travel

Anyhow, using the Cleartrip site, which is good for booking trains, I had a look to some hotels and we came across the Hari Piorko, which is in the downtown area. “A backpacker ghetto” according to Wikitravel. Anyhow, this place is quite nice, for less than we paid for a pretty crappy airport area shoebox, we have marble floors, a huge bed and also, a fish tank (righto….)

There is a nice rooftop terrace on the top level, after taking a little walk around and not really getting anywhere, we came back and had some dinner up there. Anyway, back to the check in, a couple of places we have been (looking at you in particular Singapore), the people behind the desk have just had no character, no fun, and that puts you in a bit of a mood to begin. Anyway…we came in the door…

Hello, you must be mr Daniel….yes….the famous movie man himself! I totally forgot that old Danny Boyle was the directed of Slumdog Millionare, as the guy at the desk said “it was a bit of a mega-hit”. But anyway, he was a bit of a joker and we had a laugh, and that gets you in a good mood, then your room has a marble floor and you think, hey, this is pretty good.

So having this big bed, fish tank etc, and the dirt, sweat noise etc outside, we kind of slept in a while and didn’t get on the road for sometime. We asked downstairs for the best way to get around. Since we really only had one full day, they suggested a driver. It was a bit more than we wanted to pay, but it meant everything would be pretty smooth.

I’ll probably write a bit more about that later, we visited some main sites, though most things are closed on Monday and we tried to avoid scams, but the biggest scam of all (common to all countries, not just India), is when it’s lunchtime, oh I’ll take you to a place. So in we go, and it’s even more expensive than the flash place we ate in Mumbai, so we kind of stare at the menu, look at each other, let’s go, and old mate’s probably gone for the secret good place of unbelievable cheapness, so we just bought a packet of chips and had to wait a while for him, and we saw a whole bunch of people, who must have all been on tours (mainly white), wandering around, coming out of a few different places running similar scams (I’m sure the driver gets a nice commission).