On being scammed

I'm out of India now, and in Sri Lanka. I've done ruined cities and I'm preparing to watch a day or so of cricket (though I did see some monks playing earlier today) before I head home. I'm also travelling independently now, having put my grandmother on a plane 5 days ago, and this means I get to be scammed. Yet, as I think the scamming that I have fallen victim to, and could do, it is hard to think of a greater rip off than the ones you fall prey to before you even leave home. As an example, I hired a driver for $135 for two solid days of driving (Anuradhapura - Mihintale - Pollonaruwa - Sigiriya - Dambulla - Matale - Kandy, map here) and a night of accomdation. The accomodation was a bit rubbish (the website is better than the rooms), though perfectly servicable once I had been told how to make the hot water work, but I spent the night sulking about it. I'd spent the previous night at a lovely place in Anuradhapura and I had been promised by said driver that this would be similar - it wasn't (& I'm not the only one whose had this complaint).

However, with the perspctive of hindsight, it's hard to see why I cared so much. Actually the real scam wasn't the driver who chose a cheap hotel, but the first hotel who charged $94 for a room in an almost empty rest house. Similarly, I am now in possesion of some moonstone necklaces for my 8 and 11 year old cousins (I'm assuming they're not going to read this before Christmas), which I doubtless overpaid for, though given I got them for 30% of the asking price, I dread the original mark up. However, the bigger scam is surely the vast price of my Indian leg (most of which I didn't pay for), based on pure fear. And this applies across the board. Anna & I have spent substantial sums on pleasant accomodation and food withour batting an eyelid (Morocco most recently: here - beautiful, yet worth it in absolute terms? I doubt it), yet we really hate being hassled into donations and overcharged for cheap things. We refused to be guided in Morocco and made sure we didn't tip even children too much. My parents don't care and cheerfully pay what they are asked - doubtless making some people very happy at relatively little cost to themselves. Whereas we agonise over scams by natives, yet accept it if they speak excellent english - which seems wrong somehow.

So, I resolve not to care too much, to consider it alms giving, and am off to buy some wooden elephants before being scammed out of water for over a pound (over a pound? in a third world country!) by my hotel (who I might add charged me 6 times the price of this connection to check my email last night). Bastards, with nice rooms and a pool.

Mohammedanism

Oh dear. I appear not to have really gotten into this. So, I thoughtI wouldkick start it by rambling about my holiday. Call it self-indulgence if you will, you might be right.

Actually, I don't really intend to ramble on about my holiday in India, excellent though it was, but to despair over the lack of knowledge of people about it. I went with a relatively expensive company on a tour of Northern India - i.e., mostly Mughal monuments. I was the youngest person on the trip - most being middle aged and relatively well off. And this seemed to be a pattern of the various tourists I saw. It's in term time so presumably the student crowd isn't around. My group was pretty good (though my grandmother did once confuse the Hindu temple in Neasden with a mosque - doubtless to the delight of both parties), but the bulk of the other visitors to these places appeared to have to have an understanding of religious geography that stopped in 1600 (or even 600), and ill-equipped to look at muslim monuments

Now, our record of teaching about Islam is pretty poor. A few years ago I picked up a second hand atlas that was used in Westminster school in the 80s, which cheerfully referred to the Islamic regions of the world as Mohammedan. However, Islam has been in the news recently, especially in that part of the world.

In fact, the various exclamations I hear on the subject - prize goes to "I didn't know that Islam had made it so far east - makes me wonder if they have heard of partition (and what it was about), if Malaysia and Indonesia simply don't figure in people's minds, whether they think Bangladesh (or East Pakistan as it was known in their lifetime!) is west of Iran, and crucially - given Delhi is pretty near that Pakistani border - what kind of miltants Pakistan have? It was bad enough earlier this year in Granada when I heard the Americans recognise that "this kind of thing [the Alhambra] makes me appreciate the muslims a bit more", but at least that relied on a knowledge of vanished civilisation; this is a tad more recent.

I despair. For the record, I didn't know there were quite as many Muslims in India as there in fact are, nor that it is the third largest muslim population in the world (list here, with some scrolling needed), so nobody's perfect. Though it would appear some are less so than others.

Bibliophilia

I was planning to launch forth on a thunderous rant about a variety of things this afternoon, for I have had a rubbish morning, beginning with my cleaner turning up unplanned and some petty rules about passports.

I might come back to these points later, but instead, I wanted to extol the library service in Lambeth. Actually, that's not fair, the rest of the library service in Lambeth might be terrible, but the little library on South Lambeth road - which I joined today - was a very pleasant surprise. It has, of course, got too many DVDs and CDs, and should have more books - probably more children's books by sight. However, what it does have is quite a good stock, which avoids the standards library problem of being dated. So I was very happy to see a good selection of travel literature (and not just travel guides which seems to be the norm now), e.g., Thubron's In Siberia; a decent little history section (which is what I went in for, looking for a recent history of Ireland), which seemed to balance the local with the important; and finally - and most excitingly - Peter Brown's The Making of Late Antiquity, which is exactly the sort of book public libraries ought to have. It's accesible, yet also absolutely academically sound and not likely to be at home (though admittedly, I have a copy) and so would allow people to get at something unfamiliar for free.

I am filled with praise.

Genesis

I've avoided blogging for some time, thinking it almost entirely self-indulgent. It is of course, but but the time has come to surrender and begin this one. This begins what will probably be a (very) intermittent series of postings which I suspect will rapidly become a series of rants on the things that irritate / interest me, so expect a concentration of things about Jesus, books and politics. In my defense for doing this, I advance two justifications:
1. I've never bothered the keep a diary - something I rather regret from previous years, especially as I have no tendency to take photos etc. This should be interesting as I age.
2. If I do rant on this, it might reduce the amount I rant in person, and Anna in particular will be grateful.

Neither of these is a particularly strong justification, so I'll only be continuing if it's fun. Further to follow.