Advertisement
Published: March 7th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Elephantitis
You can either walk up a steep hill to get to the entrance of the fort or you can ride an elephant up. Since Danielle had already ridden on an elephant before and I used to date really fat women, we decided to skip the elephant ride and walk. STD
There are many ads for phone service here. In particular, there is one GSM service called Hutch that has ads everywhere. They consist of a Pug looking cute for the camera. Now what makes this story amusing, is that at every phone place, there is a sign that says STD. For the longest time, I had no idea what STD stood for. I knew it had something to do with phone service, but picture me walking into the phone store and asking to purchase an STD. It seems like if I really wanted one, I could get it for free. Or if I got three-way (calling) on my phone, will I automatically get an STD or is that extra? You see why I didn’t want to even go in to ask. I looked in up on the web and STD stands for Subscribers Trunk Dialing which are the area codes for each Indian city. Yes, Americans have sick minds. Okay, scratch that, I have a sick mind.
COMMERCIALS
Being a commercial actor, I can safely say that the Indian commercials are the worst that I’ve ever seen. Granted, I don’t know what the dialogue is for half
of them (some of the commercials are in Hindi and others in English and some mix and match), but I can safely say that India could use a really good advertising agency. Something else that’s interesting is that HBO has commercials here.
FOODIES
It seems like the main concern for everyone on the trip is eating and shopping. These people eat and shop like there’s no tomorrow. I've talked about the shopping before, but regarding food, everyone’s first question when we get on the bus is asking when lunch is. It could be 6:00am and we could have just eaten breakfast, yet people are wondering when lunch is going to be. It’s not like there’s a shortage of restaurants in India, this whole culture is about food.
I am a big eater, but on this trip I pale in comparison to many on the trip. I feel full all the time and dread stopping for food. A bad flaw to have on this trip is an inability to waste food. I was always told to eat everything on my plate because people are starving in…well here. So if someone doesn’t finish their meal, even if I’m full,
I’ll try to down it. This makes me leave each table feeling like the guy in Monty Python's Meaning of Life who asks for one more wafer thin mint and then explodes.
The other problem is that the bus stops at these tourist eateries that are fine and good, but I like the down home places. Besides being a lot cheaper, I enjoy eating with Indians. If I wanted to eat with the tour group from France, I would have gone to Paris. I came to India, and I want to eat with the Indians, is that so wrong????? Apparently, it is. Have I mentioned that I miss cheeseburgers?
To top this off, people are discussing food and I’m feeling like I’m going to heave so I look out the window to try to get some air. What do I see? People going to the bathroom on the side of the road (#1 & #2). They (mostly kids) even wave to you when they’re doing their business. I don’t want to be rude, and the kids are cute, so I wave back. But it’s more than a little disconcerting to wave to some kid who’s relieving himself while
feeling more nauseous with the Indian food swirling around in my stomach. Do they have air-sick bags on buses?
OLD PALACE
Went to the old palace in Jaipur. Very beautiful. I’ll send pictures, once we’ve organized them, but take my word for it, it’s beautiful. We had the chance to ride the elephants up to the old palace, but Elizabeth (author and yoga woman), Danielle, and I decided to walk. Danielle and I had already ridden on elephants in Thailand and didn’t have a great experience because the handlers were very cruel to the elephants there. They would hit the elephants with a hook that tore pieces out of the elephant’s ears and we didn’t really have a desire to experience that again. The handlers were much kinder in India, so it did our hearts good, but we decided to walk up the hill instead. Big mistake. You see, one side of the street is for elephants to go up to the palace and the other side is for the elephants to go down. What happens if two elephants go up and down at the same time? They meet at a point and you shouldn’t be on either
side of the elephant when that happens because they could squish you against the wall. We weren’t paying much attention because we were taking pictures of the others on the elephant. We saw the other elephant too late and laid flat against the wall. I never want to be that close to an elephant again. One wrong step and they’ll be peeling me off the side of the wall with a spatula. Let this be a lesson to you, don't be a Dumbo, elephants always…always have the right of way!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.134s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 7; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0615s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
crisisofiid
non-member comment
Commercials
About commercial, I think its a cultural difference beacuse on an average I find indian commercial better than american...