A brief spell in Chennai

16/06/2013

So it’s time to check out this morning.  We headed down for the one and only breakfast we’ve had since being here (despite them being free, we’re just that lazy and would rather sleep longer than eat free food, I don’t believe that’s a good way to be!  The best things in life are free after-all).  The Manager was working so everyone was actually being busy, or pretending to be busy for once rather than sitting around doing sweet F.A.  The Manager nicely let us use the hotel room until 12pm which was great as we weren't leaving until then and my stomach is playing up again and having to use the poolside toilet right behind the bar is far from ideal, the privacy of our old room is very much more agreeable for my bowels.  My suitcase is annoying enough to lug around as it is but now the handle on the top has broken it’s a ball ache on a whole other level.  On a ball ache scale of 1; enjoyable, to 10; I’d rather chop off my hands so I don’t have to deal with it, it’s sitting at a strong 8 at the moment.  If the handle on the side goes too other than setting the whole thing on fire in a fit of rage I’ll have to buy another one which isn't going to be cheap. 
<Warning; rant beginning> I lent my original suitcase to a friend as I’m nice like that but it was never been returned and then I found out it had been trashed so I wasn't ever going to get it back or get a replacement.  So I had to replace it myself as apparently that’s the thing to do when you put yourself out helping someone who can’t be bothered to provide themselves with what they need in life so I’d picked this one up from Primark.  I should have known better, Primark is such poor quality but I was sucked in by the pretty flowers on the outside.  Damn the flowers!  So now despite having bought a good quality suitcase that I got to use myself once I’m now going to have to pay out for the 3^rd time.  You may be able to tell I’m fed up of lending things to people just to end up being put out myself. Noone ask to borrow anything from me again! My generosity is officially rinsed!  Never a lender nor a borrower be.  I’ve heard this phrase said many times and never appreciated its value until now.  (I also never processed the words through my brain and actually understood it either but it’s very true!)   

The drive to the airport was really nice, full of palm trees, rice fields and big holiday homes.  Rice picking, now there’s a bitch of a job to do; bent over all day long up to your waist in water.  No thanks!

I’m out of patience with the tip culture here.  I don’t mind if someone offers to do something for you and you have a choice whether to accept but a lot of the time they just take your bags from you without asking or giving you chance to refuse and run ahead with them and then they demand money.  But if you refuse their help they get really annoyed too.  My suitcase has wheels, I am more than capable of wheeling it myself!  3 people tried taking it from me.  It has wheels! Be-gone!
A women in the toilets (with a sign next to her clearly saying ‘no tips please’ asked me for a tip because she handed me toilet paper. Err, how about no.

 

At the airport we’re surrounded by people who think they’re higher class because they’re getting a plane rather than a bus or train.  We sat in the restaurant and watched customer after customer be unnecessarily rude to the staff like they were some kind of Sultan (I don’t know why I likened them to a Sultan rather than a King or Queen but I think it sounds better).  One guy called the waiter over just to pour the rest of his beer into his glass.  His wife called the waiter over to spoon the rice from the bowl next to her onto her plate 5cm’s away whilst she watched.  Other tables were yelling at the busy staff because they’d been waiting too long to get served, others were yelling because they had nowhere to sit.  Pretty high and mighty for people who don’t wipe their asses.  When the man from Delmonte turned up dressed all in white with shades on inside a restaurant inside an airport we had to leave.  When we got up I loudly announced (in-front of the tossers next to us) that we should leave now before I started educating people on the beauty of manners.  You’re at an airport, not in a palace.  I’ve been on a plane 5 times in the last 2 months, it doesn't make me better than anyone else so pull your head out your ass and be polite.  It doesn't cost anything!  I’d bet my bottom dollar that at least half of the women there have never worked in their life either.  Marrying into money and success does not in my opinion give you any authority or importance.  Your husband may have earned those things with hard graft or maybe been lucky enough to have inherited it but you keep yourself in room and board just by opening your legs so wind it in.

I noticed 4 women in the restaurant with short hair, they’re the first I’ve seen.  Having short hair would mean regular appointments at the hairdresser which needs money so I’m guessing short hair is s a sign of wealth.

We headed round to security and the queue was huge.  Luckily women can’t be electrically wanded by a man (every passenger has to be metal detected and patted down which was causing the long waiting line) and there was a distinct lack of women travelling so I got to jump the queue and go straight through whilst Will waited in line.

By the time we got on the plane we’d shown our boarding cards to 5 different people, they also checked (twice) that we had a luggage tag on our hand luggage.  Will had decided not to use his and threw it on the floor.  By magic he’d ended up with another one on his bag for a completely different airline (we still don’t know how that happened) but they let him on with that anyway, which in all honestly just made the whole process pointless as it proved nothing except that he might be on the wrong plane! 

