India Calling - Kerala

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Day 17-18 –Farewell Cochin



So I had picked an airport hotel in Cochin with a wrap-around pool as I’d knew it’d be back to being hot. Got to the hotel SAJ earth resort and guess what? The pool was closed for maintenance –as in completely drained. Now I get mid-January is off peak and it has to be done sometime but could they not have told booking.com or emailed customers to spell it out or maybe, I don’t know, discounted the bloody rooms? The swimming pool was the only reason I booked this place. So I let them know this and they said they could probably sort out access to a private pool later. There was some palaver about breakfast vouchers which annoyingly you had to pay for separately and I had booked when prompted by booking.com. Once that was sorted we went to the rooms (again no family rooms an option), the playground and for some lunch. The hotel claimed to be 5 star but it was not, maybe it was in the ‘80’s or something, however the lunch and dinner costs were still at expensive rates (a la carte). There was only the one restaurant open which was decorated like a Chinese restaurant in Ireland in the 1990’s; the food was nice enough though but too dear. Because we are lazy and outside the resort looked like hassle, we had lunch and dinner there though.



In the afternoon I rang reception and enquired about the private pool. So they did have some sort of a suite with a small figure of 8 pool that was not in use by anyone (not sure why upgrade not offered), so the kids and I had a happy hour or so there.



There was a pool side bar with American music playing that night but sitting by a drained pool is not conducive to anything! The grounds were big and the staff would drive you around in golf carts if you liked, there was piped music in the gardens – think 1980’s Diana Ross re-released Chain Reaction. A little bit bizarre.



After earliest possible breakfast at 7:30am airport transfer was included which was good, but check out took forever! Even the driver was asking me what the hold-up was. Think it was rookie staff was the issue.



So back to a Vistara flight this time in economy which I am not sure what was the difference from premium economy on the way down there! The departure lounge in Cochin airport is full of Dutch armchairs for some reason. It looks lie someone’s front room but hey it was comfy. There were 2 makeshift clothes shops and that was it, so it was great as nothing for kids to nag for.

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