The World's Cheapest Date

Cheap Date

While in Kochin, we had a chance to check out our first Bollywood movie with our friends Carrie and Richard. The movie, Salaam e Ishq, was showing a quick ferry ride across the bay from Fort Kochin in Ernakulum. The movie was surprisingly high budget, and the themes and storyline were certainly everything we expected from Bollywood, including extravagant song and dance routines. It was a lot of fun, and the crowd got really into, and cheered and hollered at the screen throughout the movie.

Of course, the best thing about the evening was how cheap it was. The movie cost around $1/ticket, and dinner between the two of us (at the delicious Bimbi's, a local chain) was only $1. So the entire date was only $3 -- truly one of the world's cheapest dates.

The Backwaters

Almost every tourist that comes to Kerala (this region of India) spends at least a day on the backwaters, which are series of canals and rivers -- both salt and fresh water -- connecting small villages, rice paddies, and larger cities. With Carrie and Richard, we took an overnight trip which included several delicious meals. The boat itself is a converted rice barge with a couple of bedrooms, and a common area that has a nice view of the scenery.

Passing numerous small rural villages, people were very friendly, waving at us and even starting conversations when we docked for a few minutes. Interestingly, virtually every child, no matter their age, wanted one thing: a pen. Children on the shore would sometimes run along the bank of the canal chasing the boat screaming "One pen! One pen please!" Unfortunately we came unprepared, and had no pens to give out.

At night we dropped anchor in the middle of the canal, and slept in private bedrooms (as you can imagine -- and see in the photo album -- the boats are quite large). The village we slept near was having a festival at its Hindu temple, and from the night through the morning the music from the festival drifted into our bedroom.

The trip was a bit shy of 24 hours, from the town of Alleppey to Kollam. Tomorrow morning (2:30 a.m.) we catch a night train to Madurai, where we will be checking out a famous temple complex.

Note: it is taking way too long to upload pictures from this computer, so we will be uploading any pictures referenced to in this posting once we find a faster connection.