Trekking Solo in India & Getting Robbed in Malaysia
A lot happened in the past 30 days. I enjoyed trekking solo into India and on the other end of the spectrum, I got robbed in Malaysia.
It wasn’t all that bad though. I really loved Malaysia. I made a lot of friends from both work and outside of work, so it has been interesting learning about different cultures in Malaysia. I had dinner with a Muslim family, learned about the favourite pastimes in Malaysia (by the way Karaoke and Mamak are awesome), and I enjoyed a lot of Malay food from bazaars during the month of Ramadan.
However, I guess I like to be adventurous. Just as I was getting used to Malaysia, I spontaneously decided to go to Mumbai, India, for Malaysia’s Riya long weekend and experienced a completely different way of living. It was definitely not what I expected.
Mumbai was an eye-opening experience. The differences in living situations were huge. Most buildings were 80–90 years old. I saw families crammed into rooms the size of a small bedroom, and people living on the streets with tents in extreme poverty conditions. There was a lack of sanitation on the streets. My friend in India got food poisoning on the second day, so I made sure that I was very careful.
There was a huge language barrier there. Hindi is a difficult language to understand and to read. I booked a tour and I needed to take an Uber to the meeting point. I failed on multiple occasions because they either did not speak English or had nowhere to stop on the road, so I ended up walking for 40 minutes in the soaking rain in the middle of the Monsoon rain season.
Despite the differences, Mumbai had so many beautiful aspects. I toured Mangaldas market, where there were 1000 stores, each selling clothes with unique cloth designs in vibrant colours. The food was delicious. In India, since there’s no place to keep the food, everything is made super spicy to make it safe to eat. My favourite food was the Thali. It had Indian bread (purti), dipped with different delicious sauces like Paneer Subji. It was also interesting to learn about Hinduism, where there are 32 million gods, one for everything that you can think of!
India was fun. I was extremely careful in Mumbai to make sure that I didn’t get food poisoning or get my stuff stolen, but I guess that made me a bit reckless in Malaysia where everything felt like home. Right before my flight to China, I went for karaoke with my friends, and I made the mistake of leaving my backpack in the backseat of my friend’s car. Back in Canada, this is totally fine, but in Malaysia, when people see bags in cars, they will want to take it.
Imagine, you had a great night of karaoke and returned to your friend’s car, only to find that somebody broke the car’s window and stole your backpack. You lost everything that night, including your MacBook Air, your cables, your headphones, and your keys. On top of that, you have to leave for a flight to China in 2 hours. You rush home and you realize that you don’t have any keys. So, you call your drunk housemates to come home and open the door. Then you realized that nobody has the locks to your room and nobody can pick the lock, so your friend comes up with a great idea to break apart the door to open it. That’s exactly what happened to me. Special shoutout to Vlad for breaking the lock with his foot. I lost a lot of things that night, but I can’t regret it. I can only move forward from here.
So, a lot has happened in the last 30 days, many of them were unexpected. My biggest take away? Shit happens. You just have to get used to it.
Now I’m off to my next adventure. I typed up this blog on my phone after visiting my family in China. For the next few days, I will be attending a tech conference in Hong Kong, followed by a short trip to Thailand. Cheers to more memories.
