Four hands better than two...

I finished my day yesterday wandering around happily and found myself in a not exactly swish beauty parlour succumbing to the four hands of a couple of women giving me a back and arm massage with lots of lather and ice. Was a strange, but very interesting experience, and pretty enjoyable!

Chilled out for a bit before getting the boat back to Alleppey and having another lovely meal. Got told about a party in another homestay - but, wuss that I've turned into - or maybe it's just all the fresh air, exercise, sunshine, etc - I was flagging and, yet again, crashed at about 10.30pm!

Got woken early by lots of noise, so headed off, via a quick dosa breakfast by bus to Cochin. Two hours later I arrived and found a place to stay pretty quickly, on Ernakulam (easier for getting to the airport day after tomorrow) and headed straight for the ferry to go over to Fort Cochin. The plan was to see all of Fort Cochin today and then do this area and other things tomorrow. Well... got there and headed to Jew Town. By the time I'd finished wandering around there, taking lots of pictures, browsing, wandering, chatting, eating, drinking, inhaling ginger, etc it was getting to be late afternoon already.

Decided to treat myself (and why not?) to a real full on Ayurvedic massage... Second place I went into seemed really nice and they had a free spot and gave me a good price on a 'rejuvenating massage'....

Okay. I have never had anything like this before. Basically two women spent 90 minutes giving me a full body treacle massage. Well, it smelled like treacle. I'm sure it was something that was meant to be insanely good for me. I felt like a turkey being given a very long basting anyway. We started with a head massage, than I got all treacled up, then I was put into a chamber for a bit to sweat it all off, and then I was washed down. Oh and there was a face massage somewhere along the line too! It was all pretty heavenly at any rate and I floated out of there feeling wonderful and spent ages chatting with people in the streets before realising it was almost dark.

Wandered down further to the huge Chinese fishing net contraptions that ran for a few hundred meters along the shore - snapping as I went, of course, and then saw the fishermen selling the freshly trawled in produce... naturally, I went and found a restaurant and had a delicious fish meal and a large beer.

Needless to say, it was then time to get the ferry back across - and there's still loads more wandering to do in Fort Cochin. Loved it! Great place. A waiter tried to persuade me to join him and his bike to go to the beach tomorrow morning - but I declined. I don't want to tie myself down to anything this trip - especially as it's drawing to an all too soon close.

Just one day left in Cochin now before flying back to Mumbai and then back to Tokyo the following day.

Wish I didn't have to....!