Day One: Cool Sights, Smelly Sasians, and Death Rickshaws

Saturday, April 5th 10 a.m.

So after breakfast Tee and I hopped in a taxi and headed off to meet up with her friend Ben and his friends with whom he is traveling.

Taxis in India are ridiculous because first off you have to negotiate a price beforehand (or risk getting ripped off) AND you have to make sure it's a legitimate taxi driver (or risk getting ripped off). Staying in a nicer hotel makes this process easier because they have a fleet of reliable taxi drivers they rely on. But getting to the hotel from the airport or getting from anywhere to anywhere else is notoriously difficult.

For instance, the second you walk out from the airport, a horde of little sasians (South Asians) approach you to take their taxi service. The majority of these guys are fakers and will try to take you into the woods to rob you or bring you to the wrong hotel or an empty field and tell you your hotel has "burned down" and then bring you to an "office" where you have to book another "hotel".

Almost every India guidebook warns you about these things and you have to go to the Delhi Police Station taxi stand to book a legitimate taxi and even then it is super super sketchy.

Anywayyyyy... yes. We hopped in a taxi.



First thing we saw?

A man and his monkey.




Oh. Also...India is really really REALLY poor.

You stop at a traffic light and a million little beggars come out to try to get money from you.



It's super depressing but you're never supposed to give these kids money because they're all pimped out and have been kidnapped from smaller villages etc and so they don't see any of the money anyway. It all goes back to their evil pimp daddies. Sad.



We headed toward the backpacker-y area to find Ben and his friends.



Traffic in India is insane and people drive/bike/walk in basically every direction. There are no lane dividers and though you're supposed to drive on the left side of the street, that's really only just a suggestion.




Signs and hotel names are useless and the city is so big that nobody knows where anything is. (Even more annoying with the language barrier.)

Our cab driver had to get out and ask for directions about three times before we finally got where we were going.

At Ben's hotel we met him and his friends and their friends we had a sweet group of seven.

(From left to right: Katie, Anthony, Tee, Ben, Jessie, Matt)


It's kind of amazing that all these people just happened to be in Delhi on this one particular weekend and we managed to all come together through Brown/Penn/Stanford connections. (Elitism, yay!)

Katie has lived in India for the past year and also speaks Hindi and thus served as our tour guide for the day.

We piled into a van cab and headed off on a day of fun.






First stop...some mosque.



It was closed for prayer until later in the day so we said we'd come back later.



We walked through a market.




Crossed some streets.

(Street crossing in India is basically like human Frogger. Though the wide boulevards have traffic lights, they are universally ignored. There are no crosswalks. It is terrifying.)




We ended up at the Red Fort, built (I think) by the same dude who built the Taj Mahal.












Parts of the fort actually looked like an Ivy-league campus.




Yay!



Over the course of the next day or two you will see several pictures where random Sasians posed with us. They couldn't get enough and we literally had to start turning down photo requests at a certain point because it was getting so irritating.




Oh...ALSO, one of the weirdest things about India is that though the society is pretty homophobic, it is very common for straight men to be affectionate toward each other.

Embracing...

Arms around each other's shoulders...



Or even holding hands!



I'm serious. Like...even police officers do it.



So weird!

Also there are a shit-ton of diseased little doggies. Really sad. (Kristy look away.)




We left the fort and crossed the street again.





Walked back through the nasty market...




And returned to the mosque. Now open for visitors.














India is exhausting because over the course of one day you have to interact with literally hundreds of dirty little beggars and/or street peddlers trying to get you to buy their stupid little chess sets, fake beards, snow globes, switchblades (scary), and any other useless thing you could possibly imagine.



We eventually had to form an impenetrable huddle anytime we were stopped or figuring out directions to shield us from the beggars.



We ended up heading back through the market.



Passed a weird pantless kitten-strangling beggar-child.





Hopped into a Death Rickshaw.



There were five of us riding in this piece of crap with Anthony riding "shotgun" which really just means that the driver was sitting in his lap.




We encountered more street peddlers and beggar children selling their diarrhea-water-filled coconuts and performing acrobatic trickery respectively...




Then we stopped at a park where Katie and Anthony (the more adventurous members of our pack) opted for earwax cleanings by the dirty dirty Sasians.





It was kind of like watching a bunch of apes picking fleas off one another.



Finally, we headed to the grand bazaar to find a bar/restaurant for dinner.




Cows (sacreds animal in India) roam the streets freely.



Long day.

Much drinking needed.

Ruh Roh

Flight is boarding soon.

Time is running out.

There are way too many pictures to post.

I made it through some but it's going to have to wait until I get back.

In the meantime I uploaded a few pics to a Facebook album.



See you soon!

Arrival in India

Saturday, April 5th 8 a.m.

Arrived in Delhi.

The architecture reminds me a little bit of LA.

