India 1: First impressions

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Twenty-four hours have passed since my passport was stamped into India, and it’s time to distill what I’ve seen so far into a series of witty insights, dodgy comparisons, fatuous overgeneralizations and outright mistakes.

A useful travel skill is not expecting too much out of the places you’re visiting for the first time, as this makes it much easier to be pleasantly surprised by them. (This, for example, is the only way to enjoy the Slovenian coal-mining town of Trbovlje.) For Delhi, this was easier yet: I expected a shithole with absolutely no redeeming qualities, and having now discovered at least three, I’m actually looking forward to the rest of my stay here.

The Expected

India is poor, New Delhi is no exception, and economic pundits who think India will be catching up to China any time soon would do well to go to Shanghai and then compare notes here. It’s not quite as desperate as I was afraid (I’ve yet to see any corpses or people shitting on the street), but beggars and shantytowns abound even more profusely than in my previous benchmark of big-city squalor, Jakarta.

Indian infrastructure is famously bad, and here too Delhi is no exception. Traffic is crazy, with three-wheeled autorickshaws emblazoned with “Horn Please”, sacred cows, clunky old Ambassador cars and crazy bus drivers, jostling for space on unlaned roads. Signage is laughably minimal, traffic lights are rarities and Jakarta’s sweeping elevated expressways shine in their absence. Especially at night, with clouds of dust whistling among the trees, it feels like an unusually busy night back in Chipata, Zambia.

The Unexpected

Delhi is both more flat, more spread out and less congested than I expected: there is so much wasteland and so many derelict buildings that you just don’t get the same sense as in Bangkok or Jakarta that every square inch counts. Then again, I’ve only been in southernmost Delhi and Gurgaon so far, so I fully expect Old Delhi to be much more squished together.

Pollution here is really bad. On Singapore’s PSI index, I have no doubt that every day here is well over 100, although mornings seem to be particularly bad. I woke up today sneezing with a really bad runny nose and a headache, triggered by the double whammy of dryness and pollution — fortunately it seems to be getting better already.

The Positive

After a few too many nasi gorengs, Indian food is excellent. It’s just one of those great cuisines of the world that defies easy description: Khmer cooking can be passably described as “half-Thai, half-Vietnamese”, Korean food is “Japanese with chili and garlic”, but how to describe the country that invented the curry? After a lifetime of eating the stuff only in dedicated restaurants, it still feels weird to actually find myself in a country where it’s eaten three times a day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I’m loving it — and looking forward to my first McMaharaja Burger tomorrow. (I’m planning to go veggie for the first few weeks.)

Indian music (especially the more dancy styles of bhangra) rocks. And so do the babes in Bollywood music videos. (Unfortunately, and less surprisingly, they seem to be a rather rare species in reality.)

Second impressions to come this weekend, after I actually get a chance to see something other than fancy hotels and data centres…

 

India 0: A Taste of Bureaucracy

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Unless you’re Bhutanese or Nepali, which I am not, the first step on a long journey to India is getting an Indian visa.

I chose to get mine in Singapore, which has a fairly sizable High Commission to cater for the 6-7% of Singaporeans who are of Indian descent, but need a visa to visit their homeland. The local High Commission thus doesn’t even allow visa applications from anybody else… unless they’re resident in Singapore, like me, in which case they’re grudgingly accepted with extra charges and processing time. Here’s how it went.

Weekend: The High Commission of India in Singapore has a surprisingly informative if somewhat confusing website, where I could also download the application forms I needed. One was PDF and printed out fine, but the second one was only available in MS Word format, with alignment shot to hell and question marks all over the place indicating missing Indian fonts. I filled out the two page PDF form, which, among other things, required two references in Singapore and two in India; a little perusing on Thorn Tree indicated that these aren’t necessary for tourist visas, but nothing on the application form or the HCI site said this. I left them blank and also prepared a copy of my Singaporean identity card.

