Night bus

Space muffins and double fisting beer steins

Important: this is my 69th blog post. Yamas!

My first time flying solo is just a one hour flight to Amsterdam, and I handle it with minimal anxiety and confusion. I am proud. I end up walking around the arrival halls of Schiphol – there are many – before I drop into a seat and start on my Kindle copy of Into The Wild. I’m only 31 % in when it’s time to go greet Aga at Arrival 2, which they suddenly switch to 3, but thanks to the free Wi-Fi, I realize she’s at one of the gates at the other end of the airport, running around like a lost puppy looking for me. We celebrate seeing each others faces again by eating Burger King, and then proceed to fail at finding the right platform to get to Central Station.

Anyhow, I’m sure you can all imagine how much time we can spend running back and forth with confused faces. We finally get to the heart of Amsterdam, or rather the tit. That’s right, we go to Red Light District. In between almost getting run over by bikes while we look at our map (see picture below), and snapping those awkward-ly candid tourist photos of each other (see picture below), we walk into a few coffee shops to get a space muffin. We end up going to one called High Times or whatever, and we share a tiny muffin that tastes surprisingly like not-basil.

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Such bad bitches

We walk for a long time to the Rijksmusem, where the famous “I AMsterdam” sign is (it is NOT by the train station anymore, ignorants), and we meet up with Molly, an American who’s also going to Stoketoberfest. First, we took some akward pictures by the sign.

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Gosh, kill us now…cause we’re so attractive in these, it’s really not fair to the other people in the pictures.

We all bond over beer at a nearby cafe that has “Bitter Balls” on the menu – we bond over that too. From there, we walk back to the Central Station and show Molly the Red Light District on the way. Amsterdam is a very pretty city, but at night it seems that it really comes to life. We enjoy sex shops with window displays that has dildos the size of my arm, the heavy scent of cannabis hitting us momentarily, and the atmosphere seeping out through the entrance of all the cozy bars. That was Amsterdam, and we’re on a train to Duivendrecht to catch our Stoke bus to Munich.

If I have to give one complaint, and you know I do, since this is my blog, I would point out that the sparse information I recieved before going to Munich was that I would be picked up in Amsterdam, and end up in Munich ten hours later. Instead, we are in a small city that I’ve never heard of outside of Amsterdam, and suddenly our guides, Chris, Ned and Chris show up, and they know just as little as I do. They too believe that the busride will take ten hours. It was 12+. This is important to the story of how we almost miss our flights home a few days later, but I will get to that once all the fun stuff are out of the way.

The busride is equal parts fun and annoying – one moment we are all drinking beers and getting to know each other, the next moment most of us are flying on a magic carpet to Sleepsville, but a few guys behind us are super unimpressed with us all and proceed to get wasted and loudly exclaim how much we suck. Please, we already know that, but we also know that we will be grateful in the morning, when we arrive and are NOT hungover.

As always, I am right. We arrive at Campingplatz Obermenzing where Stoketoberfest is held, and after a long check-in, which is saved by the staff shoving free beer in our faces – and in my case, also down my throat with the help of a funnel – we shower, get dressed and are on our way to the actual Oktoberfest. It is me, Aga, Molly and Hollie, our roommate from last year at The Pink Palace, all looking cute in our dirndls if I may say so – and yes I may, because this is my blog.

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From left to right: my partner in crime, me with a chest that cannot be contained, Hollie who gets to be the middle of a cuddlepie, and Cole, another great Pink Palace pal. Hottest reunion evaaah.

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With Molly. At this point we are all pretty much under the influence of sangria and beer. Damn you Stoke! (not really)

We go to the Löwenbräu beer tent (tent is a very misleading word, since it’s basically a giant house), and miracuously find a spot that fits us all towards the backdoor. We sit with some American ladies in their 30s, and right next to a table full of young Swiss guys. We order beer and food (duck and pork knuckle), and as the Americans get more drunk, they start trying to hook me up with the Swiss guys. For some reason I am not very interested in anything but taking pictures of myself eating food, and dancing on tables, but by then I am fairly intoxicated, and that’s a perfectly good excuse.

