Wantunn mee

Traffic signal, originally uploaded by wantunn.

So I’m finally back from my very first trip to India. Looking back, a lot of my expectations about India were pretty off the mark.

Food
I had no issues with the food there (in fact, I absolutely loved the local cuisine). You can pretty much get any type of food you want in Bangalore (Chinese, continental etc) although as usual, Chinese food in a non-Chinese country always tastes odd to me.

Water
Although I didn’t try drinking out of the tap, at least the water from the taps were clear, unlike some countries where you get brownish tap water. Might have just been the hotel and office though.

The Hotel
.. was pretty much fantastic. I stayed at the ISTA hotel and the rooms were clean and very very well decorated although you can tell it’s pretty much catered towards the corporate traveler. Lots of glass in the decor and broadband in the room (wired) as well as common areas (wireless). The odd thing is that we found out on the last day that the wired Internet access was payable while the wireless was free.

People
The people in general were all very friendly and many went out of the way to make our stay more enjoyable.

Sights
We didn’t get much of a chance to see the local attractions but I’m sure we would have if we had more time.

Traffic
This is the one thing about Bangalore I didn’t like. The traffic jams seem to be non-stop and every one has one hand on the horn at all times. There are few real designated crossings so walking around can be real exciting.

Airport
Was probably my least favorite part of the whole trip. Coming in, we didn’t hang around in the airport but on the way back, we had to wait for an hour or two and it was pretty nasty. The seats (all of them) had suspicious brown stains on the cushions and we had the off cockroach crawl over to say hi.

All in all, I’m still happy to be home with my family.

Attached picture of a traffic signal somewhere in Bangalore. It’s still working so I don’t know why it’s absolutely covered in cobwebs. If I get the chance I’ll post the video I took of the traffic countdown signal that starts from somewhere around 120 seconds.