This is officially my first Blog but I have written previous 'diary' pages on my laptop which I decided to extend for the purpose of sharing and add to these pages.
So here I am some where off the coast of India, Cochin to be precise on my way towards Malaysia. If you're reading this I'm 99% sure you'll know me and what I do but I'll introduce myself on the off chance that a complete stranger has stumbled across 'G'Lovers Travels' …firstly what do you think to the genius name? I was really impressed with myself for coming up with it!
Ok so I'm a 29 year single female who is fortunate enough to work on board a cruise ship. I have done so for the past 14 months. I work as part of the entertainments team on board a ship called Ocean Village.
We are currently sailing on her final voyage to Singapore. In fact we are only 5 days away from this being the end!
I can't believe I haven't 'blogged' before now but hey, better late than never I suppose? I plan on having so many more adventures that I actually believe this is the first of many interesting reads!
What better way to start than my adventure today in Cochin, India. Myself and 2 of my good friends on board Jo & Emily decided we wanted to have a taste of the 'real' India so 7 of the Indian crew guys from the bars department offered to take us out for a tuk tuk ride and a curry. This is the list of who went:
Myself (Kerry)
Jo
Emily
Alwyn
Philip
Thomas
Sandeep
Agnelo
Brino
Noel
We set off at 11.30am meeting the guys on the quayside (just off the ship) We all had to have our Indian landing cards stamped and also we had to carry a photocopy of our passports on us. There were guards just off of the ship walking around with guns!
When we got out of the security gates the Tuk tuk drivers were all waiting for their next 'targets' …………we were it!
It took honest to god about 15 minutes to actually sort out who our drivers were going to be, they were all fighting over us! I have no idea what was said but there was a lot of shouting going on. The lads decided to separate us 3 women so we each went with one of them!
Brino explained to me that there are 26 different languages in India and he didn't understand what the local drivers were saying! They do sometimes speak and international language which he was able to understand but generally they didn't speak the same language as them.
Most of the bar guys on board are from Goa.
There were a lot of men wearing what can only be described as an adult nappy! The Indian word for this is an Lungi (pronounced Lun gee) and apparently boys from Goa laugh at lungi's!
So we eventually set off to wherever Alwyn had agreed to go to eat. The Tuk tuk journey was definitely an experience!
One thing I noticed about the local traffic was there didn't seem to be any rules, no traffic signals, and no sense but it seemed to work!
We eventually got to an area of Cochin called 'Thoppumpady' and this is where we had our food. We sat upstairs in a small cafe restaurant. It was very basic nothing at all special, once we sat down Alwyn & Philip went to a wholesales place to get beer.
We ordered our food, Jo Em & I decided to go vegetarian. (Emily is the only one out of the 3 of us who is a meat eater, but she certainly isn't the easiest to please when it comes to food. Emily is allergic to fish & nuts amongst a long list of other things!!) She likes to live on the edge and while we're out with her Jo & I are under strict instructions of what to do in the event of a giant peanut attacking her, we know where she keeps her pen!!
The food was amazing. The Veggie korma which we shared as one of our dishes didn't taste like a korma at home but none the less it was tasty. What made us laugh was that each dish worked out to be the equivalent of 80p in the UK!
The boys kept giving us things to try, I'd dip my finger in taste it and then ask if it was hot?! I made a silly noise on a number of occasions due to it burning my mouth! all the dishes I tried were lovely and half way through the boys asked us if we minded them using there fingers? of course we said we didn't mind and in fact after this we decided to also eat with our fingers, making sure we didn't get food on the palm of our hands!
It was very nice and made the food more enjoyable.
Our journey back to the ship on the Tuk tuk was much the same as going…….no sense. 8 f us were left to go back as 2 of the boys had to be back on board for work. we had 4 to a Tuk tuk which was cramped.
I noticed that children were often transported on the back of a motorbikes. Buses didn't have windows. And generally here was a fair amount of rubbish around.
We stopped on the way back in a Cochin bakery and got $5 (US) worth of sweets. This I'm regretting now I'm back on the ship as I've eaten far too much of all that stuff today and feel ridiculously tired.
I Managed to send my 4 nephews a postcard each which I do in every new port we visit.
So all in all an amazing day had by every one.I would really like to go to India now and experience different areas…..watch this space. Alwyn and the boys have said they'd show us round if we ever decide to go to Goa or Bombay.
I'm going to sign off as it's gone 12.30am and iI have a really long day ahead of me tomorrow.
Keep smiling :)
Kerry xx
