And meanwhile I walk along the beach, in a country that has been my dream for ten years, I suddenly hear Bo Kaspers Orkester “Semester”, from all of the restaurants which makes me so happy, I buy four cans of tonic water and return to my room. Like every other evening we have this “ritual”: see the sunset from the rocks, drink a gin and tonic, and just talk bullshit!
From Cochin, in first class of course, just because when I suggested second class, André turned around and just look at me as if I was a mental retard, order lunch at a place where the food was cheap (something that for sure that neither André nor Mother Nina give a shit about). Whatever, we got from Cochin to Kovalam.
Trivandrum is just a stopover and we arrive late in the evening, and with a sort of stressed André, who has the hope of finding a hotel. After a late dinner at a place we found in the Lonely Planet, they don’t have any rooms available, we find a room eventually, but hey, not without problems. While we wait for the food we ordered, Nina and I go out for a smoke, take the time to ask around at all the hotels within striking distance, but they are all fully booked. Frustration and irritation are the words of the hour. Finally we are lucky enough to find a room, a decent one, like the price, and in the end everything turns out well, as it always does.
Kovalam is one of the most beautiful places a young man who is fulfilling his dream has ever seen. Wish to find a bungalow as close to the beach as possibly, but they don’t have on any, and through our taxi driver who takes us from Trivandrum this fixer meet us, takes us to a place named Rock View. Half an hour discussion results in a fat discount (from Rs 40,000 to Rs 20,000) for three weeks.
Mikael has reached PARADISE! That’s for sure, and even if it’s only been two months since he left the country that he belongs to, he’s in an unfamiliar world and the fact that he has four more months on the road is just thrilling. And so far, I did it.
And in this paradise, I’ve taking a vacation from the travelling for three weeks. With the beach 30 meters from the house we rent I‘m not going to do anything other than being big time LAZY (that basically means that I will sleep for as long as I want, head right to the beach after André or Nina give me breakfast in bed and the just cook in the sun).
Regarding the beach and things you do on it (like go in the water once in a while, maybe hire a body board, EVENTUALLY dip your toes in the boiling hot water), André managed to make a fool of himself BIG TIME (now we’re talking really big big time!) After tanning for two hours lying completely still and basically cooking ourselves, we take the big step and hit the water. Meanwhile the laughing in background gets clearer and clearer, with the two of us plashing around in the water, I turn my head towards the beach where people were laughing like a hallelujah song, and out of the water it becomes clear to me that André’s swimming shorts have torn right down the ass!!
HAHAHAHA!! OH MY GOD! YOU SHOULD HAVE ALL BEEN THERE, SEEING THIS BIG RIP IN HIS SHORTS WAS TOO MUCH FUN. (Although not that was inside his short, his fish-belly white ass), along with the enthusiastic and crazy laughing from the people on the beach!
One thing for sure, is that he certainly from this moment has achieved a nick name by the locals (as well as all the tourists that had the privilege of watching this MISERY, something like ”Mr. White Ass”!
And as if this would be the only stupid thing that happened to him, this guy from USA (try to compare this with being born in Chile regarding skin type, André has started a sun tan competition challenging me to win it. HAHA…well well we all have our dreams, some of them come true, some of them don’t. And after one week of intensive tanning on the beach, where I’m BLACK compared to him, he still think that he has a chance (come on, give me break, just give up, because that dream of yours will NEVER come true!)
“Excuse me….excuse ME, but how old did you say you were, 7 or 37??”
However, André is a funny guy, cultivated and well spoken (which he more than happily announces at every chance he gets), spontaneous, cool and together with “Mother Nina” who is also one of the funniest peopIe I have ever met, they both make me happy with simple thing like giving me breakfast in bed or massages on the beach.
And the three of us got it all, manage to get everything that a five star all inclusive hotel has for a tenth of what the Swedish tourist pay for a room next door! Garzia’s is the place that brings us lunch at the beach (beer and Gin and Tonic of course if that’s what we want), and has the best food around. And on top of that, if you’re not in the mood for having dinner with an English family of three, that how some manages to drink 23 beers over five hours (if they were drunk, well…”sort of”) you just order the food to the room. Of course we take every opportunity to do so, since we all are lazy and on vacation!
The only thing you have to do for this “luxury” is to simply give a Bounty or a school pen, depending on the age I perceive him to be on the day to “Busboy” as we have called him so far. And Busboy cleans our room every third day and makes sure that our minibar is complete, changes our bed sheets, gives us clean towels and takes care of our laundry, but as the neurotic guy I am, this young man with his “cleaning neurosis” starts his day by cleaning the room (had a guest for a couple of nights that resulted in that our room looked like the source of SARS!), and of course doing the daily sit ups and push-ups, just to make sure that I remain the ultimate “beach bum” that I am!
Hey, who is going to be the hottest guy on the beach? Me of course!
Rent a motorbike one day and drive endlessly around Kovalam; the urge for a nice beach drives us to this beautiful place. It’s just amazing. The day ends with the usual “ritual” at “our” place on the rocks watching the sunset and then dinner with André and Nina, and as always it’s good, thanks to Nina and André’s impressive knowledge about food and cooking. That’s how this young man spends his day in paradise, including a couple of hours at the internet café at Leo’s.
One morning a policeman knocks on our door (and of course a morning after having “guests”, which made me open the door in a miserably state, all wrapped in the bed sheets and a hat that I obviously fall asleep with (no further questions, please!), and I opened the door with my sunglasses on just so he wouldn’t arrest me for illegal appearance, asking for our passports. For security reasons was his answer when I asked him why. Sure, but after that it becomes sort of scary, there are police everywhere but no one know why. A murder in Trivandrum a couple of days earlier is one explanation, together with rumors of terror threats, all of which kind of worries us. But it all turns out that what was going on was that the President of India was coming for a visit to Trivandrum as well to the beach! Just because of this, they closed the whole city down, the shut down everything, even the cell phone network, and internet, forget about it all. The whole town was DEAD. Just because one fucking woman, that bitch!
For three days we’ve been kind if bored, spending the nights restlessly, but nothing bad comes without something good. We had the beach to ourselves, meaning that we didn’t have to bother with all the annoying “fruit mammas”, (that during the day scream out Pineapple, Coconut, Banana, Mango at least 697,895, 404 times a day and after saying NO for the third time, you just want to rip that fucking pineapple from the basket on her head and shove it down her throat so she would just shut the fuck up), no harassing beach hawkers that want to sell you a piece of crap they call a sarong for Rs 300, that you can get for Rs 60 in the end, no fortune teller and best of all, incredible weather!
Kovalam is Paradise, so amazingly beautiful, quiet and who is happiest in the world? Is it you or me?
(Intro: Peter, Bjorn and John (feat. Victoria Bergsman): “Young Folks”
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