Musis Respublica Floret
Al's World Tour - Kerala India
Reporting now from Kollam, in the southern state of Kerala
Well, finally made it back to good old India. Currently in Kollam, in the southern state of Kerala, about to take a cruise on the backwaters. Arse is so far holding out well, but I don't have much hope of that continuing..
When last I wrote I was about to get on a boat to the island of Koh Pi Pi, Thailand (various photographs have been taken of "Pee Pee Guest House" and "Ko Tah Poo" island for schoolboy humour reasons!). The weather was bloody awful, with high seas like you wouldn't believe crashing against the side of the ferry. We had to go slowly all the way, and about a quarter of the way into the journey when it became obvious the waves were a little too high, a massive rush of sickbags were handed out. I don't normally get seasick, but when everyone around you starts retching into clear plastic bags it's a bit of a tonsil tickler! I spent the rest of the journey with me eyes shut and hand clamped over my mouth and nose, lying back and thinking of Scotland!
Some great diving on Koh Pi Pi. A fellow diver was a 53yr old Californian self-confessed sex tourist called Joey. He had a grizzled face, beer belly, rat's tail haircut and said "a got myself a nice young local girl, cooked me good food, showed me round - great f*ck though, and that's the main thing with these little bitches". Nice - I could see he'd never quite recovered from his divorce.
The boat was lurching around in the water - the seas were very rough with a helluva swell at the bottom, which caused an inexperienced diver like meself to flail around. This really pissed off the 6ft long leopard shark which was minding it's own business skulking on the bottom, when an air-guzzling honky tourist (me) diver banged into him. I absolutely shat my pants; reminded me of the bit in Jaws2 where the diver sees Jaws through the reeds under the water and freaks out. I swam off in a "slow controlled manner" (AAAAARRGGGGHH!) whilst making some extremely pathetic whimpers through my regulator!
Saw the beach of "The Beach". Maya beach, where DiCaprio & crew set up shop for two months. The coral round Maya beach is all dead as a dodo, with bugger all fish. The only exception was a tiny clump of coral and anenome guarded by a vicious clownfish. I was soon manfully chased off by this toothless fish the size of my finger! It was darting at me and everything!
From KPP up to Bangkok. Stayed there for a few days, and visited a random tailor in Siam Square to get "my man to run up a few suits". Met "Tricky" Dicky, our smiling honest tailor from Chandigar, India (all tailors in Bangkok are Indian for some reason). We popped back to Dicky's Emporium for three fittings, and each time he was equally rude to Caryn! It was real Fast Show "OOH! Suits You Sir", stuff, with "how are you ("we" would have been better!) today sir?" (totally ignoring Caryn) and the classic "what else will SHE (sneer) have then?". I could just imagine meeting Dicky down at the Gentlemen's Club later, and guffawing over a few stiff drinks. Anyway, Bangkok tailoring is hit and miss, so right now the suits & shirts should be in transit, but the "receipt" in my wallet looks less and less substantial as time goes on!
Saw a Bangkok Transvestite Show, "The Calypso Cabaret". Felt completely ripped off as there were a lot of blatantly obvious "real" women on stage also, including a very sexy Britney Spears impersonator! There was some appalling lip synching and the Tina Turner impersonators looked hilarious with really bad cheap wigs. We were sitting right at the front, right next to the stage, and I braced myself for the barrage of audience participation which thankfully never came; the Queens all picked on the geezer on the other side of the aisle - phew! I got a photograph and a peck from the girls afterwards, and asked a doorman out of curiosity how many women were in the company. "Oh many sir", he said. "There's at least 5 who work selling tickets in the box office, but all others are men, but some have snip snip!". Aaaargh!!! I mean, obviously I knew about Britney and everything, as Caryn will testify (after she'd finished laughing big time!!!!).
The other big tourist attraction in Bangkok is the Snake Farm, where they "milk" highly poisonous snakes for their poison to produce antivenom. They demonstrate this process by dumping a highly venemous, extremely pissed off king cobra/krait/black slimy death snake on the concrete right in front of the tourists, separated only by a few feet and a single orange metal bar. I assumed the snakes didn't like orange. That was all the protection we had from that and a screaming, painful death, though "it's okay to get bitten as we have plenty of serum here". Oh goody. They showed a quick slide show about the farm, which I couldn't hear because of Thai chattering at the back, so I turned round and said "shhh!", to a group of meek looking Buddhist monks!!!
Finally, onto India. Flew into Mumbai (Bombay) airport in the evening and opted to forfeit the 48hr train journey and get an internal flight down to Kerala in the south. I once got a train for 18hrs in India which was pretty hellish, so it was an easy decision!
Watched the local martial arts training class early one morning, Kalaripayat. There were a load of embarassed-looking Western students doing the class. I don't think they realised the viewing gallery is listed in the Lonely Planet, as we turned up to watch them oiled up and forced to wear Indian cloth underpants before doing the class. Just like a nightclub in San Francisco!
Went to the local cinema to watch the latest Bollywood Blockbuster, called something like "Kaya ToomDoora". All in Hindi, but that doesn't matter as the plot is very easy to follow, with some outrageous song and dance sequences. The baddie is always the one with the most massive eyebrows, and the goodie generally has a manly tash. In this particular film the goodie was a Sasha Baron- Cohen "Borat" lookalike, which made his Bangra dancing all the more hilarious! (Think it's still called "Bangra" - "the dance of the shoulders" - or maybe nowadays in India that's like saying "so can you pogo in the discotec, Sanjiv?"). The fight scenes were a hoot; one weedy slap from the goodie and a huge "CRUNCH!!!!" echoed round the cinema, with the Indians around us cheering loudly when he beat of three guys with a crunching ear-flick!
Scran is good here. The closest to a Western "curry" (yes, curries are the preserve of Indian restaurants in Europe!), is "Kadai". The waiter at first refused to serve it too me saying "too hot", then "you sure" and finally "really sir?". After 3 warnings I wasn't giving in, and finally a bubbling pot of reddish paste arrived with red chillies floating around on the surface. The waiter kept hovering and asking if I was alright, as I delicately dabbed at my sweating brow. OOOF! That was hot!!! But very nice. So as I began this diatribe, just waiting for the old bowels to go any second..
Vila kututhal anu!!!!
4th August 2002
Alan Mitchell
RHS 1984 - 1990
Wherever Alan goes he always carries a small tin of pilchards
NEXT PAGE --->More India
- Bird garden in KL
- Al preparing to dive
- Al was confused about Britneys sex
- Reclining Buddha with fish