The Indian province of Goa has over 70 kilometers of beautiful beaches and excellent cheap food. That combination kept me in my beach hut two weeks longer than planned. India's transportation network kept me there another two weeks. Flying in and out of Goa seems relatively simple, but leaving by land proved exceedingly difficult. When I finally decided to leave and head … [Read more...]
Why Couldn’t My Train Just Derail Like Everyone Else’s?
Trains in Thailand have a hard time staying on the tracks and the route from Bangkok north to Chiang Mai seems especially prone to derailments, judging by news reports and even a few first-hand accounts on other blogs (like this one by That Backpacker, which actually sparked my memory of the incident in today's post). Personally, I've only embarked on five train journeys in … [Read more...]
Erawan Waterfall: Swimming With Flesh-Eating Monsters
Kanchanaburi Thailand is home to one of the most beautiful waterfalls I've ever seen and a couple of other entirely unspectacular sights, like the bridge over the river Kwai and the very appropriately named Death Railway; appropriate not because it's dangerous, but because it moves so slowly that anyone who boards past the age of fifty will die of natural causes by the time it … [Read more...]
I will cheat you and you will like it!
I didn't have a flashlight and my friend's was dying, so we decided to just lay down where we were. Not that we had any other options. It was a little after 3am and nothing was open even if we had been able to see it. We felt around for an area that didn't give off the impression that it had recently served as a toilet, lay down and drifted off to sleep. Five minutes later I … [Read more...]
A Burmese Train — Seeing Myanmar in Slow Motion
First of all, it was hot. The temperature outside was around 40 degrees Celsius and it felt like twice that in the cramped car. We were near a window so we figured we would get a nice breeze once the train started moving. We didn't realize that the train would never really start moving. It crawled along so slowly that the only way you could get any breeze was to stick your head … [Read more...]