On transit to USA I was in Hong Kong for 2 days, since I have seen Hong Kong last year I decided to do a day trip to Macau by Ferry. The TurboJet Ferry took less than a hour and the Super Class was very comfortable with serving of breakfast, leather seats and so on, costing about HK$250.

To visit Macau remember you will need your Passport, so don’t leave them in your Hotel in Hong Kong and also your Air Ticket copy to renter Hong Kong. Both Hong Kong & Macau allows Indian Passport holders to stay for few weeks on a visit (VISA on entry) so no need to get a VISA in advance. Macau has its own currency - Macanese pataca, but you can freely use in every place Hong Kong dollars (and 1 MOP Dollar is approximately equal to 1 Hong Kong Dollar).

When in Macau I took a Grey Line City tour for HK$120 or so from the visitor centre in the ferry station – it was worth it. The tour covered most of the highlights of Macau (leaving the Casinos which I was not interested as I have seen enough in Las Vegas) including “St. Paul's Cathedral”, “A-Ma Temple”, “Macau Tower”, “Macau Museum” and others. Taxis are available easily in all places in Macau. McDonalds and Pizza Hut is available in tourists area, I went with Pizza Hut so that I can easily get Vegetarian food.

I am in Hong Kong for two days on transit to USA by Cathay Pacific. I was lucky that my good friend/my first Yoga Master “Shyam” and his student “Jayan” in Hong Kong, had free time to show me around. Since I have seen the usual tours of Hong Kong in my trip last year, I didn’t go for sight seeing spots, instead went around Window Shopping. Since they have been living in HK for last few years they were familiar with where you can get good Vegetarian “Chinese” (yes I said it correct) food in HK. We had our lunch in “Light Vegetarian Restaurant Jordan Road, Kowloon” which had the most widest range of Vegan food and for dinner we went to “Evergreen Vegetarian Restaurant”.

On my departure for my flight to USA, we went to the huge Chinese restaurant (500+ seating capacity) in the Airport. So next time you are in HK and you are a Vegan don’t skip visiting these Chinese restaurants.

I came back to Chennai after a 5 days trip to Cologne (Germany) for TIC 2009. INFITT had appointed Cox & Kings (Chennai office) as the official Travel Agency for the conference since nearly 30 participants were from Tamilnadu & many first time travellers. Cox & Kings (Trade Fair Division) came up with a package deal costing about Rs.84,000. This included:

1. Air India Air fare (MAA-BOM-FRA-BOM-MAA) Transport from Frankfurt to Cologne and back
2. Accommodation in Ibis Koln 2** Hotel (Twin Sharing)
3. Buffet Breakfast
4. Local Travel from Hotel to Conference venue
5. Daily Indian Dinners in Indian restaurant
6. Return group airport Transfers (Frankfurt to Cologne and back)
7. City tour of Koln with cruise, Dome, museum  with Entrance Ticket
8. Overseas Medical Insurance
9. Cox and Kings Travel bag
10. Services of a German speaking Cox and Kings Tour Manager

Out of the 30 participants from India, we had about 15+ take up the package from C & K. Initially the airline was Emirates (via Dubai) but it was changed to Air India as many of the participants were from Universities/Colleges that required they fly Air India for UGC funding and for official Tamilnadu government delegates have to fly only by Air India. After my experience I am not surprised why Government has to force this dictum – without which no self respecting traveller will put up with awful Air India Ground service.

Air India and its awful service

I haven’t flown Air India for long-haul flights, so I was very sceptical. I hate the transit in Mumbai and will always prefer to fly international directly from Chennai. I consider the Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Airport’s transit service to be the lousiest and most inefficient way to transfer passengers between International-Domestic terminals, I am surprised this same pathetic service continues even after privatization (to GVK).  I was told that I don’t need to do the transfer from Domestic to International (or vice-versa). Everything went well as told during onward journey, AI191 from Chennai to Frankfurt, departed from Chennai International Terminal with customs/immigration done in Chennai itself. We landed in Mumbai International Terminal and continued the journey to Frankfurt from the same terminal – thereby saving me from the horrible terminal transfer.  But I was not fortunate enough on return, the flight AI144 from Frankfurt departed 3 hours delayed and hence we missed the connection from Mumbai to Chennai (same flight number). We landed at 2AM today instead of 10AM (yesterday) in Mumbai and the flight from Mumbai had departed at 1:15AM as scheduled.

