Clyde D'Souza

i wanna go to bkk for 3 days. what are the 5 best places to see there and when’s the best time.

gosh i kinda grew up here and it has left with me like its shifting sands a migrant quality – the only thing constant is change. i was part of the many 2nd generation Goan Gulfy kids. of course now i’m back in mumbai, so that makes me a “Dubai Return”.

there was a couple who fought the whole day…we met them on the vaporetta, then later at a bristo and finally in the evening near the Mona Lisa installation. wat a perfect place to have a lovers tiff!

Yup

this is where we’d rest our weary legs and sip a jamaican coffee while she played the SB collection of the finest Jazz. Here’s to you :)

another excerpt from my handscribbled travelogue (to be typed someday) “At London Heathrow airport it’s like watching crabs of ever color and specie crawl out. And 80% of them are Indian. 40% chinese, 20% european and 5% brit. ya, I love math too. Then everybody meets at um Meeting Point, which is basically this square yellow cube hanging from the ceiling that flashes the words “meeting point”. Genius, i think. and out there in india, i have to tell people, ‘ya meet me at the indicator next to the vada pav stall…no no not the one towards the stairs, but next to the gents toilet, not not at the south end…’ genius. we ofcourse, have decided to meet Shirley and Jibbs at the Travelex which is somewhere next to the left of the Meeting Point.
We are told we have to take a train from the Terminal to Hammersmith on the Pink line, then board the DLR and onward to Beckton where Shirley and Jibbs have a house at Angelica Drive.
We step out at Hammersmith at 8 pm and the cold brittle breeze slaps me on my face. The buildings here have red tiles on the rooftops. Now we have to get onto a bus, coz for some reason our hosts think its a better idea to take the 101 route home.
The double decker is mostly empty and I know I’m in london when someone next to me starts singing the old hindi classic “o mere dil ke chain”

Me with my imaginary partner who I will photoshop in..

This is a bit of an excerpt from a log that I kept while travelling.. “It’s been 7 days in London and in many ways I have internalised it. I stand on the right at the Tube escalators, I donn’t have to look at my change for like hours to figure out what’s a pound and what’s not. I can walk across the Millennium Bridge and the Big Ben without wanting to take a photo. I can sit at the Starbucks next to Tate Modern and I know the girl behind the counter.
I’m also falling in love with the idiot-proof nature of the city: look down on the road while crossing and it says “look right” (so you don’t get hit by a cute double decker), streetsigns actually tell you the time and distance it will take to walk from say Covent Garden to Leicester Square.
When you cross, cars actually wait patiently, everyone says please and thank you for the littlest thing.
It’s like the damn Queen’s sensibilites are everywhere!”