Trivundrum

Yesterday we went into the city of Trivundrum. This is about 20 miles from Kovalam Beach and is the city that we fly into to get here to Kovalam. This was the first time after being here three weeks that we went into the city. Trivumdrum has the population of about 1 million people, and the best way to describe this city, is the same way that I described the roads - organized chaos! We decided to take the bus to get into the city. First off, I wanted to experience the bus here in India, and second much cheaper. The cab fare into the city is 300 Rupees, the bus, 17. And that is for both of us! Riding the bus isn't as bad as I thought. However, because it was in the middle of the day, the bus was not busy. If you travel at peak times - we would call it rush hour- the buses look more like cans of sardines than buses. So we got a seat and everything. In fact, nobody was standing on our bus into the city. Riding the bus is very similar to riding in a taxi on the roads, however the advantage is that the bus is usually the biggest thing on the road so other vehicles tend to move out of your way...nice.

In the states, because we are such a lawsuit happy country, and god forbid that we take responsibility for our own actions, buses are only allowed to drop you off and pick you up at the designated bus stops, and no other place. You know, in case you fall or something and you are not at the bus stop then you will own the buses! Anyway, here, the bus is cruising down the road at a good pace and you decide you want on that bus - just wave your hand! If you have seen the movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, the bus ride he takes in the begining of the book, yeah, thats what its like. The driver will just slam on the brakes to stop for you, and hope there is not a taxi, or better yet, a rickshaw right behind the bus, because then the rickshaw would be up the exhaust pipe. Same goes for if you are in the bus and just ring the little bell, and its a real bell, not some bell like sound from a speaker. On go the brakes! And lets just talk about those brakes - they do work really well, however they need to work on the sound of them. Daren's comment would be "I would rather here nails running down a chalk board than the brakes!" and I couldn't agree more.

Arriving in Trivundrum, we get off the bus at the main bus terminal for the city. Our first stop is to be the main city market - where if we want, we can do some shopping. The nice thing, is the market is simply across the street from the bus stop. The challenging part is the market is simply on the other side of this very big, very busy, chaotic, unorganized street! Now, I think to myself, I've been in New York City, and I can cross a very busy street! No traffic lights (unless you count the traffic cop who only about 10% of the drivers actually see him. Remembering there are no lanes per say, and we are at at intersection! So the best thing that comes to mind is the very old video game "Frogger". Across the street we go and for some reason, I think a bus, teh intersection became congested for a moment at traffic came to a stand still. There were about 40 people who took advantage of that pause in the traffic and went for it. We made it with no problems. Of course we were in the big city so we didn't need to watch out for ox, cows, elephants, or other forms of wild life.

The market really wasn't anything spectacular, or funny to write home about. It was a very long street, and someone at some point in time had the brilliant idea to make the road only one way, so you only needed to watch traffic coming from one direction. A good example of what the marked was like is think "China town" in San Francisco. Very busy with tons of people moving everywhere, and some cars but mostly motor bikes and rickshaws moving through the street. Shop after shop after shop of stuff. Sometimes I wonder what some of these shops are thinking, and if they really do sell anything, but I guess they do or they wouldn't be there. The majority of the locals are buying their fruits, vegetables, and flowers for the day. The Indians like gold, considering it the best investment, so there were lots of jewelry stores, and lots of shoe stores as well.

We went into a hotel to get some bottled water, (hotel here in India can be used for restaurant as well. There is a sign here in Kovalam that says Hotel and Accomidations.) and really confused the man because he wanted to get us a soft drink of some kind. Coke, sprite, etc. It took him a moment to realize we wanted water. Daren made a very good observation about the Indians, at least here in this part of the country. They don't drink soft drinks. Now, there are everywhere you go, but the only people you see drinking them are the westerners. Indians drink tea and coffee most of the time. While we were looking around, a place that sold items for school children, pens, bags, etc was selling a poster about healthy food. It wasn't simple as there were about 18 different things, or pictures, on the poster. They did include things like meat (for non Hindu's), milk, rice, wheat, fruit, vegetables, sweets, I really can't remember everything. This was given to school children, similar to when we had the four basic food groups, now the food pyramid. One of the items listed was PEPSI!!!!!! Soft drinks were apart of that list! Daren and I started to laugh really hard and pointing to the picture. The man asked was was so funny in broken English, and we told him in America we are working at getting soft drinks banned from schools because they are not good for you. You could tell he thought we were crazy, because this poster said Pepsi, it must be okay! I wonder who paid for those posters to be made?!?

After the market, our next trip was to the Trivundrum museum. This meant riding in a rickshaw for the first time! Several things come to mind when seeing/riding in a rickshaw. First off, the sound they make. For those of you from Utah, or have even been to an amusement park (Lagoon) that has those little cars that you drive around on a track, well that is what they sound like. Enhanced lawn mower engines with bad mufflers! They don't go much faster, and when going up hills I'm ready to put my feet on the ground and help out, kind of like in the Flintstones! The way the rickshaws are designed, one wheel up front and the two in the back, they so remind me of "Doom Buggys" (These are the vehicles you get into at the Haunted Mansion at the Disney parks to go through the attraction.) Of course the Doom Buggys are not as scary to ride in - no pun intended! The trip to the museum wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and our driver could speak English so he was good at pointing out things.

The museum was an incredible looking building that was built for the purpose of being a museum, unfortunatly the government can't keep up these kind of places so it is a bit run down. The cost per person into the museum was 6 Rupees (12.5 cents). Most of the items within were of statues of Hindu and Buddist figures and such dating back up to several thousand years. They even had a replica of some stone stamps showing people in specific yoga poses that date to 2500 B.C. Thats 4500 years ago. Everything was metal, wood or stone, and there were several pieces of cloth the Bali, and a few other odd things. It only took about 25 min to go through the whole place.

Time for lunch, I will continue with another post this afternoon! Hope you are all well.