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I am not sure how long we stay at Löwenbräu, but we end up leaving Molly with the Swiss’ and try one of the “fun houses”. It is challenging to our balance, and we end up falling all over the place, giggling uncontrollably. We drunkenly eat pretzels and apfelstrudel on the street, and at some point after that, we go back to Stoketoberfest and pass out in our tents.

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At 8 in the morning, there is an unbelievably loud party going on at Stoketoberfest, so we get up and grab some breakfast. It is an egg and bacon roll which is delicious with our free sangria, and we spot Hollie in the kitchen tent, masterfully cutting up baguettes for all us lucky campers to eat. A guy in a very nice pastel dirdnl is sitting by the stage, doing the Stoke radio show, which promises to play Bryan Adams all day long. In reality, he introduces every song as “Bryan Adams’ Summer of 69”, and then proceed to play anything but Bryan Adams or Summer of 69. He promises to “be right back after this Bryan Adams song with important topics like ISIS”, and “talking about finger-banging, anal-banging and banging-banging”. Needless to say, the Stoke humor is exactly my kind of humor.

While we wait for Hollie to get off work, Aga, Molly and I try some rides at Oktoberfest, a stranger grab my tit and makes a honking noise, and then we meet up with Hollie and go to a tent. We manage for find a way to skip the line at Hofbräu, but end up at another one. When we finally realize it’s a dead end, Hollie and Aga come back from the bathroom, visibly emotionally scarred from watching a girl squatting and peeing on the floor while waiting in line. Good on her. We end up finding one seat at a table with some elderly Italian guys, and Hollie finds a dude she was talking to on the train, so she tries to get him to order beer for us, while I try to do the same at the table – and that is the story of how we ended up double fisting beer steins. Many people, the Italians especially, seem impressed by these four girls drinking two liters at once, and it distracts them long enough for us to steal some of their pretzel every now and then. We play a few drinking games, watch some guys get kicked out (that happens A LOT), and wave off an African guy who wants to buy us dinner and go clubbing with us, as he is “a PIMP”. I assumed that was a warning sign.

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While waiting for our train, some young guys (about 18) approaches us, and I guess Molly and I take a piss by putting on a very fake Southern accent and saying “Jesus” and “my babydaddy” a lot. Hollie keeps asking me to shut up, so I think I was being very offensive, which is a thing I compare to breathing: I do it all the time, without noticing. We thought we were hilarious.

We go back to Stoketoberfest just in time to grab free dinner – schnitzel with potato salad. SO MUCH YUM. Hollie did an amazing job cutting potatoes, and Cole was frying schnitzels like a champ. I am so full after dinner that I can’t even drink anything after that, so Hollie is formally invited to our tent and brings extra sleeping bags, and we all have a spoontrain (for warmth, of course) while watching Bad Neighbours (and by watching, I mean we all pass out within minutes). Aga gets sick in the middle of the night, and opens the front of the tent just in time to throw up on our “door step”, and Hollie goes back to her own, much warmer tent soon after that. After all the heartbreak, we get up, have the same breakfast that is less yummy because Hollie haven’t cut the baguettes, and then we just hang out until Hollie gets on a bus to Barcelona. Saying goodbye always suck.

As I sit with the girls by the camping reception, just hanging out, an old guy joins our table. He is in his mid-forties, very drunk and very Danish. So of course I pretend to be American and 17, but he will not stop hitting on me and ask for kisses in english that’s so bad, it’s almost just danish. We finally make a run for it and go sightseeing for the day.

We go with Molly and Liz, another American we met on the bus from Amsterdam, to the central station of Munich and do our own walking tour until we reach Oktoberfest.

