Today's recipes were:
Grilled Beef Tenderloin Steak with Stilton Cheese
Aged Whisky Chocolate Reduction
Nests of Fried Leek
Black Forest cake
Parmesan baskets for salad
Mediterranean Cheesecake on Tomato Coulis with a Sun Dried Tomato Glaze (repeat for new cruisers)
Cochin (now Kochi), India
Eastern Time plus 1 ½ hours
Cochin was substituted for Sri Lanka due to unrest. There have been incidents there in the last few days that showed the wisdom of this, but we were sorry to miss Sri Lanka. I really liked Cochin.
Due to some passenger reactions to Chennai, refunds for other India ports were offered. We stuck to our plan and were happy we did.
Chennai has 8 million people and Cochin has only 1 ½ million, so it was a completely different city. Cochin is about 20 years ahead of the rest of India according to our guide. He says that most families have at least one person in the family that goes to the US, UK, Far East or Europe to work and send money back home. That is why they are so prosperous. It is one of the principle seaports of the country and has 3,000 to 4,000 fishing boats. They ban fishing in June and July which are fish breeding months. The main exports in addition to seafood are rubber, latex, 15 different spices, vanilla, tea and coffee.
We were up early to watch our approach into port. It was one of the prettiest that we have had in a long time. Roscoe found a perch to watch. He reminds me of Stirling the way he is always exploring and finding new places.
We were welcomed by musicians, dancers, an elephant and armed guards. I heard one old lady discussing the elephant later in the day. She said he was so big…and had nice smooth legs, not old wrinkly ones. I will have to take note next time I see an elephant.
Our tour for the day was to visit the oldest European community in India and Matancherry, the old Jewish quarter. We visited the Dutch Palace (Mattancherry Palace) which was built buy 16th century Portuguese merchants as a gift to the Raja. Veer Kerla Varma in exchange for exclusive trading rights. We were unable to take pictures in there because of the original frescos. They were very detailed and beautiful. The palace was very small with a courtyard that contains the Hindu Temple.
The next stop was the Paradisi Synagogue built in 1568. The floor is paved with beautiful old Cantonese tiles. We removed our shoes to preserve the tiles. They looked somewhat like Delft, but we were told that the Delft is a takeoff on this. No pictures were permitted inside and I forgot to outside.
We visited the Church Of St Francis which was founded in 1503, the oldest church founded by Europeans in India. The great Portuguese explorer Vasco De Gama was originally buried here. This apparatus with the fabric is used to fan.Then we were given a little shopping tome. Not much time to cut good deals, but I did buy some stuff.
Our final tour stop was to see the Chinese nets. They are a set of permanent cantilevered fishing nets that are operated with a system of Pulleys and weights. They were probably brought to India by 14th Century Chinese merchants.
We drove through the streets and noticed much, much less poverty and litter. We were in the old section. I was told the new section was anything built after 1642! The new section may have been less nice than where we were, but I didn't hear anyone else mention that. Everywhere we looked people were working, building and collecting garbage!
The picture of smoke is a funeral and they are burning the body ( according to the person that was next to us).
I saw the count for the blog and wondered who could be giving it all the hits. I didn’t give it out to many people. Now I found out that it is on Cruise Critic and that explains the increase.
First of all, any of you that know Liz or our family would love Liz’s Blog. For professional reasons, it isn’t public at this time, but email her and tell her who you are and she will give you access. It is absolutely excellent! Love those Tiger and Elephant photos!
Sandra asked if this trip is one we would do again or if it is a “one off”. We love it. No it is not too long, no not too many sea days. We would probably not do the full world again for a long time. We do not like Asia much. We wanted to see it and this is the perfect way to do it. We know we have had a very sheltered exposure to it, but it is enough for now. We liked Thailand, but it is not on our top list to visit again. We may want to take a very long cruise around South America or maybe a 40 or 50 day cruise to Australia/NZ and stay there for a month or 6 weeks and then take a ship the same length back. That would be in a few years from now probably. The length of time on the ship is no problem at all.
Jennie, Sandra told me you were watching the blog. Thanks for all your info on Melbourne on Cruise Critic. Glad we didn’t end up taking a ship tour, had much more fun bumming around Melbourne with Greg and Jo.
Linda W, Glad you are enjoying it. Nothing as exciting as when our plane was struck by lightning!
Paul, I was surprised to have a reader from Cruise Critic. I didn’t know it was posted on there. Thanks for letting me know.
Liz and Richard, I remember reading your blog back when Liz signed us up for the day with Tong and the fishing village! Thanks for reading.
Steve and Alice, thanks for the great send off from New York! See you in 5 weeks! We will have our hands full trying to deal with all of the luggage.
Nickie, Can’t wait to get home and read your blog (I’m too cheap to read it now).
Donna, The sights, sounds and smells are overwhelming. We are very sheltered on a bus, but we don’t take those too often. Had to come back and rest after Chennai, it wore me out because it is so intense.
Cheryl, I am really trying to be careful. I don’t want to end up on shore because I am injured.
