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Published: February 11th 2008
Alrighty, so we're definitely off to an interesting start here.
Our flight from Singapore was delayed about 45 minutes due to some technical difficulties. Luckily we had booked a hotel with airport pick-up service, so it wasn't a problem when we arrived around 11:30PM. Unluckily, our hotel was pretty crummy and way overpriced. We woke up the next morning wondering if we were crazy for doing this. But we sucked it up and got moving.
We caught a rickshaw to our new hotel, a place called the Paradise Guest House. The ride was certainly eye-opening! Our driver whipped us around corners, squeezed through tiny gaps between cars, and nearly ran down a few pedestrians. Cows, motorbikes, cars, work carts, bicycles, and pedestrians all on one tiny road, and all making some kind of noise. I wasn't too nervous though, after having experienced even worse driving in China. We arrived at the hotel about an hour later, very eager to relax a bit.
The staff at Paradise were really friendly and gave us a room with A/C for around 500 rupees (about USD$12). So after relaxing with a couple of chai teas, we went out for our first meal
in India. We took the advice of the manager at Paradise and went to a restaurant around the corner. Not knowing what most of the stuff on the menu was, we ordered a couple of mini set meals. The waiter kindly brought us some silverware -- we weren't quite ready to manage the whole meal with only our right hand. For those of you that don't know, over here your right hand is used for eating and your left hand for cleaning yourself after using the toilet. Needless to say, they look at you funny if you touch food with your left hand. First meal down: it tasted great and didn't make us sick. Off to a good start! hehe
After lunch we paid a visit to the Music Academy in Chennai. We forgot that it was Sunday however, and showed up to an empty campus. Next we tried to walk to the 1000 Lights Mosque, but somehow ended up going the opposite direction. We caught a rickshaw to a different mosque, but weren't allowed to enter or even take pictures from the gate. So then we thought we'd try to catch a movie -- Chennai and the Tamil
Nadu area are known for movies (second to Mumbai's Bollywood). In fact, to be a politician around here, you practically have to have some film credentials!
We managed to locate three different theaters, but it was 5PM and the next showings weren't until 7PM. Instead of mulling around in the area, we chose to walk back to our hotel (which took a little longer than we thought) and spend some quiet time on the roof of the building. After all the noise and smells, it was pure bliss to sit above all the madness and catch a nice breeze. We enjoyed it so much that we decided to skip the movie and just relax up there.
We did pop out once more in order to get some dinner but that was about all we could handle for our first day.
Things we learned: roads in Chennai tend to change names frequently, guide books have unreliable maps, and when in doubt, just catch a rickshaw!
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About to set out
Cody
non-member comment
Good Lord! How many backpacks do you two have?!! Sorry the mosque visit didn't work out. Keep up the posting and taking the amazing pictures