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It’s the most crowded it had been all weekend. We go up the ferris wheel and can barely see the ground from all the people walking on it. We hang out on a patch of grass, where we have the pleasure of watching an Asian couple that look like drinking is a first for them. While the girl is on her side, spewing, sobbing and almost passing out, her boyfriend doesn’t seem to know that true love means holding a lady’s hair. The paramedics show up to help out, which is when she tris the most tragic/hilarious escape ever. She runs a couple of meters before falling down, only the way drunk people and toddlers do.

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I have my very last beer while killing time before getting on our bus back to Amsterdam, and Aga and I have our worries. Our flights are a few hours after our scheduled arrival in Amsterdam, but we were so behind the schedule last time, that we might very well miss our flights. We let the guides and the driver know, but it’s not gonna help much. A girl realizes her passport is missing, so of course we are half an hour late before even leaving the camp. There’s a car accident on the highway in the morning, which stops the traffic for a while. There are so many things that slow us down, so when the driver stops to switch with another driver, we voice our concern once again. We are very lucky, as our driver, Martin, decides to take us straight to the airport in his car, while the new driver finishes the bus route. We make it, and in good time. Thank you so much, Martin from Bakker Travel!

While Aga and I are not ready to say goodbye, we are more than ready for a shower and an actual bed. We have breakfast and try our first Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks, because all we wanna be when we grow up are basic bitches. My verdict: good, but overrated. We wacthed The Other Woman for a while, and then I followed Aga to her gate and said goodbye. I went to my gate, read my book, boarded the plane, and then got super nauseous in the air thanks to Starbucks and the delicious cookie the flight attendant gave me.

Thanks Oktoberfest and dirndl- or lederhosen-wearing people, you were awesome!

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Singapore

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I realise that I skipped the Final Thoughts post on Malaysia (which I’ve skipped on so many countries anyway), but honestly, in many ways I feel that Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur especially, and Singapore are alike: people are friendly and speak good english, it’s insanely hot, and feels very western. I like it.

We arrive somewhere in Singapore after 14 hours on a sleeper bus. It’s the comfiest one I’ve ever been on, so it definitely lived up to its name, which is Supernice. We have booked two nights at The Green Kiwi on Lavender Street, which is apparently a little over 1 km away, so naturally we just walk. When will we ever learn!? We arrive at our hostel, all sweaty and awful-looking, and the staff quickly offer us some water and super helpful directions to all the places we want to go. Oh, and their breakfast is amazing.

OK, enough with the hostel-reviewing. We don’t do much the first day but eat at a food court and go to the movies, where we watch 22 Jump Street, which has to be one of the funniest movie I’ve seen in a long time. I am crying from laughing so much. Definitely seeing that again very soon.

The next day we meet up with Geoff and go to Little India, Orchid Garden and Chinatown. In Chinatown, I buy a mono-pod. This is what happens when you spend too much time in Asia, you guys. I put on this screenshot of mono-pods so you’ll know what I’m talking about.

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Now, lots of pictures from the park and Orchid Garden:

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We then rush to see the Merlion and Marina Bay Sands Hotel. We head up to the skydeck on the 56th floor and enjoy the sunset and a strawberry slushie with rum – so basically a Strawberry Daiquiri. It’s so amazing, I could  stay up there forever. And I’m going to one day, because I am currently forcing my friend Angel to split a room there someday, because you can’t go in the infinity pool unless you are an actualy guest at the hotel.

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Doing the standard, super classy touristy photo.

 

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Needless to say, I am exhausted when we get home. The next day we have all day in Singapore before catching our flight to Bangkok, but have to check out at 12. I am hopelessly slow at packing today, and end up being the last one left in the dorm, just packing away. Our weird, intense and Brazilian roommate, Harry, then enters and we start talking casually. I only understood a fragment of what he is saying, but the conversation is about me leaving, and he’s sad to see me go – or with his words, leave him. He then points out that we’re all alone right now, which I find a bit weird, but I just ignore it. Harry asks for a hug, and I intentionally put on my backpack before saying “sure”. He does the most annoying thing you can do to a backpacker: taking it off my shoulders, to make it easier to hug me. You can’t really hug people with a 20 kilo tumor on your back – which is kinda the reason why I put it on in the first place!

