Mumbai is an interesting place. My facebook status just after I arrived was: “In Mumbai again. The taxi from the airport was fun. No seatbelt. Red lights seem to mean go. Traffic crosses in front of you from nowhere. Oncoming traffic in YOUR lane. I think the car with loudest horn has right of way.” Having driven in the UK and Japan, I found driving in Thailand to be somewhat hair-raising, with U-turns on motorways and all. But visiting Mumbai, Thai drivers are actually very safe in comparison because they have respect for each other and rarely do sudden movements, even in central Bangkok. In India, it seems either the bigger car or the loudest horn has right of way! I’ve only been in a taxi to/from the airport but the driver’s had to slam on the brakes more than once on each occasion! Add to that motorcycles, pot-holes, road works, people, dogs and cows, you can imagine how it is.

Should be flying to Thailand on Tuesday but no plans for the weekend yet! Maybe somewhere away from civilisation

I found Indians to be very friendly and approachable, they would just come up to you and ask where you’re from, for example. The food was also alright, despite having a couple of days of stomach pains; my supply of Imodium seemed to have worked. The food from the hotel was lovely but on the expensive side. It’s surprising how few shops/restaurants there were in Nariman Point. When I read my guide book, I expected this area to be like any developed city. Perhaps I didn’t wonder far enough or expected too much?

I stayed at Trident, Nariman Point. I only found out after arrival that it was one of the hotels attacked by terrorists in 2008. It explains the tight security around the hotel now, having to go through vehicle searches, body searches and X-ray machines. I do wonder though is that if someone wanted to cause mayhem, all these “security searches” do nothing as I never saw any armed guards. Very nice hotel, classed as a 5* but still missing some features in my opinion, especially compared to some cheaper but higher quality places in Bangkok.

Sightseeing wise, I didn’t do much for a 7 night stay! It was simply too hot to wonder around and we only managed about 1 hour of walking about to see the Gateway of India. Here I am with my Thai colleague, Max.

Traffic is just crazy in Mumbai. No lane discipline, lights not switched on at night and it seems the person with the bigger car and loudest horn gets right of way. That’s my take on it anyway.

It would definitely be interesting to just explore more of India. Visiting on business doesn’t really do the country justice I think. I’m visiting again in a few weeks but perhaps in the future, should I ever dare, to spend a few weeks travelling India and trying real Indian food!

I hope to be back home in a week or two! Too hot out here. The Indian people seem to be very friendly however. There’s also very tight security around my hotel and departments stores.

It’ll be a long week ahead but I think it will go very quickly as does all business trips.

The Japanese exam was alright overall. The first paper, reading and vocabulary was the hardest for me. I never spent much time learning any vocabulary, so if I didn’t know it I could only make a random guess. I probably guessed 60% of this paper. Was also quite annoyed that I changed a correct answer to a wrong one just before time was up. I checked the kanji in my text book during the break and found I lost 1 mark because of that last minute change. Listening wasn’t bad. I think I understood the dialogues at least. The grammer paper wasn’t difficult either. I was expecting there to be harder questions than they gave but I had completed it within 30 out of the allocated 70 minutes. Still, it’s a tough call to say whether I passed or not as there were several questions where I wasn’t sure between two answers. I’ll just have to wait until March 2010 to see if I got more than 60% correct.