April 25, 7:34 am, Fort Kochi
Sorry again, I fell asleep again last night while I was trying to
write. I kept banging my head on the wall when I would nod off. Haha.
So I just gave it up. I guess I was pretty tired from the night on the
train. But I feel great now. I slept like a baby last night.
So anyway, we made our way over here to Fort Kochi from the train
station in Ernakulam. The area of Kochi is made up of some islands and
peninsulas. Some are connected by ferries, some bridges. Ernakulam is
the main busy city area but Fort Kochi is the place to be. It is so
laid back and quiet compared to the mainland. After looking around a
little, we found this great place to stay. It's perfect. The rooms are
nice, nice bathrooms, AC, and there is even a nice new computer in the
little lobby area with Internet. And they have wifi. Imagine that!
Yeah, so the place is great. The guy who works here, Babish is awesome
too. He's super friendly and gave us really good info on where to go
and what to do an stuff. He's cool. Unfortunately the Internet hasn't
been working since last night... I guess just a little reminder that
we are still in India after all.
Fort Kochi and this area was were the Portuguese and Dutch and Chinese
all did a lot of business back in the day. I think Kerala is kind of
the spice capital and tea capital. Vasco de Gama lived here and
actually died and was buried here. They later moved his remains back
to Lisbon, but we went and saw the church and you can still see the
tombstone where he was buried. Anyway, so the area has a nice feel to
it. The architecture has sort of a Portuguese feel I guess.
Another interesting thing about Kerala (the state that Kochi is in),
is that it is India's only socialist / communist state. That is who
has been elected since like the 50's and you still see the hammer and
sickle symbol all over. Suprisingly, though, it has been very good for
the state. My book was explaining that it has a much higher literacy
rate than the rest of India, a much higher life expectancy, and
excelled in some other statistics too. Kind of interesting.
The people here are known for being more friendly and I think I agree.
People do seem to be generally more happy and friendly towards us,
like Babish. It all just makes this a nice place to be. We even played
a little cricket with some guys down the street at the park. It was
funny.
We went to breakfast yesterday at this Kashi cafe and it was amazing.
I got French toast and a bunch of fresh fruit. The French toast was
honestly some of the best I've ever had. It was so good.
After breakfast we walked around and saw some of the old churhes. One
is supposed to be the first European church built in India. We also
hit up some shops and vendors. I bought a couple of these leaf
painting things. One of Shiva and one of Ganesh on these leaves.
They're kinda cool. We bargained a pretty good deal when we bought
four of them. I think I'll frame mine and maybe put them in my office
in my new house. We also saw the old Chinese fishing nets out by the
water. I guess they are a remnant of the influence of Chinese traders
here. I also bought a shirt. He started at 300 and I said 200 and he
said 250 and I said 225. Not bad. I'm finding that in the tourist
areas, at least, you should go really low because I think their prices
are way high. Plus it is off season here, so people are willing to
give us better deals.
Anyway, later we took the ferry to ernskulam. It was busy and crazy
and we really just walked around for a while. We hit some stores and
some people bought clothes and then we wandered back to the ferry and
back to the quiet of Fort Kochi. For dinner we went to this Seagull
Hotel restaurant. The service was a joke. The guy got our drinks but
then I think he didn't realize we were going to eat so we found
ourselves waiting forever. And I was starving. Finally he got the idea
that we all wanted to order. Most of us got the most expensive thing,
tiger prawns. Mine came out as something different than what I
ordered, but I ended up really enjoying it. They were basically the
size of normal shrimp back home, I guess jumbo shrimp. But I don't
know about tiger prawns. I think they were supposed to be bigger. But
anyway, mine was masala and it was pretty spicy but I really liked it.
I ate it with paratha (sp?), this flaky delicious type of bread and it
really just hit the spot. I ate like 10 or 11 prawns because I ate
some other people's after finishing mine. Mmm. Holy cholesterol. I was
so full and so satisfied. Everything was right in the world. Haha.
After that we just came back to the hotel. We caught American idol on
tv, saw Noop dog get sent home, and Lil Rounds. Today I think we're
getting Ayurvedic massages! I can't wait. Kerala is where Ayurveda was
born. They have places all over here. So it wouldn't be right not to
try it while we're here, right? Tomorrow we're going to rent a house
boat, I think for a full 24 hrs before we head back on Monday night.
I'll keep you posted though, of course.
Oh yeah, one funny thing before I go. Mullet. The guy who snagged us
and brought us over to this hotel to check it out is this auto driver
with a killer mullet. He was nice, but kind of annoying at the same
time. He really wanted to take us on a tour in his rickshaw and so he
kept following us around. He would like pop up out of nowhere. Like
after we ate breakfast he came zooming up. We're like, oh no, mullet
is back. We half expected him to be sitting at our hotel waiting for
us when we got home last night.
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