December 19-20, 2009 – Day 359-360 – Chennai, India

To do a bit of last minute souvenir shopping we headed off to Pondy Bazzar and found a few neat things. The market is not a touristy place since it caters more to locals than foreigners. You can find street stalls lining the road in front of stores selling endless kinds of sari fabric, household wares, a supermarket or two, and so on.

Fortune teller bird in the market

The market stalls sell things like flowers, shoes, clothing, toys, and handbags. Quite a wide range of goods but if you are looking for a more typical tourist market, Chennai is kind of a tough bet since there is little to attract tourists here to begin with.

Lunch on a leaf

The next day was spent in a less traditional kind of cultural experience: going to the movies! It’s an odd thing to realize that cultures behave differently when they watch movies in cinemas. First of all, here they have intermissions. No kidding. It’s either because the local population can not sit through a 2 hour movie without getting up for a bathroom and popcorn break, or it’s a clever marketing tatic to make people go for a snack run. Why they can’t just get whatever they want before the movie and then avoid the anti-climactic intermission that inevitably stops during a very crucial action packed moment is really just beyond us.

In addition, there is massive amounts of hooting and whistling and general chatter that goes on during the entire movie and even more titters and whistling (or meowing, like one weirdo was doing) during any kissing or overly affectionate scenes. Come on people, grow up! It’s a fact that Indian culture is very “conservative” but it’s making them all act like overly-hormonal 12 year olds and preoccupying their minds so they can not even function without something seeming sexually charged and therefore whistle- or hoot-worthy. Anyway, we got to see a couple of really great movies, Avatar and the new Twilight movie, in English no less!