May 2014

Dear all,

and greetings from.. Sri Lanka. After spending some more time in Maharastra, Tamilnadu, and Thailand, I’m “back” here. I arrived a few days ago, went straight down south to the beach, and I’m leaving back home in three weeks.

The last few months were a-w-e-s-o-m-e. It’s funny how time flies. My last message was from mid March and still it feels like I just wrote it yesterday. So, what has happened since then..

I finished my yoga training in Bombay and am a certified teacher now, yay :) It was a fun time, and the timing happened to be perfect as well. Both in terms of people who were taking the classes with me, and also in the relative freedom of going in and out of the school in the little free time that we had. On the day when I was leaving, I learned the rules were changing: the place was not meant to be just a school anymore, no matter how “traditional” it already was, it should rather become more like an ashram. Nobody was supposed to leave the grounds at any time, with an exception of like one hour in the morning, just to go and get some fruits from the nearby stalls. I don’t know how much it was enforced then, either way, I was happy that it didn’t apply to me anymore.

I wasn’t sure where I should stay after the course was over, as I wanted to spend some more time in Bombay, and get to know the city better. On the last night we went out to this local place for a dinner.. and it seemed like the perfect time to have a beer afterwards. I was in India for past few months and didn’t have a beer in the entire time, sad story, just imagine the sun and never ending heat :) Everyone wanted to go back, so it was just my Portuguese friend and I, who were the thirsty ones willing to break the rules.

We weren’t very lucky with finding any open bar around there, but we eventually found our way to a bottle shop. Got a bottle of local Kingfisher, and sat on the curb, chatting and watching people as they went about closing their shops and stalls, getting ready to go home.

Cheers! With the covered up bottles of Kingfisher.

There happened to be a bottle shop on the other side of the street and two random chairs at the wall.

Midnight snacking.

This was apparently a go-to street for flower garlands.

Jasmine all around, it smelled delish.

There were stalls with flowers all along this street.

I have no idea where it was. I’ll probably never find it again.

Some hours and another beer later, as we were on our way back to the school, I got an email at like half past midnight, saying: Hey, we’re having a party, there will be some other journalists too, come and join us if you want. Thank goodness I had a phone with internet, the party was cool, and on our way back anyway. We got back to our yoga place in the middle of the night, breaking the rules one last time as we jumped the fence to get in. There was a security at the entrance, and curfew around 9 or 10pm..? Not sure, I rarely made it back in time.

At the party I met a TV documentarist who was also doing Couchsurfing and had a spare bedroom in his apartment, so I spent the last week in Bombay over there. Cool times, I learned a lot about India, as he’s been working on the biggest documentary TV show so far – I’ll write more about it later, but the episodes are also available on youtube, look for Satyamev Jayate if you’re interested.

It was the last two weeks before my visa was due to expire, and again I was thinking what to do next. I had to go to Thailand to pick up my stuff and laptop, so had to move somewhere to the east coast as there were no direct flights from Bombay. Chennai, or former Madras, seemed reasonable. People at the yoga school were talking about vipassana quite a bit, many of them wanting to do it after the course, so I was thinking ok why not, I might as well give it another go. There happened to be a course in Chennai right at the time when it fit me.

This is the main meditaiton hall, immersed in lush greenery at the outskirts of desert-like Chennai.

And here’s another building that was available to “old students” (which is everyone except the newbs), full of individual cells. That’s what these super tiny spaces were called it and certainly also how they felt.

Inside the pagoda. Cool thing was that it was quiet, far away from all kinds of other people’s bodily noises, but man was this place hot! Rivers of sweat streaming on my skin were quite distracting, too :)

So, Chennai, here I come. It’s such a good thing to be completely away from the world for ten days, also I got a brand new room, in fact a suite just for myself – it was the most luxury I had in India till then. Unfortunately there still were things that bothered me a lot during the course, actually only one thing in particular, and that was the “main” teacher.

Every place under this “school” of teaching does the courses in the exact same way: they use recordings of this Burmese dude who claims he’s the one who brought Vipassana back to life after it was forgotten for centuries (maybe, but I still have to look into this). His voice is so freaking irritating, and also the way he speaks about stuff and himself is very far from modest. Many people seem not to mind, but I was relieved to learn that some other people do, too.

One of them was this truly remarkable lady, whom I was talking to before the course started and after it was over. Very knowledgeable on ayurveda, yoga, and ancient texts, she would recite passages from Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras and other writings from memory, also explaining each line in such a concise way.. Anyway, this lady has been doing Vipassana for the past 30 years (so since her twenties), and she said she’s still a little bothered with the teacher’s expression, too: It’s because you have a musical mind, she said, and his voice is very much the opposite. I still haven’t got used to it completely either.

But as I said, it’s a good thing overall, so if I ever want to do it again, I just make sure I’ll go to a different kind of school, and not the main one. Apart from that, everything else over there was great.