I am a bit annoyed at this point, because the most painful and irritating part of being a backpacker is putting on and taking off your backpack. I give him a hug anyways, and immediately, he gets this insulted look on his face – as if a hug is not enough. He pushes me against my bunk bed and rests his arms against the bed, one hand on either side of my face. And then he tries to kiss me. UGH! I turn my head say “no”, but he doesn’t seem to understand and keeps asking me why, without moving. Finally I escape and hurry out of there with my stuff.

We go to the malls on Orchard and do a bit of shopping. Again. We spend like two hours in a giant H&M, where I end up running around, telling all the staff members that I think I’ve lost my phone in one of the dressing rooms, when I really have had in a puch around my neck the whole time. Embarassing. Then we go to Sentosa, an awesome island full of activities. I’ve been wanting to zipline for ages, but have felt that it was too expensive, but this is my last chance, so I do quite the hike by myself to get to MegaZip Adventure Park and zipline with a big group of anti-social Asians! Ziplining is amazing!!! And so, I’ve crossed off yet another thing on my 22 things list.

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After landing, the two guys in the picture above want a picture with me. They have been ziplining down to the beach with me. I find it funny, so I want a picture with them, too. Then 12 other Asians proceed to take a huge group picture with me, all doing the peace sign pose, of course.

We almost don’t make our flight, as we are a wee bit late at the airport, but hey, wouldn’t mind being stuck in Singapore. Ever.

Georgetown

People have told us so many times: “go to Georgetown, GEORGETOWN DAMMIT”. So we do.20140619-014639-6399317.jpg

What we didn’t realise until we arrived, is that Georgetown is just full of museums (boo), temples (more boo) and some street art. After 4 months, it takes a lot more to impress us.

So we get to Butterworth and take the ferry to Georgetown, followed by a few kilometers walking around looking for our hostel, Clockwise. It’s very new, very small and very nice. After the cold weather in Cameron Highlands, it seems even harder to endure the walk in what feels like 50 degrees with 25 kgs of extra weight on me. We make it to the hostel after asking like 5 people though – Indians in Malaysia are much nicer than the ones in India, I tell ya. Well, we of course have a nap after check-in and then go to a mall to go see a movie.

We do a stop at Watson’s to buy chapstick or whatever, when we run into Geoff from our dorm in SpicyThao, Chiang Mai! We chat for ages and he’s trying to convince us to come to Singapore with him, and he decides to tag along to the movies. I reluctantly agree to watch the new Tom Cruise movie, Edge of Tomorrow. The one where he keeps dying. Wow action much movie! Geoff smuggles in some whiskey, which I mix with my water and a multivitamin. I get a bit tipsy to say the least.

The following day we are on a mission to find the bigger mall in Georgetown, I’ve forgotten the name. We go to the mall from yesterday first and talk to travel agents, and decide “hey, let’s take the night bus to Singapore later!” That makes us run home, pack and ask for our money back for the nights we have already booked at our hostel. Needless to say, we aren’t so popular.

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We then take the bus to the giant mall and spend like 70 minutes in Sephora and an hour in H&M, no joke. We also go for waxes, and I have a full-on normal conversation about shopping, travelling and age guessing while I am pantless and this person I’m talking to is touching my lady parts. Good times.

So after all this, we hurry home and book a hostel in Singapore before going to the travel agent to catch the bus. I am on it now, and it’s the best sleeper bus I’ve ever been on, so I’m confident I’ll have a decent nights sleep. Toodles.

