Land of the Curry

I am now in Mumbai, India, land of the curry!!! And for first impressions, the look of the city here is actually like Jagalan, Pasar Turi (that's the outside of the NEW international airport, which is still work in progress) and the roads in Trawas/Batu. There are no beggars or dead people in the street as was rumored before but then I haven't gotten the chance to actually go to the city itself. The hotel is located on a hill (as advertised) but what was not mentioned that the hill itself was full of crap! half done building, slum neighborhood RIGHT across the high wall that the hotel built complete with barbed wire on top. To be fair, all the crap around the hill is quite cleverly disguised with trees and foliage so from afar you wont be able to see them. The street is full with antique taxis and tuk-tuk (bajaj).



As for standard of living, it seems that food here is quite cheap. Inside the exhibition hall, food costs around USD 2 and the portion will make you full. So food outside should be minimum half of that. Hotel buffet costs USD 20, cheaper than Surabaya Shangri-La's USD 25 and it's full of soupy food. Hungarian beef paprika, Mongolian chicken, and a bunch of other Indian names that I can't remember or know what they are made of, the similarity is that they are all soupy except for the Bashmati rice (long grained and soft, quite good).

So far the pace of life here seems to be very relaxed, with most customers coming in at the fair after 1-2pm after lunch, very few comes at the official opening time of 10am. It is rainy here also, being in the middle of the monsoon season, although it is not too heavy, more like drizzle here and there. I have yet to meet the gollywashers, which according to my Indian contact happened at the show three years ago and it flooded the exhibition hall and they had to cancel the show then.

The exhibition itself is not very furnished, it's more like big warehouses connected together. There are even birds living inside the hall, one of the them crapped on the information counter guy that I was asking about something. His backshirt and chair is full of bird poop, ewwwwwwwwwww.

Anyway, I will try to get some pictures posted later, but if you can imagine all the Indonesian locales I mentioned above, you already know how this place looks like.

Booyah,

Lord S