Cab rides

Well an update. I decided to join some of my co-workers for a movie on Saturday. The Adobe office here was providing the movie for employees at 11am. I got up early and got ready to go. I was a little nervous as this involved going out into the great streets of India which are overwhelming to say the least. (I will try to take more pictures. I feel akward taking them from the car.)
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I got my cab at 10:15am and I had to be there at 11am. This is about a 20 minute drive. I took a cab rather than a air conditioned car to save time. Well save time was the last thing to occur. I actually tried to get a cab at 10am but it took 15 minutes for them to decide that a cab was the only way to make the trip happen. Although it is only a 20 minute drive it goes through a tax zone. The air conditioned rental car would go around the tax zone and the 20 minute drive would become an hour and fifteen minute drive. So I took the cab. The only problems with the cab was it wasn't air condition and I was waiting for the floor to drop out. Oh the tax was 20 rubies and I actually paid that out of my own pocket. Sigh.

Well it turns out that the driver had no clue where he was going. He drove to Greater Noida. Which is almost 1.5 hours away from the hotel. There he tried to drop me but my gut was screaming this was the wrong place. So I asked a few times if this was the place and he finally asked and was told it was the next mall. 10 minutes later he asked someone on the street and found out we were an hour away. :( So we drove back. Needless to say I didn't make the movie but I got to see a lot of the country side. I am wishing I had taken pictures but I was too nervous. The main reason I didn't want to be dropped at he wrong place is a car was suppose to pick me up at 3. If it didn't know where to go I would have had to tried to get another way. One of the main rules when traveling here is not to just get a cab but to have a car called for you. :( So I got to the mall where the theather was very late. The cab driver gave me his number and offered to give me a lift back when I was ready. Normally I would have just used the car at 3 but since I was frustered I decided to keep his number and take him up on the offer.

I walked around the mall for an hour looking at shops and discovering that prices are about the same as the US. They currency may be 43 rubies to 1 dollar but items cost a lot of rubies. For example a plain shirt was selling for 1500 rubies, at this one store, which is about $30.00. I finally decided just to go back to the hotel and calm down.

Of couse on the way the driver got rearended and couldn't get his car to start. After almost 20 minutes of trying he finally got it going and we went back to the hotel. That was Saturday. I spent the rest of my weekend in the hotel. I find the streets here very intimadating. Shops are right off of the road and there really isn't a sidewalk. (Malls we actually Malls just like in the US though.) I think i have seen 2 sidewalks and no one uses them. Everyone is in the streets. I did see a lot during the weekend though. I will start getting more pictures of what I see so you can understand.

Oh I have a few pictures but they are on my iphone. Unforunately I will have to get some software installed to get access to them. I might now get that done until later into the week.

David