Day 64 & 65 (9-10 August)

I spent these two days in Bako National Park which is close to Kuching but an effort to get to and back from since you first have to take a bus to a boat jetty and then wait for a sufficiently large group of people and take a boat into the park since there are no trails or roads that lead into it. Given the amount of time it takes to get to the park only about 40 people visit a day in peak years. I spent most of the time wandering around in the jungles and on the beaches and looking for wildlife in the world's oldest continuous growth forest which is located there. (The rainforest there is over 100 million years old as Borneo was unaffected by the ice age. It was much more impressive than the only other rainforest I've been to which was in Costa Rica.) The wildlife I saw included Probiscous Monkeys with big noses (which are unique to Borneo and there are only about 200 left), silver monkeys, wild boars, a lepoard (that was more scared of me that I was of it when we stubbled across paths in the park's highlands), flying lemurs, an estuarine crocidile, and numerous small lizards.

Observations:
1) The rainforest and the jungle is just like any other economy. There is a limited amount of resources (soil, light, space) and all of the plants and animals are competing for them; basically its a big optimization problem. That means that in a continuous growth forest like this one was, things get very competitive to the point that you cannot see the soil and tree roots grow intertiwned over each other in the forest, which are then covered by moss that has new trees growing out of it. The animals then find unique ways to camaflouging themselves.
2) Natural bug zapper. All you need is an open florescent light and a bunch of little lizards that can hang on to the ceiling upside down. Where the park headquarters had one of these, all the lizards flocked to it as did the bugs which they ate; this kept the bugs off the people spending the night in the park.

Day 63 (8 August): Colonial Outpost in the Jungle

I spent the day today exploring the city of Kuching, which I found to be one of the most pleasant cities I've been to of its size (around 350,000 people) anywhere. I went to the Sarawak Museum (with exhibts on local industry, wildlife, and tribal populations,) the Islam Museum (detailing the history of Islam in Malaysia,) a Mosque, a Sikh Temple, a Chinese Temple, a Hindu Church. I also explored the city's colonial buildings, markets, and waterfront. At the end of the day, I took a boat trip on the river to see some of the outskirts of town more and still found that the local houses, while on stilts in traditional style, looked quite modern.

Observations:
1) The tourism authority and investment. I went to the tourism authority office to book accomodation in a local national park where I planned to spend the next two nights. There, in addition, to the local tourism information, I found materials on how to become active in investing in Malaysian Industy; I also found materials on how to buy a second home in Malaysia. I think its interesting and quite smart of the Malaysian government to be promoting such things through the tourism offices. This seems like what one of the goals of tourism should be in 'developing' countries although I'm not sure that Malaysia really is one, although it could still use foreign investment.
2) Language. I haven't mentioned this yet, but the people in Malaysia's command of English is excellent; it seems to be everybody's second language. On the streets in Kuching it is also common to hear Mandarin Chinese (as the Chinese population in Kuching is greater than 30%) and even a bit of Japanese among the older people (perhaps as a result of the Japanese occupation of Malaysia before WWII?) Since I know at least a bit of all three of these 'second' language it makes walking around and interacting quite comfortable.
3) Big business and museums. Shell Oil sponsored one of the exhibts in the Sarawak Museum on the Oil Business in Borneo. I guess this makes sense since Shell wants to promote the idea of being a 'Socially Responsible' business and it is a big part of the 'industry' in Sarawak at least from a monetary perspective.
4) Entrepenurship. I ended up in a long conversation with one of the local merchants about what he should do and what strategies he should take since he is thinking about opening a local hotel. He was asking me very detailed questions on what I thought, etc.
5) Temperment of people. The people in Kuching are hands down the friendliest people I have met on my trip so far. They genuinely are interested in talking to people who have travelled to Borneo and want to help them have a good experience.

