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Published: October 26th 2009
Just in case
Just in case we forgot where we were.Thats pretty much all that was going on for us in Fort Kochin.
We stayed in a cute little guesthouse in a cute little lane. It was a cute little room for a cute little price.
But the cute little mamma who ran the place somehow forgot to mention to us that because of the cute little window in the room...THAT WE WERE GONNA BE COOKED ALIVE. We have NEVER been that hot in our lives.
We were truly in a a desperate situation. The days were bleeding hot, walking around, in the sun, coming back to our room, our clothes dripping wet with sweat, taking a shower in the water that was SCORCHING hot since the water tank was ONTOP of the house being boiled by the sun.
And then coming home after dinner to an oven to trying to "sleep". Wasn't working out for us.
I was so desperate that I invented a system that sort of cooled us down enough to grab a few minutes of sleep here and there.
I filled up a huge bucket, with the "coldest" water that would come out of the tap, and placed the bucket at the foot of the
Laughy and...
If you look closely you can see the only photo that I have of the chinese fishing nets that Kochin is famous for. bed. Then we scootched our bodies way down on the bed so that we could lie on the bed and have our feet soaking in the bucket at the same time. SOOOO uncomfortable for sleeping but it kept us reasonably cooler.
Needless to say, after two nights we switched to another guesthouse that we had found during a serious hunt that day. The new guesthouse was oh-so cool. The tile floors were cool on the feet and our room had a serious fan with a huge window that DID let in some type of breeze if it wished to present itself to us.
What else did we get up to?
Ahhh..COOKING CLASS!
Amazing. There were only four of us there, which left alot of room for questions on our part. It was wonderful.
We learnt how to make chapatis, thoram (sort of dry veg. dish with shredded fresh coconut!), an eggplant dish and something else. It was all delicious and very educational.
Amongst the tourist restos in Fort Kochin we did happen to find a couple of gems. One was the local diner which served up ridiculously cheap south indian veg. food (uttapams-femented rice and lentil pancake).
Kathakali Performance
It was quite interesting to watch the performers applying the make up before the show. Also and upper scale place which served delicious and straight to the point, healthy south indian fare. Fantastisch!!
And we cannot forget the amazing tea house I found that was decked out with tea pots hanging from the ceiling. I was in heaven. I got to indulge in my SECOND green tea of the trip. Sigh.
I also dragged Guillaume with me to go see a traditional Keralan play. It was interesting to watch and air conditioned in the place, so we were just fine.
The kathakali is a play that is performed using no words, just sign language and facial expressions. Lucky for us, being a performance for tourists, there was a quick intro before the performance explaining and demonstrating all the "lingo".
Ex. Eyebrows UP for "suprised"...and so forth.
The best part was when the half-evil/half-good guy was chasing the woman back and forth on the stage trying to grab her breasts.
There were LOTS of eyebrows being raised then, I can tell you that much.
I don't remember our visit there being overly long, we were too excited to bust a move and head up to the cool mountain climate of Munnar.
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Marie-France Lessor
non-member comment
Looks awesome
Good to have an update. Can't wait to try some of your cooking again. The mountains will sure give you some cooler temps. I am leaving in 3 weeks for Maui for a couple of weeks. I can't wait to be sweating again. The best part is, I will be skiing as soon as I get back to Golden. Talk to you soon. M.F.