We were asked to claim baggage and get out of Intl. Airport in Mumbai and transfer to domestic airport to catch IC571 17:35 (15 Hours wait in Mumbai to go to Chennai). I checked online  and found seats available in many of Air India’s morning flights but  I was not offered seat in any of them. So instead of waiting 15 hours and losing a full working day I bought a ticket in KingFisher leaving Mumbai at 6:25AM and reached Chennai, paying Rs.5000+ extra for Air India’s fault.

As always, there were simply no Air India staff to help us - I suppose all Air India ground staffs will hide inside their cabins fearing Passengers Queries. They probably have read Mahatma Gandhi’s quote on Customer Service wrongly – you wonder whether Air India Ground staff consider customer(s) to be a nuisance who disturb their peaceful naps. Even if they do a pathetic service (which they do) Government of India may never penalize them and is more than happy to even bail them out!

To be fair Air India flights were modern, neat & clean, entertainment consoles worked and Crew were friendly and helpful.

Cox & Kings

Overall Cox & Kings service from the time of booking to completion was good. Their account manager and tour manager who accompanied us both were professional and nice. I wish the side-seeing tour they had planned for us was thought-of and executed better. The Indian Food offered in a local Indian Restaurant (Ganesha, Cologne) on all the days was very nice and tastier.

Cologne City

This is my first trip to continental Europe and it was more or less just as I expected. We spent good amount of time seeing the Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral) and the near-by shopping streets, we got used to using the Tram (S-Bahn) service to commute from our Hotel to New Market area. Since our sight-seeing trip was on the Monday (weekly holiday for Museums) we missed seeing the museums including Cologne Chocolate museum or EL-DE Haus. The City has River Rhine running through it, which gives it many beautiful places. We took a boat trip on the river and also went in the Cable car. Other than these activities we didn’t find anything else to do in Cologne.

Being a long weekend, we decided to go out for few days from city. I generally like going to beach resorts near Chennai in ECR road for a peaceful stay. Since I had been to GRT Temple Bay & Fisherman’s Cove in Mamallapuram, Ashok Resort in Pondy I looked out for a different resort. After reading about Dune in The Man magazine, I narrowed down on Dune Eco Village in ECR Road at Pudhukuppam, Tamilnadu near Pondicherry University.

Dune is a Eco friendly resort with most of the materials used for construction being reused and with little chemicals as possible. They say they used more lime stone than cement, Solar water heaters, the doors & furniture are from old houses, no tar roads inside the property and so on. Each of the rooms are different than others and with unique characteristics, the room we stayed had a nice display of Golu (coincided with the seasonal holidays as well). The resort provides 2 cycles for each room for the guests to go around the huge property (over 30-40 acres) on the Bay of Bengal sea shore. The food in their F.U.N (Food U Need) restaurant promotes the hypotoxic diet of by a French biologist (from their brochure I learned his name was Doctor Jean Seignalet).

I liked the fact there was no Satellite connection in the room – so no boring TV Soaps and Serials that my wife can watch or the usual Pogo/Cartoon Network for my son. Each room had a small TV with built-in DVD Player and you can borrow DVDs from the restaurant for free, they boost a collection of over 1000+ titles on various Genres. They have programs to entertain the kids in evening like Milking the Cow, Pot Making, Sand Pit, etc.

The room rates are expensive especially for an Indian tourist, guess the rates are fixed primarily with Foreign tourists in mind (I am in disagreement to this practise, Indian Resorts and Hotels should make it attractive if India wants to attract more tourists, India happens to be the most expensive tourist destination even for Indian’s in South East Asia region). They also have programs for Meditation (everyday free for guests) & Ayurvedic Health treatments (some of which for 14 days were priced at few lakhs of rupees!)

The items where Dune has to improve:

1. ECO friendly tag doesn’t mean cutting corners in service & providing poor amenities – they need to improve on the quality of the Television, Cycles, Furniture's, Bathroom Amenities they provide
2. Providing a Mobile Phone to all guests instead of In-Room Intercom is a good idea, but they need to ensure the signal is good. I had to step out of the room every time when I needed to talk to reception or to FUN restaurant (which was very near to our room, so I went directly to speak to Chef)

Overall, I will certainly recommend Dune Eco Village for spending few days (not worth for shorter stays of 1 or 2 days) to relax. Service by staff was generally very friendly, good ambience and nice food.

