You Say Kochi, I Say Cochin

I will soon be leaving the lands of banana trees and crowing roosters.  All the countries since Vietnam have banana trees with the little bananas I love that I can only find occasionally in Chinatown and less often at Whole Foods.  Here in India and in every country since Vietnam bananas are hanging from every roadside stand.  They cost pennies.

It is dirty, dusty and crowded here in Cochin or Kochi.  The name of the city is in question.  It is chaotic and looks better from the hotel roof then from the ground.  There are mainly tourists in Kerala many of them Indians.  Here many of the men wear cloths rolled up to make a kind of skirt like Gandhi. 

My trip to India is not the greatest.  First of all I missed my connection to Cochin which I mentioned previously.  Most of the time I am in a car with a driver while very nice and a good driver who is supposed to speak English has a vocabulary of about 100 words of which I can understand about 25.  He does not seem to understand anything I say except restaurant and toilet.  I shouldn't really complain because I knew the agent who arranged this is a jerk and I went with him anyway.  I guess I should rethink my first reactions and go with them.  I arrived a day late and although I sent many e-mails that I would be late as I have already said, he didn't look at his blackberry because it was his day off.  The driver was waiting for me at the airport and that really pisses me off because it could have been so easily avoided. Although I asked him not to call me in New York in November he called anyway. 

The hotel I went to in Cochin isn't the greatest.  However on my return a few days later not in the middle of the night it seems OK.  When I arrived I found out they sold out their one day wifi connection cards. I made wifi a priority for a hotel.  I had to buy a card for the week.  I went to the room and I couldn't find any bottled water.  I picked up the phone but it was dead.  I took the wrong elevator downstairs and could not find the lobby or anyone for that matter.  It was 11:00 PM.  I had asked the driver to ask the hotel to wake me at 7:00 because we were leaving at 9:00AM  but because he really can't speak English he arrived at 7:00 AM because he didn't understand what I said and thought I wanted to leave at 7:00.