happy valentines day... and another funny story

The two weeks we've been here in Bangalore have flown by (as you can tell, since it's been almost that long since I've blogged!). Tim, Chitra and the crew flew out of Bangalore this morning for an engagement party weekend in Mumbai (Cetric, one of the young men who works for the Hanstads, and a son of sorts, is the celebrant), and we fly out late tonight for Hong Kong. Our time here with the Hanstads was a wonderful combination of hanging out with family (playing ping-pong, chasing Oreo-the -loveable-family-dog out of the house regularly, trying to catch Star, the family rabbit, eating, evening basketball with the neighborhood college guys, eating again, school - Andy with Rajan and Matt with Asha, eating some more, bb gun wars, eating, watching the Superbowl - Go Giants! - live at 5:30 in the morning, eating and just generally enjoying being together), with some mini-adventures thrown in:

-Water World, the follow-up to Fun World, was Andy's birthday choice (the little sport turned 13 (!) on Feb. 9): This water park again would not pass OSHA standards, but that makes it all the more fun. Andy and Cetric talked me into going on the "Cyclone" without providing full disclosure. You start out in an enclosed tube that feels way to much like a free-fall, and just when everything goes dark, the tunnel takes a severe right angle turn - smashing you into the wall - then shooting you out in the toilet bowl spin, round and round, until it deposits you forcefully (most likely landing on another rather dazed rider) into a shallow pool at the bottom. Good times!

-Industrial and Technical Museum: Wonderful, quirky little place with lots of interactive exhibits. One of the favorites was severing our heads from our bodies. You can do that here in India.

-The Zoo: Fun, low key place, with our favorite part being the caged Rhesus monkeys, the same variety that attacked us in Bundi. We gloated a little over their condition, even though we realized that was petty and mean. Our second-favorite part was the 1-hour bus safari that felt strikingly reminiscent of the nice safari in the first Jurassic Park movie, except the really scary part was the bus ride, and not the animals.

-The Dentist: Our dental insurance runs out before we'll be back in Seattle, so we decided to get a cleaning while we were here. ColumbiaAsia Clinic is a spankin' new establishment just down the road, so we headed in, registered, and showed up for the cleaning. Funny things with this - the boys both came back out after about 3 minutes, with the pronouncement that they didn't need their teeth cleaned. Seems they must have been brushing better than Chrissie and I, because the two dentists working on them set them free. Chrissie and I, on the other hand, had an interesting 30 minute dental workover, getting our teeth cleaned with some combination of high pressure water, sonic vibration and enough screeching to send all the neighborhood dogs (of which there are many) howling for cover. It's all good, though, and now we can return to the clinic whenever we happen to be in Bangalore needing medical or dental attention.

-Prophesies: At lunch yesterday a nice elderly man in a walker stopped Chrissie to inform her that, as a Face-Reader, he had read Matt's and determined that he will grow up to be a great man, including becoming the prime minister of his country and having $55,000. Good news!

You can see that we've settled well into family mode here with the Hanstads, since much of what we've done sounds like anywhere. It's special here, though, because it's India, and because it's the Hanstads.

So on to the story... I'm happy to say that the story that follows does not contain any jinx-ridden reassurances from Mother-Chrissie. Any of you who know Chitra, know that she is keen on deals, and is always finding coupons for this and discounts for that. She is the queen of bargaining, and it was wonderful to be here with her and see her work her magic. So, she found us a deal - the "weekend package" at a nice resort about 45 minutes away - a local 5 star hotel, the Golden Palms. The story doesn't get interesting until the very end. Before that, we had a wonderful 3 days of swimming, biking, playing tennis, pool, ping-pong and squash, and eating way more than we needed to at the three-a-day all-you-can-eat buffet extravaganza.

The real adventure begins when we go to check out. We are presented with a bill that is double what we expected (and though Chitra got us a good deal for the nice resort that it was, there was no way we could afford "double" what we expected). It turns out that the killer rate was PER night, not for the whole weekend. We showed them the ad that said "weekend package" and "It will make you wish the weekends were longer", an ad that nowhere said anything about per night, and they informed us that "In India [Tim and Chitra really appreciated the condescending tone], everyone knows that 'weekend package' means just one night, and anyway, you should know our prices wouldn't be that low... we're a 5 star hotel." I tried to explain that a key aspect of being a 5 star hotel is treating one's clients with care - something that everyone except that day's desk manager was very happy to do - but that fell on deaf ears. To make a long story short, we said we'd happily pay the part we expected to pay, and we'd let the owner decide if we needed to pay the other part. The desk manager said we would pay all or nothing. When we told him given that choice, we'd choose nothing, he called security and had the exits blocked. He even tried to go get our luggage out of the car, but fortunately, he was unsuccessful.

In the end, after a two-and-a-half-hour stand-off, Tim wrote a long letter (while standing at the reception counter) to the owner, and we attached both the ad and the other portion of the bill, asking him to weigh in, and we'd abide by the decision. By this point, the desk manager had washed his hands of us, so the nice other people took that document and we headed home. They did let us out, though the rest of the two families were planning our escape while Tim and I negotiated for our release. We still don't know the final outcome, but we'll keep you posted.

So now we're down to our final 6 hours in India, and a wrap-up blog seemed a fitting close. It's been a fabulous time in so many different ways. And we hope you all have, are having or did have a joyous Valentines day! Here's us, with Tim, Chitra and their friends Pranu and Emu on our little date night.