Above: Dinner near my hotel and railway station.
I said goodbye to Ammi, Salome and Jackson Pollock in the morning. I was bound for Chennai at 1235 flying Oman Air. With the time difference flying eastwards, it was surprisingly and pleasantly cool when I landed at Chennai at 1730. It was neither hot nor humid. It made my taxi ride in heavy traffic from the airport more bearable. Oh! The humanity! There were people, scooters and cars everywhere.
I may have been better off on the train from the airport into the city but I had trouble location the way to the train and had been pestered by numerous drivers.
The city seems to be a lot busier than I remember from some 12 years ago. Certain areas which I thought were on the outskirts of the city centre are now chocka with traffic.
I had thought of using the train (much cheaper) but with so much construction going on at the airport, the railway station was too difficult to find. The train would probably have been faster if there was one there straight away.
Strangely I had not been able to find any international ATMs at Chennai airport. I tried a couple that didn’t have the Cirrus/Plus markings (just in case), and they didn’t work. Staying at the Raj Residency Hotel near Egmore station area, there weren’t any ATMs at all. Some things are much easier in a smaller town as you can find the business centre more easily.
People here are laid back and friendly. I greet everyone with “Vanakkam”, the Tamil word for Hello. It’s something I picked up from the opening of each night’s Tamil news on Malaysian TV when I was a child 🙂
My attempt to buy a SIM card proved fruitless. No one would sell me one … they said “It’s closed”. I think it was too late in the day for me to buy one and have the registration paperwork completed? I also thought that some brands from Tamil Nadu may not work in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. So I gave up.