Koh Samui night market

After eating a delicious meal, we zipped on our trusty motorbike over to the Friday night market at Fisherman’s Pier on the Island. It’s a popular tourist destination and filled with lots of restaurants catering to tourists and shops with kitsch souvenirs. But we love night markets for their festive atmosphere, plentiful food and varied wares (including free samples of Thai wine made from grapes, lychee, and pineapple. YES PLEASE).

 

The second most funny thing we found at the market was a stand selling insects to eat. This maybe old hat to more experienced travelers or, I don’t know, people from Thailand, but it was very interesting for us. We spent a little time gawking and exclaiming over it but ended up passing it by for being too weird. But the market was linear so we had to pass it again. This time I was trying to get Jason to convince me that it was a good idea to eat some. He pretty much failed at that, but another foreigner standing next to us overheard our conversation and said he just got some and ate one and it wasn’t too bad.

So, there it was. We had a choice between huge locusts(?) (pictured), maggot-y worms, and crickets.

We chose the crickets.

The deep fried cricket, seasoned with soy sauce and basil, was very crunchy and didn’t really taste like much except fried matter seasoned with soy sauce and basil. …Except that weird stale flavor that comes through…

We immediately bought a coke at the stall immediately next to the cricket stand after swallowing our respective crickets.

The rest of the crickets we took back to the resort to share with the other members.

They weren’t that popular.

The first most funny thing was a young teenage girl wearing a shirt saying something like “**ck monster nazi prick” which I thought was so amusing I chased her down and asked to take a picture. Jason was so thrilled that he wanted to look at the picture right away on my camera screen and promptly deleted it. So instead of that gem, here’s another one I caught on the Bangkok BTS. And while it doesn’t invlove nazis, it’s still pretty funny.

If you can’t read it, it says “our owners crunch our bodies like crisps” surrounded by a huge heart and flowers.

Orgasmic

Well after all that seriousness yesterday, here’s something a bit lighter…

We had heard that sunsets can be really nice on the island but our resort was facing east, resulting in a slow fade from blue to grey darker blue. We made a mission of finding a nice place to watch the sun set and combined it with finding a nice place to eat. Because what is better than watching the sunset? EATING and watching the sunset is what.

So after reading some reviews online, screening both for culinary quality and sunset amazingness, we settled on a restaurant called….Orgasmic .

The name raised our expectations pretty high…

But when we got to our table, we had a pretty good feeling. If you know what I mean.

ANYWAY, snickering about the restaurant name aside, the food was delightful and for proof, here is a before and after shot of Jason’s “king sized seafood orgasmic extravaganza” or whatever his plate full of intact seafood limbs was called.

Then there was the sunset, which was pretty nice. I took a kajillion photos so instead of saying, “Lindsay why did you put so many photos of the same thing?!”, you should say “Wow, Lindsay, you did a great job narrowing so many photos down into just four”.

Then it was night.

Eat quick then go home.

“Eat quick then go home” was the advice we were given after eating at un-named Thai sidewalk eatery #1340239528034. 

We had glimpsed this strip of dinner places while wandering around the neighborhood so we decided to try it out one night. We surveyed all of the options and decided on this place because it was the most crowded. 

After eventually getting our menus, we discovered there was not one word of english and even the pictures were tiny and incomprehensible. 

So we safely wrote down “pad see you” and “pad thai” on the ordering pad and waited for the waiter to come back. 

He looked at our request. Looked at us for a minute. Then started saying thai things really fast. Pointing at this menu item and someone else’s table. He repeatedly pointed at the large, cooked, whole fish at a neighboring table and I really didn’t want that since I don’t like fish very much (yeah, Thailand is hard). He kept suggesting things and we kept not having any idea what he was talking about, so eventually we just started saying “ok” (I think “ok” is universally understood) to whatever he said. 

SURPRISE DINNER, GO.

Here is how we each greeted dinner’s arrival:

Notice the huge fish.

So, all of the surprise food turned out to be: grilled whole fish, spicy papaya salad, beef(?) soup, and fried…something balls (not pictured). 

Surprisingly they all had two things in common: 

1) They tasted FANTASTIC. 

2) They were “OMG MY MOUTH IS MELTING AND I CAN’T THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE” spicy. 

Of course it is easy to overwhelm my tender, caucasian taste buds, but Jason usually accepts the spiciness as a challenge; determined to get the better of it like Sisyphus and his boulder.

