India Day 5 - Kochin

         The last day in India, Deirdre and I spent shopping and exploring the area since we hadn’t done that yet. We had planned to take the ferry, which was by far the cheapest to the other side of Kochin where the shopping district was. However, on our way there, one of the auto rickshaw (autos) drivers told us the ferry was closed. Now you need to understand that when you walk out of the port here, the auto drivers would swarm you the second you walked out of the port gate. These guys were persistent too! Each time a few of the huge pack would choose you and follow you a ways down the road trying to convince you to take their auto and out-compete the other guy who was also following you. I had to admire their persistence because we hadn’t encountered much of that in the auto drivers previously. Once you walked a quarter of a mile or more away from the port, the drivers following you would generally turn back and you were free to keep walking to the ferry. At the time when the auto driver told us the ferry was closed we were well away from the swarm of auto drivers and were slightly annoyed this man was using this tactic to get us to hop in his auto. I think our hesitation was quite apparent because he finally told us that he would even drive us to the ferry free of charge to show us that the ferry was closed and that he really was only trying to help. When we still didn’t give in, he threw us a deal we could resist. He told us he would take us around Kochin and show us different areas and take us to the shops we wanted and back to the ship later for only 50 rupees each! That was an offer we couldn’t pass up, that was barely more than a dollar for each of us for this man to take us for the entire day!
        Our driver ended up being hilarious! He called his pimped out auto his Ferrari and would constantly turn around and yell Obama! When it was quiet in the car. We couldn’t help but laugh along with him the entire day as he made these funny remarks.
        He also let us drive his auto. This was nuts because the people drive like maniacs there!! For example, there is NO possible way you could text and drive there because it would be a sure death wish. People are constantly driving on the wrong side of the road and swerving in and out of each other. It was rare to even see a car without scratches on the sides or back of it! When we first mentioned that we could drive the auto, we laughed thinking it was a joke. But he kept asking and eventually we figured what the heck, why not? The steering wheel for the auto looked like bike handles instead of the traditional steering wheel. When I got behind the wheel, the driver kept telling me that I was a good driver, that he was going to pay me for driving, and that he was going to take a nap and then he’d start pretending to sleep. Deirdre and I were cracking up!
        That day we ended up seeing a Hindu temple from the outside (only Hindu people were allowed inside), a laundry place, and many shops. The laundry place we got to see was so interesting! It was a community place where hotels did their laundry and it was really neat to see. Unlike our local Laundromats, this laundry place was all outdoors. Each section of the area had its own workers doing their own job. One section was there for washing. In this section, it was divided into cubicles with only three walls, and a ledge on the wall-less side, and a corner that had a large rock in it. The cubicle was filled to the level of the ledge with water. The washer would then soak the sheets in the water and then beat it against the rock. When they were done with that area, it was brought to the next section, the hanging area. Here, the sheets were given to other workers who would hang them on the clothesline. When the sheets were done drying, they were brought to the third and last section where they were ironed by a different group of workers.
        When I saw how the laundry was done, it made a lot more sense why the sheets seemed to always be stained in the hotels and on the train and also why the sheets were damp both times we were on the train. This may have been naive of me, but it never crossed my mind before this point that businesses such as the train station and hotels would not have some type of mechanical laundry machine like a washer and dryer. However, once I saw this and thought about it, it made perfect sense, why would they have these machines? I was very glad that our driver took us to this spot because I never would have thought to ask to see this and it was very eye opening.
        The rest of the day we spent going from shop to shop. We had asked our driver to bring us to cheap places. He told us “yes, yes, very cheap, I’ll take you to very cheap places”. However, he would not bring us to cheap places, he kept bringing us to these expensive places “to look”. After awhile we figured out something was up and finally asked. He told us that when he took us to these expensive places he got a new shirt to wear to work and occasionally small cakes from his son and daughter. Once we knew that, we felt bad so we allowed him to take us to look at more shops. Finally, after going to a few more of these expensive places, we stopped to get some ice cream. We went to this small shop and sat with our driver and a local student who happened to be working in there. We bought each of them a shake and just chatted with them finding out about the students school, etc. It was a nice break from all the looking. When we got back into the auto, we asked to go to Jew town, which we heard was a great shopping district, and spent the rest of the day there. The day all in all ended up being really fun, a great way to see Kochin and end our stay in India; although I have to admit, I was ready to leave the port for the first time. It was just a bit to hot, muggy, and dusty for me.