I haven't had much opportunity to write about the trip I had to Goa before I left India the first time but I thought I would cover it now.
My last night in India, I intended to leave at 10pm to go home and pack for my 6am flight to Goa. However I was thwarted in from my goals by the going away “extravaganza” they had planned for me at the office. First we had a Kabob fest of loads of yummy Kabobs for dinner. Then there were the pictures. I had to have my picture taken with each pod. Then with each supervisor group, then a large group shot with everyone. This doesn’t include the many pictures they took of me pretending to work at my desk, etc. That wasn’t the end of it though came the gifts. I got handed many gifts I had to open up. Well by the time they were done with me it was midnight. I got back to the apartment and packed my bags for Goa and it was too late to get any sleep before I had to leave at 4 am.
So long before the crack of dawn I headed out to the airport. Have I mentioned yet how nice it is to have a driver pick you up and drive you around? Chitty, our driver, picked me up at 4AM on a Saturday. Thank you Chitty!!! Not having to call on a random cab company was a great relief to me. Anyway I arrived at the airport for my early AM departure. On interesting thing about Bangalore’s Airport if you are traveling within India they will charge you 260 Rupees just to get in the airport.
I was wearing a nice sleeveless Salwar Kameez outfit (India outfit consisting of pants and top and a scarf like thing). Before I came to India I had read a lot of advice on what to wear and one the suggestions was that western women would be more comfortable and receive less negative attention if they wore Salwar Kameez. I will say they are very comfortable in the heat. They are generally made of very light cotton or silk that just breathe much better than a pair of jeans and t-shirt. I will say the attention avoidance concept didn’t entirely work.
My first interesting encounter occurred when I went through security. One nice thing about being a girl in India is we get to go thru the special “Ladies Line”, which is 1/3 third the length as the Men’s line so we breeze thru security while they guys are still winding thru the queue. So when you go thru security first you walk thru the standard metal detector, then everyone needs to enter a little curtained off box. You enter stand on a little platform and a security guard uses the little wand to check for metal.
When I entered the little box I had the most androgynous person I have every seen. I am certain since the person was working the girl line it must have been a female but honestly even with the eye makeup I still would have thought her a guy. Let’s call her Pat. Pat had quite a gleam in her eye when she looked at my papers and the whole time she was running her wand over me she kept saying “Oh Madam looks VERY nice.”
Much of India seems to use the tarmac boarding process where your flight is called you go thru the gate to a bus that trundles you out to the tarmac to you plane. Jetways seem to be reserved for International flights only. After I was bussed out the flight I board my Turbo Prop plane for Goa. The plane was so small that my seat in the first row was close enough to lean over and touch the Cockpit door. The Flight Attendant jump seat folded into the wall right next to my seat so during take of I sat facing and quite close to the male flight attendant. I assuming he liked my outfit too because he keep looking over at me and licking his lips. I one point I thought maybe his toungue was stuck and almost offered him a chapstick. Well I will cover the rest of the trip in the next post.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Improved Rat Race... Now with Real Rats
I was walking back from the grocery store today when, not 2 feet in front of me, a rat came shooting up out of the sewer. It's no great surprise to me that there are rats in India. I have seen the deads ones in the street. I even saw a live one poke it's head out of an alley way early one morning before it was light. I think I handled all of these rodent encounters with great aplomb, however, I draw the line at live rats scurrying around broad daylight, during rush hour no less!! There are rules about such things: cute fluffly things get the daylight and disease carrying creepy ones the night.
I really was not mentally prepared for a live, beady eyed, slimy tailed encounter of this magnitude at five o'clock at night. When you are confronted with a situation this horrific there is only one way handle the situation. You must express your feeling thru Interpretive Dance. Yes... I mean an immediate and spontaneous Heebie Jeebie Dance. I think we all know the steps to that one right? First you twitch to the right. Then you jerk to left. Then you fling yourself around like Martin Short's Ed Grimley from SNL. You can if you wish accompany this with Tourette's like exclaimations of "Get away, Ick, and EWE".
So here I am on a Indian street flinging myself around in broad daylight with my two grocery bags in my hands. Did i mention that there was a short wall that blocked the view of the rat from everyone else? Oh yeah I had what must of looked like an upright epileptic seizure over rat that I only I could see. I just wonder what the Indians on the street were thinking...
