Stories from the Bedroom

Friends warned Charlotte before she left Singapore about power failures and I told her it was not likely in Bangalore.  Our 2nd night at Mel's Apt, near Leela Palace along Airport Road proved me wrong.

Charlotte's torchlight and candle came in very useful as she tried to download photos onto my laptop.

Apparently that section of Airport Road had some maintenance work that day and we were told the electricity and water would be restored by 6 pm.  Electricity came at about 3 am and water was 8 pm the next day.

It was my first experience trying out a Serviced Apartment [apt] in Bangalore. When we first arrived at the location, our friend and the driver could not locate the specific building because of the many distractions in front of it. After much searching, we were surprised it was just there in front of us the entire time! We gleefully took the lift up to 2nd floor.  It looked like an apt block whose owner decided to make money using the apts for tourist rental.  Yes, entire apts! At first we thought we had the entire apt, including common areas, kitchen etc.  Surprise! We were sharing the apt with 2 other people and we had no idea who they were. This was where we met Paul from China in one of the apts. One more surprise to come.... 

Security and service help came from a nice skinny chap who slept in the living room in the night and who did the run around. He was our 24 hour security.

Though breakfast was included, we decided not to eat at the apt because they did not prepare the food themselves.  We had no idea if we could consume the food since we did not know who prepared it. The Manager in charge did not reside in the building and was contactable only via mobile phone during the weekend. I had purchased a stored value phone card and part of the instructions were in Hindi... i followed the English part with ease but the rest I had to guess.  What i could never figured out was how much had been spent and how much was remaining.

Across the street from the apt were quite a number of these colourful fruit stalls.

In Agra, we really liked our choice of accommodation - the Garden Villa Homestay.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

There was a power outage there too. The funny thing was when the power had come back around 3 am, I had said to Charlotte about the power being back. Charlotte responded and we had a very short conversation but she did not remember ever having that chat with me!!!! :)

 

The accommodation in New Delhi, in contrast, was a major disappointment. Charlotte had done some online research on the YWCA in New Delhi and found that there are 2 of them.  From the website pictures, she chose the nicer one of the 2.

When we arrived in New Delhi airport, we were expecting the vehicle we had arranged with the YWCA to pick us up. We looked at the placards, and checked and double checked and after almost 30 minutes, we had to walk to the departure terminal in the heat to locate a STD booth [manned public telephone booth] to call.

 

The person who was supposed to have arranged the transport apparently  did not receive Charlotte's mail with the flight details.

Instead of empathising with us and caring for 2 ladies new in town, he was more concerned about defending himself. Not exactly a hospitable introduction to New Delhi. After we managed to get a pre-paid taxi to the YWCA, which had turned out to be a cheaper option, we found another disappointment.  You can see from the pictures, it was really not a welcoming sight - and certainly the other YWCA  was much more inviting. None of their upgrading works were mentioned in their website.

Their unfriendly service did not help. The service cannot compare to Bangalore / Kerala. We had to change rooms in the evening because the light bulb in the bathroom went off and the guard could not fix it. The night duty manager had moved us to the room next door. If we were staying beyond one night, we would have moved to the other YWCA.  The green screen was just outside the rooms – it was not right to rent out rooms when the building was in that state.

For SGD 70, it was a disappointment.

In the entire week in India, we had clocked an average of 4 hours of sleep per night. There was always a reason for us to wake up early everyday – either the trains, the flights, and sunrise visit to the Taj!