Day 17

Day 17

April 27, 8:17 am, Kerala backwater

Well I feel bad, I actually missed a day. I was going to write last
night but ended up falling asleep early. I guess 1 day out of 35 is
not bad, but still I wish I hadn't missed a day.

Yesterday and the day before were pretty much just spent humming
around Fort Cochin. It was nice. We ate good food, worked the shops,
just relaxed a lot. We ate a couple of times a the tea pot, which I
thought was fairly good. Not as good as kashi cafe though. We did get
the death by chocolate, and I really enjoyed that. It was basically
just a warm chocolate cake but it was good.

On Saturday night we went to a performance of Kathkali. It's a
traditional form of play / dance storytelling that comes from the
area. They paint there faces quite intricately. It is actually pretty
strange. They don't talk, so everything is acted out with these
overdone facial expressions and then also hand gestures, almost like
sign language. But they do these really crazy faces... it's quite
amusing but a little creepy too. It's only guys, so the guys play the
girls. And then there are a couple of people playing drums and one guy
singing and banging these little cymbals the whole time. At one point
I thought I was going to go crazy because they were so loud and
repetitive.

I almost made a big purchase and bought a nice patchwork bed cover,
but after three visits to the guy, he wouldn't come down to the price
I wanted to pay and so I walked out. He was being a punk. He was upset
because I was in there dealing with him and Amy and Aurora were there
too and they were trying to talk him lower and I was listening to
them. He didn't like that. I think he knew I wanted it and so he felt
like he could rip me off a little, but then I started listening to
them and so he got upset and wouldn't go any lower. The guy wanted
over a hundred dollars. Maybe it was worth that much, but I don't
know. I'll keep looking while I'm in India, maybe I'll find something
somewhere else.

Yesterday morning we took a couple of taxis down to Allepey where we
had arranged to rent a houseboat overnight. There are all of these
waterways here and lots and lots of houseboats that navigate them.
It's pretty neat. The people live out on these narrow stretches of
land and use the water to get around. Most of them have little canoes.
They also use the rivers to bathe and to do laundry.

It's very pretty out here, very relaxing. Our houseboat has 3 bedrooms
and a common area out in the front. It's nice. So we basically just
cruised around. They fed us lunch (fish) and dinner and then we parked
for the evening and now we are heading back to Allepey.

It was really nice watching the sun go down last night. It was finally
cool and we could really enjoy it. Then as dusk fell bats started
flying all around and that was fun to watch too. But then as night set
in, the bugs came out. Oh my. It was insane. They were swarming
everywhere. We tried to eat dinner, but eventually just gave up as the
number of mosquitoes we could count on our plates started reaching
double digits. It was actually quite comical watching everyone
smacking themselves in the face and picking bugs out of their food and
spitting them out when they would fly into their mouths. Ah, good
times. We accepted defeat and surrendered our food to them.

Then they decided to bring out the bug light, which they hung out on
the front of the boat. It basically just attracted most of the bugs to
it so they would leave us alone. But by then it was kind of too late.
We retired to our rooms. I read for a little bit and then fell asleep.
I didn't sleep that well though because I had no sheet, and it got
cold with the AC. I thought about stealing Aurora's or Katherine's,
but couldn't bring myself to do it. I tried to cover myself with some
pillows instead. Haha.

Okay I guess the trip is over. We just docked, so I better go.

day 17 photos