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Published: January 17th 2017
Near new Royal Enfield
These are still manufacturered and are popular as rental bikes. They are now exporting them.Black Friday started for us with a bit of a surprise and a few laughs.
Upon waking up Shelley noticed that the small bottom compartment of our pack was empty. This place is used to hold my undies and shirts. We had been robbed!!!
Looking back over the 24 hours since it had last been looked in we guessed it must have been on the ferry trip. When we boarded all the luggage was stored in a forward cabin and had been out of sight for the whole trip. We had got lax in security and hadn't bothered to padlock the zips ( to be fair in the years of travelling round Asia we seldom did) and I guess someone downstairs got a few seconds alone with them.
The laughing started when I calculated the loss. We normally travel with about 4 changes of clothes and the only undies and shirts I now owned were the ones I was wearing plus the ones in our dirty washing bag. Unfortunately we had just had our laundry done a day before so I now had two pairs of undies, one t-shirt, and two polo shirts. So new item on the
Hindustan Ambassador
Based on a Morris Oxford. Still manufactured up until 2014 travel agenda, shopping for clothes and until then daily underpants washing.
As we had decided not to go and do a house boat cruise we had breakfast and then took a tuk-tuk to the bus station. Whilst there I met a young man working for PayTM. It's a phone based payment platform which is growing rapidly (claiming 150 mio customers) due to the demonitorisation process India is undergoing. He was trying to sign up various vendors around the bus station but took the time to help us find the correct bus to Kochi, our next stop. In some ways I wish he didn't. The 1 hour ride was the worst bus ride of the trip. The driver I am sure had a death wish! At one stage I contemplated video'ing the experience but the thought of taking one hard off the back of the seat in front of me put that plan to rest. I had a giggle thinking about the face book photos from friends in NZ over Xmas who had paid big dollars for hot laps at Ruapuna and Highland Park and here we were getting the same thrills for 52 rupees.
Our first impressions of
Kochi were marred by traffic snarl ups, watching a bus vs car accident and taking out a pedestrians umbrella with the side of our tuk-tuk but once we got to Fort Kochi, a small tourist orientated suburb of Kochi we felt our Black Friday luck had changed for the better.
Having used our new rules on accomodation selection we were delighted to see that our home stay which showed really thick mattresses in their photos delivered. The homestay was owned by a businessman who had 4 big hotels in town and he had bulk buyed the mattresses so they were 5 star quality.
We took a walk around the small village and came across one of the many churches established by the Portuguese and Dutch during it establishment. The church was established in 1663 and the sign keystone above the main entrance was set in 1779. At one stage it housed the tomb of Vasco da Gama, an early Portuguese explorer before he was shipped home.
My shoulder bag had developed a rip in it so we popped in to tailor to get some emergency repairs done. 3 days later we collected the two new dresses that
Shelley got made. Not sure what happened their!
We sleep well that night in our comfy beds reflecting on the string of disasters Friday 13th had thrown our way. We were looking forward to seeing more of this great place.
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