Day 5 - Madurai

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Got up early in the morning to check out the temple again since Heather, Dan and Becca wanted to see the temple in daylight while John and Nikki decided to sleep little longer. After a small incident where I had to call the cops (surprisingly cops were very attentive and helpful for the tourists) we went into the temple and took tons of picture in the daylight. I would say Tanjore temple is one of the very well maintained temple in South India.

Did some shopping and we headed back to the hotel in auto rickshaw since we ran out time. I got some traditional Tanjore toys for Ritika. John and Nikki were ready and waiting for us. We had breakfast got into the van and headed to our next destination - Madurai.

On the way to Madurai we stopped on a small village which had fort! I don't remember the name of the village. Surprising thing about the fort was there was an entry fees and it said 200RS for Foreigners. I asked the guy at front desk what in the fort and he said there is nothing there except a pond and a old gun! We decided not to go up the fort, got some pictures and we were back on the van to Madurai.

Madurai was going crazy due to some DMK function. The chief minister of Tamil Nadu and his son was supposed to felicitate a tamil movie singer. The funny thing was they had street lamps all over the city and the DMK party supporters installed temporary tube lights just below the street lamps (I don't get why they do this). They had party banners and slogans written every where around the town. Why cant they use the money they spend on the banner and all the nonsense to feed the poor or spend on poor children for their education?

Anyways we arrived Madurai around 3:00PM checked into Hotel GRT Temple bay. We were welcomed with wet towels and Lychee juice. The hotel was well maintained and pretty. We were asked by couple of guys if we needed a tour guide for the temple and you know what we would have said! We decided to eat lunch at the hotel while our tour guide arrived. Heather and I tried Kal dosa chicken and mutton curry while rest of the gang tried on all sorts of sandwich's. After the meal we decided to go to the famous Meenakshi amman temple.

We had a nice tour of the temple and on the way back the tour guide took us to some shop where they measure and make shirts for girls and guys in one hour. John, Dan and Becca decided to have shirt stitched and it was promised to be delivered at our hotel by 9:00PM. We headed back to the hotel and went straight to the bar where Guys had beer and Girls had some Lychee cocktail.

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