Tag > travel

Feb 1, 2015
India
Leave a comment

Wedding

Chennai, India

Getting out of the airport felt… familiar. Back on India time, two hour luggage wait and all. Back to haggling for a ride. Back to the chaotic traffic and honking and lane-ignoring auto-rickshaws and nearly being run over every time I cross the street. A lot may be different down south, but it’s still India, and it feels good to be back after four years.

I’m here this time for my NUS friend Dhiviya, who’s getting married. She’s connected me with a few of her other friends living in Singapore who are also here for the wedding, Jayasri and Deepika, who are more than happy to explain everything that’s going on, and Therese, a non-Indian who has never been to an Indian wedding. Now this’ll be fun.
Continue reading →

Jan 30, 2015
United Arab Emirates
1 Comment

Restless

 Dubai, United Arab Emirates

On my way to India from Boston, and on my way back to Boston from Sri Lanka, I had 8 and 12 hour layovers respectively in Dubai. Both overnight, that left about 2-4 hours each night to do something in the city before attempting to sleep on a chair in the airport. (Not pleasant.)

Shoutout to my friend Abhishek, who gave me some great tips! …which due to my own fault, I was unable to follow.
Continue reading →

Sep 18, 2014
Canada
2 Comments

Home

Vancouver, British Columbia

It’s taken me seven years to say this: I miss home. Having not been home for nine months — the longest stretch between visits I’ve had — made this visit that much more special. Even though I’ve travelled to and lived in some wonderful places and have so many more left on my list, at this point, I’m pretty sure that I’ll ultimately come full circle and end up in Vancouver.  It’s always going to be home base for me.

I’ve always been an ocean guy — Boston’s next to the Atlantic, and Vancouver the Pacific, and they’re both beautiful cities… but face it.  The beaches?  The mountains?  The forest?  Vancouver’s got that in spades.  Put it all together, and you’ve got my heart.  Where else can you see a skyline that includes all three, let alone those ubiquitous shiny glass buildings?!

I visit two or three times a year, and while I could make a run of doing the same things over and over again, there’s always something else on offer that I’ve never tried, despite living there for most of my life. So the only logical approach? Blend the two together!
Continue reading →

Aug 10, 2014
Canada
Leave a comment

Ha! Ha!

Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec

Roadtrip! Conni planned our route, and it was to a region I’ve admittedly never heard of. A giant fjord. Sounds interesting!

But first, we had to rent a car. With Conni having not driven in three years and me having not driven (but for 10 minutes) in seven years and Xavi not a licensed driver, we were a bit nervous as to how we would fare…but we picked up a tiny little Fiat and were ready to go, no problems at all. There’s a first.

After a 4 hour drive to Lac St-Jean where we took our time and stopped several times, the skies opened and out came the rain. Well, there goes the beach day. The lake is huge though, easily mistaken for the sea when you’re next to it. We promptly decided to call it a day, heading to our next Couchsurfing hosts, Martin and Karyne and their three children in La Baie, a borough of the sparsely-populated but sprawling city of Saguenay (not to be confused with the region, fjord, national park, or river).

I can’t forget to mention that La Baie is so named because it sits at the mouth of la Baie des Ha! Ha! — or Ha! Ha! Bay in English, if you prefer. That is indeed its actual name, exclamation marks included.

Continue reading →

Aug 4, 2014
Canada
1 Comment

Stairmaster

Quebec City, Quebec

It’s odd how long it’s taken for me to backpack in my own country. I’ve always imagined it as being hard to travel without a car.

Well, it is. A bus from Montreal to Quebec City costs about $60 one way, for a 2.5 hour ride — uhh, no thanks. We skirted that one with a rideshare, but getting a bus into town from a gas station on the outskirts of town was as much of a doozy as in some of my more obscure destinations. (You know the drill — questionable directions, haphazardly marked bus routes, exact change required, no stop announcements…) At least it’s comfy and with plenty of leg room.

Anyway, backtracking a little. A year ago, I met Conni on the street in Nicaragua, travelled with her for a week, and had a great time. Now, she and her boyfriend Xavi have moved from Costa Rica to Montreal, we’ve visited each other a few times, and we decided to do a short little road trip together around the province! It’s been quite some time since I’ve done a non-solo trip, and this is also the first time I’ve ever done a road trip.

Continue reading →

Apr 15, 2014
Benin, Ghana, Netherlands, Togo
2 Comments

Adjustments

(the way home)

Cotonou, Benin

I enjoyed Benin so much that I stretched my stay an extra two days, cutting everything else from my itinerary. Instead of using them to go somewhere far, I chose to hang out — at the beach, at the badminton court, at Miguelle’s house, at my hostel with Firmin and Clementine.

