Rabid Rats, Bats and Dogs and Two Dead Tuk Tuk Drivers

I'm sure you're wondering what the title of this post is all about! Be patient...I'll get to that in a bit.

After the fun of the island and a day of recovery in Sihanoukville I was collected from my hostel by a lady called Shelbee and taken to her house in Otres Village on the southern coast of Cambodia. The plan was to stay at her house, which she built herself, and help her with odd jobs for a few hours a day in exchange for free accommodation and breakfast. I found Shelbee through a website called HelpX which is not unlike the WWOOFing site, through which I arranged my stint on the organic farm in Malaysia last December, however HelpX is not limited to farms and puts volunteers in touch with people who need help with anything from English teaching to bar work. It's a fantastic way to save money whilst travelling but also serves as an opportunity to be involved in a local community rather than purely sticking to all the tourist areas, sights and traps. I've been offered many bar jobs throughout my travels in SE Asia however they breed a type of mandatory, hardcore drinking culture that I'd prefer not to be forced into! We arrived at her three storey, wooden house on a peaceful road surrounded by mango trees and I thought to myself "yep, I'm going to be very happy here for the next few days", particularly after the crazy week I'd just had.

Shelbee has four dogs in total - this one is a Mexican Hairless called Bambi. I painted her by accident.

Close up of a tiny Cambodian spider and its multiple eyes!

Shortly after we'd got there one of her friends came to visit and casually asked me if I'd met Shelbee's two 'killers' yet...ummm no?! These formidable sounding beasts turned out to be her guard dog Rottweilers, Sacha and Pacha, trained to attack intruders - a security method that Shelbee assured me was essential in a Cambodian village, particularly since there had been a lot of recent robberies. For the first few days, whilst they learnt that I was a friend of Shelbee's and not to be attacked, the dogs were kept behind closed doors and slowly introduced to me. On the second day, as I was coming downstairs, the Rotweilers mistook me for an intruder and started barking ferociously, one of them came charging towards me and started to bite my leg just as Shelbee yelled at them to back off. Luckily the dog's teeth didn't pierce my skin and I was merely left with a purple and blue bruise above my knee (plus I was uncontrollably shaking all over - scary stuff!!!). I know many of you may think I was mad to stay on after that but in the end they were just doing what they're trained to do and after it happened, bizarrely, the dogs began to take a shine to me and the male dog who'd bitten me, Pacha, constantly followed me around the house and with each wiggle of his happy, stumpy tail my fear dissolved.

Pacha, the 'killer' who turned out to be my little buddy!

I was told that a dog down the road had rabies and rumour had it that it'd contracted it from a rat or a bat. As if that didn't worry me enough Shelbee said that the 'tuk tuk mafia' were in town robbing houses and apparently they are like ninjas when it comes to breaking into buildings. It sounds humorous but it wasn't. I didn't sleep a wink that night. Every sound was a potential mafia-ninja or rabid bat/rat/dog to me!! I risked stabbing myself in the face by sleeping with my open pen knife in my hand. This was definitely a T.I.A. moment (let me refer you to my previous blog post)! The next morning we heard on the grapevine that a robbery during the night had turned bloody only five doors down from us. Shelbee and I went for dinner in the village to get all the gossip; two 'mafia' members had broken into a house and stabbed the security guard, the police had been called and they shot both of the robbers dead on sight as an example to any other potential criminals. Wow...

Shelbee and I.

My view whilst going for an evening run.

Despite the hazards, believe it or not, I was very content during my six nights stay; if travelling teaches you anything it's making the most of any situation plus, after being on the road for so long, I was desperate to save some money. I had the whole top floor of the house to myself, my host would cook me a mega breakfast every morning and I'd spend 3-4 hours painting her house whilst listening to psytrance, drinking copious amounts of PG Tips and chatting about our travels - Shelbee has had a very interesting life and she told me all about her crazy times living in London, Sri Lanka and Goa. We'd be finished by lunch time and I'd spend my afternoons sprawled out on the sand or going for runs along the beach.

