MUMBAI STAR

Above are some pictures of the Timber Green Homes apartment where I am staying for my PDL stint in Mumbai.

Saturday is not a school day at SIS, Mumbai. Anyway today is a public holiday in celebration of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival. (hey ppl there is no make-up for this holiday in India...Monday is a school day!) My Singaporean friend at SIS, Elvin, and I took the opportunity to see the city. The SIS car arrived at 9am. The highway to the city is littered with debris, half-constructed roads and structures, dilapidated buildings and slums. Traffic is more orderly but still the brave will have the right of way!

The journey took about 45mins. The grand Victoria Building is quite imposing. The Bombay Stock Exchange cannot be compared to SGX Building in terms of modernity. We spent half an hour at the Gateway To India, a monument next to the sea where people take a cruise to Elephant Island to see what else! Next to the Gateway is the magnificient Taj Mahal Hotel, a 5-star hotel comparable to any in Singapore. Then itwas to the World Trade Centre (really cannot compare to our WTC now HarbourFront, looks more like our Singapore Conference Hall). Anyway, there was a Thailand Exhibition selling handicrafts and delicacies. We made a round of the stalls.

For lunch, we visited a Chinese restaurant. Menu is Chinese but staff are all Indians. The servings are huge...each dish was good for 4 people! We were not able to finish the noodles and rice. Food was quite tasty and cheap. Rs 420 (abt S$16) for a posh restaurant and good Chinese food. ( yes there was red and green chilli like in our Noodle House!)

We then stopped by the beach. It was very crowded being a holiday. Believe it or not, vendors were selling cooked food on the sandy beach. There were also pedlars of tourist wares and kiddy rides..that's when I found the Mumbian Flyer! Haha. This you got to know....there are no toilets on the beach...the males simply stand on a line facing a wall where the sandy part ends and do their business in the open! Frankly I don't know where the ladies do theirs!

before we headed back, we dropped by at the "Orchard Road" of Mumbai at Marllet. Yes the usual huge supermarkets (comparable to Careffour) and shopping centres (as big as Tampines Mall and Century Square) are found here...Hub City, Innobit Shopping Centre,... It took us another hour to reach our apartment.