Cochin, India- 3/8/09

Our checkout time on the boat was 9 am but myself, Rory and Achel woke up earlier.  We were served tea and coffee until breakfast.  After breakfast we had to leave and were met by our car driver to drive us around for the day as our flight wasn't until 8 pm.  The driver took us to downtown Cochin to do some shopping.  Even though the exchange rate is really good, we all felt like we spent way too much money by the time we left Cochin.  At one of the stores we spent a bunch of money at, the store owner invited us to go to his temple celebration after we left the shop.  He wrote down the address of the place and so when we got back in the car we had our driver take us there.  They were very happy to see us there but we found out that we had missed the main celebration and they weren't picking back up again until 5 pm but they were still happy to show us around.  After one of the guys showed us around in what we thought was a cordially gestures, he asked us for money which we thought was pretty rude.  We thought he was just showing us around because he was proud of his temple and religion and wanted to share it with some Americans, us being the first Americans they had ever met which we thought was pretty cool.  After that we headed to lunch and we asked our driver to take us to Pizza Hut as we had heard it was really good but different and we were craving some American food.  This was the nicest Pizza Hut we had all ever seen and it was like a real restaurant.  They had some  promotion going on that if you used your VISA card you got like 35% off a meal.  There were 5 of us and we got a meal for 10 people, of course we ate all of it and the people working there couldn't believe it.  It had great service, people who actually cared about their job unlike teenagers who work at the Pizza Hut's in the U.S.  After lunch we headed to Fort Kochi and saw the birthplace of Vasco-da-Gama followed by a fishing village where they use Chinese fishing nets.  These are big nets they put bait onto and dip them into the water and then lift it up when the fish swim over it.  It is a very ancient technique but it seemed to do the trick in catching fish.  There was lots of little stands in which people tried to get you to buy the same things they had in the shop right next door.  One of the places was a book stand that had what appeared to be used books.  I turned one of the books over to read the back cover and there was a Wal-Mart sticker on the back…makes you have a second thought about where donated books go to.  We still had a little while before we had to head to the airport and we head there was this place called "Jew Town" so we decided to go there and check it out.  We thought it was a strange name as we are used to hearing "Chinatown" or "Japantown."  Sure enough it actually exists and there is the world's 10th oldest synagogue there.  We were talking to one of the ladies at the congregation there, there are only 11 Jewish people in the town and there isn't even a rabbi.  The synagogue was pretty small, but impressive and they wouldn't allow us to take pictures.  It hadn't even really crossed my mind that there were Jewish people in India until the Mumbai bombings and I really didn't expect to come across a synagogue in the small town we were in.  After that we went back to the car and headed to the airport as it was almost time to head back to Chennai.  Phil and I bought local Indian phone cards for like $5 each and got 40 minutes of talk time to the U.S. so we made some phone calls while we were waiting for our flight.  Our flight was at 8 pm and they served us a full dinner on the plane and we got in around 10 pm.  We were able to get a better price on the taxi back to the port because it was a pre-paid taxi stand, we agreed on 300 Rupees for the 5 of us and started driving to the port.  Only the driver didn't know how to get to the port and had to stop over 10 times to ask for directions.  At one point I was giving a local directions on how to get there.  At about 11:30 pm we finally got back and headed right to bed as we were all exhausted.