T.I.A.

I've been saving this blog title for a while - it stands for 'This Is Asia' - and it's something I say to myself, whilst shrugging, when things I see and experience here all get a bit too much (ok I have to confess that I may have slightly plagiarised this acronym from the film 'Blood Diamond' where it stands for 'This Is Africa'!! It still works though?!). Don't get me wrong, I'm in love with this continent - the fascinating cultures, unbeatable landscapes and scenery, heavenly food, smiling people...I could go on. However sometimes the constant power cuts, chronic lateness, dirtiness, starkly different behaviours and social norms of the people or the relaxed nature of some of the 'undeveloped' and 'developing' countries that Asia calls its own can be extremely frustrating, dangerous and occasionally even upsetting. It's all part of the fun of travelling of course, to experience other cultures.


Here are a few 'T.I.A.' moments from Koh Rong Island in Cambodia:

Wherever you go in Asia it seems as if you can never get away from dogs: stray dogs, rabid dogs, beach dogs, injured dogs, dogs being kicked by locals, dogs barking through the night, pet dogs, DOG MEAT and cuddly puppies to name a few. Our experience on Koh Rong was initially with the latter; we played with a litter of puppies in a restaurant whilst their mother dozed lazily in the corner. Later that day, whilst sitting on the communal balcony of our guesthouse desperately trying to escape our sweltering room, we saw all of the island dogs - around twenty to thirty - crowding together making a massive commotion and the mother dog we'd met in the restaurant earlier was crying out with the most heart-wrenching yelps I've ever heard. It transpires that two policemen visited the small island (due to a few recent attacks on tourists which made the police 'lose face'- a very bad thing in Khmer culture), saw that there was a new litter of puppies, stuffed them into a sack and DROWNED them further down the beach in the name of population control. I will never, never forget witnessing this and the wailing from the mother dog that continued long into the night. 

Sara with one of the puppies.

Koh Rong boat harbour.

Moving on from the puppy incident (that we all had to eventually ban ourselves from talking about as it was too sad) I'll tell you about the one and only day that we forced ourselves to get up and do something in the daytime on Koh Rong amidst a hazy seesaw of awesome nights out and filthy hangovers; we arranged a cheap boat trip around the island to primarily see bio luminescent plankton after sunset but also to snorkel, fish and visit the pure white sands of the isolated 'Long Beach'. Well, it turns out that 'cheap' on Koh Rong doesn't even buy you an adult to operate the boat...three tiny boys between the ages of about six and twelve were driving twenty odd backpackers around in the sea. No adult in sight. It was all a bit of a laugh at first as we took in the beautiful scenery, had a swim in the warm water and caught small, beautiful, iridescent, pink fish to then have them served up to us an hour later barbecued and plonked inside a polystyrene container! After a fun, sun-filled day the kids who were driving us thought it would be funny to race another boat on the way back causing us to crash into them, violently tipping our boat only millimetres short of capsizing in the middle of the choppy ocean waves at night. Not such a laugh anymore. The boys then took us thirty metres from the shore of the main strip half an hour earlier than expected, told us nonchalantly "no plankton" (the reason we had all initially bought the ticket) and then made us wade through the sea to the beach in the dark with our bags held over our heads. We tracked down the father of the boys who had been sitting around doing nothing all day making a ridiculous amount of profit from his children's work and tried to voice our concerns, particularly in respect to the boat crash, but in the end we are merely visitors in this country and we have no right no interfere. 

Catch of the day!

Teeny little lad operating the anchor.

Yes, this IS Asia and drowned puppies, day trips run by small children and much worse things unfortunately do happen; I've seen a dog eat a dead body and had a monkey wee in my face in India, been spat on in Malaysia and had a scary experience with a taxi driver in Vietnam to name a few (however let's not forget the vile things that go on in Western cultures despite how 'modern' and 'developed' we claim to be...). Despite these incidents my time on this continent has been full of gloriously unexpected ups and downs and I did actually have one of the most fun weeks of my life on Koh Rong. Julie and Lizette unfortunately had to leave halfway through but by the end of our time on the island Sara and I knew all the Khmer and western staff, had some hilarious memories, felt half dead and were ready for a week in bed to recover!

