Love

Today we drove down to the historic coastal city of Cochin, about 145kms west of Coimbatore. In Western Australia, such a drive would take an hour and a half at most, but here in India it takes a good four hours, as even the smooth new toll roads are cluttered with slow-moving scooters, sputtering tuk tuks and overloaded trucks, all crawling along as fast as their tiny, dilapidated engines will take them, which is to say, not very fast at all.

After checking in to our very nice resort hotel (paid for by The Boss, naturally), we walked along the harbourfront, taking in the sunset, with a thronging mix of tourists and locals. There were stalls selling the usual tourist junk, but also others selling street food, and fish freshly caught from the ramshackle little fishing piers, with their iconic net casting frames.

The main thing that made it differ from similar harbourfront walks across the world was the garbage strewn across the beaches, bobbing in the water or laying in dense drifts formed by the waves. It was a jarring reminder that this is India, where the roads rules are ignored, the water supply isn’t safe to drink, and there’s no functioning garbage collection service – the one thing missing from the harbourfront walk was a single trash bin. There’s no point in installing trash bins if there’s no one to empty them and nowhere to put the emptied trash.

As twilight closed into evening we returned to the hotel for an evening cocktail, only to make an unpleasant discovery. The hotel had recently changed its management/ownership structure, and in the process has accidentally lost their liquor license.

Unable to deal with the thought of an evening without booze, we turned to Mr Fixit for help. He drove us a couple of blocks to a different hotel for our gin and tonics. While our booze-free hotel was lovely, this one was stunning, with the sort of grand, immaculate sleekness that only comes from ridiculous amounts of money. Mr Fixit apologetically explained that The Boss had intended for us to stay at this hotel, but the entire resort was booked out due to it being Valentine’s Day, which was why we could only be here for drinks.

Two rounds of gin and tonics for the four of us (Mr Fixit doesn’t drink) came to almost $150AU, so I shudder to think what rooms would cost. We returned to our inferior but still better than we deserve hotel to have dinner in the restaurant, which was expansively decorated for Valentine’s Day but almost completely empty, as most couples insist on a little wining with their dining on the most romantic evening of the year.