It happened at the Airport...

Ok, who would think anything can happen while you are inside the secure area of an airport? We were both watching our bags carefully and such but you don't think you need to watch out for scam artists just quite yet.

Well, we were wrong. And it was a good one.

We just picked up our bags and made our way to the "pre-paid" taxi stand so we would get a set fare into Delhi. J got up and told the guy where we wanted to go and the cost ended up being 170 Rupees. I wasn't quite ready with everything and thinking we needed to break all the large bills we got in Malaysia, I decided to pull out a 1000 ($25 CDN) bill. I gave it to J and she passed it on to the guy but we were both still busy messing with our stuff when the guy said, 170 Rupees... I was thinking "What?" and he handed us back a 100 bill.

We really weren't thinking and since we did just get some smaller 100 bills earlier in Chennai, I thought it was my mistake (was still getting used to the new currency). So I brought out another bill and apologized.

We got our change and ticket, got into the cab and off we went.

Once we found a hotel and checked in, we went through what we had and I found I was missing almost 1000 Rupees. That freaked me out and looking real close, it was exactly 900 Rupees. We couldn't think of where we would have lost that much, no one picked us, and to pick only 900 is quite a feat.

I was a bit pissed and it didn't leave my mind. I thought where could we have lost 900? The only thing that came to mind was the Taxi counter. It added up. Give him 1000, get 100 back. Buddy pockets 900! Son of a ....

What luck huh? If we didn't get small change while in Chennai, we wouln't have had any 100's in our pockets and we (maybe) would have realized he made the switch. There's no way to prove it in any case.

Lesson is that you've got to watch when you pay. Don't look away for a minute!

On a brighter note, we've stayed one night so far...looked for a new hotel this morning (ours was a bit worn down and loud) and found a nice place with AC. Hope it's ok anyways. Time to start planning to see the sites.