Us four girls on Long Beach.

We returned to the main land and celebrated our survival with a movie, snacks and long awaited air con ahhhhhhh.

Minus One iPhone, Minus One Evie

After the calm and relaxation of Mui Ne we headed towards Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). The uncomfortable five hour overnight bus only allowed us about two hours sleep and as we stumbled off the bus, half asleep at 5am in the dark, we were met by the usual crowd of taxi and motorbike taxi drivers encircling us and insisting that they drive us to our hostel. I have experienced this many times in Asia and I'm certain that the overwhelming scenario is a sales tactic to dupe dazed tourists into deals they would otherwise avoid. I'd been warned that scams are rife amongst HCMC drivers and this was further reason to perform my usual ritual of moving away from the crowd and taking a minute to get my bearings; being dropped off at a recognisable bus station is rare and in this case we'd been dumped on the side of an unknown road so we were unable to locate our hostel without WiFi and GPS and we eventually had to agree to get in a taxi as we had no other choice. The taxi ended up driving us in round in a perfect circle and when he stopped we realised we could have easily walked, as we pointed this out to him he suddenly became aggressive and began shouting at us to get out whilst chucking our bags into the traffic! Not ideal at 5am in the morning! The screaming continued as we hurriedly got out, scraped our bags off the street and the taxi screeched off into the night. Shocked and shaken up we checked our bags and at that point I realised that in the commotion my iPhone had fallen out!!! I relied on that phone for a lot of things during this trip and I've been extremely careful with my stuff to the point of paranoia so I was horrendously annoyed that I'd lost it (I did everything I could to recover it including pacing up and down the street where we were dropped off for an hour trying to find the driver). Putting my acute frustration aside I was thankful that it wasn't my passport I'd lost. We slept in the hostel communal area until check in time and spent the day getting lost amongst the smorgasbord of noises and colour that define HCMC before going to the cinema. The southern city is somewhat more modern than Vietnam's capital Hanoi and this is evident in the abundance of luxury hotels, brand new motor bikes and flashy iPhones (perhaps one of them is my lost phone?!) however the hectic traffic still prevails so that every time you cross a street you say a little prayer in the hope you'll make it to the other side alive.

We took a 9p bus to a water park in a built up area of the city. We were amongst the vast minority of tourists there whilst Vietnamese families were still celebrating the tail-end of Tet.

Dancing with the locals in a Vietnamese club.

A rare quiet street in HCMC (check out the bundles of cables).

The following morning was Evie's last day and we'd only had a couple of hours sleep when we awoke early to fit as much in to her last morning as possible. We started off visiting the tunnels of Cu Chi where war guerrillas from the north of Vietnam hid from the Americans during the conflict over 40 years ago; the tunnels were dark, humid, full of mosquitoes and absolutely tiny, not only because they were 'Asian size' but also the fighters were small due to malnourishment and Vitamin D deficiencies after spending so long underground. We learnt about their cunning tactics such as wearing their shoes backwards to give the appearance that their footsteps were going in the opposite direction, pits filled with metal spikes covered with bamboo and breathing holes in the tunnels disguised as ant hills. Following this we visited the war museum which, although extremely biased due to propaganda, was a massive eye opener into the horrifying circumstances of the American/Vietnam war. The photos depicted murdered families and deformed children due to Agent Orange chemicals that were dropped by the Americans to kill crops.

This is one of the original concealed entrances to the tunnels that apparently has been made bigger(!!!) for westerners (it was still tiny).

We crawled along the underground tunnels for over 150 metres. 

This photo from the museum depicts American GIs proudly posing with the dismembered heads of Vietnamese men.

