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Re: Most exotic place you ever visited?
Author: Jack Neville
Date: 04-03-2010 - 18:35
While I have been to a fair number of places in the world, I would say that sometimes it’s the experience rather than the locale that defines the exotic.
A few examples beginning with a place I stayed:
1.Waking up in the morning in a sleazy waterfront hotel near the Tres Rios yards in Campos, Brazil to discover that the rates had climbed into my backpack and eaten most of my stash of cookies. Moments later, when I opened the antique armoire to retrieve my jacket I noticed irregular patches of light in the wooden door. Light stream in through the window was illuminating sections of the soft wood between the facings of hardwood veneer that were being eaten out by termites.
2.Boarding the narrow gauge passenger train in Shibanxi, China in the predawn hours and riding up into the mountains on a wooden bench in pitch blackness because the little steel 4-wheel coaches have no electricity, and the only way to keep out the bitter cold is to keep the steel plates in place over the non-glazed windows. It was rather like being inside a bouncing black drum.
3.Riding the Darjeeling-Himalaya railway narrow gauge train out of the town Kurseong, India – just inches away from the steps leading up to the entrances to the shops and stores.
4.Looking out through the window of our warm, velvet trimmed wooden sleeper at a family huddled together in against the freezing winter night of Northern Argentina while for their train.
5.Watching the daily ritual of one of our 50-something car attendants perform his morning exercise regimen of running up and down the length of our chartered train, through the snow and ice, clad only in his briefs.
A few examples beginning with a place I stayed:
1.Waking up in the morning in a sleazy waterfront hotel near the Tres Rios yards in Campos, Brazil to discover that the rates had climbed into my backpack and eaten most of my stash of cookies. Moments later, when I opened the antique armoire to retrieve my jacket I noticed irregular patches of light in the wooden door. Light stream in through the window was illuminating sections of the soft wood between the facings of hardwood veneer that were being eaten out by termites.
2.Boarding the narrow gauge passenger train in Shibanxi, China in the predawn hours and riding up into the mountains on a wooden bench in pitch blackness because the little steel 4-wheel coaches have no electricity, and the only way to keep out the bitter cold is to keep the steel plates in place over the non-glazed windows. It was rather like being inside a bouncing black drum.
3.Riding the Darjeeling-Himalaya railway narrow gauge train out of the town Kurseong, India – just inches away from the steps leading up to the entrances to the shops and stores.
4.Looking out through the window of our warm, velvet trimmed wooden sleeper at a family huddled together in against the freezing winter night of Northern Argentina while for their train.
5.Watching the daily ritual of one of our 50-something car attendants perform his morning exercise regimen of running up and down the length of our chartered train, through the snow and ice, clad only in his briefs.
