The American Passport

Make sure you read the post before this one. Also, go ahead and get some coffee ready because this post is really long...

Mike and I got up at 3:30am on the 8th to get ready for our 4:55 flight to Dubai from Yerevan. We took the taxi to the airport, we ate breakfast there, and off we went. Since we only had 3 hours of sleep the previous night, we slept, read, and hung out during our 6 hour layover in Dubai. Dubai was incredible from what we saw. More to come on Dubai later.

We got on our next flight. It was an Emirates flight. We decided to pay the extra 50 dollars to take Emirates instead of Air India and it was worth every penny. For one thing, we would arrive in Delhi at 8:30 on the 8th instead of the 9th at 4:30am. We got to Delhi right on time regardless of the heavy fog. I couldn’t even see the end of the wing when we were flying. Many many flights were cancelled but ours was right on time. Kamran sent me an email saying “when you get out of customs, take the right exit and you will see my smiling face.” Mike and I did just as we were told. No smiling face... Finally I called Kamran using someone else’s phone and he said he would be 45 minutes late. an hour and a half later, he showed up. It was really nice to see him... and his smiling face added with many apologizes.

Then all three of us with our bags took a rik-shaw ( a motorcycle with a covered back where we sat) and drove an hour to try and meet Hector and Marissa. Marissa is Hector’s girlfriend who is in Peace Corps Turkmenistan. They were to Nepal and were flying out of Delhi so we tried to meet up with them. So here we are in this Rik-Shaw. Its funny because we looked at the highway and it had three lanes but if you looked across the line, there were 7 vehicles next to each other. There are countless times when i thought the Rik-shaw driver was going to kill us. He didn’t... Anyway, we met up with Hector (somehow) and we went to place to eat. It was really good because it was the first thing that we had to eat since we arrived in Dubai. My first taste of Indian food. SO GOOD... AND CHEAP.

After two hours, we left. I said my goodbyes to Hector and Marissa and we went to our hotel. “hotel”. Thank God I slept only three hours the previous night and we only had three hours in that hotel. It was a complete dump. Those words do it no justice. We all pretty much slept in all our clothes and covered the pillows with shirts. Mike froze because he didn’t want to use the blanket. So we went to bed at 2am and then woke up at 5am to catch our train. We went to the train station, got some breakfast which consisted on one cup of chai between the three of us and three somosas. Then we got ready for the train. It never came. In fact, it was cancelled three minutes before its scheduled departure. So, we waited an hour in a line to get our money back and we walked over to the bus station and we got a bus. I was completely out of it due to the lack of sleep. After seven hours on the bus, we got to Agra. The home of the Taj Mahal.

I have seen plenty of pictures of the Taj Mahal. Well, it was something else. Everything there is totally semetrical. They don’t show the other buildings in photos, but it was insane. The Taj Mahal was just breath-taking. Literally, I had to find my breathe. It is so beautiful. It is this huge white thing that just sits there. The inner and outer walls and decrated with inlays of rubies and emeralds and other precious stones. It was beautiful. We stayed there for maybe 90 minutes before we had to take another train, hoping this one would actually go. We went to the train station by way of a horse drawn carriage. And if you are thinking about the stereotypical horse drawn carriage... don’t. I constantly thought I was going to fall off the back.

We got to the train station, we got some dinner, more somosas, and got on the train. We sat across a couple who were from Austria just traveling around. It was a 6 hour train ride. And again don’t think Amtrak. It was Kamran, Mike and myself sitting on a hard plastic bench for 6 hours. I did a lot of writing in my journal, did some reading, and tried to sleep.

We finally got to Jaipur from Agra. Holy crap was I happy to get there. We sat down and talked to Kamran’s uncles who were more than nice. It was a really nice place right in the middle of the city. Then... I finally got some real sleep, actually laying down. I drooled all over the place. I woke up in Lake Superior the next morning. I felt like a completely different person after I woke up. Nothing opens up until about 11 so we went onto the roof which is like a patio and we washed our clothes. For the two week trip, I just took a small backpack. I wanted to have only carry-ons and not much to carry since we would be moving around a lot. Anyway, Kamran didn’t know how to hand wash clothes so I washed his clothes. It wasn’t a problem since it is just a way of life in Armenia.

We went to the market. Now. Kamran knows Hindi, and he looks Indian. Those are two very valuable assets to have, monetarily. Basically every taxi ride he negotiated. The taxi drivers would want 200 rupees (4 dollars). Mike and I would be, thats a great price. Kamran would say no. He would get the ride for 40 rupees or about 80 cents. We went to get scarves. Lets just say that we paid about a fifth of the price we would have if he wasn’t there. Kamran was great. I mean first, it was great to see one of my close friends, eight months into service, but he just knew what was going on. Anyway, that day we just hung out and took it easy. We signed up for a tour of 11 places in Jaipur. It was 250 rupees for the whole tour (about 5 dollars). It went from 9 to 6. We had to pay for all the museum fees and for camera fees but that whole day was about 30 dollars to see every sight in Jaipur. It was funny because Kamran would always pay the “Indian fee”. For example. Mike and I paid 750 rupees each to get into the Taj Mahal (about 15 dollars each). Kamran paid 40 rupees to get in... This was the way that all the entrance fees were...

