The Shipping Double Agent
An uneventful flight to Bangkok where we stayed the night before reaching Chennai at lunchtime on the 23rd May. I must say though, it was a pleasant surprise to find the leg room they allotted you on Thai International. Puts all the other airlines to shame and makes all the difference to a flight.
Settled in to the Breeze Hotel then thought it time to start contacting the shipping agent. Unfortunately I had left the address of the Chennai branch back home, having only the head office in Mumbai. The Yellow Pages solved that problem and I was soon heading off in a taxi through the chaotic Chennai streets with frequent stops for the driver to ask for directions. Part of the problem was the authorities have changed the numbering of the buildings a while back and people don't know if they are the old numbers or the new. He finally dropped me off at No. 48 and headed off. I knew it was Number 48 as it had big lettering saying so on the outside. The building was pretty grotty but that wasn't surprising, the guard downstairs said SAI Shipping was on level 5, at level 5 I was told it was on level one, down there the news was that this wasn't No 48 at all, this was No 40. 48 was a few buildings along. I finally found it, up a few flights of stairs which had no lighting making negotiating the steps quite difficult. SAI shipping turned out to be a 2 man enterprise in quite a little office. Here I learnt that the crowd I wanted was SAI Freight Pvt Ltd. A complete different company. Luckily he said they were in walking distance in quite a well known street. Thinking back on the trouble I had finding the first place in a taxi, I thought it better to walk than explain to another person the address.
I finally found SAI Freight after asking at least 20 people, dodging cow shit, stepping out of the way of motor cyclists, encountering a drunken senior citizen who almost tore up the bit of paper that had that so important address and trying hard to decipher the numbering in the street. This was apart from the stares of the street's inhabitants wondering what was an elderly white man doing here!
Finally there was a sign “SAI Freight” set out from the building. The staff at SAI Freight Pvt Ltd were young, and efficient. And the news was good.
The Kota Jaya had docked today and the containers were being unloaded. They would take care of the application for the customs inspection tomorrow, Thursday, and they hoped we would have the van by close of business Friday. Government offices are closed Sat. & Sun., we would have to wait until Monday if things didn't go smoothly.
They offered to take me back to the hotel in a taxi but the offer of riding pillion on one of the staff's motor bikes was more interesting. It gave me a first hand experience of riding in the melee. Quite interesting and surprisingly not too many close encounters.
It was quite a tiring day