Welcome to Kerala, and before I start my entry, I apologise for any comments that one may find slightly offensive within my content. I assure you, these are not made in any harmful way, they were just honest thoughts running through my head at the time... yeah now you're interested!

We left Goa (and Gluey) for Kerala that evening. The train arrived at midnight and already there was some problem with our seats; being that there was an entire family asleep in them. The trains don't stop for long at the stations and when our backs are crooked from the weight in our rucksacks (we 'stupidly' bought over-sized swinging chairs that we thought might look nice in our future houses we will own at some point in our lives...after all, how often are you in India?), all we wanted to do was sit down rather than block the corridors. Luckilly, this family were nice and moved. In fact, they got off the train! After a fairly good nights sleep, we sat down on the bottom bunk and watched in awe at all the beggars stumbling along. I found them quit scary to be honest. Some were lepers with stubs for fingers or hands; perhaps the odd leg missing here and there. The worst were the blind ones. Hols was sleeping when an old lady dressed in white night-dress tripped her way down the aisle with a stick for guidance. She was incredibly old, had no teeth and in one eye socket was a white ball tinted with blood, and in the other, a hole where the eye should be. I nearly retched. Especially when she started feeling if there were any passengers to beg off and her long curly nail slid along my rucksack and then started to tap my arm. My word, I was so freaked out!

Anyhow, Alleppey at last loomed after 16 long hours and a seriously damaged arse. We were driven to this very pleasant hotel, which we were immediately suspicious of as they were offering it to us at our asking price- 300 Rs (about 4 quid). We had a living room, bedroom and giant bathroom! It was pretty luscious really! Alleppey is very peaceful and unbelievably friendly! Everyone wants to say hi to you- even the women- and know your name. Not many people, though, speak English that much, which we found fairly surprising. We met a Scottish guy named Sam on our first night there, who had long hair fashioned in to a mullet, and looked like an old man who hadn't quite managed to escape from his hippy university days. He was ok, except delivering to us a speech on depression that then turned in to a bit of an argument on my behalf, but of course I was wrong in eveything I said because I hadn't 'experienced it like he had, for, like, 15 years...' Tosser. Hols agreed with me the next morning when he had a go at us for sleeping in too late! Basically, the three of us were doing a back-water boat trip and we hadn't gotten up late, we just knew we took 5 minutes to get ready!

So, off we went to the canals and Sam forgot his fishing reel and moaned about it. It took a lot to say to him, 'Now who's not ready, you mullet head.' Our boat driver was called Sham and was 22. He was very nice and friendly and paddelled us around the most beautiful, photogenic rivers we have ever seen. Lining them were gigantic palms bending in to the waters. Sea snakes darted around us and the dragon flies savoured their 24-hour life-span on the big water-lilles scattered out. Hols saw a mashed dead floating frog. We got out a couple of times to walk around a bit and as we were sitting on the grassy banks taking in the lovely scenery, we saw a man running...or was it jumping...towards us. He was naked except for a material nappy pinned loosly around. He was incredibly skinny and he bounced over and started singing and dancing for us. We have named him Mickey and will post a picture soon!

After the boat trip, Sam wanted to go back to the hotel and got on a bus whereas we decided to wander around the town abit more. We were walking along when Sham, our driver, pulled up on his motor bike and asked if we wanted a lift. I don't know what came over us, but we both thought this was the best idea since flushing toilets, so we hopped on; Hols in the middle as it was her first time and we didn't want her to be flying off the back. I sat on the end and there was nowhere to rest my feet, so they swung outwards the whole journey. We zoomed along the crowded roads with not one piece of protection on us, our adrenelin causing us to giggle, flail our arms out and shout 'I'm the King of the World' the entire jouney, much to the amusement of the onlooking pedestrians!

The next day, we arrived in Cochin and fell in love with the place. It's our favourite place in India and we both want to return here. It's clean, fresh, friendly, quiet, cultured and very pretty. There's only one problem- the dogs. On our way back from a lovely restaurant, whereby we both embraced the fish scene and ordered freshly caught fish. Hols had a fillet and I had the whole bloody thing. I have a slight phobia of fish heads, and this one had its eyes on and everything. Hols kindly yanked the head off and covered it with a lemon. It was very peaceful when walking back to our room, when all of sudden, a loud barking started up. We looked to our left and a large black guard dog was standing up on the balcony yapping it's ugly head off at us. We honestly thought it may jump off and eat our faces. Suddenly, another dog appeared and the two together started barking so loudly, we both started running hurridly down the street, scared out of our wits!

Friday was spent watching the giant Chinese fisherman nets and dolphin spottting, while drinking illegally under the table! It's a lot hotter in Cochin and difficult to wander about in the heat of the day, so we went to the fish markets and selected a gaint red snapper and some tiger prawns, which were stuffed with ginger and garlic and BBQ-ed for us. Delish-nosh! We saw Basillica Church and St. Francis Church, one of which was rubbish, the other, eerily Catholic. I couldn't stop staring at all the pictures of Jesus everywhere, made even more holy by the latin chanting that was coming at you from every direction. It was all a bit weird, I found. We returned back to the hotel and decided that I would cut Holly's hair. Yeah, you're all probably thinking, 'Oh Good God', but actually, considering I did it with the small scissors on my Swiss Army knife, it turned out pretty good! In fact, I think I may have found a new profession! We saw a Kathakali show in the evening, which was interesting. It's Kerala's form of acting and dancing. The make-up was incredible and it's all to do with eye and facial movement.

Today, we headed straight to Jew Town! It was great! We expected lots of Jewish men to be chucking plates everywhere and singing songs like, 'If I were a rich man, lyddle lyddle lyddle...', and skull caps placed on the men that owned little shops full of antiques. We got the shop bit right, but other than that, they all just looked like Indians with slightly larger noses.

Tonight, we aim to have a lovely big meal to say good bye to India properly, but our money is running out, so we may just get noodles... Ladyboys, ping-pong balls and tuk tuks- we greet the...