It was time to say goodbye to my friend Evie. When you decide to spend 24/7 with someone for two months it's hardly surprising that you form friendships as deep as if you'd known each other for a decade, also when you live through the highs a lows of travelling through Asia with someone you become very close; in short I will miss her a lot! I am now a bonafide solo female traveller again ready to conquer the world!

So far this post has been ever so serious so I'll end in on a light note; as you may know I've made it my mission to try as much food - that the western world would deem 'strange' - as possible so, along with my friends Sam and Kieran who we've been bumping into all over Vietnam (very common considering the long and thin shape of the country, everyone is following a similar route either up or down), I went to a Vietnamese restaurant and tried bull penis and testicles!

Spice stall at a local market.

We didn't want to commit to the bull penis as a main meal so we ordered a DIY table BBQ as well.

The bull body parts were served chopped up in a lump inside a cauldron full of soup - does this sound appetising to you??! No?!

Massive Goodbyes and Mammoth Journeys

After all the antics on Koh Phangan we were looking for a different sort of holiday (i.e. drink-free!) when we got the ferry to neighbouring island Koh Samui. We found a hotel that had a dorm room for me as well as a private room for Jo and Tom and we spent the first night severely recharging our batteries. The next day we thought it would be good to get involved with a bit of Thai culture so we visited 'Big Buddha' - a large gold Buddha on top of a temple - where Joanna got shouted at by a very angry monk (far from the serene image you might have in your mind of an enlightened being!) because she had her shoulders on show, despite the fact that she was reaching in her bag at that moment for a cover-up.

Big Buddha.

Joanna and Tom got 'blessed' by a monk after donating a small amount of money.

Dinner by the beach.

We'd heard that there was a national park on the island with waterfalls worth visiting however the taxis can get quite expensive so we hired two mopeds (Joanna on the back of Tom's and me on my own) and explored the island. I've done this on my travels a few times now and it's my all time favourite way to see a country. We navigated our way to the national park and trekked through the sweltering jungle to the waterfall where we cooled off in the fresh water.

Helmet shot!

Joanna and Tom went on an elephant ride - I had great fun following them with their DSLR.

Swimming in the waterfall.

That afternoon we met up with my friend, Ash, who was on the island to do an English teacher training course. We'd purposefully made sure we were on the island at the same time but this didn't make it any less surreal meeting her here on a tropical island in Asia! The following day Joanna and Tom left to go to another island to have their own holiday - it has been brilliant having them here for Christmas and New year and we've had so much fun in the two weeks they've been in Thailand!

Reunited with Ash!

This protruding stone on Koh Samui is called 'Grandmother rock' although many say it looks like something else all together...

It was time for me to leave Thailand again because I wanted to do some more 'proper travelling' i.e. less partying and more integration with local culture. I'd made arrangements to meet up with Vic and Evie, two girls I'd made friends with a few months ago, in neighbouring country Laos but little did I know how horrendous the journey was going to be! I started off in a taxi with a maniac driver - little did I know this was because he was running late which I discovered when we arrived at the bus terminal and the bus was driving off without me! I had to sprint across the station with my backpacks and the driver was incredibly rude to me when he eventually stopped. After that the bus drove on a ferry and when we reached the mainland the bus started driving off with my big backpack in the cargo hold because they'd neglected to tell me that I had to change bus! Once I'd retrieved my bag I got on another bus and was taken to an unknown Thai town and told to wait for yet another bus; whilst I was waiting a motorbike crash happened right in front of me and the man involved was badly hurt, covered in blood and unconscious for half an hour. When I eventually reached Bangkok at 5.30am I was exhausted, drained and hoping nothing more would go wrong. I needed to wait for another overnight bus and had thirteen hours to kill so booked myself into a cheap hostel to get some shut-eye. When I woke up I opened my backpack to find that someone, possibly the bus driver, had been through all my things - including my underwear - and one of my spare credit cards had been stolen. This journey was becoming ridiculous. I was also very worried about crossing the border to Laos in time before my visa for Thailand ran out. Two mini bus taxis and an overnight bus later I finally crossed the Thai/Lao border but the journey wasn't over yet; luckily I met an English girl on the bus, the only other tourist, and she was going to the same place as me so we shared a taxi to the bus station and crammed in the back of a truck with forty other locals for four boiling hours. At one point the truck stopped and women selling meat on sticks surrounded the vehicle trying to sell their wares; some of them climbed in the back and were literally lying on top of us shoving the meat in our faces, it was then that we realised some of the sticks were massive, cooked rats! After the truck we walked under the fierce Laos sun to catch a longtail boat to Don Det island. After fifty one hours and many disasters I've never been so happy to arrive somewhere - I can't complain as, after all, I did say I wanted to do some 'proper travelling'....