The flight was packed with annoying kids.  One in particular screamed and cried and winged for the entire flight.  It was that fake type of crying too, just wailing for no reason other than to make a noise.  Not once did I hear either parent trying to silence it.  I was going to offer the silencing powers of my grip around its neck.  Luckily for them the sound of a winging  spoilt little brat is so soothing to the ears of other passengers that obviously no one minded. 

I heard on TV that they’re thinking of doing child-free flights and I must admit I think that’s a brilliant idea.  Children get bored on flights and create a racket, I understand it’s not really fun for young kids to be on a plane but it doesn't stop it being teeth grindingly annoying to have to listen to it for hours with no escape.  All parents can just be sympathetic together in a cabin of wailing, screeching and nose picking whilst everyone else relaxes in peaceful tranquillity behind a thick, sound-proof door. 

Whilst on the plane I read an article in the local paper about a Dr in Chennai who was transgender.  ‘She’ was going to speak at a conference about how she had come to terms with who she was to raise awareness.  I found it interesting as she said she had been taking hormones (she originally got some online that reacted badly, a comforting thought that someone in the middle of a medical degree felt it a good idea to self-prescribe internet pills) and then she had been prescribed hormones properly and has since grown breasts, grown her hair long and was undergoing laser hair removal.  She followed that sentence by saying that as she still had a beard she still dressed as a man.  Now, in a country where transgender is far from accepted and understood I must disagree that the best person to highlight the normality of gender assignment disorder and the confusion it causes is a man with a beard and breasts.  How confusing must that look?!  She has changed her name to Sofia and is referred to as a woman yet apart from having long hair (which many men do although they really shouldn’t, it’s far from flattering as a hairstyle, get it cut boys) she is simply a man with breasts.  Surely with all the effort of hormone replacement ensuring you shave every day is a minor chore?  If she shaved she could dress as a woman and begin the process of really being accepted as a female. 

She said she was going to start dressing as a woman in 6 months time which is backwards to the way we do it in the UK.  You need to commit to the way of life of the opposite sex and dress appropriately for at least 12 months before any medication or procedures can be spoken about.  That way at least you look like a man/woman and hormonal or surgical changes or wouldn’t be so obvious.  This way seems the most disruptive way to do it in my opinion.  

I must admit it is an example of how much the country is developing in terms of their acceptance though.  I would have expected something like that to simply not be done.

On the flip side another article spoke about weight loss.  I am always interested in the next explanation as to how to lose weight the best way as I really do struggle to shift just 1lb.  I get enraged by women who can sit there on their lunch break blabbing on about how they’ve lost 6lb in a week because they just cut out crisps or stopped snacking and it just dropped off.  Eat my sh*t.  I have to heavily diet, no carbs after 5pm, no more than 1200 calories a day, no snacks and 4 lots of 1hr long cardio sessions where I have to sweat my tits off and go a really sexy shade of crimson before I can even drop 2lb in a week.  And that’s on a good week!

So this article caught my attention and I start to read it.  It turns out the editor of the newspaper felt it necessary to dedicate a quarter page to informing readers that eating more than your recommended daily allowance of calories (2000 for women, 2500 for men) will cause you to put on weight.  If you want to lose weight you need to burn off additional calories.  That was pretty much it.  How is this newsworthy?  Is this honestly new information?  Because on the same note I can inform the general public with confidence that water is wet, the earth is round and Elvis is dead. 

Getting off the plane they checked our boarding cards AGAIN and also our hand baggage tags, just incase we’d slipped through the previous 5.  I stopped at the toilet and ended up in an Indian style one.  (How these women use them whilst wearing sari’s without weeing on it is a miracle).  The toilet, or should I say, porcelain lined hole, was up on a pedestal so when you stood up you could see over the cubicle walls!  I felt like a dirty meercat trying to perv on other meercats having a wee. 

Will had booked us a hotel that morning but hadn’t saved the address so we were unable to get a taxi as we couldn’t tell it where to go.  After being looked at like a pubic hair in soup when asked if there was internet at the terminal we went to a tourist agency shop and they found us the address online.  The website had said it was 7km from the airport but when the taxi driver called them they were 18km away.  As we were literally just staying the night to leave again the next day for Sri Lanka there was no need to be so far away from the airport so we went back to the office to see if they could book us something a little closer.  The taxi driver we had been speaking to and his friend decided to follow us back to the shop and awkwardly wait next to us.  They have no sense of social awkwardness here, they ask for a tip and then  stand around and wait when you obviously don’t want to give one, they will stare at you in the street and not look away when they catch your eye and they never say please or thank you or even acknowledge your thank you’s.   

