A Journey to Well Known Places

I came to India; Kerala to be exact. I flew Sri Lankan airlines. It was pretty posh. They took every available opportunity to feed me. On the first four hour leg of the journey they fed me a snack, breakfast, and coffee. I had a stopover in Colombo. When I got off the plane I was ushered past formidable security into a van that took me to a hotel where a nice buffet lunch was waiting. On the ride out I passed several fortified check points complete with heavy machine guns and lots of army men. A week later rebels blew up two buses in Colombo so I can see why the authorities were so vigilant.

The stopover was 8 hours and I had little to do, so it was quite boring. I ate and took the shuttle back to the airport. Luckily I found a café with wireless so I could kill time on the internet for a while. The last flight was only 45 minutes to Kochi. They fed me dinner. I barely had time to finish eating before the stewardess came by and made me put my tray up.

I enrolled in my courses and found a hotel. I paid for a month in advance for an alright room. It is not luxury by most standards, but it is clean and has a desk for my computer. There are not a lot of tourists in this part of town.

There is not a lot to see in the town itself. Most of the tourists stay on an island in the bay colonized by the British long ago called Fort Cochin. Most things work the way that they should and the smell is not bad in most places. There is a lot of trash on the street and a gutter system with truly disgusting water moving at a snail’s pace if at all. The water bubbles like it is fermenting and the smell is potent if you get too close. The sidewalk is missing big pieces, so if you don’t watch were you step you could drop two feet in to the brackish water below. Aside from those things it is not a bad place. The people are friendly and there are plenty of good restaurants around. Besides I am here to learn more than to have a good time.