Tuesday: Having been forewarned of the 3-hour queues that awaited, I avoided always busy Monday and showed up at 9 AM, just as they opened the gate. A stampede for the queue number machine followed and I grabbed slot 30. The embassy was supposed to open at 9:15 AM, and some people showed up at their desks, walked around randomly, answered random questions from random people and shuffled a lot of paper. Some people lined up at counter 5, and I asked what was going on, only to be informed that this is where you deposit your passport after your application has been accepted. Counters 6-9 were devoted to a milling mob of India-Indians (no queue numbers for these guys!) applying for new passports, reporting missed ones, claiming Person of Indian Origin visas, registering marriages and whatnot. And at counter one, a Tamil couple explained something, in extensive detail, to the person behind the counter for over half an hour nonstop. At least they seemed happy when they finally left.

Nothing continued to happen (giving me plenty of time to fill up that missing third form, which turned out to be entirely different from what they had on their website) until 9:45, when the first queue number popped up. 1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! 7! all flashed in quick succession, until around 12 somebody actually showed up to claim their spot. Of the eight desks in the visa room, two seemed to be employed in actually processing passports. Number 30 came up around 10:30 AM — I deposited my application forms and paid S$20 (a “fax charge” for resident foreigners). The lady behind the counter clipped the application forms together, punched away at her PC for a while, printed a receipt on an aging dot-matrix printer, scribbled random things on it and my application by hand, ripped off the extra paper with a practiced draw of the ruler and told me to return 5 days later “before 10 AM”. The queue numbers were pushing 100 by the time I left.

Next Monday: I showed up about 10 minutes “late”, only to find (as expected) a huge queue at counter 5 with people waiting to deposit their passport. I twiddled my thumbs for half an hour until I got to hand in my passport, leading to a search for my previous application in a stack yay big and a repeat of the pay-clip-punch-print-scribble-rip routine. This time I forked out S$80 for the visa itself, and was told to return at 4:15 PM sharp.

Monday, part 2: On a hunch, I showed up at 4 PM sharp, once again in time to see the gate swing open and savvy visa hackers jostle for queue numbers. I got “159” and settled down to wait, and around 4:30 they started blinking numbers again, starting around 140. This time the queue actually moved fast, and less than ten minutes later I was the proud possessor of a 6-month multiple-entry Indian visa. Whee!

Conclusion: If there’s a more convoluted way of applying for a visa, I’d like to hear about it (as long as it doesn’t happen to me). For me, the triple trek to the embassy wasn’t too bad as it’s just three subway stops away from my house, but I could imagine this being a serious nuisance for somebody who lives on the other side of the island and has to get this done during working hours to boot. Then again, that’s why there are travel agents who’ll do it all for you, charging just S$20 extra for the privilege — not much if your own time is worth anything at all.

On the upside, I did get the unlimited-entry 6 month visa on the first try, which I gather is pretty unusual for India. Better yet, I didn’t have to fork out a single penny in bribes facilitation service fees, unlike Indonesia where my multiple-entry business visa ended up costing around US$400.

The Double-Almost-RTW: Bangkok

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I disembarked at good old Don Muang, inhaled the distinctive smell (which is neither good nor bad, just Don Muang, and quite different from Bangkok’s overall funk) and reveled in my first Rot saap, thiu bin thii T-R-neung-neung-hok thammasaa Sin-ka-poh pai Krung Thep laew announcement in almost a year. How many more times will I pass through before Suvarnabhumi finally takes over?

I’d always thought transferring at BKK to be painless — but I’d never actually needed to use the transfer desk before. I trudged across the terminal only to find that the Asiana desk wasn’t open yet, and the sign saying that Thai is Asiana’s handling agent did not mean that Thai would actually condescend to handle their pax. I squatted on the floor next to a power outlet for half an hour, watching as World Cup coverage was interrupted to show King Bhumibol celebrating his 60th year on the throne by welcoming an endless stream of dignitaries ranging from the Sultan of Brunei to the Prince of Liechtenstein, and then tried again, only to find three poor Burmese migrant workers flailing in a thicket of red tape and poorly photostatted documents with huge official approval seals. I’d already learned the hard way to never, ever end up behind anybody holding a Union of Myanmar passport in an immigration queue, but here there was no escape. Tappity-tappity-tap, and another half-hour later all three were dispatched… to sit on the sides and wait some more.

Now it was my turn. My ticket was accepted without question, but then the grilling started. Where did you come from? Where is your visa for Singapore? What do you do there? Where is your return ticket? What is your address in LAX? A few ”mai mii” (not have) and ”mai dai” (not can) punctuated phone calls later I was granted my boarding card to ICN and told that I’d need to check in again tomorrow for LAX.