Whilst Will was speaking to the very helpful guys in the shop I went back inside the terminal to find the guy who had previously asked if we needed help and had offered a flyer for a nearby hotel that picked you up from the airport for free.  As I crossed the threshold a security man pounced on me wanting to see my boarding card.  I told him I had literally just arrived and only wanted to find this guy just inside.  He wouldn’t let me in without a boarding card and I firmly told him I was not walking back to root around in my bag when I only wanted to step about 4ft into the building.  At this point his mate with the gun stood up which annoyed me even more.  I’m stood there in a slim fitted dress with no pockets and no bags, what the hell do you think I’m going to do?!  Draw a sword out from between my legs and start lopping off limbs?  I told him I was walking to the next door and he should just walk with me and stand next to me there as I wasn’t going to go any further.  He kept asking me who I was looking for and I’d already explained that to him so he was really getting on my tits.  Annoyingly, after all that hassle none of the 3 men I’d previously seen with flyers for this hotel were anywhere in sight so I had to just leave. 

I feel sorry for any parting couples who can’t wait together, you’re not even allowed in the building without a ticket.  Clearly anyone with any strong terrorist ideas would find buying a budget domestic flight to get into the building too much hassle and would just turn and wander home defeated.

The guys in the shop found us a hotel 3km away with air con and internet (our 2 requests).  They also did free airport drop offs and he arranged late check out for us too for 1pm.  Perfect!  The taxi man was still lingering around like the smell of vomit on a carpet but was asking too much for the journey so the shop guys mugged him off and sent us to a taxi stall. 

We arrived at the hotel and checked in but the room doesn’t have internet, it doesn’t have a window (that’ll be great for waking up tomorrow) and none of the English language channels on the TV work.  Brilliant.  We called reception about the TV and a member of staff came to look at it and had the brainwave of just flicking through each Indian channel one by one.  Genius.  This man is wasted in his current role.  There’s over 800 channels and he was in the 400’s with no sign of stopping.  When the solid 6 minutes of flicking through channels didn’t return a magically fixed television he then called maintenance who came in and did exactly the same thing.  When he had flicked through enough channels without any of them springing into life he decided that they didn’t get any English language channels.  Congratulations buddy, you just justified your wage as ‘maintenance’.  I’ll be sure to call you if I think a broken window pane can be fixed by repeatedly opening and closing the curtains. 
The last hotel didn’t have satellite TV but it still had HBO and the Discovery channel yet we were now stuck with countless Bollywood channels in a dark hole of a room.  On top of that Will managed to block yet another toilet so our en-suite is out of action now aswell as our tv and our depleted vitamin D levels.

We went out for a walk to get some snacks and it’s clear Chennai is not a tourist place, the staring is back in full force!  They seem completely oblivious to the fact they’re in control of a vehicle and should really look where they’re going!
We picked up a couple of chocolate bars, some chocolate milk, water and an ice lolly from a shop.  The ice lolly was 1 month out of date and had turned to jelly (I’d been craving an ice lolly for days but they’re quite hard to come by), the chocolate milk was 2 months out of date and the chocolate was 6 months out of date.  What a successful snack run!  It’s a good job we weren’t looking for soft cheese and red meat with that kind of standard of produce.

Back in the room we found one movie channel that isn’t Indian or dubbed and luckily it’s playing The Return of The King so we at least have something to watch in bed and can chill out before the mental days ahead in Sri Lanka.  We were meant to be confirming our schedule with the driver tonight which was why we definitely needed internet.  Hopefully we can find somewhere tomorrow or else we’ll be a bit stranded when we arrive.

I’m really looking forward to waking up in a pitch black hole of a room tomorrow morning....

Goa Day 2

14/06/2013

I’ve noticed that all women in India have long hair.  I’ve not seen one woman with even medium length hair let alone short hair. 

I also can’t believe how many whitening creams are advertised on TV.  At home it’s all about anti-wrinkle cream and then the odd tinted moisturiser with a tenner lady thrown in for good measure.  Here, every 4^th advert is a whitening cream, I’ve not seen any promoting anti-wrinkle.  I guess with the natural resilience to sun wrinkles aren’t as much of a problem as they are to us Caucasians.  At home Garnier gives you a wrinkle chart to map your progress, here they give you a shade chart to map the ‘4 shades lighter’ that they promise you to be in a week.  I’ve noticed that all the people on adverts are all very fair skinned too, I’ve not even seen a medium toned Indian on TV.  It’s so funny when you see the east/west divide like that.  All the adverts are in spoken in English too, some with a token amount of Indian but not a lot.

