Bangalore,India

My maiden trip to Incredible India.....took that off the India tourism advertisement..hahaha

There was only one flight out of Singapore to Bangalore and one flight back.

I took the wednesday night flight out and I can count the exact number of chinese ladies on board the plane. 3 - one is me, one is another lady whom I think also going for business like me and one is with her other half.

Reached the airport at 10pm and I waited for ages for my luggage to come out from the belt. Finally only reached the hotel at 11.30pm. The hotel was pretty nice, naturally for the price tag of US$400 a night. The room had a LCD TV too. And they provide essential oils to counter stress and enhance better sleep.

The next day we headed for our meeting in the office. The office is pretty small but they have like 2 - 3 people in charge of making tea and coffee etc. Wow and I heard most people there has chaffeur.

Lunch was pretty nice, at a restaurant near the office. After the meeting, we went back to the hotel. We decided to have dinner at the hotel and meet at the Irish pub for a drink before dinner. We heard the Afghan BBQ was good in the hotel and decided to go for it but was told there will only be table available after 10pm. That leaves us with 2 indian restaurants, a chinese restaurants, the Irish pub and a western buffet dinner.

In the end, the guys decided to go for chinese food. I do not find the quality and taste of the chinese food nice. The cost is pretty high too if I am not wrong, 6000 indian rupees.

We started the next morning earlier as we are driving out of the city to our research center and it takes an hour to go there. As you drove out further to the villages, you can really see poverty. You can see people begging for money and their living conditions were pretty bad.

Lunch at the research center is only vegetarian and now I can emphatise with my colleague who goes there for a week for product testing and all she ate was vegetarian food. She even said she brought maggi noodle there. The research center is big and the gardens are well-manicured with gardeners at work. And I saw a lot of candidates waiting to go for interview at the reception.

We ended the day earlier today and when we reached the city, its slightly over 3pm and the driver drove us to see the government buildings and parliament houses. Very nice architectures. We also stopped by a shop which sells local handicrafts, silks and jewellery.

My 2 ang moh vendor ended up buying jewellery, some handicrafts and silk ties while I didn't get anything as I don't really think it's that worth it. We went back to the hotel thereafter to get a shower, packed and checked out. After that, we had some drinks again in the pub and we decided to get ourselves a reservation at the Afghan restaurant. The waitress in the pub was really helpful in helping us get the reservation.

We were the first guests at the restaurant. We ordered a tandoor each, some naan, coke, 2 wine, 1 dessert, 1 drinking water and it costed me 5000 indian rupees and that is almost S$200. Pretty expensive I feel.

Soon it's time for me to go to the airport and my driver came just in time. As I only had 5000 rupees (which my indian admin told me it shouldn't cost more than this price), I was beginning to worry if it's enough for the transport. Fyi, the 5000 rupees covered the 2 days transport.

I didn't change a lot of rupees and I spent the other 2000 rupees I had on books and magazines. True as it is, the cost is 6000 rupees. I wanted to change money in the airport and was told only available at the arrival hall. So I had to call the admin and had the bill sent to the office instead. That was enough to make me late for check in.

I went to the check in counter and the person told me they had closed the check in counter as I was supposed to be there an hour earlier. Thankfully they allowed me in and asked me not to do it again. I think they used the same lines for everyone who is late...hahaha.

The airport was small and really pathetic. Nothing much there, just a shop selling food and a shop selling sourvenirs. In any case, I didn't really have much time to shop and went to the plane direct. I read the local newspaper and the new airport will be ready by April 2008 with shops, restaurants, wireless network etc.

I also read that Microsoft is going to setup an exclusive university in Bangalore to impart high-end computer education.

That pretty much concludes my adventure in the land of incredible india.