Our World Trip: March 2011

Thursday, 31 March 2011

Cochin – Incredible India

On the spice route between Europe and China, Cochin has been an important trading port for centuries and is still one of the richest parts of India. The Portuguese settled here in their colonial period, then the Spanish and then the English – the town has many English street names and the merchant and shipping companies all feel very Imperial. The Church of St Francis has the usual brass memorials common in English churches.

Our stop was just short of a full day, so we took a tour including a run around the town with stops at the Church and famous 14^th Century cantilevered fishing nets and a dance show at the Taj Malabar Hotel, just around the corner from the port. Our approach was welcomed with much shouting from small boats and the fishing nets beside the channel attracted several dolphins, which played in the ship's wake.

Bustling like most Indian towns, the traffic seems to sort itself out at random with much hooting of horns and shouting between drivers. Inside a bus you feel secure, but in a tuc-tuc it’s another thing as they are forced from the highway by force or by choice to get ahead of their competition. Great fun!

The fishermen were working hard for their returns of single fish but the snake-charmer was doing great business with his three cobras in woven boxes, passing round a lid and playing the pipe to arouse the snakes. Nigel & Lyn risked a tuc-tuc to cover the walking distances and got great intros to the market traders.

The dance show was long and intricate, exhibiting the Karala cultural heritage with unspoken routines and facial expressions with the most elaborate costume and makeup you have ever seen. The martial arts boys were impressive and had to adjust their act to avoid damaging the light fittings!

Despite being abandoned by our tour guide we spent a lovely afternoon in the hotel before taking our Morris Oxford taxi back to the ship.

We are now on pirate alert! The Indian Ocean between here and Aden is a hotbed for piracy so the ship has taken extra precautions, falling a bit short of armed response! The open decks are closed at dusk and extra lookouts are posted forward and aft with the sonic deterrents mounted of swivels on deck 8 aft. Lights are dimmed at night and all unnecessary display lighting turned off to make the QM2 less conspicuous. A passenger ‘attack response’ drill is scheduled for next week and it will be interesting to see if we get a Naval escort down the Somali coast! Next stop Dubai on Sunday when we lose Nigel & Lyn, which will be a shame as we start the last sector of this amazing adventure. Lovely to have a contact with home today and catch up with all the news - If forgot to mention the family of whales who passed by yesterday, there must have been 25 of them only a few hundred yards from the ship.

In we come

Hard a'starboard!

Tuc-tuc

Superior transport

Gotcha!

Charming!

Wedding idea?

Martial arts

Kerala heritage

Fine sculpture

Left behind!

Cochin panorama

Could be worse!

Pirate patrol

Phuket – for orientation only

How many charts come with a compass rose 90° out, such that the North-South coastline is shown West-East? Answer: A Cunard Port map. Never mind, the lovely beaches to be found on the West of the Island of Phuket were too wet to enjoy, even if you had gone to the ‘South’ of the Island to find them! Still, it gave us a bit more entertainment with the Purser, who advised Nigel that the compass rose was purely for decoration and had no orientation purpose at all. Nice one.

Cunard hadn’t landed here before but on the last World Cruise had used Phuket itself. However, the taxi drivers there had ripped off so many guests that Cunard vowed not to come back again. After much pleading the authorities assembled the special floating pier for the tender operation, which worked very well.

Tendering the mile ashore to Patong Beach was fun and off we went to find the famous James Bond Island on the mainland at Phang-Nga. Patong Beach was hit by the 2004 tsunami but has been completely rebuilt. Phuket Island is roughly the size of Singapore and Patong Beach is the most developed for tourism. The trip to the resort where we boarded our boat to explore the rocky coastline took about 90 minutes through rubber and pineapple plantations and the country is very rural.

The powerboat took us out in the shallow water with showers and mist making the distant hills very dramatic and we explored the caves and mangroves on our way to the island famous in the 1974 ‘Man with the Golden Gun’ movie with Roger Moore as James Bond (that long ago!) Unfortunately the day was dull, so the photos don’t do it justice, but it seems hard to imagine the sea as turquoise here when it’s only a few feet deep! The little punts with car engines and long drive shafts on the back were buzzing about making the whole area feel very Asian.

The local fishing village, built on stilts, has realized that tourism pays better than fishing so we made a stop there to investigate the retail and to see their community. This sort of stop always makes tourists feel bad, but the T shirts weren’t too expensive even if you didn’t fancy trying the snacks on offer. The community had a school, a mosque, a sports area and lots of stalls, so was obviously doing well!

Ashore again for a Thai buffet watching the action on the water and then the return trip in heavy rain to the beach.

Between showers and heavy downpours we re-embarked and watched the jetskis whizzing round the ship – could they be suicide bombers? Not this time.