Today was an extremely lazy day.  We walked down to the beach (after walking in completely the wrong direction first) and watched the big waves crashing in (they even litter their beaches here too, for a people with so much respect for animal life and harmony they don’t give a toss about the environment and cleanliness).  Although it was overcast (and not raining, yey!) it was so humid.  By the time we’d walked back to the hotel we were dripping with sweat so went back for a shower and ended up having a nap too.

  

I was reading Indian Grazia and where it’s Monsoon season all the fashion is angled towards that.  If they made rain a bit more fashionable at home it might make it a bit more tolerable!  (Might, but probably not).  Hunter willies are the festival fashion but that’s where it seems to stop.  What about umbrella hats and waders? That would make the 8 months a year of rain a bit more tolerable even just for the entertainment value.

They have HBO as one of their standard channels here (we had feared the worst when there was no set top box in the room, not that we’re the type to waste time in a room but it’s nice to chill out with a bit of TV before bed) it plays films all days long and has English subtitles aswell as the speech still being in English, I guess with the American accents it’s easier for people to translate the text.  It’s funny to watch the substitutions they make for words; they don’t seem to have ‘sh*t’ in their vocabulary as this is always left in in both speech and text no matter what time of the day whereas ‘ass’ will be bleeped in speech and asterix’d in the text and they swap ‘hell’ for ‘heck’ in the text and ‘damn’ for ‘darn’ but let them say both words so I guess they have no meaning here.

They have the Discovery channel here too showing all American shows.  Now I know the yanks like a bit of drama but the over dramatics in everything just borders on ridiculous.  You can’t watch a show without there being some impending disaster they have to try and avoid.  It’s getting really tiresome now and we’ve hardly had these shows on, there’s no way I could handle that being the style of TV all the time.  Maybe Americans need to all take up base jumping or paragliding to give them more thrills in their daily life and then they can just enjoy a simple TV show without the dire need to get their pulses racing as to whether bakers bread is going to rise or whether the driver is going to get a flat when he has a delivery to make on a time limit.  (Admittedly these weren’t the shows I watched but I think that’s due to them being too tense for the American public, clearly post-watershed viewing).

Every episode of Deadliest Catch is the same, luckily it’s not been on here but it’s the worst one for over dramatics and Will always watches it at home.  They always make their catch every episode so the rotation through different camera angles, the dramatic music and the deep voiced commentator are so unnecessary.  “Out in the deadly seas of Dutch Harbour the skipper fears if he doesn’t make a catch soon they....” they will what?  Just try again the next day?  Oh my heart is in my mouth.  They’re at sea for weeks on end, they’re never going to catch nothing!  Once you’ve seen one episode you’ve seen them all. 

Delhi belly has officially hit Will in Goa, I’m on/off too which is weird as I’m not doing anything different here than I was in the other places.  We headed to the pub for some food and to use the wifi and Will had to dash back to the hotel only just making it in time.  I had to make a dash to the toilet in the pub praying there was toilet roll.  If there wasn’t then I wasn’t sure what I was going to do!  Wait around until Will came looking for me thinking I’d got stuck, or gently wimper for help when I heard another customer come into the toilet?  Luckily there was toilet roll, a bonus for being in the main tourist area.  A couple of young Indian girls had followed me into the toilet and hung around outside the cubicle for no apparent reason, I bet they quickly regretted that!

We popped into a tourist information office to see what there was to do nearby and they said everything is shut for monsoon season.  The other Tourist Information office (that we also checked with as we didn’t trust the others) had 3 tours on offer but the only one that really interested us was the elephant trip but as we’re going to Sri Lanka which to elephants is what Spain is to cats or what India is to cows we didn’t go ahead with booking. 

When we came out we saw a cake shop and popped in for some chocolate cake.  I wasn’t expecting much to be honest but their fudge cake was incredible!  It was so moist and rich, Will ended up buying another 2 slices to take with us. 

As I previously mentioned the men in India hold hands as a sign of friendship and not in any kind of gay way.  It just seems strange to me for 2 heterosexual men to want to hold hands.  I guess it’s because I’ve only ever linked it to an affection thing (or for children)  and for them it’s only seen as a friendship thing (I don’t think I’ve seen couples holding hands here) but it does still look a bit strange.  I managed to get a photo this time:

We had some food in the bar and looked up things to see in Sri Lanka.  Had I known the weather was going to be so bad we’d have stayed here a day or 2 less and had longer over there.  At least we’re getting to relax and recuperate as it looks like it’s going to be a hectic trip to Sri Lanka to fit everything in. 

