More Fort Cochin

Last night I toured around Ernakulam, the section of town where I'm staying that's newer and more like a typical Indian city. I walked to the art museum, which lacked quality art even more than it lacked size (it was three small rooms). The "artist" was actually there, standing by the door, so I felt kind of bad that I left after approximately 10 minutes (and that was stretching it). I do have to admit that despite that fact that almost everything in there was garbage, I was entertained by the two Michael Jackson portraits.

When I left I got to see my first ever Communist rally. The commies are pretty popular here; there are hammers and sickles painted all over the place. It's entirely bizarre to me to see a guy's face on a poster with the hammer and sickle next to it as an advertisement and not some sort of smear campaign.

From there I went to get some dinner. I took the extremely long route (note to the editors of The Rough Guide, "1" and "I" look extremely similar on your maps, please refrain from using them both on the same map, especially when they're in opposite directions from my hotel. Thank you), but found the place eventually. I had some delicious fish masala, I'm not exactly sure what type of fish but it was very meaty, like swordfish. My guess would be the most common locally caught fish, the kingfish. I polished that off with some fresh juice and mango ice cream, and headed back to the hotel.

On the way I met a professor of Indian philosophy. He suggested (nay, insisted) that we go have a beer and he would explain the basics of Indian philosophy to me. I agreed to go, figuring I wouldn't get too many offers in my life for a lecture on Indian philosophy to go with my beer.

We made it to the "Cool Bar" and he began to explain Indian philosophy. It was actually pretty interesting. He made it to the part about how I shouldn't ever eat red meat, then mentioned he was an Ayurvedic "doctor". He felt my pulse, then declared my chakras were all out of alignment (or something to that effect). He tried to give me (no, at first sell me) pills to take to fix my "unbalanced" body, but I refused. He then had very little interest in teaching me about Indian philosophy (funny how that works), and we left after one round (note: never buy the first round in India). Yet another lesson learned.

Today I grabbed some breakfast and headed back here to Fort Cochin. This time I actually found the fort, or at least what's left of it. It's basically a couple of small walls, one with a cannon. Very exciting! I also found the oldest church in India, from the early 1500's, called St. Francis. It's a pretty typical church, nothing too special. Vasco de Gama was buried there for a while, but then taken back to Portugal.

I watched the fisherman for a while, then took a look at their catches as they tried to get me to buy stuff to take to have cooked at a little stall. I declined on the merits of food safety and grabbed a thali (full meal) nearby.

This morning I booked an all day cruise for tomorrow. I'll be going on some sort of house boat in the morning, taking a traditional Keralan lunch on the boat, then going for a canoe ride in the afternoon. It should be a good time.

Tonight I may go to a traditional kathakali dance, held only here in the state of Kerala. It sounds mildly interesting; the book highly recommends it but I'm not so big on the traditional dancing. We'll see how I feel when the time comes.