Day 57

The last celebration of the "50 days" is taking place at home, on day 57, a week later than originally planned. Joern, Markos, Toni with Silvia, Eva, Jano, Angela with Massi, Abdul, Lucero with Jan, and Ana Maria with Giovanni and Luca bring the number of friends who helped celebrate to exactly 50 (not counting partners). We serve Raclette, as on day 1, and let the 1877 pictures and videos from the trip pass by on the wall. Reminiscences of various high- and lowlights of the trip sprinkle the evening, and I end up confessing that I feel more European than before. Why did we embark on this crazy itinerary at all? It's Carlos' fault, since he suggested that I visit my friends for my birthday, given that I cannot gather enough of them in one place. And then, of course, there is Wanderlust, or the Anatomy of Restlessness. Good to be back!

A Passage Through India

The last country that we are insulting on our trip by rushing through is India. We fly from Bangkok to Chennai (Madras), from where we originally planned to take the train to Mumbai (Bombay). However, several people discouraged us from doing that, and the alternative plan to fly to Goa and take the recommended train trip from there to Mumbai (13 hours) gets scratched as well, mostly due to insetting travel fatigue. Chennai offers us a lively beach at sunset and a delicious southern Indian dinner. Yet, Carlos' antibiotics-stressed stomach dislikes the spices, and we spend the next day recovering in the comfy Ramada hotel and catching up with things like phone calls (among them to my mother) before flying to Mumbai. There, we are in the good hands of Sumit, who facilitates our travel and takes us to a nice dinner after we have explored Elephanta island and its cave temples. The final day in Mumbai should have been spent in the relaxing hill-top setting of Matheran, but while the driver gets lost in the middle of nowhere, I receive the call that my mom passed away during the night. As planned, we fly back to Europe in the evening, but I go to Zurich instead of Vienna and Prague. Thus, on October 8th, Trudi's last journey begins and our trip ends unexpectedly. And today, on the 50th day after the 50th birthday, we are saying good-bye to a special friend on Friedhof Enzenbühl, in Zurich's Grossmünster Helferei, and in Zunfthaus Rüden. She loved traveling - but she thought that our 50 days idea was overdoing it.

Thai Food, Temples, Vehicles

Our venture into Thailand was mostly motivated by our love for Thai food and we get to enjoy some delicious dishes, particularly salads combining various fruit and seafood. But the culinary experience is not that different from the better Thai restaurants where we have eaten in other parts of the world. Most memorable is a fine dinner at a cosy, dimly lit back street restaurant, sitting on the floor amidst flowers: the spicy northern Thai sausage waters the mouth remembering it, the Snake Head Fish adds to our list of 50 animals eaten (sorry, Jano), and the vegetable and shrimp curry tastes fabulously. A discovery for me is the succulent Langsat fruit, and breakfast at the conveniently located Grand President hotel in Bangkok is the richest we have ever had. Yet, we will mostly remember the four days in Bangkok and Ayutthaya for the beautiful Buddhist temples and for the vehicles that move us between them: tuk-tuk (rather scary in rush hour traffic), taxis driven by a broad range of characters, mini buses and big tourist buses, ferries and cruise ships, the efficient sky train (the vehicle of choice in this city of eternal traffic jams), the subway - and not to forget our feet. Among the temples, the Grand Palace is certainly the most impressive, and its mural paintings are some of the finest classical art I have seen. Also, Siam Niramit, the fantastic show of Thai history and festivals at the Thai Cultural Center in Bangkok, done to perfection and including live elephants, tells us a lot about the country in a short time.

Taking a break from sightseeing

Hong Kong, a very different and much more homogeneous cultural environment (95% Cantonese, the guide says), gives us a welcome pause. Martin, Teresa, and Jennie host us comfortably in their superb apartment, overlooking the bay to the south of Hong Kong Island from the 23rd floor (and including the roof top). Carlos spends the first day in bed with the COSIT bug, while I have just recovered enough to get some work done. No need to go out anyway, as spectacular fireworks get displayed at night from seven boats in the bay at our feet (for no apparent reason). The remaining two days turn out equally relaxing, one spent walking around the top of The Peak with its breathtaking views, the other on the boat that Martin shares with friends, just being lazy and spoilt with a fine BBQ. The evening in between we enjoy at the great show of the Australian Circus of Oz. Overall, the three Hong Kong days felt a bit like getting some rest at home - maybe also because of the (marked) Swiss German spoken. We catch up with tourism on the last morning, though, by visiting the huge Buddha statue and the Po-Lin monastery, in a great landscape setting close to the airport on Lantau Island.