Well, several people have been warning me about the bathrooms on sleeper class on the train. I am getting a little nervous about it. One friend said that she ended up puking while going to the toilet because of the "conditions." Yuck and gross. At least we are taking sleeper class going and the higher class coming back. On the way, we will just treat it as part of our train adventure. (I sure hope I can keep that attitude!) I am bringing a toilet kit consisting of toilet paper, purell, baby wipes and clorox wipes. Hopefully, that will carry us through. We also decided to stop drinking liquids a while ago to decrease the chance that we'll "have to go."
A friend told me about this site that pretty thoroughly describes train travel. You can go here if you want a better idea about train travel in these parts.
Maybe it won't be as bad as I have heard. Maybe it will be worse. Either way, you'll definitely get a report from me along with pictures.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Another cliff-hanger
I am feeling bad about not posting in a while, so I am writing two posts in one sitting. The fridge story below is a to-be-continued; here is another one...
We are taking a train to Darjeeling to spend Christmas with a friend and her family. We'll be gone for about 5 days. It will be wonderful to get out of the city and travel to a really beautiful part of the country where we can deeply breathe in the air and our boogers will not turn grey and black.
Train travel is fairly inexpensive, depending on what class you travel. We are traveling sleeper class on the way there and it is only $6 each one way. However, there were no sleeper class tickets available on the way back so we will travel A/C 2nd class and the tickets are $24 each, still not too bad. You can book online, but if there are no more tickets, you can get the foreign quota seats. Lots of the trains reserve seats for foreigners to encourage tourism. However, you cannot book foreign quota tickets online. You must go to a railway office. It took us three hours to find the right place to get these tickets! But if we had not gotten them, we would have been numbers 131 and 132 on the wait-list.
I think there is a conspiracy between the railway and the travel agents. The railway site does not say where you go to get these foreign quota tickets and it is quite the hassle, as evidenced by our "three hour tour" to get them. We found out from our counter agent that the travel agents often charge 1-2 times the cost of the ticket in fees. He started explaining that a $10 service fee is no big deal to most foreigners, but it is quite a bit of money for a local. I am inclined to agree. I would have paid $10 to avoid the hassle we went through in addition to all the time spent asking around and researching on the internet. However, I am glad we figured it out, although it meant walking around at night in an area we were unfamiliar with. Jerry was getting worried that we would get jumped. I wasn't. We all read the Chasing the Perp story, right?
About the railway office... It is divided into two parts - one for nationals and one for foreigners. The divider is a low wall where the bottom half is wood and the top half is glass. On the national side, it is just a large area with ticket counters. However, on the foreigner side (that you can easily see from the other side), are couches, coffee tables, nice pictures and ticket tables where you can sit in comfy chairs while purchasing your tickets. Oh, and the "nice" side is carpeted, too. Golly! Do they have to be so blatant, especially when both sides are basically sharing one large area?!
Anyhow, this train journey is going to be quite the adventure. We have been warned about theft on the trains and how we have to buy a long chain and padlock to secure our suitcases to the train seats. And our friend was telling us today all the ways we can "hide" our things from would-be robbers while we sleep, including our shoes! I have never been on an overnight train before and it will be neat (I hope) to sleep on a berth. I have always wanted to do this, but never thought it would include safeguarding my shoes and other belongings from thieves. I wonder if they would steal the socks right off my feet?! I guess I better not wear my SmartWools. But I did not bring any other kind. I suppose I will need to buy socks that can be stolen before we leave.
Unfortunately, the train does not take us all the way to Darjeeling. We get off at a station called NJP and then line up to buy tickets for a car that will take us into the city. We get a ticket with a number on it and find the car in the line of cars with our corresponding number and then share that car with several other passengers going to Darjeeling. At the ticket counter we can request to sit in the front, middle or back seats. Our friend told us that the driver will probably try to "sneak" another fare into the car and ask us to just scoot over. (Dena and Jeremy, remember the shuttle van to the Getty Museum?) We are to firmly tell the driver, "No! We paid for two people to sit in two seats, not three people in two seats!" I am guessing that we will have to practice this in charades as we do not know the language, yet.
So, another to-be-continued....
We are taking a train to Darjeeling to spend Christmas with a friend and her family. We'll be gone for about 5 days. It will be wonderful to get out of the city and travel to a really beautiful part of the country where we can deeply breathe in the air and our boogers will not turn grey and black.
