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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