including me is guilty to the same degree. Our swalpi adjust maadi and hoogle bidreee mentality has to be shot out we need to stand up at least maintain some CLEANUU SENSEUUU in Public places on our part and then turn our eyes on to the authority.

Remember Govt is always a representative of our behavior weather we like them or not.

Landing gears and Flu tests

After this blog I have traveled to some far off lands but will post about these later

Now let me tell u some news- “I moved back to my motherland”

The land I was born an brought up in .Let me tell u now the intricacies of living in a developed European country coming to this unfinished world and the changes u start to see

This post contains a series of incidents (any mention of people and place are always real and in no case factious so go look for them)

Landed in the airport where we were all handed over some forms to get clear of SWINE FLU. All but about 100 passengers where not given these forms and we were told to wait for just 5 mins .This five minutes I should have known to be much longer so I should have just dropped my back pack and slept but NO

I waited like a Moron for an hour with no sight of forms after which it was suddenly ok to join the Queue Where there were about 10 doctors in charge clearing of the entire inbound passengers of this Airport.

These Docs where dressed obviously in White with a Green mask resembled those fake bollywood doctors with masks who come out after the Operation in the movie and saying “Ab sab kuch oske haat me hai “(Now everything is in god’s hands)

It was no different here either .To get cleared you where are asked just 3 Questions

Do u have cold?

No

How about Fever?

No

So do u have F#@@ cough then?

No

Hurray u are clear of swine flu

Then on the my own countries immigration the guy asked me if I had tampered my passport .After a lengthy explanation I was let out

Viola I was in my land after just a slight delay of 3 hrs.

And my countrymen’s explanation to this Swine flu incident was that I was too Europeanized and these doctors are so talented that they spot Swine flu just by looking

Mexico are u listening!!!!!

Behind the former Iron Curtain - Ultimo entry

Next day it was time for an early start went to Fovam Ter (Great market hall) it was good but nothing great ,but got a glimpse of life during the communist time .After a lot of haggling for about 50p, got a lot of alcohol

Caught a train to go up to see the Danube Bend ,Schentendre where i ordered a Unicum in Hungarian and just for that and as a matter of appreciation i got it for free.This place was very special calm without much people so it was time for me to catch up with my dairy.Train back to the hostel and had to pack up to leave the next day

Met a very intelligent economist from Belgium who was proud to be Flemish . We all went for dinner in Stex together to have some proper Hungarian wine and food. Food was great i would suggest this restaurant which is just about 2 mins walk from Rakoczi station not too pricey but very tasty

The bill came up to be about 16500 HUF which ment each of us had to pay up about £10 including wine .For the amount of food we had and the wine it was worth it.

I always wanted to try shooting with the AK's .Real guns remember you could try this in a shooting range but i am afraid this had to wait for later so out of the hostel after purchasing the alcohol and then to Keleti station to catch a train again and again i was running just on time to Bratislava.

A couple of hours to kill in this city so put my bag on to the clock room and off i Go . Spend about 5 hours in this city which was a wise decision .I didn't see any thing, special mind u i had just visited 3 beauties of central Europe so it was a bit of a disappointment a couple of photographs later i was back on the Vienna(Bratislava) which ryan air Claims to be Vienna but the airport is not even in the same country nevertheless cheap flight and off i went to my adopted home land.