Kerela to Bangkok
- mollyben98
- Dec 26, 2017
- 3 min read
(Image: Molly on our backwater boat tour)
We arrived at Alleppey train station 16 hours after setting off from Palolem. We'd booked a couple of nights in a guesthouse called Saaffron Holidays and the owner kindly picked us up from the station free of charge. We payed roughly £14 per night in this place for a private room with en-suite, free breakfast and free bottles of water. Although the guesthouse was about a 25 minute walk from Alleppey central the owner was always around to give free lifts which was great. That night he dropped us at a cheap family restaurant about 10 minutes away and we shared a huge veg biriyani and breads for less than £1.
We got up the following day and wandered into Alleppey city centre before taking a three hour backwater boat tour for 1,200 rupees (roughly £14). We had the boat to ourselves and the tour was brilliant, the backwaters were so peaceful and colourful with beautiful houseboats roaming the water. On our travels we saw all walks of life – fisherman, schools, people washing cooking utensils, other washing themselves and clothes in the murky water. There was a torrential downpour that night so we got takeaway from the restaurant instead of venturing out into the rain – again, paying no more than £1 for a tasty and filling meal.
(Images: Backwater boat tour)
The next day we got an hour and a half public bus from Alleppey to Thoppumpaddy near Fort Kochi (roughly £1.20 for both of us) for our penultimate stop in India. We chilled in the OYO hotel most of the day watching Comedy Central and movies on TV before grabbing some cheap dinner from the 'restaurant' at the top of the hotel.
After a day of TV we needed to get out of the hotel, so caught the public bus (9 rupees each) to Fort Kochi to wander around the old fishing town. We'd skipped breakfast this morning so headed to the nearest cafe for a bite to eat, grabbing a lassi each and a couple of delicious chicken and cheese toasted sandwiches. We headed towards Fort Kochi beach (which is most definitely not a beach) and strolled along the seafront taking in the markets, Chinese fishing nets and assortment of restaurants and 5* hotels nearby before catching the bus back to the hotel for our final night in Thoppumpaddy.
(Image: First sight of Christmas in Kochi with matching lassi)
We got an Uber (700 rupees) to our final hotel in India which was directly opposite the airport the next morning and spent the day charging up all of our appliances and wandering around the restaurants and markets of Cochin before getting a bite to eat in a local cafe. We paid 1000 rupees for our airport hotel which was nice, clean and offered a free transfer to the airport which was ideal as we were flying at 7am the next day.
Our alarms went off at 5am and we set off for the airport. Our first flight of the day was from Cochin to Delhi, where we had a four hour stop over before a 4 hour flight to Bangkok. We booked the Delhi to Bangkok flight back in the UK for about £140 each and the one from Cochin to Delhi we booked a couple of weeks into the trip for roughly £120 between us. The flights were fine, food on each was tasty and filling and we arrived at Bangkok airport around 9pm local time.
(Image: Christmas in Delhi airport)
From the airport we had a 20 minute ride on the Sky Train to Wongwang Yai station for 44 THB each, then walked to M Gray Hostel from there. The hostel staff had left for the night but had kindly emailed us the code to get in and left our room key in a box on the front desk. To our delight we'd been upgraded to a private double room, so kicked back watched some Netflix and went to sleep, ready to see what Bangkok had to offer in the morning.
(Images: James and Georgia on the wall in M Gray, Bangkok. They stayed there at the same time last year – great to see them, even if only in photo form)
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