Exploring the hood on our first day

Sunday Feb 20

I was happy that this time around I was able to get a decent amount of sleep and got up at 5am. Maybe it won’t take me a week to get used to the hours. Rafael arrived at the hotel around noon and we decided to venture to the Central Mall which was a little further than where I went yesterday. It wasn’t so scary crossing the street this time because I had someone else with me. We had a heck of a time finding a restaurant and found out later that we were just going the wrong way. Had we turned left when leaving the hotel there would have been plenty! We walked around the perimeter of Korageon Park which was a very pretty large residential area lined with large rubber trees and bamboo. We had the world famous Osho meditation center and saw everyone wearing long red tunics which were the uniform of people staying at the meditation center. There were quite a few westerners. Finally found a nice peaceful vegetarian Italian restaurant nearby.

Late afternoon we went up to the gym with the intention of using the rooftop pool afterwards. I remembered the peaceful atmosphere of the pool when no one was in it the day before. Instead I saw a mob scene of young people and found out that on Sunday there is a brunch of unlimited food and alcohol all day on the rooftop pool area with DJ music. There were drunken kids everywhere smoking and drinking. Not my idea of a relaxing time! We did go back up that night to the rooftop restaurant to enjoy a nice meal. Damn but Raf can eat! I think he’s barely 30 and is very enthusiastic about Indian food.