Traders Hotel Chennai Chennai (Madras)

... pants, so we were scorching. Did you know that there are 300,000,000 people in the USA? Well, there are 300,000,000 English speakers in India and 1.2 Billion total people. It is a crowded country! I was on an independent trip planned by a girl named Barbara. She had planned it in the summer before we even got on the ship. There were 30 of us and we went to get on our coach bus. For the first 10 minutes it did not have air conditioning. I have never sweat so much in my ...

My pics for today show the government school we visited and scenes from our morning drive through the streets of an economically depressed community that was hit hard by the tsunami in 2006- incidentally the state government (Tamil Nadu) was highly praised for its immediate distribution of aide to affected families. <br><br>For the first time during this summer seminar we visited a government ("public") school. The impressive administrators and teachers there seem to have ...

... tacky seashell vendors, these have to be the worst. tackiest souvenirs in the world. I met a few lads wearing t-shirts with bad english language slogans on them and hosted an impromptu muscle competition on the sand. There was a wanna be cowboy guy on a brown and white dappled horse giving rides and one of the shoot an air rifle pellet at a balloon carnie games. There was some deserted fairground rides and then the Shore Temple which has a reclining ...

... for him to take us back to the ship after agreeing to an outrageous price because he would not take no for an answer. We definitely snuck out a different way to dodge him and get someone cheaper to take us back to the ship. Since we were to pay our other guy once we got back to the port, we had not paid him the outrageous price he wanted. I did not feel bad about it because we had been paying him more than anyone in Chennai would pay for a cab ride and he completely took ...

... was one of those moments in life where doing my best would just have to be enough. I flushed and flushed and the paper didn't go down. Then I did my best to leave the bathroom without anyone being the wiser. In Vellore there is an old fort. It has a long history. Sometime in the 16th century the Nayakar chieftains built the massive granite ramparts and wide moat. Ownership of the fort changed hands over time. Eventually the British took control. There is no better example ...

... upon a recent motorcycle accident. Some people had stopped to lend assistance, and so we passed on. But it was in the aghast conversation afterwards that we learned that due to infrastructure issues in many parts of India there exists no 911 numbers; good Samaritans must transport people to the hospital. (Disclaimer and reminder, especially for my parents: my program is very safe, please don't worry ...

... conversion fees. This sounded awesome to me. So two days before I left on my trip I bought the card. When I went to the airport in sydney to check on the balance of the card, the card didn't report anything at all. I went to the travelex counter and the lady said wait a few more days for the money to hit the account. Wait a few more days? Was she joking? I was about to board the plane to go to India. she didn't even bother ...

... i can hear them talking on the truck (no i am not losing it!!) 2. constantly being on the go non-stop and not being able to get laundry done as a result- i actually found myself thinking the other day whats that smell and then realised infact that it was me - not a good feeling 3. the continued prevalence of monkeys around here. they seem to have shrunk in size making their weird simian faces seem all the more evil and knowing *shudder* things on the ...

Today is our first day in India and we are experiencing what some people have called a Culture Shock. But to be honest, our previous travels and laidback attitude have prepared us a little and the things we see are not as shocking as you might think. South India is in many ways more relaxed than North India and most people are very friendly (and sometimes a bit too persistent, especially beggars and sales people) We get ...

... and it was one of the nicest places I've ever seen. We sat in the bar (in which we were the only women present) and had some small snacks (peanuts, chips) as we had a few drinks (I had the most amazing fruit juice ever, and then guzzled a huge bottle of water, because I was apparently dehydrated after our long day). We also got an order of the most amazing cauliflower I have ever tasted, I can't even describe what it was like, although I suppose it was sort of like teriyaki ...