Day 62 (7 August): Cat City

So I woke up this morning in Kuching (whose name means 'Cat City' in Malaysian) after arriving very late last night on what I expected to be the very exotic and wild island of Borneo. It turns out that Kuching despite being on a fairly remote island shared between Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei is actually a very modern and very clean city. It is still surrounded by jungle, has a nice river flowing through it, and plenty of palm trees though.

The first thing I did was head to the city's Sunday Market which I found to be rather quite, calm, and clean compared to what I expected. On the way to the Sunday Market, I met a group of Scottish Medical Student who have been living and working in the hospital in Kuching for the past month on a rotation for their Med School. I went with them to the Sarawak (the state within Malaysia) Cultural Village where they were headed again as one of their sister's was in town visiting. In the Cultural Village, we spent a couple of hours seeing traditional-style houses and talking to locals about their local tribes' lifestyles for about eight different groups that inhabit Borneo who do everything from head-hunting, fishing, and basket-weaving to having pepper farms.

Returning to Kuching in the evening, I had dinner in a seafood-only hawker food court (that the Scots recommended) where I had one of the best meals I've had on my trip so far including some huge prawns and some tasty jungle vegtable at one of the best prices as well.

Observations:
1) Cleanliness. At the Sunday Market many of the propietors had fly swatters to protect their food from flies. This is unheard of in any 'third world' market, let alone outdoor markets in 'first world' countries.
2) Fixed prices. The Sunday Market also had fixed prices. This also seems to be a sign of a first-world country, which is making me wonder if Malaysia really is a 'developing' or 'third world' country.
3) Sunday is off. Things in Kuching are actually closed in Kuching with the exception of the Sunday Market. I didn't realize there were still places that operated on such a schedule, but its kindof nice that there are.
4) Diseases in Borneo. The Scottish Med Students said that when they came to Borneo they expected to see lots of tropical or third-world type diseases like malaria in the hospital, but said that the hospital only sees such things about once every two months. They said that more common they will see 'Western diseases' that have progressed further than they usually do before people come into the hospital. They also said that first-world type problems such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes are on the rise in Sarawak.
5) Electric instrumentation. In the Cultrual Village, one of the tribesmen, had an electrified version of his local instrument. He explained that this was just part of modernization. A number of the older people thought that it was nice to keep the 'Cultural Village' despite its touristy feel because in the villages things have modernized to the point that children need to come to the village to see what life used to be like for them.
6) In the local newspaper here, I saw articles about the educational acheivements of townspeople and other general promotion of education much like in India. To see such articles, education must be highly valued and regarded.
7) The local governor's brother had died and in the newspaper there were a number of condolence notices published. What was interesting about these, however, were that they were all signed by 'Chinese' sounding businesses. There must be a lot of value to having an 'in' with the local government. Either that or people and businesses here are particularly friendly.

Day 61 (6 August): Three Cultures, within 10 minutes of each other

In the morning, I headed out with Gary and Karen to do some sightseeing in KL, since they had not done the whole city yet as they had only moved there 2 months earlier.

We started out the day by heading to the Petronas Towers which are the world's largest twin towers, now that they are not the world's tallest building although they once were. We tried to go up to the skybridge at only 1/3 of the total height, but all of the free tickets for the day had been given away. Instead we settled for getting breakfast in the food court of the huge KLCC mall inside, strolled around and took in the scene there.

From there we went to a large mosque near Merdenka Square (or Independence Square) and then the square itself which had a number of colonial buildings left form the British era. One of them housed the Malaysian History Museum and another a Catholic Church both of which we popped into. From there we took a 10 minute walk over to Chinatown at which point Karen and Gary went home (because Karen needed some rest as she is four months pregnant). I explored the markets in Chinatown as well as some Chinese temples, another 10 minute walk from there was Little India which I also checked out as well as Malaysia's largest Hindu temple.

After the full day of sightseeing I headed back to Karen and Gary's apartment for a breif bit before boarding a train back to the Kuala Lumpur airport where I would catch a flight to Kuching, which is in the Eastern part of Malaysia (off the penesula) and on the island of Borneo.

