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Posts Tagged ‘hotels’

Hotel
The hotel lobby at the ITC Hyderabad. I saw quite a lot of this.

 

Hotel room at ITC Hyderabad
My room at the ITC Hyderabad. I also saw quite a lot of this.

 

Busses line up at the office
Busses line up at the office. Traffic is so bad, public transport so limited, that most companies arrange transport for their workers.

 

My pictures pretty much sum up my trip to Hyderabad. I saw a lot of the hotel, a lot of the office, and not much else. The city itself is sprawling, and it took us several hours to get into the various offices each morning. The one thing that is constant is the noise: traffic, people, and the constant honking of just about everything on the road.

Quick trip, just two days and one night, hardly long enough to get a feel for the place – but the industry here is everywhere, with huge service centres housing thousands of technology workers clustered together in technology parks. You have to see it to understand what a powerhouse India is positioned to become, to understand the sheer potential of what’s possible when you have a huge, educated workforce this big.

I always enjoy staying in hotels in Asia. Great food, good service, and generally speaking, beautiful décor.

I sent my laundry out yesterday. Like the last time I was in Bangkok, it all came back individually shrink-wrapped, with neat little cardboard bowties attached to each of my shirts.

Shirts with cardboard bowties

Hotel laundry, shrink-wrapped and complete with cardboard bowties

I have given up trying to be ecologically-friendly in Asia. There’s no way I can change an entire continent. They like their packaging, they like their plastic, they don’t recycle anything (at least, not that I can tell) – hey, that’s just part of life here.

I also managed to have some great room service. After God knows how many disappoint $25 hamburgers I’ve eaten in my travels across the US and Europe, having a tray of really delicious food sent up is a real treat.

Room service

Room service, Asian-style. Beats a soggy, greasy burger any day.

My virtual golf was not an overwhelming success. It’s tougher work than it looks, and my performance on the course suggests that I might want to reduce my handicap a little before they’ll let me onto the real Old Course.

I’m off to Calcutta this evening – and a new adventure begins!

I spent Monday through Wednesday in Barcelona, or more accurately, outside Barcelona. The factory is just beside the airport and the hotel was in Gava, directly on the beach but a fair way outside the city centre.

AC Gava Hotel, Barcelona

Looking out onto the pool from my room. Unfortunately, cold weather and rain plus long working days means that this was as close as I would get to going for a dip…

AC Gava Hotel, Barcelona

One of the nicer hotel rooms I have been in on this project…

AC Gava Hotel, Barcelona

One of the nicer hotel rooms I have been in on this project…

AC Gava Hotel, Barcelona

Free minibar. The sweetest words a travelling consultant can hear. Is there any reason not to love this hotel? (For the record, the minibar contained 3 bottles of soda, 4 bottles of water, and a 25ml bottle of beer. Before anyone gets any ideas…)

This was my first trip to Barcelona, but I didn’t get to see much of the city. I saw quite a lot of the airport (although not the airline lounge, despite being entitled access I was banned because my codeshare was apparently not eligible). My experiences flying with Iberia confirmed my worst fears: the airlines of Latin countries are generally to be avoided. Tiny seats, surly service, and not even a free glass of water. Not exactly what I expect when I’ve paid nearly EUR600 for a ticket.

I did get to see a lot of Barcelona that was not on the tourist track, however. The taxi driver did not know where the hotel was, so we relied on GPS. And GPS decided to take us on a tour of some of the grottier areas of Barcelona. And right through the middle of the trucker’s strike.

The factory itself was interesting, although I have not had a tour of the production facilities yet. The overwhelming smell when I was there was of fruit flavouring, cloying and sticky-sweet. Apparently this isn’t too bad – when they produce mint products, the smell is unbearable. Remind me to give mint day a miss.

We had some great tapas at a restaurant near the hotel, washed back with a good bottle of Rioja. I was pleasantly surprised after coming from Switzerland – I had to ask the waiter if the wine was priced by the glass or by the bottle, because a bottle of wine in Spain was roughly the same price as a small glass in Switzerland.

It managed to rain for nearly the entire trip. Not quite what I had expected from sunny Spain. Overall, my first trip to Barcelona wasn’t an overwhelming success. Maybe next time will be better.

I’m officially a convert to rail travel. This week, I’ve done Paris-London by Eurostar, London-Birmingham by Virgin Trains, and Zurich-Paris on TGV. Without exception, the trains have been quick, reliable, comfortable and clean. Yes, I’ve heard all the horror stories about what happens when trains go wrong. But door-to-door, I think they’re just as quick as taking the plane and far less hassle, as I can work the entire journey.

