Cochin “Cultural” Experince. By Hollie, 12/17

We were off, finally, on another adventure out of the land of heat, humidity and sweat. On the way up to Munnar, we stopped in Cochin for a night, to experience the floating city (aka tourist city). 

Cochin fish nets



Cochin is known for its amazing fish and produce markets littering the long beaches. The fish are taken in by Chinese fishing nets, which tend to look more like slingshots than any type of food entrapment. It was all very entertaining to watch as they made this huge effort to catch fish the size of your pinky finger (if they caught anything at all). After the beach, we saw ALL of the museums, churches and synagogues in Cochin, oh, how we find them so NOT exciting! I was almost at a point of pretending I had Delhi Belly again to get out and return to the hotel. Ah, our hotel was simply amazing. Most of the buildings in Cochin are at least 200 years old and built by the English, Jewish or Portuguese, so it brought back memories of our many excursions to Europe, with the cobblestone streets and antique filled rooms.

Home is where the bed is

Our plan for the day was to go out with Renuka and see the city and maybe do a little shopping. Little did I know that the shopping would entail ONE gold store that where  half of India’s population had managed to take over. Renuka forgot to add the fact that it was WEDDING SEASON. Every bride and her family(consisting of at least 15 people and their children), were buying these immense gold necklaces that could way down an elephant….all made of 24+ carat gold. Poor country?  I think not, or the bank has their work cut out for them in loans lasting 3 lifetimes. We stayed to a little corner that we were shoved into as Mom picked out a simple gold chain with a very small pendant of Lakshmi; the God of health, prosperity, wealth, and just about everything (the women in India revere Lakshmi ). Even our little chain was enough money for one day – imagine these people buying POUNDS of gold without even a blink of hesitation, it was a little mind boggling actually. We finally made it out of the store, and sought out our car in a mess of millions of people and their gold. The word even makes me a little queasy.

Indian Theater Performers

We made it back to the hotel in time for a quick turnaround to go to a cultural dance performance, and entered into a room FULL OF….no one. It wasn’t that unsettling seeing as we are so used to eating, rooming, and being alone nearly 98% of the time. We watched the actors put on their makeup and then came the French tourists! All of a sudden we were appreciating our past  loneliness. They all came in, sat in the front row (which was of course reserved for them..), not one of them weighing under 200 pounds – and whatever view we had of the stage was suddenly gone. They continued to talk and laugh, and burp, and fart until the performance was over. It was such an experience… It was actually quite an amazing performance, of what we heard and saw of it.

We headed back for dinner at the hotel, alone again, with our own private guitar player and drummer – and we were happy. It was around 8:30 or so, our usual bedtime, but we decided to get crazy and go out for a night of shopping. We were focused on finding a Christmas outfit for me, and went into possibly every store on the street – they were all the same, sold the same things, and had the same sale techniques. We ended up with a few trinkets for the kids at school and some other necessities, YAYYY for success!!

 We didn’t feel like walking so we decided to take a tuk-tuk for a little adrenaline rush before bedtime – and it was THE BEST TIME EVER with possibly the funniest little Indian man alive. We cruised down the street, with him BAAAAAing to fat white ladies, whistling at the ancient Indian women, and driving his tuk-tuk repeatedly yelling “scuse me, ES-CUSE ME, FERRARI COMING THROUGH!!!” you kinda had to be there, peeing in our pants with us to really experience it. Sadly, we made it to the hotel and our fun was over, and WAYYYYYY past our bedtime -11:00!!!