Tag Archives: 印度

Daily Scribble

Dine out Bangalore

1 Comment

There are many nice restaurants to have good food in Bangalore. I have been trying out new restaurants every night after work. The company has save a lot of money by outsourcing to India, I figure I should help them spend some of the saving on gourmet food. It is nice when you can expense your dinner to the company account, you don’t have to worry about whether the dish worth the price, you only have to worry about whether the food taste good or not.

Eating local food in Bangalore is very cheap. A very nice Indian dinner is only 200 rupee, about $5. However, having real food in Bangalore is relatively very expensive, the price is still slight cheaper than Vancouver. It cost $30 to have dinner in a fine dining restaurant and $50 in a 5 star hotel. The average daily wage in India is 100 rupee, so my dinner costs an Indian’s salary for the whole month. Well, the company is paying for it, who cares about the price?

In Bangalore, most restaurants only open for dinner after 7p.m., some restaurants won’t even open until 8p.m. The guest house is located in the out skirt of the city, so it is about 30-45 minutes away from most of the good restaurants. Even though I have to spend an extra hour stuck in traffic to have some nice food, the long journey definitely worth the long journal.

Here is the record of my quest for good food, highly recommend to all business travelers to Bangalore: I only list the name of the restaurant and my comment here. Please look up the address and phone number in Google, it should be easy to find.

Blue Ginger in Taj West End Hotel – Taj West End Hotel is like a forest inside the city. You can enjoy real South East Asia food sitting next to a beautiful lagoon under the tree. The air quality in the hotel is really good, you don’t suffer from the pollution on the street.

Mainland China at Church Street – This is probably the best restaurant in Bangalore you can find real Chinese food, instead of crappy Indian-Chinese food.

Mandarin Room in Grand Ashok Hotel – Another restaurant with real Chinese food. It is on the top floor of the Grand Ashok Hotel overlooking the whole city. Very nice view.

Sunny’s at Lavelle Road – Nice French and Italian cruise. I had my first steak in Bangalore here.

Windsor Grill in Windsor Manor Hotel – Pool side BBQ in a luxury hotel. Yes, you can also order steak here.

Zen in Leela Palace – Leela Palace is the most luxurious hotel in town. Go figure.

Fiorano at 100 Feet Road – Nice Italian restaurant close to the Forum Mall, which is next to the guest house.

Via Milano at 80 Feet Peripheral Road – Another nice Italian restaurant close to the Forum Mall.

I.T.Alia in Park Hotel – Probably the best Italian restaurant I had so far. It is very small, don’t forget to make a reservation.

Bangalore Bistro – This roof top restaurant offer an unique dining experience with close-enough French cruise.  The tables are carved out of stone and have a peddle of water in the middle with floating rose paddle and candle.  It is very hard to find, better call them to ask for direction.

Daily Scribble

Cultural Experience

10 Comments

When we travel aboard, we love to claim that we are there to experience the culture.  We tends to look down on package tour that lock tourists up inside air conditioned coaches and only released them at specific spots to take a few snapshots.  It seems the cultural experience is what distinct intelligent travelers from dumb tourists.  Love to experience culture works fine when traveling to places with lovely culture.  Walking down the Louvre like a French, having Cappuccino like an Italian or soaking hot spring like a Japanese all sound very cool.  You can always learn something new and useful from those rich cultures by interacting with the local people.

However, there is a dilemma when traveling to places with not so lovely culture.  Why would anyone want to experience the mess in India?  Why would anyone want to experience the uncivilized vegetarian diet culture?  It is OK to try it for the first times, so that you can claim it sucks and stay away from it forever.  There is simply nothing to learn from those backward cultures.  Why bother?  I guess the only reason someone want to experience those culture is becoming an armature anthologist, observe the culture first hand and explain why it sucks to satisfy his academic curiosity.

Daily Scribble

Holy Cow

4 Comments

Holy Cow

India is famous for the scared cows roaming around in the city.  You see cows everywhere, along the road site, next to parked cars, even in the middle of the busiest intersection.  Cow is considered holy in the Hindu religion, so killing of cow is forbidden in India.  You don’t find beef in the menu of Indian restaurants.  To a beef lover like me, I could never understand why the Hindus would make a tasty animal being holy.

Actually I asked the question why cow is holy in Hindu to my Indian friends.  It seems none of them know the exact answer.  They don’t eat beef simply by following the Hindu tradition without questioning its origin.  I read from Wiki that holy cow may have its origin from the agriculture use of cows.  However, cows are no longer used in modern day farms, maybe we should stripe the holiness of cows and make tractors holy instead.  Another explanation is that cow has some symbolic meaning in Hindu religion.  Since choosing a symbol is kinda arbitary, why can’t they pick some other less tasty animals like shrimp or crab to worship?

Luckily, if you know the right place, you can still enjoy beef in India.  Most western restaurant in big hotels serve beef in their menu.  I just had a tenderloin steak grilled to perfection for dinner last night.  There is an old saying that you are what you eat.  If I eat holy cows, shouldn’t I become holy too?

Daily Scribble

Infanticide in India

2 Comments

One of my Indian colleague is going to be a dad soon.  I congratulated him and asked him is it a baby boy or baby girl.  To my surprise, he said he have no idea.  It turn out in India it is illegal for the doctor telling the parents the sex of the baby.  The India government have such a law is because killing unborn baby girls is quite common in India.  The male to female ratio in India is 93 to 100, which means 7 out of 100 men cannot find a wife.  The problem is so bad that the government have to pass laws in order to have more baby girls.

