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There was little else to do after nightfall in India but get drunk. hmm... OK http://www.buzzintown.com/delhi/events/category--nightlife/id--1419.html http://ww

There was little else to do after nightfall in India but get drunk. hmm... OK http://www.buzzintown.com/delhi/events/category--nightlife/id--1419.html http://www.buzzintown.com/delhi/events/category--nightlife/i... http://delhi.burrp.com/events/Film+and+Theatre#3 http://delhi.burrp.com/events/Film+and+Theatre#3 an Indian will lie to your face ... they’ll hand you fake business cards and offer to sell you something that they don’t actually have, so that you’ll voluntarily empty your wallet to them on your own accord. As opposed to DecorMyEyes.. sure A couple Indians stopped him on the street, and with perfect English convinced him they worked for a travel agency. No shit. It's not like any Indian travel sites are listed on Nasdaq as MMYT right ? Everyone of the problems has happened to me in various parts of South East Asia. India is not unique with these issues. With all due respect, I think the author had a "Gautama" experience. An experience of extreme helplessness when confronted with extreme poverty at a national scale. I completely empathize with him, but lets not get too hysterical with helplessness here. It's hard to herd a billion people along... but we're trying.

briandear 14y ago
It's hard to be sympathetic when walking through Paharganj in Delhi and have hundreds of con artists just outright lying and trying to scam well meaning tourists. I won't go back to India because of it. It's one thing to pay a guy to take pictures of you at Taj, it's another to have someone be helpful then demand a tip for it. China has a billion people too, but life there is far less horrid, dirty and bureaucratic. While the Chinese government is pretty deplorable, something is going right there, compared to India. Another problem with India is the mind-numbing Colonial-era bureaucracy -- to start a small business in India it takes months of paperwork just to get a business license. You have to get papers signed, resigned, rubber stamped by ten different offices and then pay crazy expensive bribes to everyone along the way. The problem is the government. It's an obsession with administivia at the expense of entrepreneurs.
- sandGorgon 14y ago
  The comparison with china is, IMHO, pretty much apples to oranges. You are comparing industrialized portions of China with India's countryside (notwithstanding the forced removal of Beijing's slums for the Olympics http://olympics.scmp.com/Article.aspx?id=1419&section=insight http://olympics.scmp.com/Article.aspx?id=1419&section=in...). If you need to find fault with the slow pace of reforms, I give you democracy and cite US Health Reforms as an excuse - imagine if you had one billion rather than 300 million to work with. As India's MoS-Small Scale Industries' Sachin Pilot once put it - "inclusive development vs growth". Hoping that people will not cheat you at Bangkok's KhaoSan road is a bit too optimistic. Existence of ThornTree and Tripadvisor with their "Tourist Trap" sections is indeed because this is a human, not a regional phenomena. I'm sad that you wont go back to India because of it - I really wish you had not stayed at Paharganj, but instead stayed somewhere inside Delhi. I wish you had skipped Taj Mahal altogether and instead taken a walk to Hauz Khas Village, bang in the middle of New Delhi - which completely epitomises India's bohemian kitsch, shopping, food, music along with monuments that predate the Taj Mahal by atleast 300 years. Maybe you could have dropped in to have a cup of coffee at one of the cafe's there that operate on an honor system rather than a bill. Your tourist trap experience, colored the rest of your viewpoints and I'm truly sad at that.
  - briandear 14y ago
    Comparing downtown Delhi with downtown Shanghai is no comparison. I've lived an traveled in the Chinese countryside and that poverty is not even in the same ballpark as India.
- asto 14y ago
  It's easy to see why corruption in China would reduce. People are executed for it in China.[1] Hard to get scammers even behind bars in India. [1] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=china+executed+corruption https://www.google.co.in/search?q=china+executed+corruption

briandear 14y ago

It's hard to be sympathetic when walking through Paharganj in Delhi and have hundreds of con artists just outright lying and trying to scam well meaning tourists. I won't go back to India because of it. It's one thing to pay a guy to take pictures of you at Taj, it's another to have someone be helpful then demand a tip for it. China has a billion people too, but life there is far less horrid, dirty and bureaucratic. While the Chinese government is pretty deplorable, something is going right there, compared to India. Another problem with India is the mind-numbing Colonial-era bureaucracy -- to start a small business in India it takes months of paperwork just to get a business license. You have to get papers signed, resigned, rubber stamped by ten different offices and then pay crazy expensive bribes to everyone along the way. The problem is the government. It's an obsession with administivia at the expense of entrepreneurs.

sandGorgon 14y ago
The comparison with china is, IMHO, pretty much apples to oranges. You are comparing industrialized portions of China with India's countryside (notwithstanding the forced removal of Beijing's slums for the Olympics http://olympics.scmp.com/Article.aspx?id=1419&section=insight http://olympics.scmp.com/Article.aspx?id=1419&section=in...). If you need to find fault with the slow pace of reforms, I give you democracy and cite US Health Reforms as an excuse - imagine if you had one billion rather than 300 million to work with. As India's MoS-Small Scale Industries' Sachin Pilot once put it - "inclusive development vs growth". Hoping that people will not cheat you at Bangkok's KhaoSan road is a bit too optimistic. Existence of ThornTree and Tripadvisor with their "Tourist Trap" sections is indeed because this is a human, not a regional phenomena. I'm sad that you wont go back to India because of it - I really wish you had not stayed at Paharganj, but instead stayed somewhere inside Delhi. I wish you had skipped Taj Mahal altogether and instead taken a walk to Hauz Khas Village, bang in the middle of New Delhi - which completely epitomises India's bohemian kitsch, shopping, food, music along with monuments that predate the Taj Mahal by atleast 300 years. Maybe you could have dropped in to have a cup of coffee at one of the cafe's there that operate on an honor system rather than a bill. Your tourist trap experience, colored the rest of your viewpoints and I'm truly sad at that.
- briandear 14y ago
  Comparing downtown Delhi with downtown Shanghai is no comparison. I've lived an traveled in the Chinese countryside and that poverty is not even in the same ballpark as India.
asto 14y ago
It's easy to see why corruption in China would reduce. People are executed for it in China.[1] Hard to get scammers even behind bars in India. [1] https://www.google.co.in/search?q=china+executed+corruption https://www.google.co.in/search?q=china+executed+corruption