From Tokyo to Bangkok to India in 24 Hours

We got up on the day we were leaving Tokyo, once again it was snowing. We did the only thing that we could think to do that made sense: we went for a massage. We then headed out to the airport in the snow for our flight to Bangkok. It is a 7 ½ hour flight and we arrived at midnight. We stepped off the plane into Thailand humidity. In the course of the flight we went from snow to the very sweaty tropics.

We checked into out Hotel about 1am and had a 4:30 wake-up call so we could be at the airport at 5:00am for our flight to Chennai India (used to be called Madras). On the flight we were one of the few non-Indians. The stewardess made some announcement just before we landed in Tamil (the language of Chennai). W e couldn’t understand her, but we noticed that all of the Indians around us had taken out handkerchiefs and were covering their faces. We thought how odd, quaint Indian custom. The stewardess then charged thru the cabin spaying disinfectant towards the ceiling and it drifted down on everyone. Apparently India doesn’t want any strange bugs coming into their country. We arrived at 9:30am local time and were met and taken to our Hotel. We are staying at the Taj which is probably the best hotel in Chennai, which is the biggest city in the Indian State of Tamil Nadil and the state capital. The Hotel was proud to let us know they individually fumigate the room after every guest checks out. None the less we are taking our Anti-Malaria pills every day! There are mosquitoes.

After checking in we had a great lunch of Southern Indian food. They served us what is called Thali which is a platter with lots of little dishes that you sample. They rolled a cart over with jars of different types of chutney and gave us a selection of all. The food is actually served on banana leaves. We had never had coconut chutney, Hum Good! Most Indian’s eat with their right hand, but they did provide us with silverware. The food was great. All kinds of tastes, nothing like you would get in an Indian restaurant in Los Angeles! One of us had vegetarian and the other meat so we had a huge variety of food.

To keep our cultural comparisons up, we arranged for massages later in the day – so we can compare Japanese and Indian massages. If nothing else the massage will be cheaper than in Tokyo!

We then walked around the area by our hotel. It couldn’t be more different than Japan. Noisy, colorful, people with nothing to do just standing around, everything in disrepair. Tomorrow we will start our dive in the cultural history of Southern India. So far it is exactly what we expected.

At night we ate outside at the hotel. It was a typically warm night. They had performances of typical Tamil music and dance. I was especially glad to see that you could have flat feet and still be a great dancer. There is hope for me yet. We had our first bottle of Indian wine. Bet you didn’t know they made wine! Can’t get that at Silverlake Wine. It was a 2008 Sauvignon Blanc made in collaboration with Michel Rolland, Bordeaux, Fance. It is called: Grover Vineyards from Bangalore. And you thought Bangalore only had call centers!

In our history of massages we have never had an experience where we paid for an hour massage and got a massage that lasted for an hour and 45 minutes. I can’t believe it is our hard bodies that are fun to rub, so we chalk it to gracious India and will test them again..soon.

My first impressions of India:

People drive with their horns. We saw men scraping up dirt from the street to make concrete for patching crumbling sidewalks. At lunch, a group of men at a table next to us were all had bindis painted on their foreheads while scrutinizing their laptops. It is hard to reconcile a country so technologically advanced in certain areas, yet so incomprehensible in terms of traditions. If I lived here, I could be a vegi, yet still weigh 500 pounds!