It was Karaoke night in the bar which was a mix of Western and local songs.  Some Indian boys had guitars with them and they got up and played ‘Tears Don’t Fall’ by Bullet For My Valentine then ‘Wish You Were Here’ by Pink Floyd.  I was impressed they knew Bullet For My Valentine, not many British people I know know Bullet For My Valentine!  I was chatting to one of them and he said there is interest in Rock and Metal music in India but they tend to lean more towards the classic bands like Metallica and other classic groups. 

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a pharmacy for more anti-diarrhoea tablets.  We were about to rock/paper/scissor to see who was going to have to act out diarrhoea this time but luckily the guy knew exactly what we needed.  What a relief!

Back at the hotel I thought I’d back up my photos onto my new pen drive and try out my £1.80 memory card reader which I’m happy to say works perfectly!  Thank you Mumbai.

Arrival in Goa

13/06/2013

I woke up to a stinking pot of egg and onion on my lap.  The guy had delivered our breakfast and Will had put mine on me as I slept.  People will speak of waking up to the scent of freshly baked bread of newly cut grass as things of pleasure, egg and onion is probably bordering on the opposite end of the scale for items intended to be pleasant in nature (rotting carcass and sewage clearly never intended to be pleasant would be the extreme end).  Will said afterwards that he had been half asleep and seen a hand appear through the gap in the curtain, reach over him and place his breakfast pot on his stomach before retreating back the way it came.  Then a few minutes later the same hand had apparently changed it’s mind and silently slipped back through the curtain and retrieved his pot!  The image of Will laying there just watching this unidentified hand silently slip through the curtain and place this pot on him just to slip back through moments later and retrieve it (and then straight after to get the spoon it had left behind) really makes me chuckle.

I tried to eat my omelette but I just couldn’t stomach that much egg and onion that early in the morning.  The locals seem to have ‘cutlet’ for breakfast which is like some kind of potato bhaji thing.  They don’t really seem to have any variation or allowance for the first meal of the day, it tends to be of the same style as the rest of the meals with no thought to a tender stomach just awoken from 8hrs of sleep. 

Noone says ‘thank you’ I’ve noticed.  You’ll hold a door for someone or pick up something they’ve dropped and they just carry on without a word!  I know us Brits are known as being overly polite but I don’t think saying thank you is asking to go above and beyond what is necessary or expected.  Myself and Will are both quite polite when it comes to our P’s and Q’s but when everything you say is met with a silent stare it starts to get annoying.  Not annoying to stop saying thanks, that’s just ingrained on us after so many years, but annoying enough to want to slam in door in the face of the person you just held it for.  I started loudly saying ‘thank you’ on behalf of people instead, I’m sure they had no idea what I was saying.

(I did witness 2 people say thank you before we left India, both were fluent in English so I’m guessing their knowledge of the language allowed this pleasantry.  Still, whenever I go to another country I will always learn how to say ‘thank you’ even if that’s the only word(s) of their language I learn).    

The scenery is very green and lush as we approach Goa; lots of palm trees, grass, bushes and wetlands, it’s far more tropical than the north which was mainly wasteland and scorched grass.  When we got to the station we looked for a taxi and a little man latched onto us.  When I say little he was literally an Indian Ronnie Corbett with a moustache and probably a stone lighter.  He wanted us to pay 1200Rs for the trip, we wanted to pay 800Rs.  In the end we won and he led us to his car, which wasn’t a car at all, it was a tuk tuk.  Had we known it was a tuk tuk we’d have laughed at his 1200Rs, that’s just ridiculous for a 3 wheeled vehicle with no doors, no boot and about 100cc.  It was also a 1hr 20 minute drive too and you can imagine the lack of comfort in a tuk tuk.  I didn’t think a tuk tuk driver would even entertain a journey that long.
We managed to squeeze all the luggage in and set off just in time for the rain to start.  Luckily our little buddy had installed curtains between him and us so we got shielded from most of the rain that came in through the open sides until a car going the other way went through a huge puddle sending a tidal wave into the tuk tuk and straight through our little curtain!  There was about an inch of water around our feet and my suitcase was dripping.  Our driver felt this was warning enough so he pulled over to take evasive action against the horrendous weather, he put on his little green plastic hat.  Myself and Will both breathed a sigh of relief that he’d managed to get his little green hat on at an appropriate time and we carried on our merry way. 

The tuk tuk struggled on up hills at about 7mph and we passed rice fields with women in ponchos bent over gathering the rice in the pouring rain.

