12/2/10 Cherthala to Kollam (Friday)

Liz had an awful night sleep witrh her guts burning and churning with a bit of 'Ghandis Revenge'. She spent the morning making good acquaintance with the toilet and generally feeling pretty rough. We have both been suprisingly well on this trip through India though, despite eating at all sorts of places we shouldn't have...especially the temple foods we've eaten. We went for breakfast and Liz asked just to have toast but the breakfast had already been cooked. We were given huge pancakes, rice appams, eggs and some pickle. Liz really didn't want any so went to lie down but fortunately Tobias and Phil were able to get thorough some of it. At 10 oclock a rickshaw arrived to drive us all to the train station as we were all making our way southwards on the same train. We managed to load all of our and Tobias's stuff in and said our thankyous and goodbyes to the family. Once at the station the rickshaw driver didn't ask for any money so the family must have paid for it. Liz stayed with the bags on one of the platforms while the two men had to walk across the tracks to the ticket office opposite. They returned safely with their tickets and we were told we would need to change trains at Kayamkulam station to get to the final destination . We were heading to Kollam and Tobias was off to the beach at Varkala. We knew that Tobias needed the same train as us but he was a bit panicky and kept asking people for directions etc. He had no idea that the Indians will say yes when asked anything if they don't understand as they don't want to appear ignorant. As we had been caught out before with the Indian "yessing" we tried to advise him but he didn't want to know so we decided to leave him to it. The first train arrived and we all sat together in a carriage until Kayamkulum. Liz tried to sleep for that part of the journey and felt alot better by the time we reached the destination. We got off and the men went off to see where we needed to be for the next train and get some tickets. After a few minutes Tobias went running past liz shouting goodbye and that his train was about to leave. A few minutes after that Phli arrived with our tickets saying that Tobias had got in a panic and pushed his way to the front of the queue shouting "my train is leaving !!" As it happened we were on the same train and he was still waiting when we got to the platform. We had all got general tickets which means you can jump on anywhere and find a seat but you may have to pay an extra few rupees for the seat you have. Tobias was asking an Indian man where he needed to get on the train. We knew from our travels that the cheap seats are always standing room only (if that) and we were going to get on where we could. However when the train pulled in we followed Tobias for some reason and then couldn't actually fit on the train carriage he'd gone to so missed the train !!! We don't know why we'd followed when we normally did our own thing with the trains. Thankfully there was another train going to Kollum in ten minutes time from the next platform so there was no big problem. Tobias decided to go off and get some food leaving us with his bags and wasn't back by the time our train pulled in. Fortunately he got back just in time as we would have left them so we didn't miss another train. Safely on the right train and in seats we realised that the train was really dirty. It was full of litter and all the seats were dirty...euch, it was the worst train we'd been on so far. We were only on it for 40 minutes though and once at Kollum we got a rickshaw to a hotel. The room there was very clean but had no window but it was nice and cheap and not too far from anywhere. We had the usual reems of forms to fill out and they asked for our passports to make copies but we conveniently forgot to deliver them. We were there for a couple of nights and noone asked for them so its obviously just an old fashioned paper exercise that they don't really need to do. Security here is a real farce as its so half done. You can bypass most security screening with none of the officers even noticing let alone approaching you. We have filled out alot of hotel forms with false names and noone has noticed or checked !! When we booked into the hotel Phil asked if we could leave our bags there on the day we were catching a night train to Madurai. They said"yes" then proceeded to start looking up train time tables and ticketing information. Phil tried asking again and they said "yes" then carried on looking things up. It took us ages and Phil had to show them we had a ticket for them to understand what we wanted. Eventually they realised and said they understood but we weren't very convinced. We dropped our bags off and went straight into the town to book a trip around the backwaters of Kollam as we hadn't felt we had seen an awful lot of it in Kerala. Kollum is desribed as a tranquil trading town and one of the oldest ports in the Arabian Sea. It had once been a major commerce hub. We really didn't like it at all. It was really busy, dirty and the people were quite unfriendly and brusk and we were being stared at alot again. We felt like we were back in the North but at least we weren't too hassled. As we were walking to the tour office we passed by a CT and MRI place with its own ambulance to bring the patients. Hopefully the NHS doesn't think thats a good idea, we have enough patients without bringing any more. We also saw a mortuary van pass us by and saw a pretty grotty looking hospital not at all like WRH. Liz had bought a repalcement pair of sandals in Thailand after leaving her others in Luang Prabang but the sole has already fell off three times so we stopped to get the sole repaired again and this time we had it sewn on as well as glued. We found an ATM but it wouldn't work then found the tour office. After booking a half day tour for the next morning we went to the Jerome Bishop centre to use the internet and found a really cute cafe which served Phil a delicious microwave 'beef' burger. Liz wasn't feeling particularly like eating but had some icecream instead which was just the job for the bad belly. The people in there were acting like they'd never seen white people before and we got lots of attention. We certainly can imagine the stares the first Indian immigrants to the UK must have got but it all feels very un PC to us now and sometimes quite rude. Alot of people will stare and laugh amongst themselves which is really rude but we aren't sure they even realise that we find it rude, its just the way the people are here, completely different.We always try to learn the local word for hello as this seems to endear us to the locals and we get a look of suprise followed by huge smiles and a more friendly welcome. After eating we used the internet for a while but Phil had trouble downloading his photos so wasted three hours but Liz managed to type alot of blog.We called into another internet place but the man working there hadn't a clue about computers and couldn't tell us where to plug in the USB cable and kept pointing to the CD drive. Eventually we got through what we wanted and another man handed us the correct connection but the photos still wouldn't load so we left. We tried three rickshaws but noone could understand our hotel name as we were saying the English version and didn't know the Tamil version. We ended up walking back to the hotel and then it took us another ten minutes walk to find anywhere serving drinks despite the liar saying there wer elots of places near our hotel. We had a couple of soft drinks then went off to bed adfter watching tv for a while. Sadly India doesn't have much night life where we have been staying, outside of Mumbai and Goa so we have had lots of early nights in watching TV, just like being at home!!!!