I know Indian discriminate against woman, but discrimination alone won’t explain the killing of baby girl.  Your son have to marry a woman when he grow up, if everyone only give birth to boy, where the wives come from?  It turn out there is a financial penalty of having baby girl.  In Indian tradition marriage, the parent of the bride has to give a large sum of money to the groom.  Some people even take out a loan so that their daughter can marry the guy they like.  Here is something does not make sense.  According to the law of supply and demand, there are not enough women for every men in India.  Women are short in supply and high in demand, their price should go up.  In a free market of getting marriage, the groom should pay the large sum to find the right bride.  In a long run, the Indian wedding tradition is due to change, nothing can defying the law of economics forever.

If I am an Indian parent, I rather my daughter remains daddy’s girl then paying a large sum to get her a husband.  Any guy asking money from the in-law are not suitable to be a good husband.  If the Indian wedding tradition is the cause of killing baby girls.  Forbidding the doctor telling the parent the sex of the baby only treat the symptoms, it is not fixing the problem.  Assume we have to work within the constraint of arranged marriage, maybe the government should setup an internet auction platform for match making and require all parents using the auction platform to arranged the marriage for their sons and daughters.  An open auction platform just like eBay will show the true market value of the bride.  Given the lack of women in India, the price signal should strong enough to reverse trend of killing baby girl.  There is also a plan B, the Indian government can simply legalize gay marriage.  For the 7 out of 100 poor men who can’t find a wife, they just marry another guy.

Daily Scribble

Goa

1 Comment

Goa

After two weeks staying in Bangalore, I have to get away from city to get a break. So I went to Goa for a weekend trip. Goa is a beach resort town on the west coast of India, which is about 1 hour flight away from Bangalore. Comparing to the busy and polluted Bangalore, Goa is nice and peaceful. I can tell the difference once I step out of the plane. The air in Goa is refreshing, no only it has breeze from the sea, it also has the fresh smell of greenery. The whole city is surrounded by trees and plantation. The coast line of Goa is a really long beach, probably over a few kilometers. There are lots hotels and vacation houses along the main road a few minutes walk away from the beach. It is a tourist heaven.

I took the Kingfisher airline from Bangalore to Goa. The Indian domestic flight is better than I expected. Although the flight is only 1 hour, we are served a nice meal on the airplane. The airport in Goa is small, it only has two gates. After we got off the plane, we can walk to the terminal building under the sun from where the plane is parked. The weather of Goa is sweaty hot, only when you are under the sun or moving. If you sit under the shade, it is quite cool. The hotel is about 1 hour from the airport and 5 minutes away from the beach. The room is quite nice in Indian standard, most important it has air condition. We were quite tired after the traveling, so we just have dinner and retire to bed early. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant next to the hotel. It is funny that all customers are white people! The Indian food there is westernized, so it actually taste not bad.

The next day was quite an adventure. It turned out we joined a Indian tour, so we are touring the city with a whole bus of Indians. One good thing about the Indian tour compare to white guys tour is that there is not souvenir shop over. The second good thing is that the four is full of surprise. We don’t know the itinerary and we can’t really understand what the tour guide said, so have no idea what is our next destination.
The first stop is a beach, nothing special. The next stop is the Bom Jesus Basilica, which house the relic of St. Francis Xavier. The church itself is named one of world heritage sites by UN. Too bad that the relic of SFX is placed high up, I couldn’t get a closer look at the dead body. Then we visited the Mangesh Indian temples. You have to take off your shoes to enter the temple. Since I am not that keen on taking off my shoes, so I didn’t go inside. I just take a few photo form outside. You can’t take photo inside anyways. Other than some god statues, probably nothing interesting inside the crowded temple.

In the afternoon, we visited another Indian temple. All Indian temple looks the same. It got one main building a white tower and a large pool. You see one, you see them all. The temple itself is kind boring, but the rice field next the temple is quite a view. I never seen a real rice field before and never know that rice field is so green. It probably has RGB value of 0-255-0, you have to see it with your eyes. After seeing the temple, we went to a Portuguese house museum. It is an old building preserving how the Portuguese lives when they colonize Goa. The guided tour is quite interesting and it’s like a school field trip. Probably the white guy tour will not come to this place and I don’t see any white guy in the museum.

The next stop is another beach. This time we are given an hour of free time, so I and Martin just have a beer and chill out on the beach. The beach is mostly Indians. Some people swim but most of them just walking around on the beach. There are a few jet ski for rented and speed boat offering parachute-ride. It is kinda scary seeing the jet ski going between the swimmers. No wonder the tour guide told us not to swim. The tour ended with a river cruise. The sun set and the sea breeze are nice. However the cruise boat has some funky Indian dance show and the noisy music is quite annoying. I rather they let me enjoy the river wide quietly. Apparently the cruise boat as double as floating disco at night. When we dock, I see lots of young people lining up for the next boat run.

After a full day of tour on Saturday, Sunday is very relaxing. We just went to the beach and sit there doing nothing except having beer for the whole day until the car pick us up to the airport. We had a nice walked along the beach and get our foot wet in the cool ocean water. Too bad that I am stuck with Martin inside of Pat. We both agree it is kinda gay. I saw some fish boats on the beach and fishermen repairing their nets. I guess the local people still catch fish for living. A more stunting scene is rows after rows of beach chairs. Along the several kilometer stretch of the beach, I estimate there are at least ten thousand beach chairs. Can you imagine the beach chairs are full of white guys sun bathing in the peak tourist season?

Two days in Goa is too short, I wish I don’t have to come back to Bangalore. Bangalore sure gave me a bad impression on India. After seeing Goa, I think India is not too bad after all.