8th Feb - Alleppey

Jumped on board our boat at 11am, with our driver and our gummy cook. he was missing his four front teeth...ironically there was a phamplet for dental work on board...do you think they used him as motivation of how NOT to end up?? we set off down the waterways and watched the backyardds of the locals as we went past...people washing in the waterways and doing their laundry. But so tranquil...yes heaps of ther tourists doing the same thing but i rather enjoyd looking at the large 3-7 bedroomed boats which made our lil 1 bedroom so puny...some were just so huge! nihal (the gummy cook) served us up lunch of fish they had picked up at the markets, YUM! cooked in a cury crust type thing. and then some rice and coconut with cabbage which was SOOO good. some pappadums (YUM my fav!) and chutneys of coruse, plus a few other curry dishes i didn't know what they were but oooo they were good. anyways (i go on about food a lot don't i) filled the gap way too much so everyone had a nap afterwards! a guy in a canoe siddled up wondering if we wanted to buy prawns. not a massive praw fan and den was still a bit cautious over some dodgy ones he'd had so gave it a miss this time, but talk about fresh!
Once we'd all recovered and woken up, our driver took us off down some bigger waterways past massive rice fields and poorer locals who seemed to have their little shacks in between 2 massive waterways on only perhaps 2-3 metres wide worth of land.
for afternoon tea we were served up a chai and some fried bananas...still hadn't recovered from lunch but of coruse managed to get it down :P
Dinner was more fish and currys and even better than lunch.
We moored up and me and den had a few good games of last card before i discovered possibly the biggest cochroaches ever in our lil room. Den was too slow (and possibly not VERY keen...kinda like killing a fast mouse on your wall...) with his jandle, but the driver was a pro...1 damp rag and a deadly flick...and presto...bait for his fishing line! they were quite amused at how i managed to get as far away as possible. few more incidents of this variety but seemed cochroach free for bedtime. still i tucked the mozzie net in sooo tight. Not a great night sleep cos it was SOOO hot but served up a good chai and breaky helped us get on our merry way off the boat and onto the next thing.