The end of India

Boarding the train on the 21st at about 9am to Kochi we thought we had found ourselves good places to sleep for the 4.5 hour journey but as the rules in India seem to change as soon as you've figured them all out we were ousted an hour in and were generally quite cross with the hot experience. Off the train we found a tuc-tuc which took us a short distance to a ferry. The ferry was nice cool 20 min journey on a hot day which took us a short distance from the mainland to the tip of the Fort Kochi peninsula. It seemed a nice enough town with nice colonial buildings and after we found accommodation and dumped our bags we set off by foot to explore. We walked along the bay inlet and looked at the Chinese fishing nets and their catch of the day. Walking inland to what they call "Jew Town" there were a number of antique furniture shops with gorgeous pieces such as a wooden table and 6 chairs with inlaid bone detail that would have only been about 1000 pounds but worth much more. An Italian meal at a restaurant run by what I thought I was a Russian guy made a nice change to curry that night. After a restless night of sleep in another hotter than hell room, we had a late breakfast and did some interneting. Though we had talked about it the day before it didn't dawn on me until late that it was Thanksgiving! Midday we made our way, again by ferry, back to the mainland and began looking for a place to eat Thanksgiving dinner. After a bit of faffing around over wich place to eat in we settled in a nice enough hotel restaurant and ordered. The closeest thing we could find to Turkey and all the trimmings was a tandoori Chicken and dragon vegtables. For those of you who may not know tandoori Chicken is in this case a whole Chicken coated in spices and cooked in a clay oven. As for dragon veg, that turned out to be some amazing vegtables in a spicy tempura like coating. For being away from home it wasn't too bad and the company of my wife made it as good an Indian Thanksgiving as I could have asked for. After our meal we made our way to the airport for our 20:30 flight to Mumbai, eventually taking us to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).



Airport Hell!!!



Checking in at Kochi airport we asked if there was any chance of the plane being late as we only had 2 hours connection time in Mumbai. We were told that at most it may be 15 min delayed, no sweat. Then we waited, played cards, waited, played more cards, waited, had a coffee, waited some more and ended up taking off 1hr 45min late. Sarah was on edge the whole flight! I kindly asked the flight attendants if they could ask the pilot to inform the ground staff of our situation and they said they would. When we landed we were greeted by a chap who did a great job rushing around looking like he could get us to the terminal we needed and told us they had contacted Singapore Airlines and that they knew we were coming. Great! In the end though he just passed us off on his less than stellar colleague who took us to the domestic flight terminal and not the International terminal that we needed to be at and that he couldn't do us any special favors. Damn:( Knowing that we were now hosed we made our own way to the Int'l Terminal and found the Sing Air office. A nice chap there changed our flights there to the next morning at 11:40. As it was now nearing 1am we were in a quandry, sleep at the airport or go find a hotel. We drove around with a guy for 40min looking for places and the only one we could find without going all the way into the city was 35pounds a night and the lights in that room were not working. I laughed and we made our way back to the airport. Any of you that have been to Heathrow or Singapore airports know that with enough shops, restaurants or bars you could make a night at the airport fairly entertaining. Mumbai Airport is not one of those places. 7 hours later we checked in for our flight only to find that it as well was delayed by 2 hours. Great, 5 more hours not sleeping in a not very comfortable chair. Once we boarded the flight though all was well. We had 3 seats for the 2 of us, movies to make us laugh, food to make us full and wine to make us sleepy(we had noit seen wine for 4 weeks). After a little kip on the plane we landed in Singapore, where we had to connect for our flight to Saigon, in much higher spirites. Now Singapore airport is the opposite of Mumbai. Lots to do and see, if fact the worlds largest HDTV at 103"!, and even an in transit hotel. We checked in there for 6 hours at a very reasonable rate of 20lb and awoke very refreshed for our flight to Saigon. Landing in Saigon brough and end to 37 hours of airports and were we glad to see that!