I was given an “Asiana Lounge” coupon and, hearing for the first time about the existence of such a beast at an airport I thought I knew well, I embarked on a quest to find it. The map on the back of the coupon promised that the ASIANA LOUNGE should be between piers 2 and 3, next to the information booth and CIP First Class Lounge, but it entirely failed to manifest there — until I saw the cut-out of an Asiana girl in her military gray uniform behind the CIP Business Class Lounge desk, smiling in a pose that said “I’m hiding a bayonet-tipped assault rifle behind my back and will march off to Pyongyang tomorrow if the captain so orders”. With foreboding, I entered a dank cellar of crusty brown leather sofas and tortured souls sighing in corners as they counted minutes until their flight, and after raiding the triangle sandwiches (your choice of dry ham, buttery cheese or dodgy food poisoning) contemplated whether my penance had been sufficient. I could tighten my cilice and flagellate myself a little more by staying… or I could go for a massage at the TG lounge instead. Lead me not to temptation; I can find it myself. (It’s right next to gate 32, and yes, it is a Star Alliance lounge although any signs saying so have been hidden.)

TR 116 SIN-BKK Y free seating A320-200

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I was about to fly halfway across the world and back in business class on my own dime, but first, it was time to repent for my sin and pay penance. After suffering through that oh-so-annoying hourlong wait between finishing all my pre-trip preparations and the point when it actually makes sense to leave for the airport, I counted to ten, bolted the door and lugged myself and my rollboard through the tropical afternoon down to the nearest subway (MRT) station. I can get to the airport by taxi in under 20 minutes, but doing it this way involves a transfer at City Hall, another at Tanah Merah and a third onto a bus from Changi T2 to the Budget Terminal. (The upside is that it costs $1.50 instead of $15.) The rush hour was just starting and there were no seats to be had on the train, but I didn’t particularly mind — there was plenty of sitting around ahead.

Almost precisely an hour later the third and final train pulled into T2’s MRT station. Newly added signage showed the way toward the Budget Terminal shuttle buses, through a bewildering warren of underground passageways leading past, among other things, a frosted-glass door signed “SIA Cabin Crew Control Centre”. Alas, any reveries of obedience training for SQ girls gone wild, involving spanking pert behinds wrapped in kebayas, soon evaporated when I emerged into the harsh flourescent light of the underground T2 bus terminal. One of the bus bays had a few signs with random colorful swirls, a sign stating that shuttle buses run every 10 minutes, and a bent length of steel pipe to balance your butt on (a task I’d imagine even well-controlled SQ stewardesses would find a challenge). After I’d inhaled my recommended daily allowance of exhaust, the bus eventually rolled up and I boarded, the only passenger aside from an Indian uncle toting a cup of teh tarik on a plastic strap.

The bus pulled up to a squat building painted creamy yellow and violet (I think Changi could use an Interior Design Control Centre) and I savored my first visit to the Budget Terminal, only opened in April 2006. Check-in queues were slim and my thumbprint-equipped Access Card eased me through immigration. Inside, the terminal bore a remarkable resemblance to a suburban Toys’R’Us: it’s a giant warehouse with an aluminum roof, lots of brightly colored gewgaws for sale and gobs of signboards from the Angry Fruit Salad school of design. But the duty-free shop had the prerequisite bottle of Singapore Sling premix, Genki Sushi sold me a bowl of noodles for $3.80 and there was seating to spare.

The Budgeteers had one clever if evil trick up their sleeve: to prevent kiasu Singaporeans from camping out, gates were not announced in advance. Instead, 30 minutes before departure the flight monitor just silently switched to “Boarding” and the gate number appeared, precipitating a good-natured stampede towards it. But a Tiger guy with spiky blond hair was standing guard and proceeded to divide all entrants into two queues: one for families, one for the rest. The system worked smoothly and half an hour later we were ready to go.