Train travel is fairly inexpensive, depending on what class you travel. We are traveling sleeper class on the way there and it is only $6 each one way. However, there were no sleeper class tickets available on the way back so we will travel A/C 2nd class and the tickets are $24 each, still not too bad. You can book online, but if there are no more tickets, you can get the foreign quota seats. Lots of the trains reserve seats for foreigners to encourage tourism. However, you cannot book foreign quota tickets online. You must go to a railway office. It took us three hours to find the right place to get these tickets! But if we had not gotten them, we would have been numbers 131 and 132 on the wait-list.
I think there is a conspiracy between the railway and the travel agents. The railway site does not say where you go to get these foreign quota tickets and it is quite the hassle, as evidenced by our "three hour tour" to get them. We found out from our counter agent that the travel agents often charge 1-2 times the cost of the ticket in fees. He started explaining that a $10 service fee is no big deal to most foreigners, but it is quite a bit of money for a local. I am inclined to agree. I would have paid $10 to avoid the hassle we went through in addition to all the time spent asking around and researching on the internet. However, I am glad we figured it out, although it meant walking around at night in an area we were unfamiliar with. Jerry was getting worried that we would get jumped. I wasn't. We all read the Chasing the Perp story, right?
About the railway office... It is divided into two parts - one for nationals and one for foreigners. The divider is a low wall where the bottom half is wood and the top half is glass. On the national side, it is just a large area with ticket counters. However, on the foreigner side (that you can easily see from the other side), are couches, coffee tables, nice pictures and ticket tables where you can sit in comfy chairs while purchasing your tickets. Oh, and the "nice" side is carpeted, too. Golly! Do they have to be so blatant, especially when both sides are basically sharing one large area?!
Anyhow, this train journey is going to be quite the adventure. We have been warned about theft on the trains and how we have to buy a long chain and padlock to secure our suitcases to the train seats. And our friend was telling us today all the ways we can "hide" our things from would-be robbers while we sleep, including our shoes! I have never been on an overnight train before and it will be neat (I hope) to sleep on a berth. I have always wanted to do this, but never thought it would include safeguarding my shoes and other belongings from thieves. I wonder if they would steal the socks right off my feet?! I guess I better not wear my SmartWools. But I did not bring any other kind. I suppose I will need to buy socks that can be stolen before we leave.
Unfortunately, the train does not take us all the way to Darjeeling. We get off at a station called NJP and then line up to buy tickets for a car that will take us into the city. We get a ticket with a number on it and find the car in the line of cars with our corresponding number and then share that car with several other passengers going to Darjeeling. At the ticket counter we can request to sit in the front, middle or back seats. Our friend told us that the driver will probably try to "sneak" another fare into the car and ask us to just scoot over. (Dena and Jeremy, remember the shuttle van to the Getty Museum?) We are to firmly tell the driver, "No! We paid for two people to sit in two seats, not three people in two seats!" I am guessing that we will have to practice this in charades as we do not know the language, yet.
So, another to-be-continued....
Fridge Woes
Buying a brand-new fridge would cost us about $200, so we decided to rent one instead. Through a friend we got one that was $7.50 a month with a $25 deposit. It was REALLY gross and ant-infested. We (meaning mostly Jerry) washed it with bleach and I sprayed for ants with window cleaner. We got ant spray and after several days, the fridge was decent (and I use this word loosely) and the ants were gone. Hooray, right?
Wrong. It stopped cooling after a few days. We took everything out and transferred all our stuff to the office fridge. So our friend found another "source" and we got another fridge. This one seemed quite promising. It was a better size than the one we previously had, there were no bugs and it was kinda clean. A weird thing was this red button that Jerry found inside near the thermostat. A sticker next to it said something like, "You need to press this button once a day." So, Jerry asked the guy what it meant and he basically said, "You just need to press it every day or the fridge will flood." Well, we figured we could remember to do that, so Hooray, right?
Wrong. Tonight, we discovered that the motor had tripped the breaker and so the fridge was not working and the breaker thing caused ALL of the outlets in our room to stop working. Again, I emptied the fridge of all our stuff. Someone is supposed to come tomorrow. Tune in next time...