He did manage to eat quite a bit of it, but I think his spicy hubris was brought down a notch or two…

When we got our check, we tried to make light conversation (read: any words that the waitress might possibly understand) and tell her that the food was really good but really spicy. I don’t think she understood that in english so I tried the universal language of charades. 

I opened my mouth, stuck my tongue out, opened my eyes as wide as possible, and flapped both hands in front of my mouth. I thought this was easily understood as “REALLY FREAKING SPICY”.

Just before she was distracted by a nearby table, she smiled and let out a small laugh and said “you eat quick then go home!”.

Udaipur Part 1

Our next stop was Udaipur, sometimes described as the “most romantic city in India” for it’s several lakes, fantastic palaces, and lush gardens. We spent the first day wandering around the smaller Fateh Sagar Lake. We first stopped by the Saheliyon-ki-Bari or “Garden of the Maids”, remarkable for it’s fountains and landscaping. We took a nice, relaxed stroll through the grounds and saw rainbows, weird rodents (a weasel?), confusing signs, and sat on elephants.

The rest of the day we spent wandering aimlessly around the lake, discovering other gardens, stopping at some street stalls (with the usual grumbling about getting sick), and took a boat ride to another garden in the middle of the lake. The wandering was quite pleasant in this city as there were actually sidewalks in most places and also there were lots of school aged kids in uniforms around that were really excited to see us. It was pretty fun saying “hello” back to all of those excited, smiling faces.  At another time, as we were wondering on a pretty deserted piece of road, we were approached by two Indian guys. They introduced themselves to us and I was silently bracing for a sales pitch, but all they wanted was to have their picture taken with us. They traded posing with us and taking pictures with the other’s cell phone. No reason was given, so we just headed on.

We skipped lunch so we decided to head to a recommended restaurant nearby for an early dinner but it turned out it didn’t open for another few hours. So we had a few hours of downtime that could have been spent going to temples or whatever, but it so happened that I had ripped a sizable hole in the crotch of my favorite jeans that afternoon so we decided to head to a mall instead. The mall was very modern construction but had a few of those weird Indian touches.

Outside the doors there was a Zorb station set up inside a kiddie pool. Inside there were stores with ridiculous names (see above) and “Authentic American Dollar Store” (which sold almost nothing I’ve ever seen in an American Dollar Store—also see above). The escalators were motion activated so they weren’t running until you stepped on to them, which I thought was pretty neat. But the most notable crazy factor in the mall was something I think Jason can tell best: 

A quick pit stop revealed an uncharacteristically wet (even for India) mens’ room with odd acoustics.  Loud acoustics.  Like someone is opening the tap exactly in sync with you peeing.  But then, I realized there was no urinal/sink orchestra conductor; closer inspection revealed the wall-mounted porcelain fixtures lacked the stainless steel supports I have come to expect.  In other words, no one ever plumbed the urinals to a drain, leaving me more or less peeing on my shoes.  As the situation dawned on me, I screwed my face up and frowned in disgust (to what audience, I’m not really sure) and I beat a hasty, disapproving retreat.

THANKS, INDIA.

So I successfully found a pair of jeans, Jason successfully peed on his shoes, and afterwards we took a rickshaw back to the restaurant. The meal was mediocre but it was served al fresco on an atmosphereic lakeside lawn with a gorgeous view so I’ll let it slide. 

Pushkar part 2

Our Lonely Planet book warns us that “many visitors reach here and grind to a satisfied halt, experimenting variously with spirituality, bhang (marijuana), and facial hair. Time can slip by very easily in Pushkar.” And while we were a bit wary of that description, once we got there, we could see it was totally true. We had one full day in Pushkar and so we lazily woke up and ate breakfast at our hotel’s little rooftop restaurant. Besides the hippy-tastic streets, vendors, and restaurants, there wasn’t many other things listed to see except the Brahma Temple (one of very few in the world because apparently Brahma married another girl while still married to his original wife and in this part of Hindu mythology that’s frowned upon) and the bathing ghats in the lake.

And, side vent—why do tourists wear harem pants in India? They don’t wear them at home (I’m pretty sure) and Indians don’t wear them so why, when they get to India is that the dress of choice??

