Sunday, January 30, 2005
prawn madras
well, on our final leg across the indian sub-continent pete and I made a quick stop back in cochin and then took the night train across the country to chennai (aka madras) from where we will fly to bangkok this evening.
the name of the game in cochin was administration - shop for souvenirs, post parcels home and catch up on the internet. pete and i (ok, i must admit, mostly me) were keen to find some trendy antique piece of indian treasure that we could take home and flaunt for a fiver.
unfortunately it was not to be.
those savvy kashmiri businesses men had long ago cottoned on to the tourist market and were pushing over priced (well, more like uk priced) reproductions. pete asked about something that was obviously a new cd rack, and was reassured that it was no less than 100 years old. we didn't buy anything (except for 9 parcels worth of bits and pieces... how did that happen?!). the parcels took roughly 4 hours to wrap, stich, seal and send - I hope all who receive them will be suitably impressed.
we're in chennai/madras for 12 hours, and to be honest, we almost couldn't make ourselves leave the cool comfort of our bbc equipped hotel room. we had a walk on the beach and tried to tackle one last item in the highlights of our guidebook: 'go see a bollywood film'.
unfortunately it was not to be either!
after loitering in the lobby, eating an ice cream, admiring the admittedly huge crowds, commenting on the incredible cheapness of the tickets (10p), we chickened out. afterall could we really be bothered to sit through 2 hours of tamil singing, dancing, shooting and smooching? not when there was bbc world back at ours! in the end we ate at the cinema restaurant. close enough we reckoned, to cross off the highlight, bringing us to 14 out of 35 - not that we're obsessed or anything.
the name of the game in cochin was administration - shop for souvenirs, post parcels home and catch up on the internet. pete and i (ok, i must admit, mostly me) were keen to find some trendy antique piece of indian treasure that we could take home and flaunt for a fiver.
unfortunately it was not to be.
those savvy kashmiri businesses men had long ago cottoned on to the tourist market and were pushing over priced (well, more like uk priced) reproductions. pete asked about something that was obviously a new cd rack, and was reassured that it was no less than 100 years old. we didn't buy anything (except for 9 parcels worth of bits and pieces... how did that happen?!). the parcels took roughly 4 hours to wrap, stich, seal and send - I hope all who receive them will be suitably impressed.
we're in chennai/madras for 12 hours, and to be honest, we almost couldn't make ourselves leave the cool comfort of our bbc equipped hotel room. we had a walk on the beach and tried to tackle one last item in the highlights of our guidebook: 'go see a bollywood film'.
unfortunately it was not to be either!
after loitering in the lobby, eating an ice cream, admiring the admittedly huge crowds, commenting on the incredible cheapness of the tickets (10p), we chickened out. afterall could we really be bothered to sit through 2 hours of tamil singing, dancing, shooting and smooching? not when there was bbc world back at ours! in the end we ate at the cinema restaurant. close enough we reckoned, to cross off the highlight, bringing us to 14 out of 35 - not that we're obsessed or anything.
// posted by courtney and pete @ 04:29 