Observations:
1) Public transportation in KL is very good, but can be improved. Its only flaw is that the various train lines don't connect on one ticket. Tokyo suffers from the same problem as some lines there are owned by private companies while others are public. I am not sure what the issue is in KL.
2) Co-existence. Even though Malaysian has a number of various ethnic groups living in it, they tend to co-exist rather than be in a sort of melting pot. The Malays tend to work government and industrial type jobs; the Chinese tend to have business and money-oriented jobs; the Indians tend to have service jobs.
3) Filtering of money. Due to economic policy decisions (since the ethnic Malays have historically been the poorest,) Malays can receive loans at lower interest rates than the Chinese or the Indian populations. What frequently happens as a result is that a Chinese business owner will find a Malay front man so they can effectively get a loan at 5% instead of the 15% they would normally be charged. This just shows that when arbitrage opportunities exist, people will get smart adnd take them.
4) True Islam? In KLCC (the giant mall in the Petronas Tower) as elsewhere in Malaysia it is common to see a large percentage of the women covering their heads in Islamic tradition. What was funny about them in KLCC, which is one of the trendier malls in a city know for shopping, is that a number of these women would be wearing headscarves, but then be wearing very tight jeans and short shirts exposing their bodies. This makes me wonder why they bother to wear the headscarf at all (other than for tradition's sake.) It also makes me wonder how true to Islam most Malaysians are.
5) Domestic tourism in Malaysian is starting to pick up for Malaysian. Until very recently Malaysians had a six day work week, but now most companies are starting to move to a Monday-Friday, five-day schedule, which means Malaysians are starting to discover what it means to have a weekend and are beginning to travel within their own country more.
6) Language. Bahasa Malay is the first language in Malaysia. Karen who is originally from Puerto Rico says she can actually understand a decent bit of it although she's never studied it because a number of the words have the same roots in Arabic (due to Arabic speaking traders in both Spain and Malaysia.)
7) Singapore's acceptace of gays. According to Gary, Singapore is starting to consider encouraging homosexuality after doing a study that found that cities with higher gay populations tend to be more creative and as a result more economically prosperous. The causality of the realtionship seems a little dubious. It'll be interesting to see if Singapore can attract more gays and if that will actually make them more wealthy. Should be an interesting topic to ask people about once I get to Singapore on 11 August.

Day 60 (5 August): Hello Mr. Ambassador

After all the flight delays the previous night, I didn't arrive at the airport in Kuala Lumpur (more commonly known as KL) until the early afternoon when I was supposed to arrive early in the morning. Nonetheless, it was good to arrive and I was pleasantly surprised to find what must be the world's cleanest and most efficient airport as I was zipped through customs and on an express train into the city in no time.

When I arrived in KL, I boarded a local light rail train to meet my friend's Annie's friends (Karen and Gary) who work for the US Embassy here as part of the Foreign Service and were generous enough to offer me a free place to stay. After meeting them and taking a quick shower in their quite posh diplomatic housing, we took a quick drive through the city where I got a glimpse of the famous Petronas Towers headed to the Embassay for a happy hour with their co-workers and Embassy staff. During that time, I was fortunate to meet the US Ambassador to Malaysia and ended up having a rather lengthly 15+ minute conversation with him, since we had a common interest in Japan (as he spent a good bit of his career there), learning about his perspective on a number of Asian and Malaysian issues.

From there, we went with some of Karen and Gary's friends to get dinner at a Malaysian style hawker food court which is really a collection of outdoor food stalls with tables where people from each come and take your orders from their different menus.

