The decision to go to Vietnam was when I read about Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam (more about that later) sometime ago. I thought crawling through narrow, suffocating tunnels sounded fun and it came close to War Museum in Penang which I loved! The initial plan was only to visit Vietnam, but later I learnt about the Khmer Rouge regime and decided I wanted to learn about the genocide (whether or not it was a genocide is debatable) that killed more than two million Cambodians in the 1970s. Due to time constraints, we changed our itinerary a bit but we covered Phnom Penh (Cambodia) - Siem Reap - Chau Doc (Mekong Delta, Vietnam) - Can Tho - Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam). Our lifesaver! We departed from Kuala Lumpur on 10th July and landed in Phnom Penh. Out of the few cities that we travelled to, Phnom Penh was the city that we liked least, no thanks to the deceiving tuk-tuk drivers we met. A few of them were okay, but most of them were not. Well, we only took 4-5 rides on tuk-tuks? On ...
How does your body react to altitudes that are thirty to forty times a Bukit Timah Hill’s? It screams at you with the worst headaches you will ever experience. Some nights, they get so bad that not even popping four Panadol (and ActiFast at that) can lighten the throb in your head. So you learn. You learn that prevention is better than cure. You learn from your peers to pop one tablet every four hours and wonder how many years of medical detoxification you will need before the tablets make their way out of your body. First-aid talks aside, you also come to reliaze that, while your body reacts to the harsh Himalayan environment as quickly as its winds blow, you can cheat it into believing that are you taking a descent, when the opposite is the truth. Acclimatization days are the BEST because apparently, if you put your body at an elevation level just a few hundred metres higher in the day, make a descent and then go to bed at lower altitudes, the headaches, unfortunately, don’t...
Six months ago, I made the decision to leave the corporate world – months later, fate brought me to Sri Lanka, where I spent 5 weeks eating (mostly rice and curry), praying (on meditation retreats and when I jaywalk) and – not loving, but pooping (because chillies aren’t the best for weak stomachs). 1. Think chilli padi gives no kick? Try Sri Lanka’s world-renowned chilli. The world’s spiciest chillies are grown in Sri Lanka. The Bhut Jolokia, more commonly known as “cobra chillies” in Sri Lanka, is the hottest of all known chili peppers at 800,000 to 1,041,000 Scoville units. The Guinness Book of World Records certified these scorching spices as the world's hottest pepper in 2007. I had to request for a takeaway for this plate of roti kottu because IT. WAS. SO. SPICY. Third day into my pro bono volunteering with Sarvodaya , I had to rush to the nearest vegetable store for some wholesome shopping simply because my tongue (and stomach) couldn’t take them chillies ...
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