Had a couple of days to kill in Trivandrum (or Thiruvananthapuram – blimey!)waiting for Jess to arrive and one of the cultural items I decided to pursue was a visit to the Puthe Maliga Palace Museum.

I paid my entrance fee and expected to be able to just wander around, but once inside I had to wait with some local tourists for the official guide to take us round.

After a few minutes of waiting the guide arrived and from the first moment he saw me, he acted as if I was the only person on his little tour. He personally ushered me from exhibit to exhibit, spoke about the various objects only in English, and dashed from room to room leaving the half a dozen or so India tourists to lag behind, waiting for those few who understood English to translate into Malayalam for the rest.

I felt incredibly awkward and made a few apologetic shrugging gestures to the rest of the group, which fell on deaf ears, well eyes. Things came to a head halfway through when one of party said something in a slightly shirty tone to the guide in Malayalam, I guess quite reasonably along the lines of: "Look mate, that English guy is not the only one on the tour you know!".

The guide was unrepentent, as far as I could tell saying: "If we stand here talking about this much longer you won't even get to see the rest of the exhibits, even less hear about them!"

At the end of the short tour, he homed in on me for a tip, and I suddenly understood the motivation for the personal service. I gave him twenty rupees – the same as it had cost me to get into the museum – which seemed not unreasonable for fifteen minutes work the museum presumably paid him to do anyway. But he was not happy. Oh well...