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Cheeky Snapchat from me

Amritsar, also I’m going to get a penis

The number of times I’ve sworn I’m getting a penis once we get to Thailand is impossible to keep track of. While I enjoy my chesticles and wearing dresses, I can’t survive another 12-19 hour bus drive that only stops for a ladies peebreak once.

In India (as well as many other places in the world) it is perfectly acceptable for a man to pull his pants down and urinate publicly. Women on the other hand not only have to deal with a far less efficient plumbing system, they also have either to find a toilet, or a bush so far away that no one can hear them scream if they get raped. Because, you know, vaginas are gross to look at, penises are totally fine.

Now that’s off my chest, I’d like to announce that we are currently in Amritsar. Where’s that, you say? I have no idea. Bruno said something about a golden temple and we like shiny things. Men here wear turbans and no shoes. When we arrive at 8 in the morning, it is raining and the streets are all muddy and gross. Poor barefoot guys. Of course, when the weather’s shit, there’s also only one autorickshaw driver around, and he wants to overcharge. We get to the hostel, a large apartment block full of Indians, which means it’s cheap and dirty. Oh well.

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Now, ever since our psychology teacher in High School told us about her trip to India, where she mentioned that McDonald’s is a vegetarian “restaurant”, I’ve wanted to go just for that. What is a vegetarian McDonald’s like? I’ve been harassing Sara, who is gluten, lactose and life intolerant, and finally she budged today. Finding this World famous place is a bit of a struggle though, since no tuk tuk driver knows what or where McDonald’s is – what? So we need to use two different drivers to get here, since the first one just drops us off by a mall-looking place, far away from everything. Finally, when we arrive, I have a large McVeggie meal and it is 27 kr. 27 kr! Denmark should reconsider the prices, but definitely keep the Big Tasty. Oh, how I miss having dead cow in my mouth.

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Getting back to our hostel is the same struggle; two different drivers that don’t recognise the name or address of the hostel, even though it’s super close to The Golden Temple. We rest after our trying day, and at 2.30, we drive to the Indian-Pakistana border for the Retreat Ceremony.

We share a car with two local couples, an old and a newlywed, and they are busy showing us pictures on their phones – Indians love to take hundreds of blurry pictures and then show them all to whoever is willing to look – and they ask to see my husband (we tell everyone we’re married), so I end up showing them a photo of the only guy that’s not Bruno on my phone: Michael from Jaisalmer on a pink scooter. Thanks Michael for sending me that picture, haha.

We get to the border, and that’s when we get seperated from Bruno. All the lines are according to gender, and there’s a seperate line for tourists – these two lines lead to the VIP section. We reunite in this section, standing on a big staircase, looking out on a long street where the two countries meet. On India’s side of the border, local women and children gather on the road and dance and run around with their flag. I recognise one of the songs as Jai Ho from the Slumdog Millionaire Soundtrack. After some dancing, guards do a funny walk towards the gate between the two countries, and then open it. People go absolutely crazy with excitement, and I’ll admit I do too. I find it very moving for some odd reason.

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Guy painted flag on my cheek and I took an awkward selfie

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On our way back to the hostel, the couples insist we stop by a temple. I follow them, just taking it all in, but hurry back to the car, as the driver tells us we only have a few minutes. We get back, and since Sara and I cannot eat Indian food, because it’s so spicy, we go to Domino’s (it’s close to the hostel, give us a break). This place is also vegetarian, just FIY. I have like two slices of pizza, so Sara gives my leftovers to a poor woman on the street as we head to The Golden Temple for the 9 o’clock ceremony. It starts raining again.

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Now, this temple is so beautiful, especially at night. People are bathing in the water surrounding this golden wonder, kissing the ground around it, and handing out food for small offerings. Once we get inside, we are hit with the feeling of being very unwelcome, as people take a break from praying to look up and stare at us. Everything inside is golden and so beautiful. People are sitting down, praying, while men are playing instruments and singing in a circle filled with flowers and money. We have a quick look around and decide not to interrupt and invade their space anymore. We’ve lost the ever-curious Bruno along the way and have to walk the dark and narrow alleys to find the hostel by ourselves. It proves to be very challenging, mostly because we both want to set each other on fire.

