Kristin Reporting!
We were back in India today in the city of Kochi, also known as Cochin. We did another ship tour so we could just sit back and relax while being taken to different sites.
The first thing we noticed when we got off the ship was that there was a long row of souvenir booths set up and some of them were selling postcards! We asked the price of the postcards as we passed by and we were told 3 for $1.00. Good price! We didn’t have time to buy any right then, but knew we could get them when we returned in the afternoon.
We loaded up on the bus and headed into the city. We passed a huge crowd of taxi drivers and their vehicles. We also passed several trucks that were decorated in fancy colors and floral patterns. We were told that these trucks belong to spice merchants, and they were parked by the port waiting for cargo to arrive. Cochin has been an important spice trading center since the fourteenth century, and I guess it still is today!
Our first stop of the day was the ‘Dutch Palace’. Our bus joined a long line of buses parked on a regular street. As soon as we got off the bus, we were being harassed by local people selling souvenir junk– hats, elephant/bell wind chimes, silk scarves, etc. These people were obnoxiously persistent and would follow us and get in our faces despite our negative signals.
Just off the street was the Dutch Palace. The building is not much of what we’d picture a palace to be. It is more or less just a mansion. Despite being referred to as the ‘Dutch Palace’ it was built by the Portuguese around 1555 as a gift to the king of Cochin. The area had been occupied by the Portuguese in 1503. The Dutch renovated the building after they supplanted the Portuguese in the area, and added some extensions around 1663 and it then became known as the Dutch Palace.
What makes the Dutch Palace special are the preserved murals of Hindu temple art that adorn many of the interior walls. The colors are vibrant and the images of Hindu gods and creatures are fun to look at. Unfortunately, pictures of the wall art weren’t allowed!
The next stop on the tour was a visit to ‘Jew Town’ to see the spice market. When we were on the bus, our guide had told us that the merchants in ‘Jew Town’ were disreputable and would overcharge for everything. It looks like there is a bit of a reputation war going on here because the shops lining road where the bus parked had this big sign over them:
We walked a few blocks away from the Dutch Palace to reach the spice market store. It seemed like a nice shop. They also sold a ton of random souvenirs. We pretty much just walked through it and out the other side and headed back to the bus.
We walked past the open door of a warehouse and the overpowering aroma of Ginger was wafting out. They had a ton of ginger in there! P.U! Next door was a shop where you could buy ginger everything.
I enjoyed the shops that had mounds of dry paint pigment piled up in bowls. The pigment looked like giant bowls of sherbert! It was very colorful and very pretty!
We noticed that the buses in India, and in other Asian countries sport talismans on or under their front bumpers. D made me take some pictures of these.
The next tour stop was another shopping stop at a store with really expensive items like statues and carpets. I enjoyed perusing the ridiculously priced artifacts and taking a few pictures. We only spent a few minutes inside however because the salesmen were hounding us as if we were actually going to buy something! Ha! (They tried to encourage us to buy something by telling us they could ship the items directly to our house!)
We were then taken to the Indo-Portuguese Museum of Cochin. This was basically a museum with artifacts from historic Cochin churches and documented the long history of Christianity in the area. It was a very small museum and was almost entirely artifacts with very little information to read. I quickly walked through in about five minutes and then went to wait outside. Pictures were not allowed inside, and this was a very boring place to stop.
Continuing the Christianity theme, we were next brought to St. Francis Church. The only interesting thing about this church is that at one time Vasco de Gama, the famous Portuguese explorer, was once buried here. However, he was only buried there for a few years and then his remains were taken back to Portugal where they remain to this day.
To me, visiting a former resting place of a famous person is just slightly more boring than visiting the actual resting place of a famous person. Both are relatively boring things to see and do. There are exceptions. For example, when the famous person has an awesome tomb carved out of stone. That might be worth admiring. But a flat plaque on the floor in the corner of an unimpressive church? No. That’s dumb.
Luckily, the tour picked up a bit with the next stop. We started walking to see the ‘Chinese Fishing Nets’. On the way, we passed some more souvenir stalls and we saw some good postcards. We asked the price and they man wanted to give us 3 for $2.00. I told him that we could get 3 for $1.00 back at the ship and he didn’t seem pleased. I was going to walk away though, so he very grudgingly agreed to give us 3 for $1.00. He didn’t seem to appreciate this sale at all! We were happy though because we had acquired a few postcards that represented our day’s activities.
When we reached the Chinese Fishing Nets, we walked along the coast to view them. These contraptions are actually quite impressive. I enjoyed watching a group of men raise and lower a net. They have massive rocks tied to ropes to act as counterweights. Simple but effective! The entire contraption is built from simple materials but the end result is mechanically very impressive.
Our walk brought us to a hotel for our ‘snack’. Lunch wasn’t included this time, but we did get soda and a really delicious banana bread. It rivaled my mom’s own baking. Yum, yum! Unfortunately, our tour was ahead of schedule so we have an entire hour to eat our snack. This would have been enough time for lunch! Oh well.
I think it was around 1:00PM when snack time was concluded and it was time to take our scenic boat ride. We loaded up on a touristy boat and drove around the harbor. There was nothing in particular to see, but we did get to view the Chinese Fishing Nets from the water, and we saw many local boats, and some water birds.
The boat conveniently took us across the harbor to where the Queen Elizabeth was docked. So it was a short walk back to the ship. We briefly perused the souvenir stalls at the port, but since we had already acquired our postcards for the day we didn’t do any further shopping. They were mostly selling knick-knacks and spices.
The day had been very hot and humid, so we were happy to call it a day. We returned to our air-conditioned state room and whiled away the hours in our usual modes of relaxation!
[Davin Interjection: This stop in India wasn’t as good as the last. There were at least five to ten times as many souvenir sellers as there should have been, and it was annoying to have them constantly hassling you. I honestly felt bad for them having to try to make money this way, but I wasn’t going to buy a bunch of junk just to help them out.
It was still a decent stop just because we got to see the Dutch Palace and the Chinese Fishing Nets. That being said, I’ll be happy to leave this land of humidity and heat behind! Some other people from the ship took a tour of the backwaters and it seems like they saw much more interesting stuff. I’ll have to keep that in mind for future reference.]
Next Stop: Dubai, UAE (April 16, 2016)
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