Jo and Sarb's Year Off

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Day 76 (Thu 21 Sep) - Mumbai

Breakfast again at the friendly Food Plaza.

Decided that we should try again to sort out our train journeys. Despite having no US dollars or GBP Sarb had a plan. Go to Thomas Cook get loads of US Dollars and then buy our train tickets. Brilliant!!

Got to Thomas Cook and discovered the central flaw in our plan. Namely that foreigners cannot buy US Dollars or GBP. So we had a slight problem here namely that as a foreign tourist you have to pay in GBP or USD but you could not get any GBP or USD because you were a foreigner. So unless you had wads of cash strapped to you or travelers cheques, of which we had neither, you were up the Ganges without a rickshaw. To be fair the chap at Thomas Cook sympathised with the stupidity of the situation.

We had a rethink and headed to the train station anyway, via a big fountain, deciding that we would only try and book the train from Mumbai to Chennai. The others we would have to arrange as we went. We had another cunning plan in that Sarb would brush up his Hindi and pretend he was a local. So after a quick refresher course of about two minutes, we queued at the locals counter. Whilst queuing we saw one ticket tout, they literally infest the booking hall, having a robust discussion with a guard. The guard was doing all of the discussing with his hands; delivering a serious of rapid slaps and a jab.

Anyway spoke to the woman at the counter and booked our tickets no problems, paying in rupees. After a brief discussion with her it transpires that we could have bought all our tickets in rupees without any problems. It seems all this foreign tourist thing has to do with tourist quotas on trains. So if you are a foreigner with USD you would go to this counter and they would book a seat using up one of the train's tourist quota seats. If however you wanted to book seats in rupees and not care a fig about the tourist quota you could go to the normal desk and just get them. In a nutshell then; if you want to buy any train tickets in Mumbai, find a travel agent, pay them some money and sit back in a bar secure in the knowledge that someone else is getting a stress headache.

Walked back to the hotel, taking a piccy of the quite stunning building opposite the train station, where we burnt some CD's and done some blogging. At about 4.30pm we got taxi back to Nariman Point to see how our man was getting on with reorganising our flights at Air Malaysia.

Met our chap and he explained that if we wanted to change our flights it would cost us about 400 GBP EACH. This is basically because of the new flights, that the fares would have to be recalculated from the current date, that there would be new taxes to be applied, that some of the taxes already applied had to be reapplied and that the office cat needed a vet so a small contribution to the kitty was required.

After a massive discussion with our hapless man, a knowledgeable woman piped up and explained that the best thing to do was to leave the tickets as they were, get a cheap flight to Hanoi ourselves and then rearrange the Australia flights when we get there. Made sense we thought. So after all this we have exactly the same tickets! We both wished we'd spoken to this woman first.

Walked to the Pizzeria on Marine Drive and had a couple of great pizzas.

Whilst we were there we noticed a group of people holding a big banner stating it was World's Alzheimer's Day. Jo got very excited and popped over to have a chat with them. She was tempted to join their memory walk but thought it wasn't safe to leave Sarb so she went back to the pizzeria and bored Sarb with Alzheimer's talk for the next half hour.

Walked to Chowpatty beach. Weather was a trifle turbulent; breezy with sharp showers.

Got to Chowpatty about 7.30pm ish where we found it was bustling. Quite a few people milling about doing normal sea side things, eating ice creams, sitting on the sand etc. although very noticeable that no one looked like they had been swimming. The surrounding area of Chowpatty is dotted with some quite impressive tower blocks, with very flash looking apartment’s right at the top.

Had a drink in a nearby cafe and walked through the darkening streets back to our hotel. Took us about 2.5 hours; passing through busy little markets, past rows of bright shops and residential areas. Jo bought her mum a birthday card, which is quite an achievement as we hadn't seen many card shops since we have been in India. Reminding someone that you know how old they are on the day they probably want it least remembered seems to be a Western thing.

Got back to the Food Plaza and had a soft drink before turning in.

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