Steinbox

Saturday afternoon I was taken sight-seeing by my Indian coworkers. The trip began aroud 3:30pm to avoid the heat of the day. The first stop was Crocodile Park. It’s a zoo for crocodiles. At the admission desk we bought 6 tickets. One for each of my coworkers, one for me, and one for my camera. Yes, it costs a full price ticket to bring in your camera. Hey now! The camera may be an extension of my body but it is not it’s own entity. Luckily it was not video camera or it’s ticket would have cost seven times as much as a normal ticket. Yikes!

Upon entering we went immediately into reptile city. Reptile city admission was half that of the overall park and my camera was coming so we again had to buy six tickets. The main feature was the snake pit where they hold live demonstrations of venom extraction. As you can see below, they also had a scorpion. I’m not sure if they take venom from scorpions, but the guy held it up so I could get a good shot.

Crocodile city has about 30 crocodile pits similar to the one below. Not all the pits are as full as the one below but many are.

The guys paid for me to have a picture taken while holding a baby crocodile. I would have tried to repay them if there was any chance in succeeding. From left to right: Neelakandan, Me, Bill, Sriraman, and Loganathan. No the crocodile didn’t have a name, but he does now.

After Crocodile Park we headed to Mahabalipuram. I recommend following the link in the previous sentence and reading the first three paragraphs (I will refrain from describing it here). We arrived ten minutes after closing so unfortunately we were unable to go inside the fencing. I’m actually glad as a ticket for myself is twenty-five times as much as for a native of India, and it would be impossible to convince them to let me pay it myself. Besides I think standing outside the fence scored better photographs due to the height.

We went to one of the other sculpture sites that was on the beach and had just three days earlier been made inaccessible with a high tide combined with previous damage from the Tsunami. On the beach were lots of people and lots of trash. I was happy to grab this snapshot though. On the left is Loganathan, and on the right is my co-workers’ team manager, Karthick.

After Mamallapuram, we went to dinner at a new restaurant that also had quite a bit of entertainment. A couple of guys in the group had their fortunes read by a man with a deck of cards and a parrot. First, the man will ask your name. Then, the parrot takes cards off of the deck one by one until it picks a card and takes it to the fortune teller. The fortune teller then pulls a picture out of the card and shows you. Lastly, he tells you your fortune out of his book. I assumed that there was a trick that the man used to indicate to the parrot when to pick the card out of the deck. All the cards looked different on the outside but were mildly abstract so Im guessing the man had memorized what pictures went with each card. When the group decided it was my turn the peer pressure combined with my curiosity of his trick led me to try.

When prompted I shared that my name was Benjamin. The man let the parrot out of its cage and the parrot immediately pecked at some grains outside his cage. The man quickly brushed them away so that the parrot would focus on his task. At this point I realized that the man had a small amount food in his hand. The parrot pulled the first card off the deck, looked at the man, and then dropped it. I was staring at the man’s hand once I saw where the parrot had looked. The parrot pulled and dropped the second card after a second glance. When the parrot pulled the third card, the man blatantly rotated his hand to lift up the food to the parrot. The card was delivered and the reward received. I was appalled (not that there was a trick, but that it was so obvious). Out of my card he pulled a picture of Jesus. At this point I was working very hard to stifle a laugh (not that I don’t follow Christ; it was just that the whole fortune was such a simple affair. So simple that if he lit his face from underneath with a flash light it would have made seem it less hoaky). He then read some fortunes such as: “You will make a major purchase soon”, “There will be a marriage in the family”, and my favorite was “You often travel to foreign countries”. This is my second time overseas. The last time was ten years ago.

The rest of the entertainment was quite spectacular: an 11-year old doing slack rope walking and dancing, live pottery making and some lovely baskets that I tried very hard to purchase myself for Jessica, but was thwarted by Neelakandan who paid for them instead.
Next up on Steinbox.com: Going to Church