Innovas East!

This weekend was a trip for a small contingent of expats (and shortpats) to the state east of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu (some of you may remember from an earlier blog that I have traveled to this state before!). Before I get into how great my trip was, a short recap of the week prior...

Last week was the end of training for the 2nd wave of new hires. In general, the end to a really successful batch of trainees, and honestly I'm extremely pleased with how the training has gone. On top of that, getting Vikram prepared to take the training over from me is going really smoothly. I honestly, couldn't be happier. However, as I noted in this last blog, as the training begins to wrap up, it means that my focus has to shift to the remainder of my projects, and that is going to be crazy. Every day I become more aware that I only have a short time left to wrap things up. Not that I'm worried about getting things done, just more aware daily that I'm in the 2nd half of my trip!!

Alright, now onto the weekend. The area we went to is called Mahabalipurum, which is a small town on the east coast of India, just outside the larger city of Chennai. In order to get there, it required a caravan of vehicles (our Innovas...hence the blog title). One car was stuffed with...well us and food and car two carried all our luggage. At first we felt bad for Pam's driver for having to ride by himself with the luggage, but after the 6.5 hour trip, I actually felt worse for Shekar for putting up with the 5 of us being obnoxious in the car. Also, I think now is a good time to mention that this was Olaf's first trip with us. Olaf is another shortpat (otherwise known as a short term visitor - or someone staying less than 6 months) who arrived a few weeks ago and is now awaiting the arrival of his wife and kids for the remainder of the summer. While I'm sure he had a good time, I think he was surprised by how close a group becomes when they spend all their time together (meaning the 4 of us) and how well we all know each other. At least it all got some good laughs...

After the extremely long car ride (which included getting lost a few times as apparently the drivers weren't quite sure where they were going) we arrived at what was probably one of the coolest hotels I've ever stayed at!!! Seriously, even though it was midnight and really dark (duh) it was so cool. First of course is the ever vigilant security checks. So...I don't think I've ever quite covered these, but most places you go in India (nice hotels, shopping malls, and any business park - all the office complexes consist of many HQs all in one location) you have to go through security. Which means they check under the front of the car with a mirror and open your trunk and sweep a metal detector through it. What are they looking for? Bombs. Honestly, it made me really nervous the first week or two that this was something they were checking for but now I'm used to it. The interesting part is when you stop and think about it. They don't check inside the car at all and they don't look in any bags or anything in your trunk. So really...it's all for show. It's just an interesting phenomenon that they spend so much time and money employing people to do this, but its really no safer than those guys at the entrance to the Metrodome who look through your purse for anything dangerous...or any outside food. Anyway, the part that made us laugh was when we pulled into this hotel in Mahabalipurum called Fisherman's Cove, the guy did a really thorough check of the car inside and out...but only the right side. Apparently the left side of the car is always safe. Just another one of those things where you just shrug your shoulders.

So after arriving we checked into our beach side villas. They were AMAZING. The pictures were obviously taken during the day time, but seriously, they were so beautiful. And they were right on the beach. Our backyard had some rocking chairs, deck chairs and hammocks. It was a the LIFE! We dropped our bags and priority one was going out to the beach. Not only was the sand pretty nice and clean, but the Bay of Bengal (part of the Indian ocean) was warm. First order of business, a quick dip in the water!!! There's a funny little story involving me and a fish, but that is for another time. More importantly, I have checked off another ocean on my list!! So cool...

Saturday we woke up early (everywhere but Bangalore is ridiculously hot during the summer so you have to get up super early to go sightseeing) to go see some of the temples around Mahabalipurum. They have another UNESCO world heritage site, consisting of a few temples built around the 6-7th century. The interesting part is that this area of India was hit by the tsunami a few years back but was not as badly damaged as the city of Chennai (not far away) or Sri Lanka (which was severely damaged). Actually, all the temples, built right by the water, were relatively unharmed. Very impressive. The temples were really cool, but one of my favorite parts of our tour was that our drivers, Mr P (Pams driver Prakash) and Shekar were able to come with us. They don't get the opportunity to travel much around India, so it was fun to have them come with us. They really enjoyed themselves and even managed to smile when we forced them to take pictures with us! Poor guys... You can see them in the picture on the left (Mr. P and Shekar)

The remainder of the weekend was spent relaxing and enjoying the pool!! Oh yea, that and eating :) One of the best parts of the trip was enjoying fresh seafood. Being in Bangalore (not close to water) you always wonder exactly how "fresh" the fish is. At this place, everything was caught that day and served and it was SO good. Lance and I for lunch one day got a combo of everything they had caught that day including crab, mussels, lobster, prawns and a red snapper. They just threw it all and the grill and served it up. And it was fantastic. I was such a happy camper. The only slight dining snafu we hit in the trip was our dinner on Saturday. We went to their highly recommended Mediterranean restaurant that was at the top of a small hill and gave the most incredible view of the ocean and the resort. Also, there was soft lights everywhere and our table was under a white canopy. It was really nice. Until the part where dinner took almost 4 hours. Apparently there was some sort of issue with the kitchen and so it took FOREVER to get our food. Granted the food was great, but when you wait over an hour for soup, you start getting a little testy. And the music didn't help. While I am a Jack Johnson fan, I must admit, his songs after 2.5 hours start to sound the same...especially when its the same cd on repeat. Yikes. Then they put on a different cd after I'm sure another table complained, which had a huge skip in it and so every like 2 minutes you'd just hear this static and skip. It got pretty comical.

All during this dining fiasco, we actually stayed pretty calm, just talking amongst ourselves and cracking jokes. Several others however were NOT pleased and started arguing with the wait staff. And in a seriously bad decision, instead of telling diners that were coming to the restaurant that the service was too slow to take on new customers they kept seating people and then taking forever to bring food - just a bad business model. After a mostly excellent meal (Will, unfortunately, got served a terrible piece of beef) we gave them a little feedback. Have I explained about comment cards yet? They LIVE by them in India. Most restaurants (and it isn't just restaurants, hotels, and even the KFC at the food court) pass them out to get your feedback. And they watch you fill them out like HAWKS. They are extremely intense about what you write, and we've even had a hotel manager argue with us when he didn't like our comments! We after hearing what we had to say about the wait and Will's meal, they brought us two deserts to apologize that were seriously amazing. Like chocolate molten cakes but...wow, well they were good. We were appeased and just went home and fell asleep. Apparently word had spread the next day that the 5 Americans had not had the best dining experience and so every person we encountered from then on: 1. Apologized for what happened and 2. Offered everything and anything to make us happy. It actually got incredibly embarrassing. And the weird part is we hadn't even made a big deal. I am honestly in for a rude awakening when I return to the U.S. and people in the service industry aren't constantly looking for ways to make me more happy...sad!!!

All in all, it was a really nice weekend of relaxing at the pool and generally just winding down at a seaside villa. Ah...I could get used to this :)

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Click on the link to see more of my pictures. If I had to pick a favorite it would have to be either the picture of the giant prawns (so good) or of Wills feet. For those of you who don't know Will, he single handedly keeps the sock industry in business. The man NEVER goes sockless. Seriously. Sandals, shoes, walking into a Hindu temple where you can't wear shoes, 110 degrees out, the man wears socks. I captured photographic evidence of him sockless. Yea, it was a proud moment.

I leave Friday for Sweden/Denmark to see my parents so it might be a little bit until my next post. I'm so excited to see them (and to take a vacation!!!). I hope everyone has a great week and Happy Father's Day to all the dad's out there :)