Pushkar is actually a very holy lake for Hindus. In legend, Brahma, the creator-god sees a demon trying to kill his children and harassing people and so slays it with his lotus-flower weapon. Three petals fell from the flower and formed three lakes, this one being the largest. When Brahma came down to the earth, he named the place where the flower (“pushpa”) fell from Brahma’s hand (“kar”) as “Pushkar”. Because of this, it is one of the five sacred pilgrimage sites for devout Hindus. Due to this religious atmosphere, all consumption of meat is forbidden (including eggs) and no alcohol is allowed. (Source)

Anyway, we decided to visit the Brahma temple since they are so rare. We were not sold on going to the ghats due to both Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor’s stories about manipulative priests separating individuals from their group and asking for unreasonable amounts of money like so: 

” we were taken to a brahmin who made some prayers for us , for blessing etc, after 10 minutes he asked how much we would like to pay, INR 10,000, 20,000 or 50,000!!!!, and when i said we dont carry such cash when we on holiday travelling, he got aggressive, he said ya you foriengners spent a lot of money etc and that he is int begging etc. anyways i dint agree to pay and was in a state of shock with the behaviour. after that they took me somewhere where there was a receipt book asking how much we want to give and then they kept pestering that they can accept USD, Euros etc, and also they can take us to the ATM machine etc.”

( Source)

(P.S. INR 10,000 is ~USD 200) And besides we could see the ghats from the rooftop restaurants?

(Picturesque view of the ghats from afar!)

So we wandered slowly around the shopping streets being harassed by surprisingly few people. It was actually quite peaceful as Indian cities go—there were very few cars/motorbikes to dodge and the weather was pleasant. Indeed, we were falling in to the lazy time sink the guidebook warned of.

The Brahma temple was quite crowded with worshippers, although as a tourist with not too much knowledge of Hinduism I’m not sure it was as interesting as many of the other temples we saw in other cities. Pictures weren’t technically allowed inside but I saw several young Indians taking pictures with their phone so I followed suit.

The rest of the time we just wandered around and I snapped some photos trying to practice some street photography. Here are the photos, hopefully you can get an idea of the town.

I guess there are about 400 other temples in this tiny town but most weren’t mentioned in the guide book. Below are two entrances to other temples we happened across while wandering around town. Apparently some other tourists decided the green one was worth visiting :)

Pushkar part 1

We did reach Pushkar on the bus, despite many stomach-turning hairpin turns. We eventually walked our way to our $8/night guest house (that I ALREADY PAID FOR ONLINE, thank you very much) and met the owner. The rooms were a little sparer than we were used to, but for $8 we couldn’t complain. It even looked cleaner than our surprise Ajmer hotel. We rested for a bit as night fell and we noticed the distant uhn-ch’s of Indian techno-pop. This continued for at least an hour until we decided to get dinner (apparently it was a full moon that day/weekend which, astrologically, was a very auspicious time to get married, so that was certainly not the last wedding we saw/heard). We chose a place in the guide book that was listed as having falafels, a type of food that above all wasn’t Indian and additionally may have raw vegetables with it. We were so so so tired of curries and turmeric and chapaties, that this possibility was incredibly exciting. We were so desperate, in fact, that we would ignore all the warnings about eating raw produce and trust that a tourist restaurant must have clean produce. Lettuce? Tzatziki sauce?! BRING IT ON.

It wasn’t a very long walk to the restaurant—Pushkar is a small town. But on the way we were passed by not one but two wedding processions and could hear at least three more. The two were basically the same. The decorated groom on a decorated white horse follows a parade of decorated women and men who are all led by a few brass instruments accompanying a rolling keyboard to loudspeaker set up. The parade is bounded on either side by a line of decorated electric lanterns carried by…band employees? Family members? Now…if the lanterns are electric and the keyboard and huge speakers are electric, how can they get power while walking down the street? Easy! A rolling generator, following a few meters behind the crowd. Doesn’t the groom look happy?

I apologize for the awkward video and my apparently super dirty lens….totally un-pro…

We finally found the restaurant and DID have falafels and they were AWESOME. The restaurant (like many in Pushkar) had rooftop seating which we opted for, and so we enjoyed dinner with the nice view over the ghats. And the lovely sounds of distant honking wedding parades.

Jal Jeera

In Ajmer, Jason and I went to a cute cafe called Mango Masala. I convinced him to order a Jal Jeera by describing it as a sweet almond milk drink. I was honestly confused and was instead referring to kheer, not Jal Jeera which is actually made of “cumin, ginger, black pepper, mint, black salt, some fruit powder (usually either mango, or some kind of citrus zest), and chili or hot pepper powder”. It wasn’t his favorite.