I spent my last few days in Chennai couchsurfing again, recovering from my lack of sleep, walking around the city, beach, temples and ancient sites..

The ancient site of Mahabalipuram near Chennai.

I’m not bombing anybody’s family picture here :)

The architecture comes from the 6th century AD.

The locals call it Mahabs. Convenient.

It’s been a UNESCO heritage site since the eighties.

Everything you ever wanted to know..

Dear cow, would you come closer and look at me? Woow, thanks!

The goat who stares at men.

“I don’t know if it’s allowed but it’s cooool!”

Goat posing.

The lighthouse.

Good night, goats.

And then back to Bangkok again. There’s something about the city that I like, and still not sure what exactly it is. Although coming back there after almost half a year in India, I initially couldn’t get rid of the impression that it felt kinda perverse, too. But more on that later :)

Big deal these days are the anti-government protests. They have already been going on there for some time when I came to Thailand the first time in November, and to my surprise still continued when I returned from India five months later. There were some differences the second time – police and army in the streets and all kinds of public places, but otherwise life went on as usually, at least outside of the main protest sites.

Later I learned that the very same evening I left Bangkok, only a few hours later, Thailand has come under martial law in order to restore “law and peace” in the country. What it means is even more soldiers in the streets, some TV stations were shut down, but overall, according to what I was told from a friend, it is kinda scary but nothing too dramatic has happened yet. The situation has been unstable since 2006 when the former prime minister was overthrown, and the current protests have been going on for over half a year, with the new prime minister, sister of the former one, being forced to resign recently, too.

But none of this affected my stay in Bangkok neither last nor this time. I still had some Thai massage, watched Thai box, ate Pad Thai, and drank Mai Tai (I know). I had a great time, went down south to the beach and back to Bangkok, walked around some more temples a little, partied at the famous Khao San, visited the red light district, ate at my favourite food court and tested several other ones, had some street food, mangos and drank coconuts, went up the tallest building in the city, did dome more couchsurfing, visited the national gallery, bought a pretty dress on the market.. the list goes on.

I basically have four words in Thai that I’ve been using over and over to have a conversation – or at least to explain what I want: Hello, thank you, vegetarian, delicious. With the “hello” word I’m still not exactly sure how to pronounce that, and even Thais seem to have slightly different ways of saying it, but apparently my “thank you” is close to perfection. One of the guys in a shop, after thanking each other politely, asked me if I’ve been living in Thailand for long. Wow, I was flattered :)

Faces of Bangkok..

It was almost another month and time to move on again. My return flight is from Colombo so I just had to get to Sri Lanka again. Without going into all the details, what seemed to be such a mission (two flights, night at the airport, landing in the middle of nowhere, getting out of there somehow and finding a place to stay somewhere) ended up being a pretty smooth journey eventually. My inability to plan ahead has so far proven to be a pretty cool, even useful thing. Not only things have always turned out well, even better than I’d dare to expect, it has also led me to some unique places and situations. Maybe I’ll just stick with it, without trying to learn to be more organised anymore.

So now I’m down south, chilling on this dreamy beach. It’s quiet, palm trees all around.. The weather has been lovely, very warm but not too hot, and the sun is often behind the clouds which is perfect for me. I happened to find a cool place for a good price, right next to where we were staying last time when we were travelling around here with friends. I didn’t even say anything, when the owner asked me: So, you do yoga? There’s a roof here, come with me. And sure enough, there was this awesome roof on top of one of the buildings, surrounded by branches of coconut trees, facing right the beach and ocean. Perfect! So I stayed :) There are hammocks as well, and so many different spots to chill that I don’t even know which one to choose first lol.

Just chillin’..

Late morning and the beach is still empty.

I’m the only foreigner around here, it’s low season these days, and the town seems as if there never was a tourist before. A little sleepy, people look around on the street and smile, surprised to see a white face, kids stop to introduce themselves and have a little conversation in English, happy that they can put in practice what they’ve learned at school. It sounds kinda unreal, I know, but that’s what it is right now. … Ok, it’s few days later now, and I’ve already seen some tourists, and many locals are also just their usual, drivers shouting and whistling when I walk by etc., but it’s all cool.

Apart from chilling, doing yoga, eating fruits and swimming in the sea.. I’m actually doing some real stuff as well :) I’m putting the stories together so I can write some decent articles to publish or put on my future blog, I’m going through the pictures, and thinking about all these things that I want to do when I’m home.. I don’t want to get in a state of shock after coming back, with all the responsibilities falling upon me, so I’m trying to get a bit of a head start :)

Anyway, I think this is so far my longest email, so I better stop already. I’ll probably send one more after I reach back home, and that’s it, almost an end of another adventure. Hopefully not the last one :)

Hope you’re all well xx
Jana