Cochin (the Final Countdown)

So, Cochin. After days of pretty bleak/dull travel, I was prepared to love it. (Okay, not love it. I was no longer prepared to love anything in South India. But like it, sort of, maybe.) Unfortunately, given the circumstances, such love would have been misplaced.

First, the "hotel." The room could have been much worse (with the exception of the facts that there was no television remote and because some weird fan mechanism in the bathroom ensure that the toilet paper all ended up in some bizarre wet corner), but its location was not ideal: it opened out onto the hotel restaurant, which frequently had patrons. What's wrong with a hallway, can someone please tell me? Also, there was a strange, lurch-like staff member in charge of (ruining) laundry and coming into one's room at odd hours. When I left, they said "see you next time" and I actually turned to one of them and said "Are you kidding?" So, no love.

But maybe Cochin proper was lovable? Maybe not. Our tour leader took us to his favorite place in town, a mediocre kind of seafood place which didn't serve beer, and where he tried to stiff the check (I guess the reason it's his favorite place is that they normally comp his food if he brings people, but since they didn't, he thought he'd make the rest of us pay for him. As if).

I think there may have been lots of interesting things in the city. We just didn't see them. Instead, we went to two incredibly disappointing sites (a not particularly old church and a not particularly regal Dutch palace), before making our way to Jew Town (yes, you read correctly). We strolled down Jew Street (again, not joking) to the (oldish) synagogue, which now accommodates the six Jewish families remaining in Cochin (apparently, Jewish people first arrived in Cochin more than 2000 years ago, but have in recent years moved on). It could have been an interesting story, except that our tour leader knew nothing about it, and couldn't have communicated in English even if he had. Instead, I heard him telling someone how once upon a time, there were black Jews and brown Jews and white Jews, and the black Jews worked for the white Jews. Full stop. That was his entire explanation of the Jewish community in Cochin and their 2300 year history in the area. Wow.

But Cochin was not entirely bad. The English kids and I had a great meal at a very nice restaurant near our (crappy) hotel. So nice (i.e., expensive), in fact, that after looking at the menu, one of them wanted to leave without ordering anything. My one problem was that some (or all) of the kids forgot about VAT, meaning that even though I'd overpaid, we were still stiffing the server several dollars on the tip. Not pleasant.

Also not so bad (but way too long): a traditional dance featuring heavily made-up men (one of whom played a woman) in something bordering on theatre, but communicated only through facial expressions and hand gestures. I'm not describing it well, but think Noh drama or something. And guess where we went after the performance? Back to the tour leader's favorite restaurant. When asked why we couldn't go somewhere else, he responded that it was the only nice restaurant in town. A) It wasn't nice. B) There certainly were better restaurants all around, but maybe ones where his chances of getting a free meal were even lower. And of course the place still didn't serve alcohol (much more of an inconvenience at dinner than at lunch).

But, like all bad things, our time in Cochin drew to a close, just in time for us to find out that our flight to Goa had not one but two stops, and that despite having left the hotel at 8 am, we wouldn't be arriving in Goa until 3 (and wouldn't see the inside of a hotel room until after 4). But Goa is another (mercifully brief) story that will get its own entry. Maybe tomorrow.