Wrong. It stopped cooling after a few days. We took everything out and transferred all our stuff to the office fridge. So our friend found another "source" and we got another fridge. This one seemed quite promising. It was a better size than the one we previously had, there were no bugs and it was kinda clean. A weird thing was this red button that Jerry found inside near the thermostat. A sticker next to it said something like, "You need to press this button once a day." So, Jerry asked the guy what it meant and he basically said, "You just need to press it every day or the fridge will flood." Well, we figured we could remember to do that, so Hooray, right?
Wrong. Tonight, we discovered that the motor had tripped the breaker and so the fridge was not working and the breaker thing caused ALL of the outlets in our room to stop working. Again, I emptied the fridge of all our stuff. Someone is supposed to come tomorrow. Tune in next time...
Thursday, December 6, 2007
I am glad this didn't happen to me...
and that it happened to Jerry instead.
So, Jerry decides to get his haircut at the first place he blogged about since the outdoor-sidewalk-under-a-tree guy is kinda far from where we live. He goes in and is directed to the last chair in the corner. The barber starts to unbutton the top two buttons on his shirt, which they typically do, so they can fold the collar in to get it out of the way as well as to prevent hair from getting on it. However, instead of stopping at the second button, the barber keeps unbuttoning almost all the way to his pants. He then grunts, points and yanks at the shirt to signal that he wants Jerry to take his shirt out of his pants and unbutton the rest. So, Jerry unbuttons and then the barber starts yanking his shirt to take it off. Jerry's dress shirt is off and he starts thinking, "Hmm... this is new, maybe they changed their haircutting procedure." THEN, the barber starts yanking on his undershirt, Jerry untucks it, and the barber starts pulling it and off it comes!
Before he knew it, Jerry was sitting topless in the barber shop and really wondering what changes had been made and began thinking, "Wow! They really want to keep my shirts clean." (That is NOT what I would have been thinking.) The barber goes out, brings back a large towel, tosses it on Jerry's lap and walks over to another part of the shop. All of sudden, a woman in a white coat appears out of nowhere, standing just a few inches to the side of him, speaking Bengali. After a while, Jerry just starts saying, "Haircut, haircut, haircut." She leaves to go to the women's side behind the wall and peals of laughter start coming from that direction. Then the barber comes back and Jerry turns to him and says, "Haircut," with hand motions this time and barberman nods, gets the normal haircut sheet, drapes it over Jerry's topless body and proceeds to finally cut his hair.
Ya know, just last night I was telling Jerry that it is hard to know if something weird/strange is "just the way things are," or if something is really wrong. This story is a case in point. Again, glad this happened to him and NOT to me.
So, Jerry decides to get his haircut at the first place he blogged about since the outdoor-sidewalk-under-a-tree guy is kinda far from where we live. He goes in and is directed to the last chair in the corner. The barber starts to unbutton the top two buttons on his shirt, which they typically do, so they can fold the collar in to get it out of the way as well as to prevent hair from getting on it. However, instead of stopping at the second button, the barber keeps unbuttoning almost all the way to his pants. He then grunts, points and yanks at the shirt to signal that he wants Jerry to take his shirt out of his pants and unbutton the rest. So, Jerry unbuttons and then the barber starts yanking his shirt to take it off. Jerry's dress shirt is off and he starts thinking, "Hmm... this is new, maybe they changed their haircutting procedure." THEN, the barber starts yanking on his undershirt, Jerry untucks it, and the barber starts pulling it and off it comes!
Before he knew it, Jerry was sitting topless in the barber shop and really wondering what changes had been made and began thinking, "Wow! They really want to keep my shirts clean." (That is NOT what I would have been thinking.) The barber goes out, brings back a large towel, tosses it on Jerry's lap and walks over to another part of the shop. All of sudden, a woman in a white coat appears out of nowhere, standing just a few inches to the side of him, speaking Bengali. After a while, Jerry just starts saying, "Haircut, haircut, haircut." She leaves to go to the women's side behind the wall and peals of laughter start coming from that direction. Then the barber comes back and Jerry turns to him and says, "Haircut," with hand motions this time and barberman nods, gets the normal haircut sheet, drapes it over Jerry's topless body and proceeds to finally cut his hair.
Ya know, just last night I was telling Jerry that it is hard to know if something weird/strange is "just the way things are," or if something is really wrong. This story is a case in point. Again, glad this happened to him and NOT to me.
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