Observations:
1) KL is a clean city (at least relatively.) I'm very impressed with the cleanliness of KL which probably means less than usual considering I just came from one of the world's dirtiest big cities. Nonetheless, there is no way I would have even thought about eating 'street food' in India, but it is perfectly safe here and even looks more sanitary than most sit-down restaurants in India did.
2) Embassy life is different. I guess this happens whenever you take a large number of people with something in common and put them in a place where things are very different.
3) Pollution is supposedly a problem in KL. I didn't seem to think it was bad at all (again relative to India,) but apparently Embassy staff in KL gets an small increase in their wage because of it. The Malaysians blame it on the Indonesians on Sumatra for failing to completely extinguish a forest fire (since 1997) so that whenever the winds shift, KL gets a little hazier. (Then again the Malaysians blame the Indonesians for a lot of things.)
4) No noise pollution. Drivers in KL don't use their horns which comes as a complete shock for two reasons: 1) in India drivers use their horns regardless of whether or not their are other cars around, 2) the driver is a little crazy (but nothing compared to India where cars will overtake other cars overtaking other cars that are already across the yellow lines and be in the breakdown lanes of the opposite direction's traffic while doing so.)
5) The Ringgit (Malaysia's currency) was allowed to float or be in a managed float, the same day that the Renminbi was re-pegged. I didn't know this since the international media in India didn't say anything about it. I had thought for some time that it made more sense for Malaysia to float than for China to revalue, but its interesting that the media in India didn't pick up on the development at all (especially since it actually might be more significant of a development.)

India Wrap-up

So despite all of the negative or somewhat negative sounding comments I have made about India, I am very glad that I went. In fact, I think it should almost be a required place to go visit for people from developed countries like the US because there is a lot to see and experience that words from others (myself included) cannot do justice to. Its probably cliche to say this, but it is one place for most Americans is almost certain to be 'life changing' since you can't help but change your perspective at least a little bit after having been.

Even though I am very glad to be out of the country now, I would still like to go back at some point and see some more of the mountainous regions in the north and the more remote parts of Rajastan. I both loved and hated India. It is undeinably a very dynamic place that is hard to describe or define. Nonetheless, I will not miss having taxis hail me instead of vice-versa, people grabbing my clothes asking for money, the awful smell of a lot of places, the trash, the dust, the heat, the undeinable poverty, the corruption, the scammers, the lack of any sort of 'personal space' once your outside a hotel room, etc., etc.

A couple of broader comments/observations:
1) Time in India. When I told people I was there for three-weeks, most Indians I met replied with 'oh that's short.' At this point, I think they're right that a trip to India does require at least three weeks because it takes at least one week if not longer to adjust to being there and probably another week after that before you begin enjoying it. Also getting around is a time-consuming affair.
2) India is very, very, very big in many ways. People told me this before I went, but I didn't completely understand what they meant. The population makes it big, the physical area makes it big as well, but more than either of these alone, the sheer amount of time and effort it takes to get from one place to another even when they are relatively close by makes it seem even bigger. That said I am still glad that I took the time and money required to see at least one place in each of Indians major regions: Mumbai (the West,) Calcutta (the East,) Dehli and Agra (Central,) the South (Goa and Kerala,) and the North (Dehra Dun.)
3) China vs. India. I no longer understand where this analogy comes from after having been to both. India and China are very different places besides having similarly large populations and cheap labor as a result. The Chinese government at least appears to be in control of most of its country which does not seem to be the case in India. Furthermore, poverty and poor sanitary conditions almost do not exist in China in comparison.
4) Military. This might be one thing that is also similar with China actually. Everywhere that you go in India there seems to be some kindof small military presence in terms of bases, ships, or uniformed officers on the street.
5) In India, cheap does tend to mean low quality or very low quality. This made my trip to India about twice as expensive as I planned it to be because eating budget food was just unsanitary and made me sick and staying in budget hotels was bound to get me lice or malaria (despite taking malaria medication.) At least if cheap means low quality that means markets are actually competitive though and goods and services are not just cheap arbitrarily.
6) The role of the middle class. This is an interesting one, since Indians who are in the Middle Class seem somewhat concerned about the dire situations around them, but are almost to busy protecting their own positions to do anything about it or to show any compassion. Perhaps, this is because if you show any hint of compassion, you end up with throngs of people around you begging.
7) The rules. India seems pretty close to being a lawless place to me. There clearly are laws but the enforcemnt mechanisms aren't strong enough in most places to keep people following them. Several times, I heard people comment about how they could buy their way out of situations rather cheaply if on odd chance they got caught doing something wrong.

