Sunday, 24 February 2013

Day 43 - Beach bum day

As the name suggets the day was spent doing as little as possible. Being washed up on the beach by the big waves and during the hottest part of the day relaxing on the roof top room thing. The owner of the beach house introduced us to a game popular in India, the game uses a large board 2ft by 2 ft and some discs that you try to pot into holes in each corner of the playing board. It is like snooker but with discs. After each shot you grab the equivalent of the white ball and position it on your side of the square board. You flick the disc with your finger and if all goes well it hits one of the coloured discs and you pot it. Like snooker different coloured discs have different values. It seems im completely rubbish at the game, the stupid discs defy the laws of physics common sense and newtons third law of thermodynamics, and, for that reason Laura, a woman, was good. I potted two discs the owner (clearly an olympic champion at the sport) potted about 15 and Laura (clearly a complete cheat somehow) potted about 10. I think my side of the board needed talc'ing up as something was clearly wrong. I pretended I needed to upload a blog entryto save myself another round of humiliation and we all called it a draw (in my head). The owner agreed to take us into town with him to get some cash and some essentials. One of them being alcohol.
The town center is a roundabout. We are on the island of Vyppen next to Fort Kochin there is a bunch of villages one main road down the center of it and a few temples. We grab money, some snacks and, being a generally dry area we head to one of the government approved 'drink shops'. Like a dispensary for needles the lowest of the low are waiting outside queuing patiently in makeshift queue lanes made out of wire and old television cable. I blend in like a morris dancer in a reggae club unaware what the translation for a bottle of nice spiced dark rum,  and two bottles of red chianti is. I'd have settled for non spiced rum and even a dry white wine. Unfortunatly this shop was geared to homeless drinkers and the type of person that would pay for another bottle of alcohol over his insulin. I took the rum made from brent crude oil and some wine / port / paint stripper concoction.  All came in plastic bottles and cost a total of £10. So far so good. We hadnt tried it yet though.
Another swimming session in the sea and before long the sun was setting and we were heading for another home cooked meal. Curried prawns from the backwaters and an assortment of spicy vegetables and chutneys. 
That evening, we started on the 'wine'. I thought things like this were tested on animals,  clearly this one missed that stage of the development process. If a wine taster were to put this in their mouth they'd not say "Cheeky little number, delecate on the palate..." going on to describe the region the grapes and the chateau which made it famous. ..no they'd uppercut you in the chin and try to smash the plastic bottle over your head. It was offensive. Luckily, after a couple of rums it could have been Crystale. I lost at cards about 20 times to complete my streak for the day. Tomorrow was an early start. We were going on a tour, a backwater house boat ride then a canal ride. We needed to be up at 7.
Plodding through the mud and dead things round the backwaters of Vyppen island.

The open air upstairs of the beach house. Very chilled.

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