I guess this got to a point where the pleasure versus pain equation was getting so heavily tipped towards the pain that I started to cross that fine line…

While they made interesting photo subjects, we tried not to make eye contact with them and we tried to keep our distance as told by Adi. However, in one sudden

…we had trouble entering… the accommodation that Mom had booked on Friday night, and when she finally started getting a handle on the location of the accommodation…, that was when I realized…

So from that point on, we had a decision to make. Should we get off the next stop and take the next train back to Ueno hoping that we’d arrive in time to catch the 8am train back to Mito?…

It was funny that we had to leave the resort to get the real Maldivian experience… to do things that are more indicative of the local lifestyle than try to have a home away from home…

…sun went down, we started to notice crabs coming out of their holes. Just a few paces from our hotel, I felt something squishy on my left sandal. I feared the worst as apparently I did it again…

When I Lokesh noticed I was busy washing my boots at a water spigot near his car, he inquired what I was doing. “I’m washing sh*t off my boots,” I said, squeamishly as my fingers were in the grooves..

…furious after realizing there was no hot water (I took a cold shower), no hair dryer, no filtered water, toilet cover broken, no hand towels, and overall the room felt quite dirty and subpar…

At 6:30pm, the plane was in a holding pattern. The captain announced that there was a thunderstorm in Mumbai (probably influenced by the cyclone), visibility was a 3km, and the runway was wet. The…

Subhash seemed like he was in shock as he sat silent, and then got out of the car. From that point, he was swarmed by villagers (one of them hitting him repeatedly). And it was then that I started…

We couldn’t read the Japanese script by this closure sign, but a sign further up the path showed a picture of a menacing bear. “I don’t need to read Japanese to understand that sign,” said Julie…

For an hour-long train ride, there’s no way there could be nine more stops so my doubts that kept nagging at me finally became action. Julie asked some employee on the train, “Toyama?”…

The train was about to move and both Julie and I were separated! Julie panicked and my heart started to race. So both of us tried real hard to force the doors open before the train moved…

No one seemed terribly happy in the car from the driver to Donald to Julie who could understand the complaints made between Donald and the driver in Chinese. I could sense the momentary tension…

So we disembarked to a chorus of “Meiguoren (American)” or “Laowai (Old Foreigner; not exactly a kind thing to say)” by some of the more intoxicated guys also wielding cigarettes…

There, we paid our 20 yuan per person admission charge and walked about checking out some of the indoor exhibits and having fun with looking at some of the larger statues, especially the first one…

He straight away asked whether we’ll pay in cash or credit. But we already hesitated. And upon further inspection of the box, I had read that this stuff was Bear Bile Powder…

He said he had never been out this far before and the longest he had driven in any one stretch of time in his 25 years on the job was 1.5 hours. So the 6 hours or so of straight…

Once uncle got home from work, we conversed for a bit. Unfortunately, he had a pretty thick Sichuan accent or dialect going and we really couldn’t understand a word he was saying…

At that point, we embarked on what would turn out to be one of the more dangerous slow boat cruises I’ve taken part of as this boat (as well as others) would routinely crash into the walls while…