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Calicut, India
11° 15' N 75° 46' E
Nov 24, 2006 06:41
Distance 104km

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Other entries in Calicut

how to avoid the rip off

Text written in: English

spend time in a town where even the richshaws have meters - man, that's heaven on 3 wheels - no negotioation needed! 'cept for the time I ventured out on my own and on the way back, the driver took the long way just to run up the meter. asshole - think I don't know what you're doing?? here's 12 rupees - that's what you deserve. not the 18r your stupid meter says it wants. yeah sure, it only saved me like 5 cents, but I did it for the PRINCIPLE. you can rip off some of the blonds some of the time, but not all of the blonds all of the time.

anywhoo, stayed in another nice place with TV (ahhhhhh....bbc!), bought my plane ticket from bangalor to kolkata for 10 jan (the day I'm off to volunteer - hurrah! but also the day I say bye to peds - boooo!), slept in, went on a 30 min TP run (I kid you not. clearly we're still not in a tourist zone yet), then braced ourselves for another day of bussing....oy....tomorrow we head south towards the infamous backwaters of kerala. guess the thing to do is rent a house boat and laze around for a couple days. not too hard to agree to a few more days of lazing around....

side note: saw my first female rickshaw driver today. at first thought 'finally, a sign that india has moved a few steps forward in gender equality'. but then noticed the rick-shaw was labeled 'women only'. oh. got it. as in, women can't even be driven around by other men - they need to hire a femlae driver so their husbands don't get jealous.....so much for that forward thinking....

but in all fairness, I've noticed at least one anomaly  - whenever we pass construction sites, 9 times out of 10 you'll see women AND men in the job of dirt-mover. this basically means fill a tray full of dirt, put it on top of your head, hand carry it to a truck. (keep in mind the women are still wearing their sarees.) but of all the jobs they decided to have no gender barrier....   I'm still trying to get a local's take on this....