Chicken and rat meat sticks.

The final leg of my mammoth journey.

Ectoplasm

'Popping' to Malaysia wasn't originally on my itinerary but it makes sense to visit peninsular Malaysia so I can re-enter Thailand and get another thirty day visa as I have visitors coming to see me in Thailand over the Christmas period. Before I reach Kuala Lumpa, where I'll fly back into Thailand, I have two weeks to explore the country so I caught an overnight ferry from Koh Tao which I heard one man describe as a 'slave ship' because it consists of a large cabin with row after row of bunk beds. After two subsequent bus trips and two rides in the back of pick-up trucks, 22 hours later I arrived at the Malaysian island Penang, which is not far from the border, and I made my way to a hostel recommended to me called Reggae.

My hostel room had 12 beds all inserted into the wall with a curtain for privacy and your own light and plug socket.

Georgetown in Penang has lots of street art that you can walk amongst (it mainly depicts cats and nobody seemed to know why)

I was in Penang for three days and each morning when I came down for breakfast the old man working there would give me a hug and babble away in what I thought was Malay but later found out was extremely strong-accented English; his name was Charlie and he arranged a trip to Penang's Monkey Beach with me and some other people from the hostel.

'Uncle Charlie'; I thought he was earning money out of the excursion but it turns out he just likes hanging around with young people!

Monkey beach.

Here's something about monkeys for you: they are aggressive and thieving!

My bandaged leg prevented me from swimming (boohoo poor me...).

Malaysia is known for its eclectic mix of cultures, namely Malay, Chinese and Indian, and Penang's street food famously exhibits the culinary best of these cultures and I was determined to try some before I moved on so I went to a food hawker stall area with some other people from Reggae hostel.

The food court was a collection of tables surrounded by food stalls from all around the world from Japan to Armenia.

I was so excited to try a prawn Laksa after hearing people rave about Penang street food but I'm sorry to say it was foul and reminded me of the Myanmar 'monkey poo soup'...

Bag snatching by motorcyclists is common here so imagine how scared I was when a man on a bike grabbed hold of my arm on the street as he rode past! Thankfully he was just warning me to wear my bag across my body which I usually do but I'd got distracted because I'd bumped into some people I'd met in the back of a truck two days before. That time I was lucky. What wasn't lucky was when another man on a bike spat all the way down my back, covering my arm and my top with a massive, stringy, slimy gob (how is it possible for that much ectoplasm-like-goop to come out of one man?!) in between gags I stumbled into a shop to buy something to clean myself (bleach? petrol and a match??) and just at that moment the radio played a public service announcement advising people not to spit in public...

Planking on an Elephant's Head

I slept most of Wednesday and only emerged from my hotel for the most essential supplies i.e. water, diet coke and pomegranates, the latter being my new addiction - I eat them in my room with my swiss army knife. On Thursday I had arranged to meet an Indian man called Manish who my friend, Paula, had previously hired as a guide (and later a 'bodyguard' in Delhi). My rickshaw was ten minutes late to our agreed meeting place and I couldn't see him anywhere so I asked the nearest man if I could use his phone; as I dialled the number and pressed the call button the screen flashed up with the name Manish! "You know Manish??", I asked in surprise - what were the chances? At that moment Manish appeared with a Diet Coke in his hand that he'd bought especially for me as Paula had told him I like it (it isn't easy to find here). He showed me around Jaipur's ancient Amber Palace which had taken over 150 years to build. He was unlike a lot of the men I had encountered here because he didn't stare or ask a thousand intrusive questions; instead we chatted about India and our respective lives.