We met a girl who was volunteering in a hospital in Delhi and we hung out with her. After the tour, we went to dinner together. Mike and Rebecca talked together while Kamran and I caught up on things going on back home.

The next day we just hung out. Kamran’s uncle taught me how to make Chai. It was really good. He knew how to make it taste really good and thick. A good way to cap the day. We actually ended up staying an extra day because we decided that we would spend the extra 80 dollars to take a 2 hour flight instead of a 19 hour train ride on a plastic bench seat.

We left on the 19th to go down to Mumbai. Our flight was delayed 7 hours from Jaipur to Mumbai but fortunately, the airline sent us text messages to let us know that the flights were delayed so we got to the airport about 50 minutes before take off. Mumbai was a welcome change of weather. Since I was trying to pack light, I only took my fleece which was not enough for Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. Mumbai was tropical and I welcomed the warmth. We took a prepaid taxi to the hotel and then walked around mumbai. Kamran wanted to go to some nigh club so we went to try to find it. Instead Kamran decided to throw up all over the road, so we called it a night. The Indian apparently had an adverse reaction to Indian food. (sorry Kamran, I still think its funny). It was great though. There was a lot of power behind that yark. He probably got it to spray a good 5 feet. (ok, too much... Im finished).
So, we went back to the hotel and went to bed early.

The following day, we did some errands and hung out. We went to the movie theatre. Mike and Kamran watched an Indian film, in Hindi and I went to watch Sherlock Holmes which was just plain disappointing. I should have gone to see the other movie. Afterwards, we went to dinner and then we went to the market. I tried my hand at bartering with the people. Here is how the negotiating went.

Me: How much is this
Seller: its 1600 rupees
Me: Ill give you 50
Seller: ok, Ill sell it to you for 1000 rupees
Me: Ill give you 50
Seller: 700 rupees
Me: Ill give you 50
Seller: I am going down in price, you have to go up in price
Me: Ill give you 50
Seller: How much do you want to pay:
Me: Ill give you 50

Needless to say, I didn’t get it for 50, but I did get the price down to 350. I wasn’t really going to buy anything unless they were going to bring the price down to 100 rupees. But at least you can see how much the inflate the prices. And this was the case for about everything... including the taxi.

That night at 2am Kamran left. That was weird. I was like saying goodbye to everyone back home again. That was hard. Mike noticed that I was sad. It was now me and Mike.

The next morning, we woke up early and went to the airport to fly down to Goa Beach. No problem there. We got to Goa around 2pm and took a taxi to our hotel which was in the center of the capital of Goa, Panjim. It was an incredibly beautiful drive. It reminded me a lot of Hawaii with all the palm trees. The air had the right amount of humidity in it. It was great. Mike and I got to the hotel and then decided that we would walk around a little bit. We ate dinner at a restaurant that was recommended by lonely planet. For both our meals which consisted of three beers, two huge plates of prawn rice and kalamari, we paid a mere 9 dollars. I am over estimating. We ate there for two nights.

The next morning, Mike and I wanted to go to the beach. We went to the concierge to try and find a bus. He said there was a bus. Now this is where there was a loss in translation. We thought this was a coach bus straight to the beach. So we packed out stuff up and off we went. We got on the bus looking forward to a day at the beach. We noticed that there were only Indians on the bus, which was fine, but they didn’t look like they were going to the beach. We got the first stop. There was no beach. We talked to the bus driver who surprising knew a good amount of English. Well, apparently we signed up for a day long bus tour of Goa beach. This was one of the 8 stops. The bus driver called a taxi. The taxi driver wanted 800 rupees to go 12km. Which is outrageous, so Mike and decided we would just stay with the bus, because eventually the bus was to visit three beaches. We ate at a restaurant and then afterwards we went to the beaches. We stayed at the first beach for 35 minutes, the second for 25 minutes, and the last beach for an hour and a half. Mike and I milked every last minute out of the last beach since it took the whole day to get there. At that point we were too tired to do anything so we just took the bus back. Looking back it was a good experience. We got to see a lot of the beautiful scenery.

That night we went back to the Lonely Planet recommended retaurant and ate there. We got the same waiter who remembered us and made fun of us for ordering the exact same thing. Mike ordered a cake after dinner and that cake tasted like ashtray. Not that I have tried an ashtray but that is what I would imagine an ashtray would taste like...

The next day, we took our time walking around the city. We got some errands done. Mike sent a package to his parents. That was an ordeal because there you have to get your parcel packaged somewhere else before bringing it to the post office. Its cool too because they sew your box closed with white cloth. After that, we walked around some more and then came back to the hotel to get cleaned up for our river cruise.

