Amit Sinha's Travelog

I have a few minutes to kill at the Madurai airport, and looking
around me, its like a mini replica of San Jose Airport, as it seems
that this place caters only to the NRI community, with the occasional
business traveler. It does make sense, as with the excellent bus
connections, I find it hard to see why someone would take the flight
to Madurai.

I look around me and there are little brats running around with thick
american accents, followed by parents in jeans and salwars and bad
american accents… This could be San jose International Airport,
minus the Spanish!

Transport has been a fascinating experience in the past few weeks
that I have been here in Madurai. Buses are by far the most popular
forms of public transport, available in all shapes, sizes and forms.
From the old rickety ones that serve the suburban and city regions,
to the short-haul buses to places like nearby Karaikudi which have
TVs and show Tamil movie DVDs, with English subtitles!!! The long-
haul buses though, are by far the most interesting. They are full
sleepers, i.e., they have no seats, and instead have comfortable
sleeping berths, lower and upper, much like a train. While the single
ones are comfortable, the doubles can be a little intimidating, as a
single traveler, as you will be spending the night in the same bed
with a stranger! But such issues do not seem to affect the average
traveler, who is most accommodating of the situation.

A note on the airport before I sign off though- It serves only about
eight to ten flights a day, but is extremely clean and neat, with
professional staff and facilities, and what’s more, free Wi-fi, which
scores mega points in my book!

More about my experiences in Madurai when I return to Chennai and get
some time to have my virtual life catch up with reality.

A dingy, non-air-conditioned cubbyhole in the small South Indian town of Madurai may notbe the first place that comes to mind for cheap broadband, but at Rs. 20/hr, or less than fifty cents an hour, you can sit on an old computer and access the net at blazing fast speeds.

I was walking around trying to find a place to eat and happened to see the faded sign announcing fast internet, and decided to check it out.

I’m trying not to be attached to the internet, but its hard with it being everywhere- you just can’t escape it.

In the past ten days or so, from walking around the monuments in
Beijing, to buying train tickets, to roaming around Shanghai and
bicycling through Sozhou, I’ve begun to develop an understanding and
appreciation for this part of China, the people, the chaos, the
development, and life out here. While my observations and experiences
here could fill reams of pages, the most striking thing has been how
quickly I’ve picked up the important phrases required to get along here.

When moving out of the touristy realm, finding a place where you can
order from an English menu, or look at pictures and point, can be
difficult. Luckily, the mates I’m traveling with have a working
knowledge of Chinese, as well as a Mandarin phrase book. However,
sometimes even that’s not enough, so tonight I had to walk around the
restaurant and point to dishes that looked attractive and then had
one of the owners who knew about ten words in English, confirm
whether they were chicken, pork or beef, and meat, and not intestines
or abdomens or other interesting body parts that are relished in this
part of the world.

In summer, words you learn very quickly end up related to drink- My
favorite phrase is asking for a bottle of cold beer (bing ping
pijou), and then changing the ‘pijou’ to ‘shwey’ and getting ice cold
water anywhere.

You begin to recognize some Chinese characters, like the symbols for
entry and exit, or more interestingly, the sign for Internet, which
is two crosses in a box. I was pretty excited to make the discovery
today that the sign meant “net”, by seeing it used in a tourist sign
for some place that had a net… I thought that was pretty neat.

I’ve really had a wonderful experience in China, and have tons of
experiences to share. Will share them, as well as post my pictures
very shortly… Its a fascinating country, and I’ve seen so little of
it.

Sitting in a hotel room in Beijing, with a view of construction
cranes, concrete slabs that are apartment complexes, and as I try to
make out the mountains in the background through the haze of
pollution, I think back to Laos, where, less than twenty four hours
ago, I was in a country that was still ‘unspoilt’ by development.

I am in two minds about development. It is easy to go, as a tourist,
with a fistful of dollars in hand, into a poor, under-developed
country like Laos, and live large, and enjoy the nature, and friendly
people. Its easy to come back to the modern world, sit at a fancy
restaurant, or in the air-conditioned comfort of your home, and wax
eloquent about your trip, sipping a pinot noir, and talking about how
you enjoyed a place like Laos because it still hasn’t been developed,
and then, as a rejoinder, you sadly mention how you feel its all
going to get corrupted, as the country is opening up its economy. To
me that feels hypocritical. Who am I to deny a country the chance of
improving the lives of its people just so that there is a place that
still has its “charm” for me to return to when I want to get away
from all the luxury that development has bestowed upon me. I see the
modern International terminal in Vientiane airport, managed in co-
operation with the Japanese, and think about the jobs its created,
and think whether its right for me to say that progress such as that
is wrong, because its changing something that in my modern,
westernized mind I find “quaint and exotic”.

Development is good because it provides an opportunity to improve the
quality of life of the people in the region. However, the unfortunate
aspect of development is corruption- both in the conventional form,
as well as social corruption, where, blinded by dollars, people lose
their basic moral fibre, history and culture, and pander to tourists,
or switch to aping the West. If development can be achieved without
such corruption, then I think a healthy balance for both the people,
and the visitors, as well as the environment, can be achieved.

I don’t want the Laos I saw to change. I want to be able to go to
Luang Prabhang and walk the streets without being harassed by
shopkeepers. I want to be able to walk into a village and have a
conversation with the local villagers without being expected to throw
money at them, such as in Tonle Sap in Cambodia. I still want to
retain my faith in the basic genuineness of people. And if this can
be achieved while having better roads, schools, airports, and maybe a
couple of ATMs here and there, then I have no issues with
development. I think its possible, and not just in Laos, but also in
say India, which is probably at a stage that’s early enough so that
development can be channeled in the right way, without unduly harming
the environment, culture, and corrupting the people.