India: Most of Day 2

Maria, Gabriela and I woke up early and took a cab to Mammallapuram...or something along those lines. I can barely say it, let alone spell it. The important thing is that it's a really famous old Hindu temple carved out of stone and stuff.

The temples were beautiful and spiritual and stuff, but I can't really describe them sans my camera. I'll have to go into more detail at another time.

What I can describe, however, is the utter silliness of the temple tourist process. So we get to the entrance of Mammalla-whatsit, and the taxi suddenly comes to a stop. We look at each other and start to pack up our things to get out, when suddenly somebody ELSE comes IN. It was, I kid you not, our "tour guide". I glared at our nonchalant cab driver, then looked at Maria, who was considerably better-traveled than me. She told me to just go along with it, and that it was better to just let this guy do his thing than try to argue with him. So yeah. We got a tour guide without even looking for one. "You pay me anything you want!" he said. Yeah. Sure. I decided to worry about that later.

India gets a serious kick out of ripping off its tourists. Mamamamamamamalalalalalapuram is the best example I've seen of this. Here are the actual entry costs posted at the ticket counter:
Indian citizens = 10 rupees.
Non-Indians = 240 rupees.

I'm sorry, but whaaaaaaa?! I get that for me it's under 5 bucks and not a big deal to get in, but what if there was a tourist from Somalia or something? That's seriously not okay. Shame on you, India.

And, of course, just like the cab drivers, it appears that our "professional tour guide" also got some special rewards by bringing in tourists. We got dragged into some crazy expensive shops, where I decided to annoy the sales associates by asking for the price of every obnoxiously big item in the store, and then looking disappointed when I realized it was more than five dollars. Luckily, I did manage to get a pair of sandals for five dollars. Unluckily, they're a size too small for me. Anyone a size 7 who wants some cute sandals from India?

After the temples (again, I'll describe those once I can share pictures with y'all), we paid our tour guide. He demanded two and a half times what we gave him, at which point we rolled our eyes and told him to take what he was given and get lost...well, we THOUGHT that, but Maria put it in much nicer terms. She gave him a pen in addition to our pay, and that seemed to be good enough for him. Weird day.

Our cab driver dropped us off in front of a really classy Indian restaurant. We didn't want to go, so we went to the cafeteria-type place next door. A full meal there cost about 1 USD. We proceeded to spend $15 USD. The Indians across from us looked both alarmed and annoyed. Regardless, we ate everything and everything.

We got back to the ship early because we needed to part ways and pack for our respective overnight trips. The epic tale of my homestay begins that night at 9:00pm. It will commence shortly...