Saturday, November 05, 2005

Celeb Status

Checked out the town today.

At two different times, groups of Indian tourists asked me to pose in photos with them. I'm not sure if it's because I'm a foreigner, or because i'm wearing a lungi (the skirt that the working men wear in the south).

It's the weekend here, and so the town is filled with tourists from Bangalore (7 hours away). I sat with one couple for dinner, and talked with them for a while. They had a love marriage (as opposed to the much more common arranged marriage) - it was quite a cute story, and they had to involve a marriage broker so that her mother thought it was arranged (and thus honorable). The husband worked for a big IT company in Banglore, and told me a bit about the working conditions there. Pretty much every firm requires a minimum 12 hour working day. That's crazy! I will certainly have a new-found sense of respect to the Indian call-center workers I talk to in the future.

I was the only foreigner in the restaurant (with the love marriage couple), and pretty much everyone else there was an Indian tourist. All the families at the nearby 3 tables were craning their necks to try and listen to our conversation. And at one point, even laughed at the jokes we made. The lack of privacy here certainly takes a bit of getting used to.

I found a killer deal on flyertalk.com (a complete mistake on expedia.com's part), and booked a 9 day stay at the Tokyo Hilton for $3 per night. If Expedia honors it, I'll call United and arrange to spend a week or so there on my way back to the US in May 2006. For $3 bucks a day, how can I say no? Plus, my friend Austin is teaching english somewhere in Japan, and this'll give me a way to visit him.

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