So I was in Manila with my travel buddy Elizabeth and we stayed at a place advertised as a ‘Home Stay’. It was actually an apartment which was turned into a hostel. We were placed in 4-person room, with two bed bunks. So quite naturally, I took up the top bed while Elizabeth took the lower bed. While most of the nights we had the room all to ourselves, there was one night when a traveller from Korea came in…
Kolkata seems to have long moved on from the time when Mother Teresa was still alive. I didn’t really see the sheer starvation that was portrayed in the books about her and her works. In fact I was quite surprised to see how well-off the people of Kolkata were in general. There were still beggars here and there but then we’d see beggars in big cities in other countries too so it was not really much of a big deal….
So I have just remembered. I went to Phuket late last year – to join a bunch of friends from my hometown who actually toured from Bangkok to Phuket and back on bicycles. It would be my second time to this island, after going there with a friend back in 2009 (one of my very first travel trips). As expected, everything had changed a lot. It was only a moderately sized airport back then, but now it seems to have…