Jaipur's Amber Palace.

Ancient floating saffron gardens.

One of the many many honey bee hives in Jaipur.

We went to a temple and a priest who looked about 100 years old wearing only an orange loin cloth painted a red bindi on our foreheads. I was expecting him to ask for money afterwards but because I was with my Indian guide he didn't. In fact, having a man with me, particularly an Indian one, meant I was protected from everyone who sees me as a 'walking wallet' and I got 'Indian prices' for everything (prices are never marked and usually people take one look at my white face and quadruple the price). We sat and had tea with his family members and friends; I felt very comfortable around them and we chatted for ages. Next he took me to an elephant village which is a charity set up to promote the welfare of the Indian elephants.

His friend took us to the elephant sanctuary on his motorbike and he asked Manish if he could take a photo of us on it because he had never spoken to a white person before!

They asked me whether I wanted to ride the elephant the western way or the fun way, naturally I chose the fun way and this meant riding on my own with no saddle or seat! They asked the same question about getting on the elephant - did I want to use a ladder or do it the fun way?? Stupid question. The elephant held out its trunk for me and I stood on it while holding its ears from the front and it lifted me over its head. Right at that moment my trousers split at the bum all the way from the crotch down to the back of my knees and everything was on show!!! I was planking on the elephant's head with my backside on show and I had no idea how I was going to manoeuvre on to it whilst maintaining what little dignity I had left! Never have I been in a more ridiculous situation!

PLANKING on an elephant's head!!!

Eventually I got in to a seated position on the elephant's shoulders after several minutes of thrashing around; I quickly tucked my trousers around me and tried desperately to forget what had just happened whilst searching the ten Indian men's faces that were watching to gauge how much they had seen. They taught me how to 'drive' the elephant as I sat on its neck with its shoulder joints undulating beneath me making me feel like I was going to topple off!

Riding the elephant Indian style!

As soon as I got off I wrapped my cardigan around me and scuttled off. Manish was a perfect gentleman and assured me nobody saw anything but I highly doubt that and I think he was just trying to be nice.

It started raining like crazy when we were waiting for a bus back-this is me with my Indian guide completely soaked.

The bus was full of locals and they just couldn't believe what they saw when a soaked, bare-shouldered western girl got on with a Indian man. Manish took me to buy some trousers straight away thankfully! We ate lunch at a village cafe and the cooks were shocked when I asked for the parathas (Indian bread) to be more spicy. The food was insanely cheap and tasty. After eating Manish took me to get my palm read; the man asked me nothing about myself and proceeded to tell me that I'm going to live until at least 80, my job line shows I'm going to start a career at the age of 28 and may even start my own business. He says I am not appreciated enough by people around me and my downfalls are a quick temper and being too much of a perfectionist!

I had arranged to meet the English couple for dinner (the ones I had met on the train to Agra - they were now in the same place as me) and I had to down two coffees because I was exhausted from being up all night with infuriatingly itchy mosquito bites. We all like spicy food and implored the waiters to hit us with their best attempt but it still wasn't hot enough! We aren't sure whether Indians being hardcore with spicy food is a myth or whether they dull it down for us despite our relentless requests to make it as spicy as possible; although there are chilies in a lot of dishes I think India's reputation for spicy food is misinterpreted and it is perhaps spices rather than hotness that this refers to. As we left the restaurant a man with a creepy puppet insisted on putting on a show for us - he gave us all a handmade toy elephant despite us saying we had no money to give him. He asked for a souvenir in return, we had nothing so Sam gave him the equivalent of £1, I gave him 6p and a shopping receipt and Hetty gave him a hand massage! He seemed satisfied with this and so we got up and went on our way!

One of my favourite days in India so far!