I really was not mentally prepared for a live, beady eyed, slimy tailed encounter of this magnitude at five o'clock at night. When you are confronted with a situation this horrific there is only one way handle the situation. You must express your feeling thru Interpretive Dance. Yes... I mean an immediate and spontaneous Heebie Jeebie Dance. I think we all know the steps to that one right? First you twitch to the right. Then you jerk to left. Then you fling yourself around like Martin Short's Ed Grimley from SNL. You can if you wish accompany this with Tourette's like exclaimations of "Get away, Ick, and EWE".
So here I am on a Indian street flinging myself around in broad daylight with my two grocery bags in my hands. Did i mention that there was a short wall that blocked the view of the rat from everyone else? Oh yeah I had what must of looked like an upright epileptic seizure over rat that I only I could see. I just wonder what the Indians on the street were thinking...
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Seat wipers... to tip or not to tip?
I was greatly surprised when I decided to use the Bangalore Airport restroom before my flight to Goa. My entrance caused the bathroom attendance and rush to a stall with rag in hand. She proceeded to wipe my seat down thoroughly before I could use the toilet. For those who might have found the preceding sentence unclear she was wiping the seat on the toilet not my personal seat.
After completing my business and exiting the bathroom I found the young lady standing at attendance at the door. Thinking she wanted a tip I dug around in my bag for a five rupee coin and handed it to her. Her look showed she was somewhat offended by the gesture so I thought "gee I must not have given her the going rate for a seat wipe" and I gave her another fiver. Well she managed to look both offended and confused.
I told Mark the tale and said I thought she looked offended. He said she probably was and that she only wiped my seat for me because I am a westerner. So I was under the impression that tipping the seat wiper is BAD. Fast forward to the night I arrived at Delhi airport. I go to use the restroom where the attendant dutifully wipes my seat for me. This time I thought well at least I don't have to tip but as I am leaving the bathroom the attendant asks me for a tip. Well this is in the baggage area before where I can exchange my money so I didn't have any Rupees with me so I had to leave a disappointed and offended seat wiper no tip.
Now I am thoroughly confused. Should one tip a seat wiper? If so... does anyone know the going rate for a seat wipe these days? Thanks.
After completing my business and exiting the bathroom I found the young lady standing at attendance at the door. Thinking she wanted a tip I dug around in my bag for a five rupee coin and handed it to her. Her look showed she was somewhat offended by the gesture so I thought "gee I must not have given her the going rate for a seat wipe" and I gave her another fiver. Well she managed to look both offended and confused.
I told Mark the tale and said I thought she looked offended. He said she probably was and that she only wiped my seat for me because I am a westerner. So I was under the impression that tipping the seat wiper is BAD. Fast forward to the night I arrived at Delhi airport. I go to use the restroom where the attendant dutifully wipes my seat for me. This time I thought well at least I don't have to tip but as I am leaving the bathroom the attendant asks me for a tip. Well this is in the baggage area before where I can exchange my money so I didn't have any Rupees with me so I had to leave a disappointed and offended seat wiper no tip.
Now I am thoroughly confused. Should one tip a seat wiper? If so... does anyone know the going rate for a seat wipe these days? Thanks.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Back in India again!!!
Well, I made it back to Bangalore. What a journey!! I have never been so tired. I had a 4 hour layover in Vienna and then got on the flight to Delhi. That flight was almost as long as the Dulles/Vienna leg. I finally got into Delhi at 1230AM and had a 940am flight out of Delhi to Bangalore. I did have a hotel reserved for me at the Intercontinental for the layover. I was a bit worried that the Immigration and Customs and getting my bags would take too long and that I wouldn't really need the Hotel. I did get thru all of that in less than an hour and I headed out of the airport to find a cab.
Now I had read quite a bit about Delhi and getting cabs at the airport. The important thing seems is to get a pre-paid taxi. I did check out the hotel website that listed the cost of a cab from the airport so I knew how much it SHOULD cost. When I got out of the airport a Tout did try to get me to take his taxi for a the bargain price of 2495 rupees (about $50) but since I knew the fare should be 300 rupees I declined his KIND offer and opted for the pre-paid taxi, although he assured me the service wouldn't be as good. I do think he was right there.
