Over the last few days we have been in M-town. Some new friends of ours (in the pic below) are moving to M-town for about a year, so we went to help a little in that moving process.
All 4 of us fit on a little tiny bicycle rickshaw! It was awesome!!
We got to hang out with the Kumars (the family we used to live with when we lived in M-town). Our favorite street dog (Mad Dog) had more puppies, so we got to see them and they were very cute!
Of course we had to make a trip to Pizza Hut to see the dancing!! It's awesome! They turn up the music really loud, and all of the employees dance a choreographed dance! If you want to see a video of a previous Pizza Hut dance, then click on this link:
OK, so on to the Kite Day Tragedy....I think I mentioned in the previous post that Kite day is our all-time favorite holiday here... It's an awesome day of Kite-flying and great food! Last year we woke up really early and flew kites almost all day! Now, for those of you that think that sounds boring... think again because it's not just about flying your kite, but "cutting" other people's kites! The goal is to get your kite up high in the sky and then try to "cut" another person's kite... and when you cut their kite you yell out: Vo Cuttay (I cut you!). It's TONS of fun!
So, Kite Day (Basant Panchmi) was on Tuesday... so we decided that we would leave M-town on Monday night to be back on Tuesday morning in the capital for Kite Day. We thought it would be a great and easy way to meet some of our neighbors that we haven't really had the chance to meet yet. So we were excited!
All day on Monday (and the days before) we saw scenes in M-town like the one in the pic below of kids buying and selling kites and getting ready for kite day!
Well, on Monday night we were checking on our train (that was supposed to arrive at 8:30 pm) to see if it was on time or not... we checked online and it said that our train was running 1.5 hours late. No problem, we just hung out with our friends a little longer... So right before we were about to get on a rickshaw, we checked the schedule again and it said it was only running 45 minutes late!! So our friend Scott drove us to the train station quickly (as quickly as you can in south asia) so that we wouldn't miss the train. Well, we got to the train station just to learn that our train had left ON TIME! and that the internet was WRONG!
Well, on Monday night we were checking on our train (that was supposed to arrive at 8:30 pm) to see if it was on time or not... we checked online and it said that our train was running 1.5 hours late. No problem, we just hung out with our friends a little longer... So right before we were about to get on a rickshaw, we checked the schedule again and it said it was only running 45 minutes late!! So our friend Scott drove us to the train station quickly (as quickly as you can in south asia) so that we wouldn't miss the train. Well, we got to the train station just to learn that our train had left ON TIME! and that the internet was WRONG!Well, we wern't sure what to do because we really wanted to be home in the capital for Kite Day. So we called Scott and were talking to him and realized that our favorite train to take hadn't left yet... BUT we didn't have tickets and we couldn't buy them at that time of night... so we decided just to get on (aparently you can do that, but it's just a little risky)... so when the train came, we jumped on (there's only about at 1-2 min stop in M-town, so we had to be fast)
We got on the train and just as the train starts going, one of the conductors told us that he was going to charge us 1,700 Rs. per person!!! That would be about $80 for the both of us!!!!!!! We knew the price that we should pay (250 Rs. per person - about $5 each) so we told the guy we wouldn't pay more than 250. Then he told us to go to another car. So we walked through a bunch of cars to get to that car. When we got there, another conductor pulled us in between the cars and told Adam that he had to pay 1,700 per person (we knew they were trying to scam us)... ANYWAY... to make this already too long of a story shorter... we stood our ground and only paid 250 a person.... whoo hoo! Talk about a cultural victory!!
Well, we got home that night and went straight to bed so that we could get some sleep before Kite Day that next morning. Well, we woke up and didn't see any kites in the sky.... so we took showers and then checked... and no kites!!! We decided to walk around town .... NO KITES!!! Well, we finally found out that they don't celebrate Kite Day in the Capital!! Talk about dissappointment!! We could have stayed in M-town just one more day and we could have celebrated Kite Day!We brought some string back with us from M-town, but we didn't bring any kites... so we couldn't even fly one ourselves... what a sad Kite Day Tragedy... Oh well, I guess we'll have to wait for next year.... Next year on Kite Day we're definitely coming to M-town!!
Here's a video from last year's Kite Day if you wanna check it out! (we had to shrink the quality to put it on here, so you can't really see all the kites in the sky, but trust me, it was covered!! Oh, and the begining of the video is a little bit boring... sorry)
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And it's way fun to see some of our new friends hanging out with some of our old friends. :)