Incredible !ndia

So says the back of the immigration departure card that my colleague showed me (while I waited 3.5 hrs for the Singapore Airlines ticket counter to open in the international airport because of the four days of non-stop rain that hit the city this side of the monsoon season. Multiple parties informed me of horror 5-hrs trip to airport stories and missed flights that I decided to play it safe and came straight to the airport rather than risking it out there. Already the news said flood killing people in this city because of the rain, so what am a sane person to do?) and the first thought that came to my mind was: "Incredible Smell!". I have smelled it first hand in the rented car that one of the more adventurous potential customer got for us to show his corporate office in the city proper (the airport and the hotel was located at the outskirts of the city), claiming it to be his company car during conversation, but with the reality of a brightly painted logo of tourist company advertising its services on the sides. The guy is a crook, never manifesting it directly in words but the arrogant behavior and illusions of grandeur gave it away after several meetings with him. Two of my regular customers already warned me about him. His office was crap too, even worse than some of our Chinese customers' office. For some reason (or made up one), he thought that we were looking for a partner to open a factory here and because of the government regulation here limiting foreign ownership to 74%, maybe he thought that he was the one! Anyway, I'm getting side tracked about Incredible !ndia (and yes, that's how they typed it in the card, with the !)..

This country is indeed incredible:
1. Incredible Smell (legions of unwashed people assaulting your nose with their aromatic hair and maybe armpit odors)
2. Incredible Service (or lack of it, which might be limited to my hotel but I seriously doubt it after my observations about the people)
3. Incredible Traffic (loads of small taxis and bajajs littered the street) and dont start about the road! (to be fair, it was Surabaya's road 3-4 years ago after the rainy season)
4. Incredible Poverty (if you think people living in triplek houses under freeway overpasses in Jakarta is sad, here they live on the sidewalk with plastic sheets for walls. Maybe the corpses on the street story came from here)
5. Incredible Food (the best part of visiting really! I didn't dare to try the spicier ones but the ones that I have tasted were very good and most of them are vegetarian!)
6. Incredible Weather (it was raining the whole time except for my first half-day)
7. Incredible Shameless Self-Esteem (which doesn't hold up to the rest of the world. They are proud of it except that they dont know that it's crap!)
8. Incredible Airport (it is constantly under renovation and for an international airport, the roof is leaking and the water drops were contained with torn newspaper. This was happening at the immigration counter!!! and also all over the airport)

So it is the sums of all these things that leads me to give this suggestion to you:
Don't go to India unless you really really have to (Taj Mahal supposedly) and cut all of your expectations of any international standards by half. A forewarning is that maybe the Taj Mahal is also crap based on what I just wrote. So for example if a hotel advertises itself to be a 5-stars hotel (as in the case of my hotel, the incredibly shitty Park Plaza Mumbai), it's really a 2.5 stars, based on the following:

1. It doesn't smell (1 star)
2. It has a working door lock (1 star)
3. The food doesn't give you stomach ache (half star)

All the missing stars:
1. The 4 batteries that are powering your room's small deposit box had only 3 batteries and they are sprawled outside with no one coming in to fix it for five days
2. The internet connection is controlled by some asshole in the front desk who picked up the phone only once during my stay to actually give me the password to login. The other times someone else picked up with promises that the asshole will call back (no one did for 1.5 hrs) and the other time the server was down
3. The fresh towel has a bright yellow stain on one of the corner which could be: squised papaya, squished orange, squished durian or more likely: squished shit (i wisely decided not to smell it to determine what it actually was at that time and just threw it inside the bath tub)
4. The shower box is sloped to better regulate the water flow, except that they put the drain hole on the UPPER part of the slope, so the shower is always full of water
5. On the last night of the trip, at 2:30am, the electricity went on and off for about 6 times in the span of 10 minutes, each with bursting flash of lights as the lights in our rooms are halogen, kind of like being flashed with a full camera flash right in front of your eyes. How did I know it was 2:30am? I'm always aware of my surrounding so i know :P To give the hotel credit they did give me 3 candles to light in case it happens (which according to one employee is common)
6. On the last day of the trip as I was checking out the same thing happened at the lobby, have these people no SHAME???
7. The waiter on the dinner buffet gave you nasty look and nodded to acknowledge that you asked for tea, except that he just stood there. After you asked for the 3rd time he brought you the tea mixed with milk, which when I sipped I immediately commented that this is not tea but rather 'banyu korah-korah'
8. The bells and lights in front of your room have pretty much decayed
9. The furniture has the looks of the furnitures that Vivi was interested to buy from Index at the PTC (yes, her taste is not that good, bwahahah)
10. The remote control has one dead battery, which was replaced with one of the 3 batteries from the room safety box and it's still a remote from hell, you have to squeeze reaaaaaaaaaally hard for it to change channel

So if you total all the missing stars, it comes out to be -7.5 stars! And they have billboards all over the city saying that it is a "LUXURY Business Hotel".

Now I have written for quite some time and still there is 2.5hrs to go, ugh! To make life interesting, as I was walking to the other side of the check-in counter, I saw a blue queue strap (that they have in front of the bank or any kind of line to help you queue up) and empty space behind it with this sign "Suspicious Article Ahead, Do Not Approach Within 100m" and suddenly I realized that there were soldiers lining up the strap and that there was a guy in full bomb suit moving forward slowly next to a bomb-sniffing dog, I'm NOT joking!!! I was like WTF???? and I just walked the hell out from there... Aren't you supposed to clear the airport for this kind of shit??? Fifteen minutes later apparently it was false alarm and everything went back to normal.... incredible indeed!

Sleepily yours,

Lord S