Holidays Part Two: Singapore to Chennai

After being on top of the world, we had to come down. Singapore is a wonderful place for people who like to shop. There is a whole shopping district along this place called Orchard Road. It has tons of malls and stores to wander through. Once again we took the MRT, and got out just before Orchard Road. We went to a huge mall and walked around for a bit. They had a lot of expensive stores selling high-fashion clothes that only rich people can afford. Still, everything was decorated for Christmas, and it was quite pretty.  We had lunch, and I had some Indonesian BBQ chicken. The sauce was sweet, kind of like thick teriyaki sauce. I also had rice with a coconut curry sauce on top. It was very delicious. It came with a thin egg-pancake thing, and the whole thing tasted great.

The first mall was very nicely decorated for Christmas

This is my delicious lunch.  Everything was so good. I could eat this once a week. :)

I thought these decorations were particularly beautiful.

After lunch we walked a bit, and found an old building with lots of tailor shops and little places that sell shirts and clothes for much less. Also, like with sellers in India, you can bargain for a better price. For every U.S. Dollar, you get 1.2 Sing dollars, so you can tell if you’re getting a good price or not. Raja bought some t-shirts for our kids, whom I call Monkey and the Man-Cub on this blog, and I got one too. 

Since Raja has a bad knee, he went to get a coffee and sit down (we drank a LOT of coffee on this trip.) and I went shopping! I bought Raja a shirt for Christmas. He didn’t want me to spend any money on him, but I can’t resist. The shirt is blue and is in a very beautiful South Asian style fabric. It was so pretty I had to buy it. It was very hot out, and I had forgotten and packed my sandals in my suitcase, which was going directly on the plane to Chennai. So I bought some sandals. I also bought a dress, because it was pretty, and I love clothes. I figured I had bought enough things, so I met up with Raja, and we walked to the next mall.

Even Rodrigo has coffee. 

My Kinder girls would have loved this mall because the whole thing was pink!  I even took a selfie with the pink unicorn. The place had Christmas fairies and unicorns and stuff everywhere. Raja went to sit down had have more coffee, and I wandered the mall. Little did I know that this mall was really 2 malls put together, and I got totally lost! I finally found Raja again, and he wasn’t too mad at me, as we had plenty of time to get back to the airport.

The pink mall

Me with the pink unicorn

Rodrigo trying to hide in some pink tinsel: so much pink!!!

We finally got back to the airport, and went through security again. We had to go through security at every airport to make sure everyone is safe and no one has anything that can hurt people, accidentally or on purpose.

We were in a room waiting for the plane, and I realized I had to go to the bathroom (it was an emergency!) so I had to go all the way out and come back through security again!

Eventually we boarded our plane for Chennai. This was a short flight, in comparison, so I didn’t sleep that much. I finished the movie from the last flight, and watched half of another movie.  The interesting thing is that when we flew to Seoul and then Singapore we went forward in time. When we flew to Chennai, we went backwards in time and when we come home, we’ll come backwards in time again. We’re not really time travelers, though. It just seems that way because of time zones. It’s a different time in each time zone, and there are different time zones in different parts of the world there are even four different time zones just in the continental U.S. !

Rodrigo is looking forward to our final destination: Chennai.

By the time we got to Chennai it was getting close to midnight. We had to go through immigration, where we show our passports and a paper, which tells the guy how long we are staying and why we are visiting. We had to do this in Singapore, too, because we were leaving the airport. We just switched planes in Seoul, though, and never went outside the airport, so we didn’t have to go through immigration there.

After the immigration officer checks out passport, he gives us a stamp, and lets us through. Then we have to go through customs, which is where you have to tell them if you are bringing anything into the country. We told them we’d brought a few gifts, but no food or gold bullion, and they let us through, no problem.

We had to wait for our luggage to come out of the plane, then pull it off the conveyor belt, which moves the luggage around and around in a circle (more or less) until the person finds their suitcase and pulls it off.

After we got our luggage, we put it on a cart and took it outside. Raja’s parents had arranged for a driver to come pick us up. He had a board with our name on it. The parking lot of the airport is really crowded, and cars are driving everywhere, so you have to be very careful that you don’t get run over.

We got to the car, and the driver put the suitcases in the back. We got into the car and shut and locked the doors. In India, no one wears seat belts, and they drive like maniacs, so you need to make sure your doors are locked, at the very least, so you don’t fall out.   In India, people drive on the opposite side of the street than we do in the U.S. However, sometimes they drive the wrong way, or they drive right down the middle line. That’s what our driver did. In India there are a lot of cars, so people drive kind of slowly, but they are all smooshed together, and they drive around each other sort of randomly, honking and squeezing into tiny spaces. You’d think there were a lot of accidents, and there are, but a lot less than you might think.

On the way home to Velachery, it was late at night, so it actually wasn’t too crowded. One of the first things I do when I get to Chennai, other than smell the air (I love the smell of Chennai. Some people think India is stinky, and it is sometimes, but it also smells good a lot of the time. I like the smell most of the time.) is look for the first cow I see. Cows roam freely in India, because they are considered holy.  A lot of animals roam free. There are stray dogs everywhere. On the way home from the airport, I counted 27 stray dogs and two cows.

I'll stop here, but write more later. 

Until then, Be good!