I am in Bay Area, USA for 2 weeks which will take me to Silicon Valley, Redmond (WA) and Los Angeles (for Microsoft PDC '08). Sunday evening I went along with my cousin who lives here to Fremont Temple. This is a well maintained and spacious (considering it is outside India) temple and I was impressed by the newly build area for the south indian gods.

On Monday morning I went to the Intel Museum in their campus in Santa Clara (CA). The museum covers about the history of Intel from memory chips, 4004 to the latest chips; chip fabrication process and basics of silicon, etc. The self visit doesn't take more than 30 minutes and I will recommend visiting this only if you happen to be in Silicon Valley area. Not worth travelling from anywhere far for this. I was told most of this is available online in their website as well.

Seeing the Intel 386 PC on display brought old memories for me. I started learning and doing extensive programming first on this PC - a 386SX (without the math co-processor) computer from Wipro during my school days. It is on this PC I learned my first business programming language - FoxBase and then Clipper. It is amazing the progress we have had in terms of speed and features over the last 23 years - unbelievable.

From Venkatarangan's Jaipur Photo Album (See the other photos as well)

We had a wonderful trip last four days, no rain and we got clear views of all places we went. As I said in the previous post we stayed in "The Trident", Jaipur. Trident is on the highway going to Amber fort, opposite to Jal Mahal. When I booked after seeing the hotel in their website, I thought the Hotel is on the river bank (as shown in the left photo below) and it will be great.  When I actually went there I realized that the hotel is on the other side of the road, and in between there is a park. One good service in the hotel is that of "Kids Club" where you leave your kids safe and they have toys, TV, books, games and trained people to take care. My son Vaageesh loved the place, I wish all other vacation hotels adopt this. The view from the park to Jal Mahal is beautiful but the park maintenance and cleanliness have to be improved greatly.

Day 1: In Mumbai we had few hours for transit from Chennai to Jaipur, I decided to go out of Airport rather than spend few hours inside. We took a taxi and went to Oberoi Mall (Dindoshi, Gen AK Vaidya Marg, Off Western Express Highway) which is probably the closest mall to Mumbai Domestic Airport. It took some 20 minutes one way, we had a good time there and had a great UP style vegetarian Thali (Set Lunch) at Sanskriti restaurant. We arrived in Jaipur in the late evening and after check in I went to their travel desk (which is oddly not manned by the Hotel but by Avis). What I approached him was for planning my itinerary for sight-seeing next few days, but the Avis person was keen only to sell his "Car Rental" Services. He kept repeating Avis full-day/half-day charges, I had to repeat few times before he started on the itinerary. Though he said not required, I insisted on having a "Guide" accompany us both days so that we can understand what we are seeing better.

Day 2: On the second day we started around 9:30AM and went first to Amber Fort, which is near-by to the Hotel. The fort is not at a high altitude so the car journey to the top took only few minutes. If you wish you can royally in a Elephant Ride to the top which costs about Rs.550 per person. Amber fort has a beautiful palace used by the kings then - a Summer palace and a Winter palace. We then went to see the Madhavendara Palace inside Nahargarh Fort. The palace has 9 compartments for king's 9 queens - it struck me if the king married the 10th after the palace, he would have had a tough time expanding the palace. Each Queen's compartments is self-contained with a Kitchen, Bedroom and Living area - you can see most of these rooms intact with the furnishings & fittings removed. The top of the fort has an excellent view of the entire Jaipur cityOur guide Mr.Rajiv did a great job in showing us all the places and explaining it in detail.

For lunch we went to Pink City Restaurant which served good Thali and you can see the cooking clearly as they have an open kitchen. After lunch, we went to Jaipur Mall we saw how the block printing is done in textiles using natural vegetable colours.Our guide recommended us to try staying in heritage hotels like Samode Haveli in our subsequent trips to Jaipur.

In the evening: We went to the famous tourist restaurant - Chokhi Dhani which is nearly 1 Hour drive (closer to airport) from Trident. It is a theme restaurant on a wide open space modelled like a typical village market of Rajasthan. Entry fee is Rs.300 per person which includes Dinner. They are open only from 6PM to 11PM. My son loved the rides - you have camel rides, elephant rides, horse cart rides and more. There is also model Rajasthani village houses for you to see. We stood in the dinner queue for over 30 minutes before being let in (crowded). The seating was in the ground with traditional low-height table for eating. The food was rich with lots of butter and ghee in almost all dishes- so be careful to eat limited if you wish not to gain weight. You can unlimited helpings of all the served items.