The rain was coming down hard and another car went through a flooded part of the road and another tidal wave hit us, this time absolutely soaking the poor driver.  He didn’t even flinch as it hit him, just sat there.  His clothes drenched, water was running off his hair and he just shook his head slightly like a dozing dog semi aware of a fly landing on his head which dropped off a few drips and that was his only reaction.  Me and Will were creased up in the back and couldn’t stop laughing for a solid 5 minutes.  Every time we caught a glimpse of a bead of water left clinging to his short, black hair it would set us off again.

I’m sorry to say that wave took his little green hat off his head and it wasn’t replaced for the rest of the journey.

We arrived at the hotel and found that the online description wasn’t exactly accurate.  It was not on the beach, it did not have wifi in the rooms (despite us picking the more expensive option so we did have wifi in our rom) and food was not available all day.  On top of that only 1 of the 3 lights in the room turned on, the TV wouldn’t work, the hand towel was dirty and/or stained and the toilet roll was soaking wet.  The guy said he’d change the towel and toilet roll but when we went downstairs he was just sat on his ass with the other two staff members behind the desk doing sweet FA. He’d also taken Will’s passport for the log book and said he’d bring it back this evening for no other reason than he’s a lazy sod and couldn’t be bothered to walk it back upstairs once he was finished with it.

They have to take so many details from you when you check in anywhere.  All your passport details; passport number, valid/expiry date, country of origin, DOB then visa number and dates of expiry, where you came from and where you’re going next and your job at home.  I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d asked for Will’s penis size and my menstrual cycle (if only to prevent me from entering their temples unauthorised).  I’d love to know if they ever do anything with that information but I’d bet it just sits there like a identity fraudsters Christmas present.

We popped to the bar next door for some food as we’d note eaten all day and our hotel wasn’t serving until 7pm and we’d decided we weren’t going to give the lazy sods a penny more than we had to.  I almost squealed when I saw a beef item on the menu.  I don’t eat excessive amounts of beef normally but when you know you can’t get it it becomes forbidden fruit.  As a result of the naughty air surrounding the ‘spaghetti bolognaise (beef)’ listing I couldn’t resist ordering it.  Beef! Beautiful beef!!  I did feel a bit bad making them cook beef but they put it on their menu. 

Also on their menu was bottles of Bud for 80p and rum/vodka/gin for 35p a shot! 60p a double!

Whist I was enjoying my beef a cow walked past the open front bar, stuck his head in and moo’d at me.  He knew.  He knew what I was doing and he judged me.

I had a text through saying I had less than £1 credit.  I’d put £26 on before I left and other than the texts to Mum to book our hotel and 3 others I’d not sent any except my free travel journal updates.  I emailed them to find out what the deal was and it turns out their ‘free travel journal updates’ was incredibly misleading as they’re not free at all!  You have to pay for each text message (50p) then they update it for free.  Update what?! The text message posts on my account and Facebook, that involves no work! How can you say that’s free? It’s also free to call anyone back home, until the call connects.  It’s also free to write a text!  Just not to send it.  Stupidly misleading and had I known that I’d have literally posted one text in each place to mark where we were and so people knew we were alive rather than chatting away like a knitting club at the W.I. spunking £25 up the wall for fun.  

Mumbai Day 2

12/06/2013

The sleep walking/talking was back in full-force after my pretty timid night on the train.  First I dreamt there was a mouse running around the room so I got out of bed and picked up my bag so it couldn’t sleep inside it (but seemingly not caring otherwise that there was a mouse in the room).  Then I dreamt that the building was being evacuated, but instead of everyone leaving everyone had to come inside and we needed to fit 18 people in our room .  So I jump out of bed and run into the bathroom (so Will told me, I have no idea why) then I start yelling at him to get up and move the furniture around to fit everybody in.  He turned the light on and I apparently just shouted at him for turning the light on and waking me up and just got back into bed! 

The weather is absolutely awful this morning.  It’s as if being British means we have a life-long contract that it will rain wherever we are.  Not only is it really raining it’s very windy too so you can’t even have an umbrella.  Luckily we don’t have to check out until 12pm so we had time to chill out and hope the weather improved.  Amazingly people are still sat on the wall by the sea, absolutely soaked to the skin no doubt.

By 12 the weather was still the same so we got a driver to take us around to see the sights we hadn’t seen yesterday.  He charged 300Rs an hour which shows how much of a rip-off our taxi from the station was which took 25minutes tops. 

We got soaked to the skin just dashing the 4 ft from the door to the car.  The rain was so heavy!

The driver took us to Banda Bandstand which was a nice beach stretch with palm trees and sand.  He showed us a lot of homes of Bollywood stars (this got boring quickly as we don’t know any of them and they were all quite similar so we had to tell him to stop with those, he seemed a little hurt by this).  He showed us the most expensive building in the world (it wasn’t, it cost $1,000,000, I didn’t want to burst his bubble though) and we saw the famous washing area too and a shanty town.

