Mother and child. This beautiful photo only, courtesy of www.mongabay.com.
The name is a tongue twister - Tiruchirapalli - but I've finally gotten it. Its monicker is sweeter - Trichy, like Richie. Arriving into this south Indian town - err, city, started with a bit of chaos at the Civil International Airport. There was much to do about taking everyone's temperature. Trouble is, a single masked nurse in complete nurse get-up and cap was thrusting a single digital thermometer for everyone to touch. One friggin thermometer for a planeful of tourists!
After that spectacularly dreary experience, I wanted to change some dollars into local money (Indian rupees).
And what rate did we get? A stunning exchange rate of $1 is to 38.50 rupees! For the ignorant, a dollar is equivalent to PhP47 or 47 indian rupees making Trichy airport's exchange rate highway robbery! I changed $20 which i'd need for my tuktuk fare. Elsewhere in Trichy, their rate was 46 to the dollar PLUS a service charge of 50 cents per dollar. Bwahahaha. These people are sooo greedy they will charge every little thing they can think of. So I changed my $100 at my hotel. 46 rupees for a dollar flat, with no service fees.
Yo! Traveller! If you are anywhere in Trichy, NEVER exchange your dollar at the airport. Someone is making his heyday there! LOL
Trichy's tourist pack stays at the Cantonment area. It is the most suitable place for a tourist. There's a great concentration of hotels there. The bus station is just across the street. The tourist office is a hop away; so is the post office. The problem - THIS has got to be one of the noisiest places in the world! Though not exactly cosmopolitan, Trichy's local transportation of buses, motorcycles and tuktuks are HORN-CRAZY and WHISTLE-BLOWERS! Up at my hotel room, at the 5th floor and right in the middle of the building, I can still still hear the incessant horns beeping. They beep their horns to DEATH! Like there's no tomorrow! Consider this - they push on their horns so that a single tooting sound lasts for 6-7 seconds. Try this with 20 other buses, and 20 other Ambassador taxis, and 15 other tuktuks subsequently getting their ejaculatory orgasms beeping their horns!!! Add the 5-second whistling of the bus conductors - and what you get is Noise Central! Am friggin on the verge of lunacy! If beeping horns were outlawed with death penalty in Trichy, 90% of their driving population would just drop dead!
And what's with the 5%, 10% and 20% luxury tax imposed on all hotels? It's not like these Tamil Nadu cities are nearly as sophisticated nor as luxurious as its neighboring southeast asian cities! It's just crazy.
This is the Eye in the Sky on my way to a shop with ear plugs - if there are any!
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