Day 59 (4 August): Bye, bye India

Today I took in more of Dehli. I saw the Naxmi Naryan Temple (which is a newer temple also built with funds from the Birla family that fixed up the temples in Rajastan.) I also saw New Dehli's famous, Lotus flower shaped Bahai temple. On the way to that I passed by a number of the city's government buildings including the Reserve Bank of India (their central bank), parliment, and the Inida gate monument. Finally, I saw the Qutab Mintar, a 70 meter tall stone towere, which is from the old city, actually the 4th attempt at building a lasting city; also next to that is India's oldest Mosque since it was from the Moghul era. The present city is the 8th attempt and it seems to have finally stuck. On the way back, I saw the embassay neighborhood of the city.

From there I went back to my hotel, ate, took a shower, and watched some Indian news programs on TV because I thought I had time for my flight out which when I check two days earlier was still scheduled for 11:40 pm. Eventually, I got bored and headed to the airport, where I thought I'd have time to check some e-mail. I arrived at 7:10 to find out that the previous day my flight had been moved up to 7:55, meaning I barely made it given customs for international flights, etc.

When I arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka, I was supposed to only have to wait 3.5 hours for a middle of the night connection, but now it was just under eight hours. Apparently, just under eight hours (7.75 hours) means that Sri Lankan airlines didn't have to give me a hotel room to stay in when if it was eight hours they would have. I spent a pleasant night wandering around the airport in Sri Lanka and try to find places to sleep--unfortunately there were none that were suitable. On the upside though, based on the airport alone in Sri Lanka, I was finally in a clean country again. On the downside, my morning flight was delayed by 2.5 hours meaning I spent nearly 10 hours in the Colombo airport.

Observations:
1) Parts of Dehli look like Washington DC and almost seem to be designed after it. The parliment building is at the end of Raja path which is similar to the mall, just replace the Washington Monument with the India gate. Another example is that the Reserve Bank of India building appears from the outside at least to have the same floor plan as the main Federal Reserve building; RBI's facade, however, isn't nearly as nice.
2) The Embassay enclave and government areas which are closer to the airport look entirely different than the rest of the city. I wonder if the Indian government thinks that by keeping the roads functioning and this part of the city clean if they really think they can make foreign leaders who visit think that India is clean, has good roads, and no poverty problems because if you were to look at these areas alone that is what you would conclude.
3) Sri Lankan Airlines. Sri Lankan was actually a nice airline (although I think it really is Emeriates operating under a different name) given the high number of code share routes. Nonetheless, I think they scammed a bunch of people into camping out in the airport as several flights arrived just under the eight hour window for connections and every morning connection flight was delayed by at least two hours.

Day 58 (3 August): Indian Post Office

I took an early flight back to Dehli this morning. After checking into the hotel again, I went to the New Dehli GPO or general post office to ship some things I have accumulated along my travels back to the US. It was an experience that lasted almost three hours.

After that I took in some sights. First I saw the 'Red Fort' which was a Moghul Fort like the one in Agra although architecularly much less interesting. Historically, it was a little more so, since this is where Nehru made his famous speech on the eve of Indian Independence. Furthermore, this fort was also used by the British as a colonial command post and had buildings from that era inside it.
From there I went to Hanuman's tomb, which was another Moghul tomb, that predates the Taj Mahal in Agra, and is nice, but slightly less impressive.

To end the day I saw and ate dinner in Connaught Place which is the modern day commerical heart of Dehli. The place is three concentric circular roads, designed by a British city planner, filled with shops, trash, homeless people, and traffic buzzing around it.