I don’t particularly like Tiger as far as Singapore’s LCCs go, but I seem to end up flying them quite a bit anyway — they fly to all sorts of interesting places and regularly offer the cheapest fares. The major problem for me is the seat pitch, which is bad by any standard, and I can’t really imagine sitting on one of these birds for over three hours. Today the load was 60%-ish, so I had a free seat next to me, and as the plane accelerated towards takeoff and the little pigtailed girl in the seat in front of me squealed with excitement I smiled and thought to myself: “BAM — on the road again!”

The Double-Almost-RTW, Part 1: SIN-BKK-ICN-LAX and back on OZ C/TR Y

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Prologue

Last year I spent a month going around the world, covering a safari in Africa, an iceberg cruise in Svalbard, live octopus in Busan and (the scariest of all) poutine in Ottawa. I’d been planning to top it this year with a two-month RTW that would take in various obscure Pacific islands, but due to time and finance constraints this seems imprudent at the moment… so I decided to fly almost all the way around the world and back instead. Twice.

SIN-BKK-ICN-LAX-ICN-BKK-SIN-FRA-LHR-LTN-LJU-CDG-BRU-STN-HEL-STN-LHR-YOW-YUL-YQB-LHR-SIN

Total 42562 miles, at a cost of approximately 25% of what I paid for my 28984-mile CRWSTAR1 last year. 

To be covered in this thread is the first half:

  • SIN-BKK on Tiger Airways (TR)
  • BKK-ICN on Asiana (OZ)
  • ICN-LAX on Asiana (OZ)
  • and back, with a 5-day loop through South Korea (Seoul-Cheonan-Suanbo-Danyang-Guinsa-Seoul) on the way

And the trip starts tomorrow!

SIN-JHB-XKL-SIN in F: A little tale of first-class travel, Asian style

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I rarely if ever travel in F, but as it happened a friend and I had to go from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur with 2 days notice, and everything else was booked up. Due to a quirk of international relations, KTMB’s tickets are charged in ringgit from Malaysia but in Sing dollars from Singapore, meaning that it’s effectively half price to leave from across the border in Johor Bahru (JHB). So that’s what we did, and the total price for two one-way tickets in F came to all of RM230 (~$60).

It being the Friday before a 3-day weekend in Malaysia, the Causeway connecting SIN and JHB was even more jammed up than usual. We were aware of this and hit the road at 20:30 (almost 3 hours before departure), but as it turned out the queues started at Kranji MRT station for the buses to the border! We took a taxi to Woodlands Immigration instead, but getting within striking distance even there proved tough, with our cabbie eventually depositing us at a shopping mall from which we could trek across the parking lot to the checkpoint. The queues for leaving Sing weren’t too bad, everything operating with typical Singaporean efficiency, but there was another bus queue & traffic jam on the Causeway itself; fortunately, we had only a little luggage, so we opted for the cheapest option and walked the 2 km across. On the Malaysian side it finally paid off to be a furriner — the “Other Passports” line was much shorter than the Sing and Malaysian lines and we were through in a jiffy. Another little jog to the terminal, and it was time to board…

KTMB 12 JHB-XKL F “Ekspres Senandung Malam” 23:15

We’d scored seats 1A and 1B, right up front, which in KTMB’s “Deluxe ADNF” are configured as a private little suite, complete with shower and toilet! A little cramped, to be sure, but what was the last time you saw that in First? The seats had already been converted to beds by the time we boarded; and yes, they are truly flat, but the rather unorthodox bunk bed layout with two vertically layered beds leaves a little to be desired, and the bed was just a little short for a tall guy like me. For IFE we had a personal TV screen with two channels, but alas, we got nothing except static out of either one and we didn’t get headphones for the audio either. Tut tut.

Departure was a couple of minutes late, but no big shakes; soon afterward the steward came to bring us amenity kits and take our meal order, our choices tonight being: Fried Rice, Fried Noodles (Mee), Fried Bee Hoon, Tuna Sandwich, Anchovy Sandwich.

Plus a selection of fruit juices. No alcoholic drinks available, but then again, this is a Muslim country. All in all, not quite a match for SQ, but then again, I wasn’t expecting even this for such a short hop and late departure; the poor slobs in J and Y got nothing at all. I took the bee hoon, which was mostly edible; the lady opted for the mee, which wasn’t too bad. Given that the F cabin was less than 25% full, our orders took a rather unreasonable 45 minutes to arrive though, during which time I sampled the joys of the shower. Quite nice, although the hot water took a while to get started.

