Big day. Huge.

Today has been a long and eventful one.

We woke up at 4am to catch a flight from Mumbai to Cochin, rode to the hotel to check in, had a quick lunch and immediately started sightseeing. I will note that they served bottled lemonade with salt in it on the plane, which was a surprising change from typically delicious versions of lemonade we were used to.

I will also note that the hotel is super nice. Our room is right on the water, overlooking palm trees and the hotel's private yacht, as well as the infinity pool and spa complex. Considering that its a Taj hotel, security has been upgraded, given the recent terrorist attacks on the Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai. Well, kinda upgraded. They did check every car pretty thoroughly as it drove in and made us go through the metal detectors when we entered, but we all did so with our backpacks still on, clearly setting the detectors off, and yet were allowed to continue merrily on our way without further scrutiny. Apparently, 'white' is not a color on the Taj threat level indicator.

One thing that is weak about the hotel is that it wants to charge me for internet access, which has made me resort to typing this out on my blackberry. They make up for it, though, by having a cruise director who arranges all kinds of activities during the day, including a napkin folding class and an Indian martial arts demonstration, none of which we attended.

Instead, we had the hotel organize a driver for us to take us into Old Cochin to see the sights. Cochin is located in Kerala, a predominantly Christian state, and was also a central trading port, so it has been significantly influenced by Portugese, Dutch, Chinese and other cultures. As such, the substantial number of houses of worship here are a hodge podge of various simultaneous ethnic designs, which can be very interesting. The Santa Cruz Basilica was particularly pretty.

So as to not leave anyone out, there is also a neighborhood in Cochin called Jew Town, centered around a street called Jew Street. No joke. We learned from a very informative sign in the synagogue that there are SIXTY to SEVENTY Jews living in Kerala. Despite these numbers, however, Cochin is still primarily up with Jesus.

We also visited the Dutch Palace, a palace built by the Dutch. There, we learned that the Dutch are not very good at building palaces, as it kind of sucked, but it was still worth the four-cent admission price.

The highlight of the stops in Old Cochin was seeing the fishing nets. Fisherman here still use traditional Mongolian fishing tactics, which basically involve a giant wooden lever suspended over the water, counter weighted with boulders, that they use to raise and lower huge nets in and out of the water. This leads to catching two or three whole angelfish at a time, but its really cool to watch. Cochin is apparently the only place left that uses this technique. To me, the inefficiencies make the reasons why this was abandoned by everyone else pretty obvious, but what the fishermen lose in actual fish they seem to gain in tips from tourists, so I guess it all evens out.

After our Cochin tour, we returned to the hotel and departed on the hotel's complimentary sunset cruise. We though this cruise would be on the aforementioned yacht, but they surprised us and brought around a double decker boat made to look like a traditional Keralan houseboat, which was ten times more awesome (we will be on an actual Keralan houseboat tomorrow, which will be even ten times more awesome, so were talking exponents here people). From the boat, we got some awesome shots of the sun setting behind the fishnets we saw earlier in the day, which I would post, but for the blackberry.

Now we're off to one of the restaurants to have Indian/Western barbecue al fresco, and also my thumbs hurt from typing, so no more to add until tomorrow.

Monkey sightings: no change.

Jew sightings: unknown, but probably less than seventy.