Monthly Archives: January 2013

Not quite sure what it was, but somehow the buses in Mexico are great, but the rides are always horrible and you just feel like crap afterwards. The overnight bus was a bit delayed, but this is better for us because we got to town at 8:45am instead of the scheduled 6:30am! Don’t think my B&B owner would be happy with two red-eyed guests knocking on the door that early in the morning.

The streets of Merida instantly feels much different than the previous cities we’ve been to, with much less ‘colonial’ architecture and with many more buildings in ruins, it’s a stark reminder that although Mexico has a vibrant economy, there still are many places where life isn’t as colourful as the shades of pastel painted on throughout the exterior walls.

The rest of the day was spent resting, as during the night bus one of us experienced some signs of food poisoning. May have been the fruit, we’re not sure!! Either way, even the supermarkets in this town are much smaller and less widely stocked. Grabbing some fruits and crackers, we spent the day dozing in and out of consciousness and living of fruits and water.

Aaahhh, the hazards of traveling!

The day was as uneventful as you can get while traveling. One of those quiet days, where you’re content with what’s going on and just want to laze around reading a book.

Waking up, we got ready and booked our itinerary for the next couple of days. Thinking we should spend the New Year’s around a more popular destination, we thought about heading over to the beach side town of Playa del Carmen. Well, looks like we are too late in booking anything, and whatever is left is about 100x (no joke) what we’re used to paying now!! So we called off the idea and planned a couple of days elsewhere.

With a few more hours to wander the city, we weren’t content with the food we’ve had so far since it’s such a far cry from the delicious stuff we’ve had the past week, we decided to look up TripAdvisor for the #1 rated restaurant in town…. turns out it was a Thai place! Haha, well no problem we could use a bit of Thai. We got there too early for lunch, so we grabbed a light snack at a coffeeshop before heading over. The hot chocolate here is DELICIOUS, and they must have coffee production somewhere close by, as there are several shops that even roast their own coffee beans, sending the lush aromas out into the streets.

The Thai restaurant, is a bit off the beaten track in a less popular area, and is in a small shop that can seat only 10 people or so. You can smell the aromas once you walk inside, but that was the only bright side of this place. The menu consisted of 3 items of the most standard Thai fare: Tom Yum soup, Pad Thai and a Curry. Oh, and they had a Thai iced tea, which was the only decent thing on the menu. They had 5 people working in the kitchen, but considering the small number of tables they had to serve and the simplicity of the menu, they took about 50minutes to get our order out. We were patiently waiting, as you can see the chefs working pretty hard, thinking they may be making a lot of this fresh, and hence the long wait. Well, when the food arrived, we were pretty amazed. We’re not quite sure how 150 people gave this place such a high rating…. just rather strange considering the STRANGE flavours we’re getting with this. We left the restaurant, slightly hungry and even more confused at this city and how it can have such weird tastes for food, in addition to the bohemian-style people that overrun the streets.

Our bus leaves at 6pm, and knowing the way the road is going to turn, we opted for not eating dinner, but instead headed over to the market to stock up on fruits. We bought 3 boxes of fruit, weighing in at about 2.5lbs for a whopping 30Ps, or a little less more than $2CAD!! The craziest part was, the fruit stand at the market was worked by children probably less than 12 years old, and we asked for a watermelon box, which they didn’t have, so she grabbed an empty plastic box, cut up one massive slice of watermelon to fill the box. We were thinking, wow, that’s quite a bit for 10Ps, but then out of nowhere, she started to pile more and more onto the box. For a while there I wanted to yell at her saying “Stop! What are you doing? You have a business to run!”. So we left with our hands full of fruit, and lazed around in the hostel lounge eating fruits for the rest of the day.

Another 12hr bus ride up ahead…ain’t going to be fun.