Cochin

The next day I was a little sore from the accident, so we took it easy.

Here we have moved the bed onto the floor of the living room in our hotel to watch football early in the morning....



Headed out later with Manu to see his hometown of Cochin...

decent shot of a family on a motorcycle(there are 4, you can just see the leg of the youngest).. I think the most I saw was 5 people on one, ut I've heard of many more...



We visited the Dutch Palace (actually built by the Portugese abt 500 years ago. There are some very well preserved murals inside that tell the story of Ramayana. I like the way this pic of the exterior came out...



Cochin has an area known as Jew Town. Jews were thought to have settled in this area as early as 700 BC. It is also home to the oldest synagogue in India, called the Paradesi Synagogue. We tried to visit but it was closed to the public for Yom Kippur



Jason was a little upset!



The synagogue and Jason in front of the gates...





And one of my fav shots... schoolkids walking through the streets of Jew Town



Later, Manu took us to the beach a little before sunset, where we walked around looking at the stands and being followed by little kids wanting us to buy their homemade cards. Jason tried out some drums...



We saw the famous chinese fishing nets which you can read about here



We even lent a hand...



and saw some of the fish they caught...

Kerala backwaters, Allepey, houseboat

So the next day we left our beach paradise and Manu drove us north to Alleppey, the starting point for the famous Kerala backwater tours...

We arrived at our starting point to this...




You can see in the 2nd pic the "living room" in the front of the boat.. behind that is a private bedroom with bathroom. So onboard was me, Jason, the cook, and the driver (more on him later...)

We chilled for a while... (notice how high the ceiling is above my head... will be important shortly...






So after an hour or so we pulled over on the banks to have lunch made for us by the cook...



Jason asked the cook what kind of fish this was, and the cook looked at us like we were crazy and said "lake fish", meaning fish from the lake we were on!



Shortly after lunch I got sick (must have been the "lake fish"!
I was sitting in the front of the boat to get some fresh air and Jason was directly behind me. The captain went to turn from the wide canal into a much smaller narrow canal. He seriously misjudged the angle of the turn and ended up hitting on of these concrete pillars... All of those metal rods were vertical before the crash



The canopy came down right across my back. The seat in the front right was where I was sitting



Side view, including all the local villagers who came to see what the fuss was about...



And our story ends when I was taken to the local hospital to get Xrays ($3.20) and a pain shot ($1.75). This is the washup sink in the "surgery room"!