With my French finally at a basic conversational level, it was all the more refreshing to get to know people better… tragically, just as I was about to leave. We coached Kesley through her interviews for a volunteer opportunity in Canada. Aubin and I exchanged music and learning materials related to informatics. Maman and her gang at the shop gossiped some more, teased me about potentially dating African women, while I dished right back to them. Lots of time killed on Youtube, huddled around a smartphone. I played a bit more badminton… and at least scored a single point. Watched a few telenovelas with Clementine and her family, then received a few bags of peanuts and tapioca flour to bring to her brother in Boston. I was killing time and enjoying company. I felt like I could stay… I really didn’t want to leave.
Continue reading →

Mar 12, 2014
Benin
3 Comments

Superstition

Abomey and Porto-Novo, Benin

Kesley pointed at the neighbour’s door excitedly. Before we had any chance to walk more than two steps out of our hostel, a set of 8 dots caught her eye. She called Miguelle and told her we’d be an hour late.

Next thing I knew, the two of us crammed ourselves and our stuff on the back of our hostel owner’s motorcycle, heading towards… somewhere. The 8 dots on the door meant there was a Ifá priest inside. When Kesley asked the hostel owner, he mentioned that his brother was one, and that he could take us there instead.

Knowing that I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, they gave me an example. A former president of Brazil, before becoming president, was in Benin and went to see a priest. The priest was able to divine his future, but told him that there were many evil forces acting in his life that were preventing him from his potential. Afraid, the future president gave some money to the priest to perform the rituals and sacrifices necessary (in this case, buying 8 goats and simply releasing them), and followed all instructions related to dietary restrictions. Few years later, this guy becomes the president of Brazil. Believe it or not?

Kesley did, certainly. She knew that there were people out there channeling evil energy towards her, she just needed to get rid of it. So it was decided!
Continue reading →

Mar 10, 2014
Benin
1 Comment

Doucement

Ouidah, Benin

Another day, another trip on the backseat, another badminton errand to run. It was a long ride from Cotonou to Lokossa, back on the dusty construction-filled road towards Lomé, needing multiple literally-on-the-road stops to fill up on gasoline. (Gas stations are few to none; vendors sell gasoline in bottles on the side of the road, imported illegally from neighbouring Nigeria.) Traffic is anything-goes: separated local traffic lanes (like “collectors lanes” on the 401 in Toronto) run adjacent to the fast lanes in the middle, but with the roads frequently blocked due to construction, everyone just ends up driving anywhere on the dirt, on sand, through fields…whatever means necessary to get to the next surfaced road. Motorbike traffic u-turns at will, driving up and over a median to go to the side of opposite traffic. Chaos, but it seems to work better than Ghana.

The night before and all through the morning, before heading on the road Aubin and Miguelle’s mom were warning me about “la poussière”. Didn’t know what that meant until I was covered in a layer of it, skin turned ashen grey, nasal passages burning. I let Aubin keep the helmet he brought to protect me from it — he was driving, he needed it more.
Continue reading →

Mar 9, 2014
Benin
2 Comments

Backseat

Cotonou and Ganvié, Benin

After 3.5 hours of waiting in Lomé for a taxi to fill up, I was finally en route to Cotonou.

Never mind the fact that I was the first passenger in the car because the taxi driver pretended to be a passenger for an hour before he revealed himself as the driver.

Never mind the excruciatingly upbeat and… morally questionable, non-sequitur Christian music he played for at least an hour ad nauseum — something along the lines of “You are stressed from work or exams? In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you to be free!” *canned cheering* “You are gay or suffering from sexual immorality? In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you to be free!” *canned cheering* (How do you go from exams to that?!)

Never mind the chaotic border crossing, the bad and very dusty roads, and the fact that it took another 3.5 hours to get there.

None of that was the problem. (At least this taxi wasn’t overfilled. It was comfortable, for once.)

The problem was one I knew would happen, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it anyway.
Continue reading →

Mar 6, 2014
Togo
1 Comment

We’ll get there eventually

Kpalimé and Lomé, Togo

Ghana clearly didn’t want me to leave. Hey, I was even tempted to stay.

The distance between Hohoe and Kpalimé is not far, maybe about 1.5 to 2 hours tops by vehicle. Naturally, this would be a route with plenty of travellers, right? Nah. After sitting in the parking lot, in the only tro-tro going to Kpalimé, under the hot sun for 2 hours, we were still missing our last passenger. I decided to buy the last seat just to speed things up. It got me a bit of goodwill from the other passengers, but also what seemed like a little derision for my impatience. Hey, at least that means everyone has a teeny bit more leg room, right? Nah.

So then we’re off! Well, the tro-tro driver’s gotta tie all the tags up top and tighten the screws on the wheels first. Sure, just a couple minutes more, no big deal. Off we go on a bumpy unpaved road! Oh, whoops, gotta fill up on gasoline too with the world’s slowest automatic pump. Okay, now we’re really going…30 km/h!

About thirty minutes in, we hit a particularly large pothole. THUD! Oh, false alarm. Wait… THUNK!
Continue reading →