The Indian Ocean Ate my Baby

Well, not my baby, but my sunglasses.  We went to the beach this morning, and the moment I broke the surface of the water, the water broke me back.  Literally, as soon as I got in, the otherwise calm sea erupted and bitch slapped me with a wave so big that it knocked me face first into the sand, causing the sunglasses that I forgot I was wearing to fly off my head.  Thanks, ocean.  I now understand why Rachel didn't take Ben into you.

After swimming, we went to the public part of the beach in Kovalam, where we saw more white people than the entire rest of our trip put together.  We tried to ignore them and walked around and did a lot of great shopping in the beach-side shops instead, and then we ended the evening by haggling with a rickshaw driver over 50 cents.

You see, on the rickshaw ride down from the hotel, the rickshaw driver refused to put on the meter and instead quoted a ridiculous price of 100 rupees ($2) for the ten minute ride.  Cynthia then told him that the hotel told us it would only be 30 rupees (60 cents), a number she pulled from way deep in her ass.  The driver then told him that the hotel was "trying to screw him," but we all definitely thought the 'hotel' had been right.  And so, upon arriving at the beach, I gave the driver 50 rupees ($1), making it clear that the extra 20 rupees (40 cents) was because "I was in a good mood," adding insult to injury.

After shopping (aka haggling) for three hours, we were ready to head back, and so we went to the place we were previously dropped off to pick up another rickshaw.  Of course, every driver similarly told us that it would be 100 rupees ($2) to get back to the hotel, which caused me to say that it had only cost us 50 ($1) rupees to get down there, and that we would only pay 50 rupees to get back.    No one took the bait, so we walked a little bit up the road to another rickshaw driver who also quoted us a 100 rupee price.  I again said 50 rupees for some reason, but after some arguing and because we had grown tired of walking those 20 feet, we finally settled on 75 rupees ($1.50) as the final price.  We piled into the rickshaw and were on our way to the hotel before we knew it.

And that's when we realized that none of us had 75 rupees, and that our smallest bill was the 100 rupees everyone had initially requested.  In retrospect, 100 rupees may have very well been the fair and correct price, and so we wound up giving the guy 100 anyway, but I was proud of us for thinking that those 50 cents were worth 30 minutes of our time.  The British Imperialists would have been proud.

As a parting note, I'd like to relive an exchange from yesterday of which Cynthia just reminded me:

Mike: "Man, I smell like eucalyptus from my massage."

Three minutes later...

Cynthia: "Man, what is that smell?!?"
Mike: "Its still me Cynthia, from the massage."

Three minutes later:

Cynthia: "Wow.  You really smell."
Mike: "Thanks, Cynthia."

Ten minutes later...

Wayne: "It smells like bell peppers."
Cynthia: "Mike, is that what you wanna smell like? Bell peppers?"
Mike shakes his head no.
Cynthia (threateningly): "TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT TO SMELL LIKE."

So, that's basically all I have to say for today.  Tomorrow we fly to Delhi to start our golden triangle tour.  More to report then.

Monkey count: no change.  Grrrrrr.

P.S. Even the squirrels are malnourished in India.  Seriously, they're the size of NYC rats.  Why even have squirrels?