13/2/10 Kollum (Saturday)

We woke up , checked out and tried to explain again about leaving our bags. It was too much hard work at that time in the morning but we managed to get understood and left our bags near reception. We also left some laundry the night before and hoped that it would be back later as there was alot lost in translation at the hotel. We caught a rickshaw to the boat port and went to tell the tour office we were there and were greeted by a real grumpy woman. We were a bit early so we walked to get some food and saw a bakers. We both felt really queasy and thought it might have been the malaria tablets we'd had on empty stomachs. Then halfway up the road Liz was sick ! She felt alot better after that but we both needed food. We walked in to the bakers and the girl there looked up but then carried on what she was doing and didn't try to serve us....weird people!! Kollum is one of the main tourist towns on the main backwater route so they should be used to tourists but you would never think so. When she finally served us we got two pastries to eat while we were waiting for the tour bus to come. After the pastry, sugary drinks and some plain biscuits we both felt alot better and were fine by the time the tour bus arrived at 9am. The bus turned up and we were joined by two German women, three Italian girls and a nice Israeli couple. We drove for 45 minutes out of the town and into the countryside along a lovely stretch of palm fringed water to a village near the Northern shores of Lake Ashtamudi. The lake has many small islands where many little communities live. Lots of the villagers came out to greet us when we arrived and we said Namaskara and got big smiles while the other guests took photos but didn't really interact. The boatman arrived and introduced himself with good English. He took us along to his big hand built wooden boat. The backwaters there were much more interesting than the ones we'd seen in Cherthala and we saw lots of the village life and people . We went along saying hello to the people and ducking under really low bridges along the way. We stopped to take a look at boat building in progress. It takes 6 men two months to build the boats. They are made of wooden planks stitched together with rope made from coconut fibres, then sealed with a mix of fish and coconut oils. We passed a few local fish sellers travelling along in their canoes stopping to serve people on the river banks, it was all very idyllic and simple and completely different to life in the towns. We saw herons, kingfisher and cormorants and stopped to feed the fish in a fishery lake. The opposite lake was for tiger prawn but was not being used so we couldn't see them. We carried along until we reached a place where a man was toddy tapping. Toddy tapping is collecting of juice from a palm plant which then ferments into a potent alcoholic drink called Toddy. We all went to a small straw shack and inside the man gave us a cup of Toddy to try. We both dived in to try it but everyone else refused probably worried for their bellies (Phil had spoken to another toddy tapper we'd seen up a tree overlooking our open air shower in Kerela) Phil decided to buy a bottle but was handed an old plastic pop bottle with a dirty lid with the toddy in. There were several black floaters in it and it smelt awful but it was only a few rupees so it didn't break the bank. Liz put it in her bag but after a while the boatman grabbed it and opened the lid as it exploded with froth. The toddy ferments continuously getting stronger until three days later its 13% proof. It was bubbling away like a fizzy coke so we couldn't put the lid on. We decided to try and off load it to someone during the rest of our day. We stopped again at a house where the guide treated us all to fresh coconut. He used a machete to open them and made spoons out of the shells for us to eat the soft coconut inside. After three hours floating around and seeing some of the local activities we returned to join the bus back to town. It had been a really great trip and a welcome escape from Kollum. We asked the bus driver to drop us at the internet place which he did and we gave him the toddy as a thankyou. We called in to the little cafe for some food and Phil ordered what he thought was black forest flavoured ice cream for pudding. When it arrived though it was a huge pile of icecream, fruit, nuts and sponge all covered in a variety of sauces. He didn't feel the need to leave any of it suprisingly!!! We spent a couple of hours in the internet when Phil started looking at Hong Kong and Africa stuff while Liz blogged. We called phil's grandparents as it was their Wedding Anniversary the day before and the Africa Tour Company to check on visas etc. We aren't sure we have enough free pages in our passports but felt better after speaking to the office. We went back to the hotel about 4pm to get our laundry and pick up our bags, then after about an hour we went to the train station. We were booked in the first class sleeper carriage which is a berth for four but we were alone until Trivanthnam about an hour and a half away. The carriage was definately not first class but was comfortable enough. We weren't given sheets and the seats were sticky plastic in the heat. We had open windows though so could see the views. There was a beautiful sunset over the backwaters and at Trivanthnam station three other people got on and sat in our 4 person berth. We clambered into our upper beds so that we didn't have them nabbed and tried to settle down for the night.