Day 3: Today we had another guide Mr.Vijay Singh for our city tour of Jaipur. We saw Hawa Mahal from road, I believe there is nothing much to see nowadays inside. Then we went to Birla Mandir and had a good darshan there.  

Then we went to Jantar Mantar (which is near city palace) the centuries old Sun Dials and other instruments which were way ahead in their accuracy of their days. The large instruments there are believed to be used for both Astronomy and Astrology. Our next stop was City palace.  We saw the 350Kgs Silver urn used by one of the earlier Kings to carry Ganges water during his visit to London. Apart from the usual items that you will see in a palace, there was a huge display of weapons in the Queen's Area of the palace. It had variety of daggers - one that can open up and be turned for maximum damage to the victim, one that shoot apart from the cut, 15Kg swords, metal helmet cutters and more. The kings seem to have spent a lot of money and talent, on fighting wars and building weapons.

We had lunch in Peacock Restaurant which had a decent food but a very ordinary service, so if you are not near-by you may want to skip this restaurant.   

In the evening: We went for shopping to Jaipur Haat (which was walkable distance from the hotel) and bought some traditional style dresses.

Day 4: We left this day intentionally free, spending the time relaxing in the room. In the evening we went for a walk to Jal Mahal (the mosquitos were too much on the road, making it difficult to walk).

போன சனிக்கிழமை குடும்பத்தோடு நாங்கள் ஸ்ரீமுஷ்ணம் கோயிலுக்குச் சென்று இருந்தோம். ஸ்ரீமுஷ்ணம் என் பாட்டியின் பிறந்த ஊர். ஆனால் இதுவரை நாங்கள் பலர் அங்கே போனதில்லை. இந்த முறை உறவினர் ஒருவர் அழைப்பை ஏற்று அங்கே போயிருந்தோம், நல்ல தரிசனம் கிடைத்தது.

வைஷ்ணவத்தில், இந்த பூலோகத்தில் சுயம்வக்த (சுயம்பு, தான்தோன்றி, Natural, Not man made) க்ஷேத்ரங்கள் (புனிதத் தலங்கள்) என எட்டு க்ஷேத்ரங்கள் பெரியவர்களால் கூறப்பட்டுள்ளன.  அதில் ஸ்ரீமுஷ்ணம் (தூய தமிழில் திருமுட்டம்) விசேஷமான ஒன்று, விருத்தாசலத்திலிருந்து இருபது கிலோமீட்டர் தூரத்திலிருக்கிறது. சென்னையிலிருந்து விருத்தாசலம் 220 கிலோமீட்டர் தூரம் - NH45ல் சென்று விழுப்புரம் தாண்டிய பிறகு உளுந்தூர்பேட்டையில் இடது (Left) பக்கம் திரும்பி 20 கிலோமீட்டர் செல்லவேண்டும்.

இங்கே இருக்கும் புஷ்கரணி (குளம்) - பூமியைப் பெருமாள் (விஷ்ணுவின் அவதாரமான பூவராஹ ஸ்வாமி) தூக்கும்போது பெருமாளின் வேர்வையிலிருந்து உருவானதாக ஐதிகம் (நம்பிக்கை).  இங்குள்ள ஸ்ரீ வராஹப் பெருமாளை (மூலவர்) வேண்டினால் சொத்து சம்பந்தமான தடைகள், பிரச்னைகள் விலகும், பூமி/சொத்து இவை கிடைக்கும் என்பது ஐதிகம். அது போல குளத்தின் அருகிலிருக்கும் அரசமத்தின் அடியில் ஸேவை தரும் அஸ்வத்தநாராயணனின் (ஸ்ரீ நரசிம்ஹர் ஸ்வாமி) சந்நிதி சென்று பிரார்த்தனை செய்தால் குழந்தை பாக்கியம் கிடைக்கும் என்பதும் ஐதிகம்.

(கோயில் புஷ்கரணி குளம்)	(ஸ்ரீ பூவராஹ சுவாமி கோயில் கோபுரம்)
(நாங்கள் தங்கியிருந்த ஆனந்தா லாட்ஜ்)	(ஸ்ரீ அஸ்வத்தநாராயணனின் சந்நிதி)

Last week my son had the whole week off from Tuesday through Friday for his school annual day. My work in office was relatively light, so I decided to take him (of course along with my wife :-)) for a tiny-vacation. We had been to almost all resorts in Mamalapuram near Chennai, so we decided to go to Pondicherry. Though I have travelled through Pondy numerous times (on the way to Cuddalore or further south) and been to few places there, I haven't stayed and seen Pondy in its entirety, that way it was an ideal choice.

