Let's go shopping...

Uh...ok...what are we looking for?  "Don't worry about that, I'll know it when I see it."  Shoot me right f'n now!  The mercado is cool here...in a sweltering hot kind of way!  Do they sell beer?........ya, but not in the volumes I need to go shopping.  What the hell are swaheely peppers?...you'll find them right next to the f'n hen's teeth peppers. The only redeeming quality to shopping is getting to eat at Fonda Delia...ya want peppers, they have PEPPERS!!!

those are cucmonga peppers slathering my cojones,,,that's Spanish for prawns!  I'm fluent in a few languages ya know!  Look, can you find Cassandra?

See her, she's just to the right of the kid in red who's about to try to steal my camera!  She already drank my beer, and is drinking my other beer too!...shopping my ass!  The mercado is quite the place...in the back I found these two happy guys covered in blood, hauling some kind of skinned animal in one door...

...and out another door it was like the Walking Dead...nothin' but bones!

The sign says "It's a different kind of boner you get here."  Got that right!  So then there was this lady dancin' around, but I didn't see a pole anywhere...maybe she was lost.  

But there were these people...

  

                          
              
                                                                   ...and flowers too!

                                          Just after sunset this boat pulled into the harbour...

                ...then the moon came out.........almost full................and yes, my pants are still on!

Can't keep this pace up much longer........

Hello little people!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh...here we are in the incredible warmth of Mexico, in a favourite little fishing village of Zihuatanejo.  We are having to stay in a cramped (by our standards) 1300 sq. ft., 2 bedroom suite overlooking the ocean...I'm sure you'll agree, IT SUCKS TO BE US!!!

...for context, here is more of the resort...hahahahaha...cruel huh?

...and here is the crappy pool we almost consider going in every day!

...here is Cassandra in the living room...

...and our balcony...

...we try to put up with the discomfort...........hahahahahaha!  We go into town every day for lunch or dinner at Fonda Delia...here are the girls!

...and Cassandra with the head girl...

We get crappy food like this fish!

The restaurant is in the fish market part of the mercado...here are some of the regulars...

                         

Last night we went down to the town basketball court where Sunday nights are truly special!  They were supposed to have a concert by the Juvenile orchestra, but all we got was political speeches.  The guy on the cello was getting warmed up though...

...and this little munchkin was all dressed up!

She was so excited to be there that she started to eat her dress!  

Now that's excited!  Time to go for lunch!

 

The last night in India...

We got to India on the last day of the year...now it's past Valentines Day, and we're about to leave.  It's been a good run...the tour was out of gas for the last few days, but most of the people were too...no big deal.  The last few hotels have had food service problems...the food was ok, but it took forever to get it...like today, 90 minutes for a chicken burger.  The old TLD flamethrower got a good workout on the chicken burger team!  We head to Bangkok for 5 days, then home...this will likely be my last post for this trip.  As usual, this trip has had it's ups and downs...mainly ups.  Lots of old men for me to take photos of...men don't seem to get as old in Thailand, but we'll see when we get there!  Thanks for reading amigos...TLD out!

Fading glory...

Meet the Maharajah, we're staying at his house.

 Times have been tough for the Prince...first the Indian government gave him the shaft, and now he can't afford to keep up his palace...has to rent it out to us!

 This is a grand old place, stuck in the 20's...hand painted walls that look like wallpaper...paintings and photos of ancestors long gone...

...yes, that's an elephant head!...

...musty libraries of books that may never get read...peeling paint, all the signs of lack of money for upkeep.  The prince and his lovely wife have resigned themselves to a life of innkeepers, no longer royalty as they knew it, they look for money to continue the renovation that may stave off the auction house.  The palace was built in the 1870's, and must have been grand in it's prime...one of the first  buildings with electricity in the region!  Legend has it that the Prince shot a man eating tiger right between the eyes in the very garden we now eat breakfast in.  We are given free run of most of the palace...the storage areas that hold so many memories, now on the verge of mildew in this tropical climate...the photos of long forgotten celebrities that used to be daily visitors, hang faded and rarely looked at.  The garden, if you could call it that, still has some nice flowers...

Is this what happened to Xanadu?  Oh well, not my problem!  The food isn't too bad...lot's of mosquitoes that rip you a new one when they bite, and the beds suck...but we have air mattresses!!!  The queen of this tour is a woman named Charlotte...she's a very cool lady that is saving the world a little at a time...and that includes the Prince and his palace!  Right now Charlotte and her tours are all the business the Prince has, but with her direction, I think he can turn this thing around.  Today we drove 2 hours to some village...not the highlight of the trip, but found a few guys worth taking photos of...

 ...this is a look down one of the more affluent streets of this particular village of 100K+...

 I don't know where the hell we go next, but I'll keep you posted!

They tricked me...plain and simple!

They took me to the desert...to a place called Bhuj...Booooj....not Booze!  You shouldn't place tricks on TLD, bad things happen!  Just before we left Bhujodi, they told me were going to Bhuj, not Booze...I flipped out, I went berserk...I descended on them like a bad smell with food poisoning leaking from both ends...make that exploding from both ends!  They were sorry I tell you...turned out all that really happened except it was a 24 hour bug that took down 23 of the 24 people...it was impressive!  So these maniacs took 23 sick people out to the desert, put us in mud huts with mongoose and cobras all around...and big ass horse-like deer...don't forget those!  The sounds that came out of the mud huts that first night would have made Wes Craven proud!  Just to complete the nightmare of NO ALCOHOL (did you know Muslims don't drink...how the f do they stay hydrated?), they took us around to villages where the people sit around and darn socks all day...they had a fancy name for it...embroidery or something...go figure.  Anyway, here is Cassandra in front of our mud hut...

...and I took this pic inside, with her in bed, but without the naked parts showing...it's Muslim ya know...

...no tv, no internet, living like savages out in the desert...NO BOOZE!!!  I was going to call in the helicopter, but the little woman vetoed me....you heard it here first (well, maybe not first) I'm a pussy!  So here we are out in the desert without booze...

...there's Cassandra out looking for the toilet...and the next one is her learning how to darn socks...

...here's the head sock darner...

...they had these fancy sock darning uniforms...I couldn't make out any numbers or sponsors...and they were all different colours...maybe home and away or something...here's another one...

...I don't think these guys made the team...and weren't very happy about it!  One had to scrub pots!

I think this guy was the coach, but couldn't really tell.

This guy must have been the waterboy...he just kept bringing water!

I took this one just because the kid was cute, and because people made all those sappy comments about me!

...and here's a desert sunset just for Megan!

We're back in Bombay for a couple of days...gawd knows where after that!