As I type this, I’m enjoying a lovely glass of Riesling and a scallop and saffron risotto as I watch the Swiss countryside go by. It’s much more agreeable than the cold cheese sandwich and lousy cup of tea I had on my flight from Birmingham to Zurich last night. I paid more than €560 for my economy class flight ticket. My first class train ticket cost me €132. I can’t understand why anyone chooses to fly in Europe.

On Monday, our meetings were held on an active production site with a chocolate factory just outside the meeting room we were working in. Everywhere you went, there was an overwhelming smell of cocoa – I felt like any minute Willy Wonka was going to pop out and say hello. It was really bizarre. I raided the factory shop after our meetings and have come home with a suitcase full of chocolates – I figured they’d make good conversation-starters at the office.

I stayed in the Radisson SAS hotel on Monday night. Those crazy Scandinavians have their own unique sense of design. The room looked like a cross between a Bang & Olufsen stereo and a TV test pattern, all the carpets and soft furnishings a rainbow of reds, pinks and purples.

After my short flight to Zurich, I managed to arrive in Zug around 11pm, only to discover that the hotel had managed to give away my room (and, this being Switzerland, they’d given it away with remarkable efficiency – it had been resold by 7pm apparently). They finally managed to find me another hotel room at the motorway hotel – the very last one, a handicapped room and very noisy at the top of the stairs. It certainly wasn’t the Ritz.

It’s nearly impossible to find a hotel room in Zug (note to investors: building a hotel in Zug is a sure-fire winner) so I’m back in the same motorway hotel next week. Hopefully they’ll put me in a nicer room next time as a “regular”.

I’m back in Paris today and for the weekend, a chance to catch up on a load of admin at work and unpacking at home.

It’s my last weekend in Singapore, so I decided I should probably take the opportunity to do a little sightseeing, despite the poor weather. I waited for the worst of the rain to clear in the morning, then jumped in a cab to Arab Street to see a different side of Singapore life. Lots of interesting shops (and a nice change from the branded stores that line Orchard Road) and a chance to buy a few souvenirs to bring back home.

Bussorah Mall

Bussorah Mall, just off Arab Street. Bizarrely, this enclave of Muslim life in Singapore is decorated for Christmas.

Sultan Mosque

The Sultan Mosque

Belly dancing shop

One has to wonder whether this is the biggest belly-dancing shop in Singapore, or whether this is simply a belly-dancing shop that caters to the biggest bellies in Singapore?

Maserati

Five brand new Maseratis were lined up in front of Raffles Hotel, presumably for some sort of launch party? Given the high taxes on cars in Singapore, expensive cars like these are a relatively rare sight despite the number of high-earners here.

The famous Raffles doorman

The famous Raffles doorman

Christmas, Singapore style

Christmas, Singapore style. Barney entertains the kids with a Christmas show. I’d wager that less than 10% are Christian. No one seems to care — Christmas here is an all-enclusive holiday, and more importantly, another excuse for shopping!

Few things suck quite as much as being sick when you’re on the road. I managed to catch a cold in Istanbul, and it’s managed to reach that really unpleasant stage where my nose runs constantly. I must have really looked poorly, because even my slave-driver of a client suggested that I should probably take myself home and get an early night (mind you, it was already 7:30pm, so it’s not like I was working a half-day or anything). I figure giving him my cold will be a sort of parting gift…

Drugged up to the gills!

Drugged up to the gills!

I’m using up the remains of the cold medicine I bought in Turkey. It seems effective enough, but I suspect it’s actual a combination of horse tranquillisers and morphine, because it leaves me high as a kite. So each morning you’ve got to make that fateful judgement call: do I suffer and sniffle all day with a clear head but a blocked nose, or do I take another sachet of the Turkish cold medicine and struggle through the day with a clear nose but a foggy head?

Chicken soup

Not quite Mom’s chicken soup. (Who are we kidding — even she’d admit that she used to heat up a can of Campbell’s!) The closest thing I could find to chicken soup came in a coconut. A bloody coconut.

The second challenge with getting sick on the road is actually tucking yourself up in bed. It’s bad enough that there’s no one nearby to whinge to (in a last-ditch attempt for sympathy, I was even tempted to pour out my heart to the woman at room service, but was thwarted when she misunderstood my lamenting for “one prawn cocktail starter”). No, worse still is the fact that it’s awfully hard to find comfort food when you’re a long way from home. So you either have to drag yourself out someplace (not fun, especially when it’s pouring with rain outside) or you have to settle for what’s on offer at the hotel.