Shamballa Cruising Yacht Club: The Great Indian Blanking

After 27 hours of travel, with a great 12 hour stopover in KL, Bob and Eileen arrived in Chennai. The airport was relatively quiet and orderly and the driver from the hotel waiting for us patiently. Where were the hoards of people and chaos that Eileen was lead to expect? Mind you the trip in the taxi through the Chennai traffic was fairly hair-raising, but no worse than HoChiMihn City. We have learned to not look at the driving while in the traffic, just look at the street scenes – much less chance of a heart attack. So Eileen is thinking travel in India isn’t going to be as challenging as everyone was telling her.

That was before The Great Indian Blanking. We arrived at hotel reception and there was only one other customer ahead of us with three staff behind the counter. We waited there for at least 20 minutes before they would even acknowledge our presence despite repeated attempts. There was no eye contact, they shuffled around behind the counter, straightened papers, made phone calls and looked at the computer screen. We had to admire the artistry of this blanking, really superb.

Hotel in Chennai

Finally they gave us a registration form in triplicate carbon paper. Who uses carbon paper these days? Then someone wrote some details in a hard bound registration book, another found our reservation on a loose piece of paper in another folder while another person took our passports to photocopy. This might sound like efficiency once they started but none of these activities were done in any organised manner. The photocopying of the passports took about 10 minutes while the person came out several times jabbering to the other staff. Filling in the registration form was done in a minute or two by Bob but the staff didn't acknowledge the completion for about 15 minutes despite pushing the paper their way, another bout of blanking. And so it went. The whole process took an hour. There were two computer screens behind the counter but everything was paper based and done in triplicate. But even then when all the bits and pieces of the process were finally completed, we asked for our key and were told the bell hop had it as the room wasn't ready yet. So despite having made a reservation, the hotel sending a driver to pick us up, the plane being an hour late and the registration taking an hour, they didn't have the room ready. All we could do was laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

We probably did not give Chennai a fair chance but it is not really a great tourist destination. We stayed near the Egmore railway station, a beautiful old building from the days of the Raj.

Egmore Railway Station in Chennai

Near a railway station one would usually expect cafes and restaurants and other amenities for travellers. These were hard to find, or at least not in the form one sees throughout South east Asia. We went to the beach front and there were lots of Indian tourists and locals enjoying a day out. The beach was very wide, probably 500m of sand but absolutely filthy.