So after i paid my fare and found the taxi that takes the pre-paid fares, I got in the taxi and we set out for the hotel. No not really... that would be easy. First the driver had to figure out where i was going. Now I had printed out the hotel address and the directions from the airport from the hotels website in my mistaken effort to be helpful. One thing I am coming to realize is that most Indian taxi drivers are not overly literate. They don't tend to read my carefully printed out directions. After giving the driver the directions he consulted with two other cab drivers and they acheived the Indian taxi driver consensus of where I needed to go. I was not overly emboldened with confidence as we set out for the hotel.
Well actually... we didn't set out for the hotel because the driver apparently had some issue at the taxi stand where they log where I am going. I think he didn't have all his papers on record or something because he spent a good 15 minutes at the taxi stand pulling out papers and talking to the guy at the desk. Finally he came back and we set off for the hotel. Well, no we didn't because then he had to stop at another spot and get out an argue some more with someone else for 15 minutes. Finally though we set out and I really, really knew I was going to be taken for a ride.
Now never having been to Delhi and arriving in the dark with no idea of landmarks, etc, I still had the sinking feeling that I was not going in the right direction. After about 30 minutes we did pull up to a hotel called the Lalit. I was reasonably certain that we were NOT at the Intercontinental so I wouldn't get out of the cab until someone verified where I was. The security guard at the gate assured me that the hotel was the Intercontinental but had changed the name. Thus assured I got out of the cab and went into the lobby.
It's actually a very nice hotel. The lobby was beautiful. The front desk staff very gracious and helpful. I really would have loved to stay there longer but unfortunately it was the wrong hotel. Oh it was AN Intercontinental Hotel... just the WRONG one. At this point it's 2 in the morning and I am at the wrong hotel in Delhi. The hotel could have given me a room but since the company had booked me a room using points at the other Intercontinental they could not transfer my reservation to the new hotel. So here I am at 2 in the morning wondering do I take a cab to the other hotel or just one back to the airport? I really wanted to take a shower (I have been traveling for more than 24hrs straight at this point) so I got a cab to the OTHER Intercontinental hotel.
The staff at the wrong hotel did call ahead and let the right hotel know I was coming so they breezed me thru check in and were quite gracious. It's 230am at this point and I have to leave for the airport at 730am so I know that sleep really is out of the question. I took a nice bath and watched some TV. I found myself nodding off but I was afraid if I fell asleep I would never wake up and would miss my flight.
After a very nice breakfast, I hopped a cab to the airport. I really didn't have any trouble with the airport except for some brief confusion about whether I was traveling on Indian Airlines or Air India (apparently they are the same carrier now but some things say one name and some say another... not confusing at all really... ). The seats were a bit crowded on the flight. My face was about a foot away from the seat in front of me but for a 2 1/2 hour flight they did feed me!! I am not talking a "food for purchase" snack box either (which is all the had on the 4 1/2 hour United flight) but real hot food with real silverware. Although I would have rather had less food and more room. Oh well what are ya gonna do? It's India. Anyway, I have never been so happy to get somewhere as when I arrived at the apartment!!
Now I had read quite a bit about Delhi and getting cabs at the airport. The important thing seems is to get a pre-paid taxi. I did check out the hotel website that listed the cost of a cab from the airport so I knew how much it SHOULD cost. When I got out of the airport a Tout did try to get me to take his taxi for a the bargain price of 2495 rupees (about $50) but since I knew the fare should be 300 rupees I declined his KIND offer and opted for the pre-paid taxi, although he assured me the service wouldn't be as good. I do think he was right there.
So after i paid my fare and found the taxi that takes the pre-paid fares, I got in the taxi and we set out for the hotel. No not really... that would be easy. First the driver had to figure out where i was going. Now I had printed out the hotel address and the directions from the airport from the hotels website in my mistaken effort to be helpful. One thing I am coming to realize is that most Indian taxi drivers are not overly literate. They don't tend to read my carefully printed out directions. After giving the driver the directions he consulted with two other cab drivers and they acheived the Indian taxi driver consensus of where I needed to go. I was not overly emboldened with confidence as we set out for the hotel.
