P--A--R--T--WHY? BECAUSE I GOTTA!!!!

I just got back from Bombay for the weekend (or should I say Mumbai). I just finished exams and my friend and I went to detox cuz med school is a pain. Two months of straight studying. Like minimum 10 hours a day. NO B/S!! Let's hope it pays off.

Anyways, we went from Thursday the 30th to Sunday the 3rd of October. We took a flight from Mangalore to Mumbai. By the way, Jet Airways is the bomb (well, by India standards). The flights were on time and they bumped us up to first class on both ways. First class wasn't much better, but it just sounds good for the trip. In Bombay, we stayed at the Hyatt Regency near the international airport. AWESOME HOTEL!!! It was so cool. The rooms were all marble, glass, and chrome. All the doors were sliding doors and the sinks were like wash basin bowls made of clear glass. The bed was one of the best ever. It was like a giant king sized pillow surrounded by even softer pillows. It was hard to get up and do things, but you know. The room was weird, though. It had no locks anywhere within the room and no drawers or hooks. The bathroom was especially different, but the best part too. When you opened the door, there was a giant recess in the floor. You see a drain, a control faucet, but no shower. Then you look at the cieling. The ceiling is like 13 ft high and there is a shower head coming down from the ceiling! It's falls just like a rain. It was so cool. And it was the perfect after going out in the humidity of Bombay, especially at night. I took like 3 showers a day. Once again though, no locks were on the door. If someone opened it, then they'd get the Full Monty! It was a little disconcerting(?). The room also came with some of the best cookies and chocolate I ever had. The room was awesome.

Now, the food in Bombay was soooo goooood! When we got there, we had the lunch buffet at the hotel. It was awesome. First they have great food in the line, but then they make you pizzas and other stuff at your request! It was great. That night, we went to the Leela hotel. They had an Italian restaurant on the top floor that was awesome. I got the lobster tail, which was the best I had ever had (lobster, that is). It was the perfect thing to get before going out because it was light. On friday, we went to the buffet again for lunch. We just got lazy and decided to go to that. That night, we went to The Taj Mahal Hotel for dinner. This place was baller!! I saw a Maybach!! There was some high-roller birthday party across from the restaurant. Anyways, the restaurant was a Meditteranean Restaurant called Souk. It was really good too. We got the humus. Again, best humus I had ever had. Just awesome. For main course, the mixed grill. It had a little too much meat for me. I didn't realize that when I ordered it. However it was still awesome, but a little too heavy for that night. Then on Saturday, we actually left the hotel for lunch and ate at Subway. Subway was just awesome. It was so good to just have a little taste of home. That night we didn't get dinner, just ordered a club sandwiches to the room. However, these were awesome. They came with awesome fries. If anyone goes to the hotel, I would suggest ordering this sandwich, for sure. That's pretty much it for the food.

As far as doing stuff in the day, we didn't do too much. The first full day, Friday, we did some stuff within the hotel. I got massage that was pretty cool. The gym was awesome. They had separate plasma screens for each treadmill. The weight machines were new and sturdy. The jacuzzi was great too. As far as leaving the hotel, we didn't care too much for shopping, but to spend time we went to the typical tourist shopping areas. We went to Saga, Crossroads, and Phoenix Mills. Saga was the most annoying store I have ever been to in my life. Piece of advice, never accidentally wander into to the cologne/perfume/skin care department. You'll never get out of there alive, or at least smelling like you did when you came in, or even smelling good at all. They just come up to you and spray you with like 10 colognes at once. Then they have the nerve to tell you what skin problems you have, just in order to sell their creams. Just so annoying. Speaking of annoying, my friend tried to explain the meaning of the word to the workers. They couldn't get it though. They just kept spraying. We had to just bugg outta there. Crossroad and Phoenix were pretty much one and the same. They both had Marks & Spencer stores. I love the stuff in that store. I think they have some great clothes. I first saw it when i was in Spain. Crossroads was a little better than Phoenix b/c it had more stores. Phoenix really didn't have much, or at least we didn't see much.

Now for going out at night. There are a lot of places to go out in Bombay. The places that we went to were Rockbottom, Vie Lounge, Provouge Lounge, and Lush. Rockbottom and Vie are both near JW Marriot. They were both okay. We went to them on Thursday. That is why they were kind of dead that night. We went back to Vie on Saturday and it was better. On Friday, we tried going to Athena, near Taj Mahal, but there was a private party so we couldn't get into the club. I was curious about Athena cuz I have heard good things about it. Instead, everyone was going to this club called Polly Esther's. It looked good but they were real strict about letting guys in the club. We ended up going to Phoenix Mills for Provouge and Lush. Provouge was okay as far as club and music goes, but the crowd was real good. We later went to Lush because Provouge got boring. We left Lush b/c we got bored and just went back home. Saturday was kinda crappy becasue we found out that it was a dry day. It was Gandhi's birthday so it was a real seroius dry day. Nobody showed up to the few clubs that were open. We went back to Vie where there was a decent turnout, but not that great. It was kinda dissappointing but it was okay. We still had fun. There were more places to go, but we didn't get time to hit them during the trip. Maybe next time.

However, Mumbai was great. It would even be a lot more fun with a lot of people. We were only two people so it was kinda slow, but it was cool. I'm anxious to go again.

Damn, this was too long a post.