Pudong CBD @ Shanghai

On my first day in Shanghai I did a little visit over to Pudong, the CBD area of the city. The view from the west side of the Bund river looking toward CBD is the postcard image of Shanghai that I'm used to seeing come up on Google searches.

Pudong from across the Bund river

South Of Pattaya

I decided to visit Sunset beach just south of Pattaya, on the way there the surroundings started to look more run down like I imagined Thailand. At sunset beach I found a restaurant surrounded by bungalows for 200 a night. The view from the place was great, as it was an isolated point on the coast.

Pattaya

After arriving in Bankok I drove south to Pattaya, I checked into my hotel and then grabbed a bite to eat, at this hour the only people out were bar owners cleaning up the mess from the previous night. After getting some sleep at the hotel I went out and started my normal bar hop routine on Walking Road where you can find everything from german bratwurst to fresh shashimi.

Dana Pani

This morning I found a little beach on google maps called Dana Pani and decided I was going to go there. My cab driver didn't sound excited about this and tried to convince me to go elsewhere but I was insistent that I wanted to see something new. He stopped first at Marve Beach, where I was able to witness one of the most dangerous ferry landings I've ever seen.

Sick/Rain

I woke today with a brilliant feeling, I rose early to enjoy breakfast and watched the rain fall on the hotel pool as this feeling of brilliance slowly morphed into one of strangeness. After returning from breakfast I realized I must be sick after coughing up some colorful things into the hotel sink, but I decided to venture out in the rain and do some restaurant hopping anyway.

View from the Harbor View Hotel

Wet Mumbai

I made it down to South Mumbai today in time to witness the beginning of the monsoon rains. Due to the recent humidity my Nikon stopped working so I took my shitty Kodak with me. After enjoying a couple beers at the Taj and Leopold, I made my way back over to the Gate to admire the dreary scenery looking toward the east. Here I chatted with some guy named Mayur who's known as the slum-dog tour guide who directed me to a nice rooftop bar near the gate.

Lake Powai

So I made my way over to an inland area for a change today. Lake Powai is kind of a less talked about part of Mumbai. It appeared to be the most civilized also, one of the people I work with told me it was like visiting a foreign country. After failing to find what I wanted at the GNC there, I asked the driver to take me too a shop called "natures basket" which has a branch in Powai. This caused about an hour of phone calls and meandering, he even passed the phone to me multiple times so I could communicate to a more multilingual friend of his. We eventually made it to "natures basket", and even out to the lake edge for some photos.

Crawford / Aer

I found myself at the Crawford market area in south Mumbai today. My attempt to discover the scope of this market was useless, it was kind of an endless maze of shops spanning out from the Crawford. Among the more interesting things I noticed were the bats which seamed to be following me around the fruit market.

Odd Car Rides

I've been recording videos of my more interesting car rides in Mumbai, I figure I'll go ahead and post them. On the second one down you can see my favorite site in Mumbai, pigs eating near a dumpster of burning trash. Sometimes the trash piles on the ground light on fire and the pigs eat right off of them, which may be why the pork is so tasty here.

Bouncing Around South Mumbai

My taxi driver got clipped by a dump truck today and a 20 minute argument ensued on the side of marine drive in South Mumbai. After this, I was practically pushed into a hand craft shop so the driver could get some sort of a kickback for bringing me there. When I politely tried to explain that I would maybe come back at a later time to purchase something, the owner got upset and went on a rant. He explained in detail how his father left and said he would come back and then was run over by a bus in front of him. As I made an effort to flee the shop I was cursed at.

Father Of The Nation

I was lead into a nice British looking neighborhood where I ran across this famous guys house. From what I could gather he's like the Rosa parks of India, he also suffered from an eating disorder and was an extreme minimalist.

There were some good trees here in front of his house.