Now, we are both kind of over India by now. Maybe it’s the food, maybe it’s that we feel unsafe and unwelcome too often, maybe it’s because we’re sober. It’s a beautiful, yet confusing country, and I am forever grateful that I got the opportunity to come here and have these experiences, because so few people actually get to do this. I am ready to move on though, but I still have things to see and do here, so I cannot listen to anymore complaining. I have been writing down some general thoughts and observations about India that I will share when we leave in one week. Until then, know that I miss and think about the ones that matter back home and all over the place.

Happy birthday, grandma.

Busride from Hell

A 19-hour bus drive. That’s not too bad.

Or so we thought.
After sitting on the pavement of a hot, busy street for what seems like ages, our bus stops a few hundred metres away from us. As we are entering the bus, we are greeted by a handful of local guys right by the driver’s seat, loudly exclaiming “nice” as they stare us down. Creeped out, we go to the back of the bus to get to our top sleeper. As we climb the ladder, the guys go absolutely nuts. They are laughing, yelling and pointing, just because they got to see us bend over to get into our sleeper. Great. At this point, I am 90 % sure we are going to get either robbed or raped at night. I am extremely terrified, so we try to keep our spirits high by singing children’s songs about bad busdrivers.

But it gets worse.
The sleeper is disgusting. It’s old, worn down and downright dirty. It has to be the smallest, most expensive double sleeper we have ever been in, with no AC either.

But it gets worse.
The bus barely drives anywhere for the first five hours. It will drive for 10-20 minutes, then stop for an hour, then drive for another 10 minutes, only to stop for several hours again. Not having AC on the bus is acceptable when you’re actually driving, as the wind cools you down, but being parking for hours directly in the sun with no curtains to block the warm rays is awful. The mattress and blankets under us gets soaked with our sweat. We are getting increasingly annoyed. And the bus keeps stopping. We realise that it doubles as a delivery service, as we stop just to unload packages, and at one point, all the guys are outside, trying to lift motorbikes to the roof and then attach them. This gives the bus a slight tilt, which is just great when your driver is a maniac behind the wheel.

But it gets worse.
The road is so bumpy, and our bus is driving so fast, that our bodies actually elevate and we bump our heads into the ceiling, even though we are lying straight down. It’s like a long rollercoaster ride that you never asked for.

But it gets worse.
We get our only toiletbreak 9 hours into the ride, but we both have to pee long before that. I blame the bumpy road punching our bladders. Sara is so desperate, she takes out a plastic bag and asks me if it’s OK if she pees right in our sleeper, into the bag. Of course I say no, the girl has no aim and the road is bumpy, and I don’t want to spend 15 hours on a pissed-soaked mattress.

But it gets worse.
At one point, I pull aside the curtain that seperates our sleeper with the rest of the bus, and to our surprise, the bus is completely full. So full, that people are sitting on the floor of the bus. We are the only tourists on the bus, and as soon as I pull aside the curtain, people notice us and we are now the most interesting thing to look at on this bus. I close my eyes, enjoying the breeze coming from the window, drying my sweat-soaked clothes a bit. All of the sudden, Sara starts screaming, and I really think it’s because she has to wet herself, since we had had no toilet breaks. No. Big spider crawling right next to me. I freak out completely, find a reciept and try to squish the son of a bitch, but it slips away and crawls out of the sleeper. Except it didn’t really. So 5 minutes later it is back for more, and I brutally kill it in front of several locals just staring at the only blonde person on the bus, who is letting out a victorious laugh.

King of the world

Our 19-hour bus ride turned into 22 hours, of course. We only had an apple and some crackers each all day, one pee break, and so many horny locals around us in this confined space. This was without a doubt a busride from Hell.