Ponto de Vista

Behind Ta Prom in Angkor Thom, as my fellow travelers meditated on the incredible roots of the trees that have taken over the ancient temple, this fellow came along and perched on me.
I waited for a long time for him to get moving so I could capture how dazzling his iridescent his tiny blue/black wings were – but he flew too fast and in quick bursts which made all the motion pictures totally blurry.
He flew off and came back to perch on my finger three times in total – and I have no idea what made my finger so attractive. But there he was. And I wasn’t complaining about being so favored! 🙂

What a thrill, right? To see my brother’s film posters on buses and walls 🙂 But the movie was unfortunately timed; it released with 8 other films and was almost totally ignored by the mainstream press (Ok, the Mumbai Mirror did review it and decimated it, but the Times Group seemed to have decided to boycott it. Others said they’d had to choose three or four of the eight and “Toss” just didn’t make the cut).
So, we tried to salvage some of it by creating a buzz in the social media fraternity and while that didn’t really take off either (logistics, quick-changes of movies in theatres, I left for Cambodia), it interestingly garnered a mention as a sort of case study in Campaign India magazine. It didn’t talk about the results, but I’m glad someone noticed the effort! Read the story Do Indian Bloggers affect consumer views? here. What do you think?

Let me tell you while you figure exactly what that is in the photo, this dish did not look ANYTHING like the descriptors on the menu. 😀 And I will confess, after we photographed the gook and worked up the courage to taste it, it was totally divine. So I started to think up disclaimers to add to the menu: “close your eyes when I arrive;” “Disgusting looking, but delicious!” “Always remember: the proof of the pudding is in the tasting!” Which in turn reminded me of the ad campaigns Dudley Moore’s character came up with in “Crazy People“. Did I mention this was dessert? Ok, so here goes: served with salad and chocolate ice cream, this is actually flambéed bananas in a rum-cream. 😀 And the quote in the title is from Dudley’s ad about Volvos. 😉

Ah, finally a club where you AND your hazmat can party together.Well, as long as your patrong is not toxicated and you’re not on Megal 😉 This is “27” in Ho Chi Minh City, or actually Nua Hang 27. But most clubs, I was told, are just referred to by their address number so voila! 27. Click on the photo for a larger, clearer image of the sign.

My barely planned trip to the Kingdom of Cambodia and then Vietnam was the fulfillment of a long-time goal. Thanks to Mrs. Colaco in 9th grade history, I’ve always wanted to go to Angkor Wat. This was the first temple we visited in the temple city of Angkor Thom. These photos of Bayon feel flat and vacant after witnessing the grandeur up-close. The entire place is atmospheric and heavy with history. And in the monsoon, it’s lush and quiet and green. Aaahhh 🙂
Click the photo for a close-up (from a different angle).

Fish massage (or “FiMassaa” in the patois spoken by the guys trying to tempt you into getting one) is quite a popular thing for tourists to try in South East Asia. In Cambodia, at the night market, we were accosted by a FiMassa guy. Sure enough, there was a white dude sitting on the lip of this inflatable swimming pool with tiny fish nibbling away at his feet. He merely smiled, albeit wryly, in response to my inquiring look. This poster almost made me sign up for a 5 minute session 😉 But then I guess I still ‘felt confused matter of me’ even after dinner so I didn’t.

Think I could have gotten the daily tour (good use of space, no?) for less if I’d gotten Dr. Fish at my heels? 😉
Click the image for a larger, clearer picture.

My mother said after she’d visited the Louvre, she felt this sense of satiation and then faced a big question mark: a lifelong dream had been realized. What on earth came next? That’s how I felt. 🙂

Thanks to: Kwantu game reserve, The Fantastic 5 contest at Web18, Blish for the online support,& South African Tourism for making it happen.

I am, I mean. Cos I’m in South Africa. And you can follow my adventures (and vote on what daily tasks I have to perform) on http://f5southafrica.in.com 🙂

In March, I visited Rani Baug, which houses both Mumbai’s zoo and the Victoria & Albert Museum, now the Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Byculla. We had such perfect timing, we chanced upon the albino peacock just as he unfurled his beautiful tail and tried to get the attention of the very coy peahen (visible on a perch on the left.) It was gorgeous! Very soap opera-esque. Yeah! Someone told me it’s all happening at the zoo 😉 We saw sleeping rhinos, a python, gazelle, neelgay, sambar, beautiful birds, including one of paradise – all with bad or no signage. The bird of paradise, an unusual red and green specimen was identified as a “mynah” – a terrible travesty.
The only decent sign we saw, however, was … audacious in its sheer stupidity. Click on the peacock picture to see the only sign of explanation 😉

So, you know the potato crisps you get at the old-time movie theatres? Not the branded ones shilled by film stars – the ones that look like hey, they could have been fried and packaged in a cottage industry around the corner? Well, turns out that they kinda are! This was the glimpse I got into a wafer-ki-dukaan in Kotachiwadi one afternoon. Behind the posh, clean counter with the sealed bags of all kinds of fried farsaan was this massive man with an even more massive set of utensils. Look at the size of that ‘pateela’ and the fryer he’s using to literally paddle the crinkle-cut potato wafers in the scalding oil! Don’t miss the salli (as in salli-boti) and the already fried chips in the forefront.
P.S. Kotachiwadi was beautiful; really a small glimpse of Mumbai’s colonial past with the Portuguese architecture and the brightly painted cottages 🙂