He also took us to a temple with a big sign outside with the rules and regs of going inside, the number 1 rule was “ladies on monthly period are strictly not allowed”.  I’d love to know how they police that!  “Excuse me Miss, but could I please see your jam rag?”

By the time we’d seen all this we were conveniently miles from home.  He’d managed to get us out there very quickly down Marina Drive and then using the sea road which was a big bypass built over the sea that you paid a toll to use.  We said we wanted to head back to the south by the hotel and told him to take the sea road back.  We said we’d walk to the final sights from the hotel but he was adamant it was the same road and he would take us.  This resulted in us sitting in traffic for nearly an hour (which we had to pay for) as we just inched along.  It turned out there was some government official visiting so they’d closed loads of roads causing the traffic jam.  There were also lots of people in the streets protesting the rise in taxes and some stray dogs tagging along with them.  An ambulance came through at one point and no one moved for it, a few cars were even trying to get ahead of it!  Someone I know used to work for the ambulance service in the UK and she said you’d be surprised how many people deliberately get in the way of ambulance.  I couldn’t believe it, I was disgusted!  If I ever saw anyone do that I’d probably follow them home and whack them round the head with the gold clubs I forget to take out of the boot after a session at the driving range which are in no way an intended weapon.

We stopped for fuel and an almighty racket started from under the bonnet.  We had no idea what the hell he was doing but he explained after that there are 2 options for fuel here; either petrol, which is expensive (still cheaper than at home! About 65p a litre) or you can have a pure gas and air mix.  Apparently you need a kit to convert the car but it makes fuel a lot cheaper and when the gas and air runs out the car automatically reverts to the petrol.

 
Due to being in a queue we got to get a good look at ‘Little Dubai’ which was the Muslim area and we also passed through where the Muslim gangsters lived!

After squeezing through gaps where the wing mirrors missed each other by .5mm and almost getting sandwiched between 2 cars I asked our driver if women were allowed to drive (as we hadn’t seen any and where special awareness doesn’t come as naturally to a lot of women as it does men (I’m one of the exceptions I’d like to point out! And before any women get offended by that it’s not opinion, it’s scientific fact due to the side of the brain we use) I thought it might be a struggle for a lot of them to handle the Indian way of driving of squeezing through gaps me and Will admitted we wouldn’t even have considered.  The driver told me they were infact allowed to drive (later that day we saw our first and only female driver on the road) but they were (and I quote) “crazy”.  If anyone has ever been to India you can imagine the irony of any driver calling another crazy.  That’s like a dog looking up from licking his balls to tell his owner he’s disgusting for scratching his.  (In my mind all small dogs have New York accents, narrate something next time you see a small dog, it’s really quite entertaining). 

Once we were released from the prison of the car in the never-ending traffic we walked around on foot to see the rest of the sights.  The rain had stopped by this point which was good although there were loads o puddles everywhere that kept splashing up your legs.  In my wisdom I’d put a bit of fake tan on my legs that morning (before the rain had started) so the constant moisture on my pins had caused it to dislodge and streak which obviously looked very attractive and not at all like I was a grubby street urchin. 

Will thought that 3 pairs of imitation Ray Bans were not enough and added another 2 pairs to his collection.  He keeps calling Rupees Dirhams (despite the fact we’ve been to Dubai once 3.5years ago).  It was very amusing to watch him trying to barter Dirhams.  I don’t think the guy even knew what they were!  “300Rs my friend” “Oh hell no I wouldn’t go about 150Dirhams” “Thats a lovely sentence of strange words I don’t understand but where are we on the 300Rs?”. 

I bought a 32GB Sandisk memory card to back-up all my pictures on whilst I was away.  I’d ordered one just before I left but it had failed to arrive in time so I was glad I found one and it was only £13 so was quite  a bargain.  (I’d paid £12 for mine from Amazon plus an extra £10 to have it delivered by 1pm the next day, something it failed to do so I had to cancel the order.  Yes I know it probably would have been cheaper in town but I didn’t have the time to wander round and last time I checked memory sticks were disgustingly overpriced in shops).  I also bought a watch as mine has annoyingly stopped.  We’d got the guy down to 150Rs for the watch, Will guaranteed me it would break but I said even if it only lasted me 2 weeks for £1.80 that was good enough for me to not have to keep pulling my phone out of my bag.  The guy kept showing me loads of different watches, all were horrible.  “No, I don’t like women’s watches I like men’s. No I want a silver face.  No I want a large, round face.  No, I don’t want that strap.  Do you know what’s easier than this?  Me just looking for one I like and telling you which is it rather than me trying to educate you on my individual (and seemingly picky tastes.”  It makes me want to just not bother and walk away when they do that.  They never listen either and keep showing you styles you’ve said you don’t like/want or try to persuade you you are wrong in your preferences and you should like this after all. 