Amanda ,thanks for keeping in touch. I can only take so many food pics. Let me know what you want to see. XXOO
Jaime, I hope this gives you the taste for travel.
Di, You were the first friend I had that did extensive travel.
Joe, I think you will do one of these someday. It would be a perfect trip for you.
Nancy M, thanks for being such a loyal reader.
Sharon, Love those comments!
Liz has a contact that has a foundation that is doing some wonderful work in Cambodia. Liz and Tim donated approximately 75 uniforms to a school for children that were unable to buy them and also brought a lot of clothes for them. They visited the school to distribute them along with others that had been donated by people that weren’t traveling there. The people are small and some of the teachers could wear the children’s clothes they brought. Her blog has many pics from their visit to the school.
The area is so poor that the teachers are forced to work in the fields to supplement their teachers’ salaries. There are many ways to donate. Twenty dollars a month is what it takes to keep a teacher working in her classroom instead of the fields. Another opportunity is to buy a child a bike for $40 so they can get to high school. It doesn’t take much to make someone’s life a whole lot better and this group has many ways you can do it.
Here is the charity website. You may want to get involved in some way. http://theplf.org/
Eastern time plus 10 ½ hours… yes, somewhere in the last few days we moved the clock 30 minutes.
The paperwork to get into India is extensive and held up getting off the ship. We had Visas before leaving home, but everyone also needed a personalized landing card which wasn't available until we got into port and they checked everything over. Then we had to all wait in line to pick them up. The line did go pretty fast once we were given clearance. We also had to have a form that listed all information about any cameras etc you were taking ashore. We also had to go through security leaving and reentering the port, the busses were boarded and all of our documents checked.
We set off in our bus along the beach. This beach was hit by the tsunami with a huge loss of life and is the 3rd or 4th longest beach in the world. The people on the beach were fully clothed. We decided that they use if for the large open space. Roscoe noticed that many were playing cricket and commented, “No wonder they are such great cricket players”. There were blocks and blocks of these shelters, a huge amount of boats along the shoreline and lots of litter.
It is hard to take pictures from a moving bus and I was mostly looking. This was unbelievable. No matter what you have heard about the mass of humanity and the litter, it is still utterly shocking to see it. The pictures don't do it justice. As Dr Seth said, no matter what you thought, you will never be same after visiting India.Jeff took a quick look and went outside to talk to this really nice couple from Michigan we met on our Singapore Tour. (Stirling and Clare, come to find out they are in the Carpathian Suite on deck 7 with the double doors we always tried to spy into.) Jeff is going up there today to help the man with copying something onto the disc for the Captain.
If we weren't supposed to be somewhere, they said no, no. Roscoe was good with the dollar tips so he and I explored on our own. The dollars seemed to help us get into some of the back areas. We got up on the roof top terrace through another door that I guess was off limits. The bad part was that we forgot to close the door behind us and some others from our tour followed us and were loud. Suddenly we could hear barking dogs coming at us. They sounded mean, must have been watch dogs. (You know how I love dogs.) Anyway we got chased out of there. Roscoe stayed with the dollar while I made a hasty retreat. He got some info on the family from the guy.As we were poking around we came across the kitchen. It was hot, dark and loaded with unfamiliar smells. The man in the back is cooking on a wood stove. They wanted us to know that. I was glad we weren't eating lunch there. It was just too much for me. As was the case with each place we went, the people were very friendly. This woman got upset with us for taking pictures. (Roscoe's were much better; I need to get those from him if I can.) She was gesturing for us to come in and also (took me awhile to figure it out) to put down our cameras. She was very nice and wanted us to join her. This involved a lot of bowing. Not sure if I did what I was supposed to, but she got the message I was trying to be respectful. We were sorry she was so upset and the dollar he gave her helped. We were innocent on that one. The bad part was that I still had bare feet, Roscoe at least had socks. The front room was somewhat sticky, but the back room was really something.
We then passed this guy who was fishing in this litter filled water.
Back on the bus and driving through the streets was eye opening.
We stopped at a hotel and had refreshments and then back to the ship.
Jeff was done, but I wanted to ride the shuttle back in and see what I could see. Roscoe decided to come along and we decided that if we didn't want to get out when we got there we could just ride back to the ship.
We took the shuttle to a really fancy hotel and then the two of us decided to walk around on some of the back streets. We were right with the people so I didn't feel comfortable taking pictures. Here was poverty mixed with new American Stores like Nautica and Benetton. We couldn't figure out who would shop there enough to keep them in business. One of the Tuk Tuk (little yellow car) drivers decided he would get us to ride to a mall.We didn't want to go to a mall. He must have pestered us for half an hour. I let Roscoe deal with him while I tried not to break an ankle or get cut on the foot. At one point we went into Nautica to hide out so he would leave. He just stood outside the door with his hands on his hips waiting. We finally gave up and went back out on our walk. Eventually it just got to be too much to view all of the poverty, the sights and the smells and we went back to catch the shuttle.