Observations:
1) Ayn Rand in India. On my flight this morning I saw for the n-th time an upper- or middle-class looking Indian reading an Ayn Rand book. The longer I thought about it the more it made sense. To enjoy India and to succeed in India, it is almost essential to adopt Ayn Rand's Objectivist philisophy towards life.
2) The Post Office. This was a real experience. The number of forms I had to fill out was silly. They also have people who take pieces of fabric and wrap up whatever you want to mail and then stich it together to make a package rather than using a cardboard box as we would in the US. I can only imagine what the people at the US Post Office that receives my package will be thinking when they get this strange looking thing that arrives.
3) At the 'Red Fort' at any height where people could reach, gems that were supposed to be inlaid in marble were missing. People must have stolen them from the historical site to make some money.
4) Pissing in the streets. As a solution to people pissing anywhere in the street problem found throughout India, Dehli has some short tiled walls with drains at the bottom to avoid having people going just anywhere. You can still see people peeing in public though since there are no walls around these public urinals.
5) Light beer in India is called 'Diet Beer'. They don't seem to have low-carb yet as 'diet beer' can only be found in bigger cities like Dehli.
6) Internet cafes and porn. It seems like such a common thing at this point that I haven't yet commented on it, but at every internet cafe I've been to in India there has been at least one person surfing the web for porn. Also many of the browsers are book marked to it. I can't imagine anyone doing this in the US or almost anywhere else in an internet cafe.

Day 57 (2 August): Jain Temples and Camel Rides

After waking at 5:30 and getting to a safer hotel, I finally got in some sleep, since I couldn't the night before. Today turned out to be much better; most of what I did today was at the suggestion of my friend Umung's mother who I stayed with in Dehra Dun.

I went to a town called Sanganeer which is south of Jaipur. There I saw a bunch of small Jain temples that foreign tourist apparently never go to. The people at each were very friendly and excited that I was interested in Jainism at any level and knew what it was. In Sanganeer, I also saw a couple textile shops as this is where Indian 'wood' block textiles come from. From there, I went further south about another 30 km at the suggestion of one of worshipers at the temples in Sanganner to see a 'Jain Cathedral.' The building which was out in the middle of nowhere turned out to be one of the most spectacular and pleasant sights in India so far and was probably even nicer looking than the Taj Mahal at Sunset. There were a number of people in prayer when I was there and a lot of music and even a couple of people who were in states of trance which made it really interesting. Anyone that spoke a bit of English there wanted to talk to me, so I had a couple broken English conversations about where I'm from, what I do, whether I like the temple or not, etc.

From there I went to a place called Choki Dhani which is a 'replica,' '5 star' version of a rural Rajastani Village set up for upper-middle class Indians. There I saw some typical Rajastani dances, kids doing acrobatics, and even got to ride a camel. That was followed by one of the tastiest meals I've had in India so far and actually at a relatively cheap price. It was also nice, since even though it was touristy, it was meant for Indian tourist, not foreign ones like me. And finally I could eat some 'Indian Street Food' that wasn't safe to eat elsewere but looked tasty elsewhere.

Observations:
1) The world is small. For the second time on my trip I met some people who I didn't know before but lived within a couple blocks from where I did in San Diego. This time the family was an Indian one that had moved to the US, so the father (originally from Mumbai) could work on Oceanography at Scripps (which is affiliated with UCSD.)
2) Non-resident Indians don't invest in India. That was a headline in the Times of India today. Interesting, but seems obvious why to me after being in India for this long. They just send money back to their families instead.
3) Lack of computer skills. I also spent time today trying to get pictures from my digital camera onto a CD. It was shocking how incompetent the people were at the internet cafe at using a CD burner and a SD memory card reader, especially since two of them who were working on the 'project' claimed to have degrees in computer science; obviously not very strong ones.
4) My rickshaw driver today was rather friendly. I decided that when I was stopping for dinner that I'd give him 40 Rs to buy his own dinner across the street, since he had gone out of the way to help me find random, hidden Jain temples. He was more appreciative than anyone I have seen before and ended buying a beer to share with me once I got back to Jaipur in appreciation. He then went on and on and on about how food is all that matters in life and that food is why there is war, etc. Kindof interesting insight into the life of a rickshaw driver which isn't the easiest.