Will found a Starbucks on his Trip Advisor city guide (it works offline so it’s brilliant, it even picks up your location through GPS so can tell you what’s around you) so we headed there for food so we could get online and check emails etc.  To get inside you had to walk through a metal detector!  They have metal detectors at train stations (which are pointless because no one gets stopped) but not seen one anywhere else but clearly Starbucks felt there was a need to screen all their customers for knives and bombs.  Will had my laptop in his bag and he’d padlocked it closed so he didn’t have to worry about pickpockets so the security guy, clearly not committed enough to the safety of barista’s and their customers enough to wait for us to retrieve the key,  just let us in without checking.

Luckily this internet let you log on with an international phone number so we were able to get online.  There was a nice western toilet in there too with a spare roll of toilet paper that went straight into my bag.  I’d not taken my backpack with me though so had to smuggle it out about my person which caused a weird look from the girl waiting to use the toilet after me as I danced around her so she wouldn’t see it in my other hand.

We walked back towards the hotel and stopped to chill in the park with the locals (another place there they like to just sit and hang out).  During another mad, death-defying dash across the road I heard a clunk and the guy behind me pointed out I’d dropped my watch.  Great.  That lasted less than 2 hours!  Luckily the guy had given me the links he’d removed from it so I pulled one of the spare pins out and put my watch back together implying I didn’t care and the watch was fine (little bugger taking my £1.80 for a watch that doesn’t stay together, granted the battery alone costs more but still)!  

The locals just seem to walk infront of moving vehicles and hope they stop.  I’ve got to hand it to the drivers here though; they do react very quickly to everything.  At home on the roads we rely on everyone to be sensible and not do anything unexpected.  Here they always expect the unexpected and are always ready to react to it.  We could benefit from a little of that attitude I think.  Just a little though, and definitely none of the incessant beeping.  They can keep that. 

We headed up to the seafront and squeezed in with the hundreds of locals all sat along the wall.  One guy started chatting to me telling me about what he does for work and let me listen to some Indian music on his phone.  He asked to take a photo of me as he said I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen!  (I’m so bloody popular in India!  I should go to Japan for my next ego boost, I hear they love a Westerner there too).  I said he needed to visit some more western countries as they get  a lot better looking than me, believe me!  He felt my “sunshine smile, golden hair and strawberry lips” were comparable to none though.  He took a photo of me which Will was compelled to mention afterwards what he felt that photo would be used for later.  Thanks for the image. 

Other people around us took sly photos of us and a group of young lads split up so they could sit either side of us.  Seems like we’re not totally unappreciated in Mumbai, we’re just more interesting at night I guess.

More little scrotes selling their crap descended on us.  Will was convinced one of them had pick-pocketed him.  I was about to go back windmilling (7years old and homeless or not you don’t steal our money!  Toilet roll, yes, money no) but then he found it in his granddad pouch under his t shirt so they were let off.  The whole time he was looking for his money another kid is trying to sell us bloody roses!

We got a trabi taxi to the train station (which also smelt like shit, the station, not the taxi) and took ourselves into the first class lounge (we’re only 2^nd class but no one questions the white folk).  Even the toilet in there made you retch from the smell!  Does no one use domestos? Try it, it’ll change your life.

We made our way onto the train and settled into our seats.  Just before pulling off the instructor came round to check our tickets and told us we were on the wrong train!  I’m about to sh*t a brick when I realise I’d handed him our old ticket by mistake.  His choice of ‘you are on the wrong train’ was unnecessarily confusing; the ticket was from Jaipur to Mumbai.  We weren’t on the wrong train; we were in the completely wrong city on the completely wrong day!

There were some Indian folk in the 4 beds opposite us and surprisingly they all spoke English to each other.  One of them had been living in the US for the last 20 years, I’d have thought coming back he’d have liked to have spoken Indian so it made me wonder if he’d maybe forgotten a lot of his native tongue.  It’s not that uncommon to do so when you’ve not spoken it for so long.  He was the only other person in the carriage to brush his teeth too. 

The train left at 11pm so we were ready for bed within the hour so we settled down for the night.  The seats on this train were about 4cm higher than the last and it was just enough to fit my huge suitcase under the seat meaning we didn’t have to sleep with it under our feet which allowed us much more comfort than the last time.  


Updated my 'Where I've Been' map, just want to see if it works;
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