I am now in my spacious hotel room (1712) at the Taj West End.
It has a four-poster bed and a vaulted ceiling at least 20 feet high. There's a sitting room, patio [which I never used - I was a little worried about exposing myself to too many mosquitos since I never got any treatment for malaria before I left], and a fairly nice bathroom with just one appliance in it I can't identify [it's a bidet, but at first I thought the water spout was pointing down, which made it look just like a low sink].
Customs was a snap: hand over our "departure card", pass our luggage through a machine once more, get checked off by a customs official, then we're out the door.
There was a horde of people with signs outside the airport exit waiting for their passengers. Ours, somehow, found us before we found them (did they have our pictures?) [It turns out someone approached Laura hoping she was her passenger, but she was not. The person was able to point out our drivers]. There were two cars waiting for us for some odd reason [the person who arranged from the ground transportation thought we might need two separate cars. Laura and I just planned to stick together the whole trip, although we did use both cars on Tuesday and Friday], so we just sent one away.
The streets were fairly busy with pedestrians and three-wheelers for it being after midnight. There were several stray dogs and I saw three cows resting on the sidewalk.
The hotel is quite impressive. I will have to explore the grounds a little later.
Posted by Rob Reid at April 26, 2004 02:50 PM