The river cruise. What do you think of when you hear river cruise. Maybe a nice boat with a dinner and a tour of the river and some of the landmarks on the shore. Yeah, that’s what we thought too. Mike and I missed the boat we were supposed to be on so we got on the 8:30 boat instead of the 7:30 boat. Mike and I were the first ones to the dock. We couldn’t believe our eyes. We heard this sound coming from a boat. As it got closer we saw that it was a party boat with people dancing on the upper deck with insanely loud music. As the boat came closer we saw the name of the boat... it was our boat. Again, Mike and I somehow managed to find a “tour boat” that was a party boat and again we were the only two white people on the boat. All we could do was laugh. The funniest part was the fact that the boat we were supposed to be on was literally 80% girls, the boat we were on was 85% men. The DJ kept telling the men to come up and dance. Mike and I stayed seated. We were completely dumbfounded by all that... After the hour boat “tour” we went to another restaurant and ate dinner. We went back to the hotel, watched some tv and went to bed.

I commend you for reading this much...

We then went to the airport the following morning around 7am for our 8:30 flight. We got to Mumbai with no problems. Around 10 we landed. This is when I was really ready to get off of that sub-continent known as India. We wanted to take the free transport from the Domestic terminal to the International Terminal. There was a free bus but we didn’t have our boarding passes printed out for our Emirates flight back. It was a catch 22 because we needed to get to the other airport to get the ticket needed to get to the other airport by bus. The armed guards with their huge guns understood what our problem was but they were afraid of their supervisors getting angry with them. So, Mike and i took a pre-paid taxi to the international terminal. The airports in India are not the same as those in the States. We were greeted by more armed guards asking for our boarding passes. The guard said we couldn’t go in and he said that he didn’t have the passenger roster and wouldn’t get it until 3 hours before the flight. So Mike and I tried to call Emirates directly but there was no one there. Finally one of the guards said, if you go to a travel agent, that he would print us out boarding tickets. So, we took another rik-shaw to a travel agent. We got there and I gave him our confirmation number and our passports. Then he said that it would be 50 dollars each to print out the tickets. I looked at him like he had an arm growing out of his eye... I asked him 50 dollars or 50 rupees. a difference of 49 dollars. He said dollars. I laughed in his face. He said “ok, 25 dollars for each”. I laughed even harder. Then he said twenty dollars for both. I about punched him in the face after he tried to convince me that I couldn’t just go to the internet cafe to make print outs. After the travel agent, we went to the internet cafe where I printed out two copies of our boarding passed for about 70 cents total. We also got a drink.

We got back to the airport five dollars later (the internet cafe was a little further into the city) and we went to the same guard to show him our boarding passes. At this point it was about 12:30pm and our flight didn’t leave until 10:00pm but we were going to try and get an earlier flight. The guard looked at me and then the tickets and said that he couldn’t let us in until 3 hours before departure. I got really frustrated and to the armed guard, I started arguing with him. I think he saw the frustration in my face and ultimately let us into the airport. So we got to use the bathroom and ate some lunch. I took a nap. We read, talked, did whatever else. The time actually passed pretty quickly. Seven o’clock came and it was time for us to go. I was ready to go.

India was a great experience. It was sad. I don’t remember what I wrote before because I have written too much probably, but it was sad. Walking around India, especially Jaipur and Delhi, there were people everywhere sleeping on the streets begging for food or money. We think that two dollars is nothing but the average monthly salary is about 20 dollars a month there. The constant nagging and the constant bartering and the constant thought that people were trying to get the most money that they possibly could from you just wore we out. It was just exhausting.

We arrived in Dubai at 12:15am and went straight to our hotel. We found a great deal online. The hotel was 8 minutes from the airport, across the street from the mall, and really close to the metro. Mike and I went to the markets and looked around. We also went to the tallest building in the world, just to see a whole bunch of desert. Dubai is very modern and it was a great way to wind down the vacation. That was much more relaxing. If you have ever heard of the “big bus tour company” they charge about 70 dollars for the a tour of the city in their double decker bus. Mike and I spent a dollar fifty riding around on the city double decker buses. We only ate at McDonalds and Pizza Hut... because we wanted to. Holy crap. I don’t ever eat at McDonalds or Pizza Hut. I prefer Wendy’s or Arby’s or Papa Johns. But biting into American Fast food that tastes the exact same as in America was just out of this world. It was great. Both nights we were in Dubai, we ordered Pizza Hut. Two days was enough in Dubai. We went to eat at “Central Perk” the same cafe that “Friends” met in. However, the one in Dubai didn’t look anything like the one on the TV. Anyway, that was it. We left at 10am on friday and got back to Yerevan around 1pm.

School starts back up tomorrow. A week of school and then I have a conference on how to write grants for a week.

Lastly I want to say how great it is to look down at my passport and see the American Emblem there. I know that the last blog was a little different, but I do think as American’s we have a very tunneled view of the world, and the American media doesn’t make matters any better. At the same time, you can really see the advantages we have. Although I probably see an American flag differently than those that served in the Armed Services, how I saw the flag as a high schooler or even as a college student is completely different. I remember looking up at the flag before lacrosse games, looking at it as a piece of cloth, but it becomes something completely different when you go abroad and you see the living conditions elsewhere. There is a reason why people try to become American Citizens and its easy to see when you’re outside the US boarders. Be thankful for being an American...

Hope everyone is doing well at home. Honestly, if you read this whole blog and the last one, thank you...

Until next time...