After the meal was cleared we settled down to sleep. The ride was slightly turbulent and the engines were a tad noisy at times, but there was a rhythm to it all and soon enough we drifted off to dreamland.

A rude awakening came at 5:30 AM when the steward came around to bring breakfast. I’d been hoping for some decent nasi lemak, but no such luck, our choices were limited to the rather un-Malaysian selection of Chicken Burger, Tuna Sandwich and the undoubtedly ever-popular Anchovy Sandwich.

Plus the usual choice of warm and cold drinks. Neither Chicken Burger nor Tuna Sandwich were noteworthy, and my hot Milo was poorly mixed. Grumble.

At 6:10 AM on the dot — we’d obviously made up for lost time at night — we touched down at KL Sentral (XKL). Unfortunately for getting from XKL to our hotel we missed the 6:14 train and, it being a public holiday, the next one only came at 7:03. This, however, did not stop both signboards and staff from announcing non-existent trains that would usually have run if only it hadn’t been a holiday…!

But by 8 AM we had checked into our opulent Oriental Suite (RM168++) at the Heritage Hotel, and it was time to get down to some serious shopping. A veteran of KL, I started my day in authentic style with a Currywurst at Muller’s Imbiss in downtown Bukit Bintang, and then plunged into the murky depths of Sungei Wang…

So yes, KTMB = Keretapi Tanah Melayu Berhad = Malayan Railways Company, and the Ekspres Senandung Malam is the sole night train plying the SIN-XKL route. Yes, the KL Sentral train station really does have its own IATA code!

A legacy of the British era privatized some time ago, KTMB’s services are much better than they used to be thanks to the introduction of the new sleeper trains and nifty services like e-ticketing (which worked without a hitch), but as a whole the service remains a bit of a quaint relic. Most passengers are people for whom getting there is half the fun, as even the “express” takes 7 hours (compared to 4-5 hours by bus, 3 in your own car and 35 min by plane!)… or people for whom 18 RM (2nd class train seat) vs 20 RM (bus) for the trip actually makes a difference, still a not inconsiderable number in Malaysia.

Anyway, I was going to write more tongue-in-cheek tales of decadent luxury about our return journey by bus, but our plans were rudely interrupted by the realization that all NiCE tickets for KUL-SIN departing on 02 May were sold out! 

So we put on our thinking caps and booked a Plusliner to JHB instead, still leaving at an uncomfortably early 10:30 AM, but beggars can’t be choosers as the next available seats were at 8:30 (meaning arrival in JHB past midnight).

The NiCE Executive Express buses are the F class of bus travel in Malaysia, with 24 seats in the entire bus (built for twice that), meal service and direct connection into Singapore across the Second Link, all for a price of 50-70 RM from KL (and S$38+ IIRC if departing from Sing). By comparison, the same company’s Plusliners to JHB are C-class on a bad airline; plenty of leg room (at least 50 inches) but no other amenities, period. There are of course plenty of other companies plying the same legs from KL to both Johor Bahru and Singapore, but many are rather dodgy and your bus may leave late if at all, while NiCE/Plus are known for their punctuality. Also, while NiCE buses leave from the genteel charm of the quiet old Kuala Lumpur railway station (not to be confused with the new KL Sentral!), Plusliners and everybody else leave from the festering pit of chaos known as Puduraya deep in heart of Chinatown. The plus side to this (hee hee!) is that if you have a moment to spare you can saunter over to the food markets to sample some of KL’s famous bak kut teh, lit. pork bone tea, which despite the name doesn’t contain a drop of the stuff, but is instead basically a soup containing nothing except meat. 

To make a long story, the trip from KL to Singapore via JHB by bus ended up taking the better part of 7 hours, partly thanks to a traffic jam on the expressway (unusual), partly thanks to the bus stopping for snacks and to fill up. The bus dumped us at JB’s Larkin terminal, several km to the north of the city, where we changed to the Causeway Link buses crawling across the border in the omnipresent and interminable traffic jam between the two cities… sigh. The good thing is that all this cost a grand total of RM 20.20 + 1.30 = RM 21.50 (~$5); but I will still gladly pay the full RM 60 next time to go straight into Singapore next time.