Month: December 2010

Henna Tattoo in Hyderabad.

It was our last day in Hyderabad. We were at City Centre Mall to check out an Indian restaurant recommended by a local. City Center Mall is supposedly quite a happening shopping complex located in Banjara Hill, a more upmarket area of Hyderabad.

We took an auto rickshaw (or auto, as it’s more commonly known there) from our hotel, Gunrock Manor in Secunderabad and it costed us about 130 rupees (RM9). We really didn’t know how far City Centre Mall was from Secunderabad so we decided to pay what we were comfortable with, ripped off or not. Turned out it was quite a distance.

Anyway, Sahib Sindh Sultan, the Indian Restaurant we wanted to check out, was closed -__-

It wouldn’t open for another 3 hours so we decided to explore the busy streets and find other meal alternatives. As I was exiting the shopping complex, I noticed a couple of sitting stools just outside of the main entrance with a few young Indian boys hanging around. There was a huge catalogue of henna tattoo designs.

And then it hit me. How could I leave India without getting a henna tattoo? So I sat down, placed my hand on one of the boys’ lap and armed with a mini piping bag, he proceeded to tattoo me.

# – It started out small.

# – And he gradually filled in the design with more patterns.

# – More and more.

# – Almost done….

# – Done! Forgive my inept expression in this picture please, was a little too happy :P

# – The finished result. Very intricate design! I was so impressed that he managed to come up with this in less than 10 minutes.

I had to walk around with the moist henna paste on my hand for two hours to allow it to dry.

# – After 2 hours, you can see that the paste had hardened. Then it’s very easy to peel the paste off and wash my hand.

# – The final result.

Best 100 rupees I spent there.

Back in KL!

I’m home! I had 6 amazing days in Hyderabad, India. A lot of people asked me on Twitter, why Hyderabad? Actually, we’re mainly there to attend the wedding of Chatts, ST‘s good friend cum ex-colleague.

We got the invitation from Chatts a couple of months ago but we were not sure whether it’s a good time to leave the country as we anticipated moving house around the same time. In the end, we asked ourselves…how often do you get to attend a good friend’s wedding in India? The answer was pretty clear. Also, we took it as our 6th anniversary honeymoon ;)

Before we left though, we bought some multi-coloured blackboard chalks and headed to our new place to……. urmm vandalise the walls :P

# – Cocks and balls on the walls.

Yeap, poor contractor. He probably wished he had never met us. The chalks were used to circle out bits of the walls that we wanted him to improve or fix. They were issues like small holes, paint splat, leftover bristle from the paint brushes and many more. On the first day we reached Hyderabad, I got a call from him and he revealed he’s bought brand new buckets of paints to redo all the walls….

I feel really bad for him but at the same time, admire his patience and willingness to do the best for his customers.

Anyway, the first Hyderabadi thing I got acquainted with was the road traffic. I’ll blog about it more extensively in my later posts but let me give you an idea…

People there must use side mirrors and rear mirrors to look at their own reflections while driving because I can’t think of uses other than that. The less narcissistic ones just remove the mirrors altogether. Oh and EVERYBODY has a crazy loud horn.

They should make a video driving game called “Staying alive in Hyderabad”.

# – In an auto rickshaw, the staple public transportation that is cheap and efficient.

After arriving in KL, on the way home. One thing that I instantly noticed was that, we KL-ites are incredibly, incredibly quiet.

# – On the way home in a Proton Wira.

I’m missing Hyderabad already.

On the way to airport.

It’s 4am in the morning and we’re on the way to the airport. Packing as usual was last minute and I can only hope we could buy what we’ve missed out in Hyderabad.

This is the first time I’m going somewhere where I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know what sort of food I’ll be encountering, I can only imagine what’s the retail landscape is like and I hope it’s not too cold for me to wear shorts because I’ve only packed two pieces of bottoms (yeah, including the shorts).

I won’t have access to the Internet from tomorrow onwards till Monday, so the blog will not be updated for a while (unless I found wifi points, which I was informed are quite scarce or even cyber cafes).

I think this will be the longest flight I’ve ever taken with AirAsia so I’m keen to see how the experience will be like. Hopefully it’s a good one! Err this is not an advertorial by the way hehe.

Have a good week and weekend peeps!

Posted from my Crackberry.