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Lard Air

Rhymer1
2005-03-26 19:10:04

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seems to be a sort of Tenerife for people with more money but not much more taste. The fact that they are building a palm-shaped island out in the Gulf, much of which has been bought up by footballers and other celebrities would support this theory. The airport itself is a sort of blingin' shopping mall and may as well have signs all over the place that say 'THIS MAY BE THE ONLY CHANCE YOU GET TO BUY STUFF AT SUCH FAVOURABLE RATES. CONSUME, CONSUME, CONSUME NOW!!!' Beloved of Americans and the kind of people who think that Humvees are the ne plus ultra of personal transport, it is quite awful in a very clean and acceptable way. I was lucky to get out having consumed only six falafel and a pair of sunglasses; though prising Jane away from the Rolex boutique was quite an effort.

Holiday India

Chennai (Madras) airport, by contrast, is the antithesis of swish. It has a sort of tropical communist feel and the lights kept going off. Curiously, it also had piles of feedback forms everywhere 'How would you rate your Chennai Airport experience?' Alas, they didn't have a box for 'primitive.' Once we'd cleared customs (about 4am), we headed over to Le Merridien, a largely unremarkable airport hotel, very JG Ballard, notable only for its excessive use of carpets in a locale where the weather is a constant humid 30C. It was as soulless and indifferently plush an airport hotel as you could have wished for. It could have been anywhere; it could have been in Dubai.

The following morning, we tried to get a taxi. But this wasn't going to happen. Chennai currently has an enormous dearth of these, so we took at tuk tuk 12 km into town, allowing us to experience the aroma of an Indian city first hand. I pictured myself as a wine critic: 'Ooh - I'm getting hints of sewage...no, it's rotting garbage...and petrol fumes and burning rubbish.' Actually, while ...