Well actually... we didn't set out for the hotel because the driver apparently had some issue at the taxi stand where they log where I am going. I think he didn't have all his papers on record or something because he spent a good 15 minutes at the taxi stand pulling out papers and talking to the guy at the desk. Finally he came back and we set off for the hotel. Well, no we didn't because then he had to stop at another spot and get out an argue some more with someone else for 15 minutes. Finally though we set out and I really, really knew I was going to be taken for a ride.
Now never having been to Delhi and arriving in the dark with no idea of landmarks, etc, I still had the sinking feeling that I was not going in the right direction. After about 30 minutes we did pull up to a hotel called the Lalit. I was reasonably certain that we were NOT at the Intercontinental so I wouldn't get out of the cab until someone verified where I was. The security guard at the gate assured me that the hotel was the Intercontinental but had changed the name. Thus assured I got out of the cab and went into the lobby.
It's actually a very nice hotel. The lobby was beautiful. The front desk staff very gracious and helpful. I really would have loved to stay there longer but unfortunately it was the wrong hotel. Oh it was AN Intercontinental Hotel... just the WRONG one. At this point it's 2 in the morning and I am at the wrong hotel in Delhi. The hotel could have given me a room but since the company had booked me a room using points at the other Intercontinental they could not transfer my reservation to the new hotel. So here I am at 2 in the morning wondering do I take a cab to the other hotel or just one back to the airport? I really wanted to take a shower (I have been traveling for more than 24hrs straight at this point) so I got a cab to the OTHER Intercontinental hotel.
The staff at the wrong hotel did call ahead and let the right hotel know I was coming so they breezed me thru check in and were quite gracious. It's 230am at this point and I have to leave for the airport at 730am so I know that sleep really is out of the question. I took a nice bath and watched some TV. I found myself nodding off but I was afraid if I fell asleep I would never wake up and would miss my flight.
After a very nice breakfast, I hopped a cab to the airport. I really didn't have any trouble with the airport except for some brief confusion about whether I was traveling on Indian Airlines or Air India (apparently they are the same carrier now but some things say one name and some say another... not confusing at all really... ). The seats were a bit crowded on the flight. My face was about a foot away from the seat in front of me but for a 2 1/2 hour flight they did feed me!! I am not talking a "food for purchase" snack box either (which is all the had on the 4 1/2 hour United flight) but real hot food with real silverware. Although I would have rather had less food and more room. Oh well what are ya gonna do? It's India. Anyway, I have never been so happy to get somewhere as when I arrived at the apartment!!
Saturday, June 6, 2009
On my way back...
So... here I am on my way back to India and on Mr Toad's Wild Ride of an Itinerary. I am set to travel from PDX to Washington Dulles on UA connecting to Austrian Airlines from Dulles to Vienna and Vienna to Delhi, where I overnight in Delhi. After arriving at 1230AM I depart out again at 940am. I get to check into my hotel for basic a quick shower and nap then back to the airport for my Delhi to Bangalore flight.
It's not the simplest of trips but I do get to see quite a bit of the world!! I was a bit worried as this whole trip is like a house of cards... and wouldn't you know it my Portland flight was delayed by almost an hour. Everything worked out I made it to the gate in Dulles in time and now am in Vienna with a 4 hour layover. I am 1/2 way there!! Two flights left!
Austrian Airlines was a new experience. Their uniforms are really quite RED. Which is not bad in itself but... I have to say that I have never really liked the concept of cherry red panty hose. It tends to make them look like lobsters in heels. Anyway, gotta go, wish me luck on Part 2 of my journey.
It's not the simplest of trips but I do get to see quite a bit of the world!! I was a bit worried as this whole trip is like a house of cards... and wouldn't you know it my Portland flight was delayed by almost an hour. Everything worked out I made it to the gate in Dulles in time and now am in Vienna with a 4 hour layover. I am 1/2 way there!! Two flights left!
Austrian Airlines was a new experience. Their uniforms are really quite RED. Which is not bad in itself but... I have to say that I have never really liked the concept of cherry red panty hose. It tends to make them look like lobsters in heels. Anyway, gotta go, wish me luck on Part 2 of my journey.
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