Day 56 (1 August): Encounter with Scammers?

Today I met the guy who I struck up the conversation with initally yesterday at my hotel, since he was supposed to take me to Samode today and I was supposed to cook him and his friends 'American food' for dinner in exchange.

The day turned out rather differently. In the morning I did meet him and we had several cups of Inidan tea. The character from the night before showed up and offered to let me stay in his 'family's hotel' since it was relatively empty as it was the low season. In retrospect, I probably should have refuse this offer, but it seemed genuine and friendly at the time. The hotel which I moved to was quite nice so his story seemed legit although it began to fall apart latter in the day when details failed to add up.

I ended up getting taken by his friend's rather than the inital 'friends' I met to Lake Ramgar instead since he said it was nicer. It was OK, but I doubt it was nicer.

When we came back he gave me a pitch about how he should ship some gems worth $40K to a PO box with my name in the US and his friends there could pick me up at the airport when I return home and then he would pay me $40K when they got their gems back; his story was that his family's gem business gets taxed at 250% for exports to the US and he needed friends like me to beat his the tariffs and that justified why he could afford to pay me their 'full value'. He promised me that it was legit and there was nothing illegal about it since tourist get a high allowance to help Inidan cottage industries that exporters don't. Obviously this still sounded very suspicious, but I was already in a somewhat compromised position (as I moved my stuff to his 'free' hotel room) so I pretended to go along with his story at this point and said I'd think about it. He thought that was great and said we'd go to the Post Office together the next day at 9 am to mail the gems.

This had me feeling very nervous and looking for ways out. At this point though he didn't let one of his 'friends' or himself leave my sight. He took me to dinner and then we went to have a drink at the 'Tiger Fort' which overlooks the city lights (similar to the pictures of cars you see overlooking LA at night.) He ended up talking and wanting to stay there until 3 am while I kept looking for ways to let him know subtley that I knew he was trying to scam me somehow. Eventually, I worked that into a conversation with one of his friends. Soon thereafter the head scammer told me that he could pick me up at 12 noon instead--I think giving me an out since he knew that I knew he was up to something.

Once they dropped me back at 'his families' hotel at 3:30 am, I set my alarm for 5:30 am so I'd be sure I could get out of the situation as safely as possible.

Observations:
1) These scammers are very good. I don't think the inital guy I met was the one who 'referred' me to the head scammer, but perhaps it was one of his friends. Especially since I was the one who struck up the conversation with the inital guy and he was actually going to Galtar as were his friends. I'm not sure who or when these guys decided to play this game on me, but since it was through 'friends' of 'friends' of 'friends' it seemed more convincing than it should have, especially given that I was already pretty highly on guard and very suspicous of trusting anyone I'd met in India unless they were my friend's parents. The whole situation makes me wonder how much of the previous day was 'real.'
2) Turbins have multiple uses and are another example of Indian efficiency. They are used unwrapped to carry things. When on the head they are meant to block the sun. They are also used as 'air conditioning' by adding water to cool people off.
3) Taxes. Everyone, all around the world wants to avoid them. The head scammer guy claimed he operated reatil store fronts when his business was primarily export to get him out of taxes. Whether or not this is true I'm not sure because the guy was clearly not trustable.
4) Trash. Apparently the government in Jaipur (and elsewhere in India) has tried installing public trash cans to help avoid the mass piles of trash in the street and litter everywhere that are common in India, but the effort failed. Apparently what happened is that people are so poor that they unbolt trash cans from the ground and sell them to other people! That's desperation.