From Chennai, Pondy is only 3 Hours drive - you have two choices for the route. One route through the scenic "East Coast Road" where you pay a toll-fee of Rs.45 from Chennai to Pondy; or the multi-lane world class NH-45 from Chennai to Dindivanam where you pay toll-fee of Rs.20 twice. I went by ECR and while returning come by NH-45, while coming back we had darshan in Panchamukha  Anjaneyar (which is at near equidistance from both ECR and NH-45). Driving my Honda City in NH-45 was a joy by itself, the car did (thanks to the wide road) effortlessly 120Km/Hr most of the time, of course I could've done more but the official speed limit was 80 Km/Hr !

We stayed in Ashok Resort (a part of ITDC), which had decent rooms overlooking the sees at good rates (Rs.4000 for Standard AC Room per night). The food and service was good considering that it is a public sector hotel.

The beautiful french quarters area of Pondicherry with its white buildings on the side lanes of the beach	With the Pondicherry Pier behind me (we couldn't find the entrance to get in to it though)
The first time I have seen a portable toilet (the blue boxes) for public convenience in an Indian city. Kudos to Pondy govt.	The famous pondicherry beach and Mahatma Gandhi statue

After spending few hours in San Jose Tech Museum I took the local VTA bus 180 to travel to the Great way mall. I was not sure on the direction of the bus to take, their call centre was unhelpful answering my query, then I asked one of the bus driver who guided me to take the bus going in the"Fremont BART" direction. After Seattle Bay Area seems to have a decent public transport system, which made me like this US city a bit. There is nothing exceptional about the mall other than it is big and you get all designer stuffs here.

To kill time I went to Century Cinemas there to watch "Hellboy II" - why Hellboy, because there was no other movie I would have liked. The movie's story is completely fictitious and unbelievable, but the graphics and effects are superb.

I was in San Jose area and had the whole day to spend before my return flight (Jet Airways from SFO to BOM) in the evening. So I started the day with my friend dropping me in San Jose Tech Museum.

First I went to see the IMAX movie "The Alps" which had breath taking views and an emotional story - an expert climber had been wanting to climb the "Eiger" mountain in the Alps which had killed his father 40 years back.

Then I went to see the exhibits, which included a Silicon IC (Chip) manufacturing, Gene therapy, inventions, solar energy and many more. It is a must see museum for today's students.

I wish we had something like this in India - may be in Bangalore Indian IT giants can take a clue from their Silicon Valley counterparts to fund one. What impressed me was the web page creation kit they have - in every exhibit you can insert your bar coded ticket to get a photograph of yourself and at the end you can post all of them into your own custom web page, cool!

This time while travelling within the USA, I selected to fly with Southwest Airlines. Most other airlines especially in the USA are using the Oil price rise as a good excuse to cut all the "services" they are offering to customers and deteriorating in every aspect. Southwest seems to be using this great risk as a clear opportunity to differentiate itself as a provider of great service. You might ask what great service, I could list the following:

1. On time arrival and departure
2. Courteous Staffs
3. Accommodating change request whether it is to prepone a flight at the gates or with no fees postpone your ticket online even for the lowest fare
4. Wide choice of beverages on board - Starbucks Coffee, Tea, Soft Drinks & Juices
5. Quick arrival of bags
6. Affordable fares and no charge for two check-in bags (In one sector Alaska charged me $25 for the second bag)
7. Finally, few tables in every gate with 110V Power sockets to charge your laptops/accessories and USB Power sockets to charge your iPods and phones.

Last weekend while doing some room cleaning, I came across an old photo album (you remember those chemically processed photos from photo studios). It was the photographs of my first USA trip in 1999. I selected few of them and uploaded it to my online album. You can see me "younger" than today and without spectacles :-).

(Below) With Actress Ramba in Frankfurt Airport (1999)	(Below) With Actor Vijay in Frankfurt Airport (1999)
(Top) In 1999 in New York with World Trade Center (Twin Towers) behind me in the horizon	(Top) In 1999 in New York on top of the World Trade Center (Twin Towers) observation deck

BTW, I don't know Actor Vijay or Actress Ramba in person. Just happened to get out from the business class together with them and I requested them for a quick "snap". Fortunately I remembered to carry my pocket camera in my backpack then (of course, nowadays every one has a Mobile Phone with Camera).