Blocky. Gray. Ugly.



Temperature has cooled off though. Was supposed to be incredibly hot. Instead it has rained the days prior to our arrival and it feels real nice.



Our hotel is great. We opted to not sleep in feces.





Headed straight for the buffet.



Curry before 10am? Sooooo my scene.




Was very careful with the water though.

It's funny. You look around and all you see on every table are full glasses of water.



That. And sooooo much food.




Meeting up with friends in a bit.

This is going to be incredible.

iChat how I love thee...

10-hour layover

Just got back to HKIA from Delhi.

Waiting for ma' luggage...

It was an insane weekend.

Updates coming in the next few hours.

Sasia is the absolute best.

And so it begins...

At the airport.

At my gate.

Surrounded by Sasians.

And the smell of major B.O...



It's going to be a long flight.

Graveyard Fun, Uncle Ben, and Karma

We skipped all around town yesterday to pay respects to all departed Kwans at their assorted final resting places.





We brought with us a feast of meats, some questionable veggies, oranges (Vitamin-C is very important in the afterlife), tea...



...and of course, SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS!



(Great Grandma looked very pleased.)



We hiked up to the top of the mountain where Yeh-Yeh (my gramps) is buried.








Yeh-Yeh is very important not only because he left his little village and made a name for himself in the big city, but also because he helped a lot of people survive famine and war and continues to subsidize the education and entreprenuerial endeavors of several distant Kwan cousins and uncles. He is probably the sole reason you are currently reading this posting in English.

A great man. No doubt.



We burned a crap-ton of money for him to be make sure he was provided for wherever he is.






Lastly we visited the monastery where Uncle Benny's ashes are kept.







Visiting Uncle Benny always has an effect on me. In that little room full of ashes and incense, I feel his presence.

It sucks that we never really got to know him and were kind of kept at a distance.

For those unfamiliar with the backstory, Uncle Benny had AIDS.

He didn't seek treatment because he had little/no support from the few people who knew about his condition. As such, he died quickly when we all were still relatively young.

I think the year was 1994.

He was thirty-something.



I remember our parents (his brothers and sisters-in-law) getting all weird whenever we went to hug him.

I remember having to eat off paper plates when he was around.

God that must have sucked so much.

I also just found out yesterday that Uncle Ben was never given a proper funeral. The government, uneducated and fearful about the causes and spread of AIDS, wouldn't allow it.

So he was simply cremated and placed in his monastery cubby-hole.

He died in excruciating pain. Alone.

..................



As I walked down the steps leaving the monastery, I couldn't help but think how awful it must have been to feel so rejected and unloved when he knew that he was about to die.

I thought about our family. And I thought about karma.

..............

I think we should have a proper funeral for Uncle Benny.

I think we've all grown and changed over the years. And I'm sure many of us (especially those who had all the facts) share a sense of regret.

We owe it to him. And we owe it to ourselves.

We should share the stories and memories that we do remember. Because I'm sure it wasn't always just anger, shame, and rejection. That was just the last few years.

I know there were happy years. I've seen the old photo albums.



I'm not sure how it would all come together. Or how everyone would be able to make time between school/work/babies/etc., but I think it is important and it should happen and we should all return to Hong Kong to pay tribute to yet another great Kwan.

..............

Now with all this in my head I finally got to the bottom of the hill and walked across the monastery parking lot and opened the trunk of our car to load up all the stuff we had brought with us.

And of course...sitting smack dab in the middle of the trunk in plain view for me to see was MaMa's wheelchair, emblazoned with the simplest most mind-blowing sign from the universe:

Funny India Advice

Tara: just be careful about ice in your drinks! ask if the ice is made with mineral water or tap water. otherwise you will be sad.
Sent at 6:46 PM on Monday
me: haha
sad = diarrheafest?
Tara: exactly. and if you eat spicy food, burning diarrhea.
me: oh god

Rugby

I was posting out of order because there were a ton of pics to process from Rugby.

If you missed those pics I posted them as Monday's post.

You can either click or scroll down.

Clarence... has a maid.

Clarence just got a maid.

Hilarity.

So...it's not that weird to have a live-in maid in Hong Kong.

Maids are pretty inexpensive. About $4000 HKD a month (roughly $500 US).

Most practical people (Jessup, for example) hire a maid to clean their apartment once a week or so.

But...Clarence is a single dude living by himself in a two-bedroom apartment.

I guess it's kiiiiiind of like a roommate.

Except that the roommate is a 40-year-old Filipino woman who lives in your closet, is ALWAYS around, and all she does is clean up after you and fluff your pillows and boil eggs for you whenever you desire.



Clarence you are a goofy goofy bastard.

(Rugby post is coming. There are just so many pics. Takes some time. Keep your panties on.)

Worst. Combover. Ever.