Agro in Agra

On Monday morning Paula and I said our goodbyes to each other because we intended to visit different parts of India. I cannot explain how strange it is to walk into a train station on your own and have several hundred Indians stop what they're doing and stare at you. Hundreds of eyes followed me as I walked with my big backpacks trying to find the board that tells you what platform your train is on, they stared while I got a cup of tea and continued to look when I sat down. You know when you catch someone looking at you and they hurriedly look away? It isn't like that here, they carry on looking right at you and if you make the mistake of making eye contact this can be perceived as a come-on so you have to be careful. This is what it must feel like to be famous! Or what it's like to be a grotesque alien, I'm undecided.

I've been a little ill for the past few days - let's call it traveller's stomach if you know what I mean. Because of this I've been dreading this journey because the amenities on the train consist of a hole in the train floor...this provides a great view of the train tracks but not so great comfort when you're feeling ill! Thank Buddha (and Immodium) I got through it ok! I happened to be seated next to the only other non-Indians on the train and they were a couple from England. We got chatting and when we reached Agra we shared a rickshaw and they ended up staying in the hotel I had booked for myself in advance online. Paula had put me in contact with a friendly Indian man to show me around Agra including the Taj Mahal and I arranged to meet him outside my guesthouse at 5.45am the next day so I could see the Taj at sunrise and avoid the crowds. In the dark I waited outside for ages but he never turned up and he didn't answer his phone. I was annoyed as the Taj Mahal had been the one thing I didn't want to experience by myself but I had to go because I was going to miss the sunrise and was leaving Agra later that day. I eventually found my way to the ticket office and then to the entry gate and the security guards went through my bags and said that I couldn't take in my little toy monkey that had somehow found its way into my handbag. They were smirking as they told me that toys weren't allowed and asked why my guide hadn't told me this. I explained that I didn't have a guide and they 'helpfully' said I could put it in a locker which turned out to be 2km away! Luckily a female guard took pity on me and said she'd put it in her pocket (it was a birthday present and was made by villagers in the Himalayas, I didn't want to chuck it away). Once I was in the gate I decided to get an audio guide because everyone else seemed to have a human guide but I couldn't afford one by myself. The Taj Mahal seemed like a beautiful mirage amidst the chaos of India; against the white morning sky it seemed as if it was floating. The gardens and lakes surrounding it had been manicured to perfection and kept very clean - the antithesis of the grimy cities I'd been in. I could see the silhouettes of hundreds of monkeys on the walls of the complex. My audio guide was broken and the man at the desk wasn't interested in replacing it, the ferocious morning sun was beating down on me and male Indian tourists were taking photos of me despite me asking them not to. Some of them were photographing my backside and I shouted 'no photo!!' but they found this hilarious and continued whilst I ran away. This wasn't the Taj experience I was hoping for.

Something about monkeys on a wall...

Within ten minutes of taking this photo the whole place was filled with thousands of people.

The Taj at sunrise.

I had 9 hours to kill before my train and I was feeling quite miserable when I got back to the guesthouse so I was very happy when I bumped into the English couple from the train and we all went for breakfast. Afterwards we found a rooftop pool to go to and for hours we swam around chatting and had such a lovely day in the blistering heat!

Yet again my love/hate relationship with this country prevails! 

I had such ridiculous sunburn lines on my arms when I got to the station which provided further reason for people to stare; I was feeling like the only white (red) person on earth. The train notice boards were broken and there were no station staff so I looked for a safe person to talk to and approached a man in a business suit, "This in India...", he offered as an explanation. I hear this an awful lot.

I briefly got talking to two very sweet Japanese girls at the station and they giggled in unison at everything I said. I got on the train at 9pm and had to stay awake until it arrived at 3pm as I didn't know when it was going to arrive. I had been up since 5am and was exhausted when I reached Jaipur; I got a rickshaw to my hotel but the building was completely dark! I had emailed ahead to warn them I might be late and thankfully, after knocking on the window, a young boy came out and without a word he showed me to my room and left.