The previous night we had met a very smooth older gentlemen. He seemed to have his eye on Hannah and had regaled us with stories of loving coffee, a lost wife and pretty much said all the right stuff that chicks fall for. Anyway he was assuring us of how rich he was so we decided to go for a water tour that day in the hope he would help pay for it.

He duly did this and we got a private water taxi instead of going on this group cruise filled with pissed youngsters.

As we pulled out on the taxi, “Hey Mister Driver is the boat supposed to sound like this?”

We asked in response to the 5 minutes it took to start the boat and the funny sounds it was making. Our exit from the small harbour was only marred by the sounds of a rickety old engine and the site of numerous sunken boats, all not unlike our own. The sight of dead fish floating around did nothing to lighten the thought of touching the water, let alone sink in it.

“So does this boat have lifejackets?”

“Lifejackets? What are those?” The captain reassured any fears I may or may not have allegedly had. I spent the time ignoring my fears by trying to place them firmly on Hannah’s shoulders.

A nudge to Hannah, “See that sunken boat?”

“Yes Mika it’s the fifth one you have shown me.”

“No, actually it’s about the sixth, speaking of fifth did you see all those dead fish over there. Also I can hardly hear you over the boat clacking so loudly, and do you think that smoke is supposed to come out of the engine?”

Hannah gulped a bit and watching her squirm made me feel a whole lot better.

Chugging along, middle age Swiss man tried his luck with Hannah a few times regaling her with stories of passion and coffee and all that crap girls love. He wasn’t getting very far at all. Even his open white shirt and hairy chest wasn’t working too well on charming her. Although, I was impressed with his attempt at being sauvé.

We stopped for lunch at this fish restaurant. I decided to pass on fish. So I had a dish of fire and brimstone instead. Hannah had some lava fish and so did middle age Swiss man. This was followed by a visit to a swirling mass of duck. It was totally cool chugging through a flock of 3000 friendly ducks. I tried to speak to them but they didn’t speak English duck only Indian duck so they ignored my frantic quack, quacking and flapping arms. The driver thought I was going crazy so he took me back to his house for some fresh coconut.

He drove us to his little shack in this village. It was so awesome to see how people really live in the backwater villages.

The driver then got out his extender stick and knocked down a coconut.

“Wow it really falls hard doesn’t it?” I pointed out.

“Yes, lots of Indians die from falling coconuts a year.” The driver informed us.

“Really! Hannah did you hear that, wow look you are standing under a coconut tree right now.” I then enjoyed watching her jitter around the place trying to avoid standing under a coconut tree, which was quite hard to do seeing as the man lived under a grove of coconuts. Anyway being the man of the group the man cut up the coconut and handed all the pieces to me to devour. I twinkled my fingers over the spoils of war and looked up to see a group consisting of Hannah, the drivers wife, a curious village lady, a drivers son, middle age swiss man, driver and a crazy lady. I looked back down at the succulent coconut and thought about the random village lady and she was quite pretty so I decided swiss man wasn’t the only suave man around and offered some to her. She refused about 20 times before I finally forced her to have some. Chalk one up to my tally of browny points for her. I then saw the drivers wife and she was looking a little hungry so finally I got her to accept some after the usual 20 attempts. The boy started running around the place and caught my attention and I thought I could go for the browny point hat trick and offered him some. He wasn’t nearly as shy as the other ladies and took a piece. The crazy lady was looking crazy so I was a bit scared and hugged my coconut pieces tighter. Hannah caught my attention with one of her random shifts of position and so I handed her a piece as well. The driver had done all the work so I gave him a slice. I then smiled happily at the thought of a delicious piece of coconut left and went to grab a piece, only to realise I had given them all out. I looked up at everyone munching on the coconut and thought about trying to grab a piece from someone quickly. I mean I was a bit bigger than the girls, and only the little boy could probably match me in a scrap but he was off skipping, munching on his coconut. I sat there dejected for a moment and then looked up with a smile.

“So girls, enjoying your coconut?” While really I though, I wonder if I can distract them and grab it off Hannah. However Hannah had given me a bit of distance because I suspected she knew exactly what was going on in my head, either that or was trying to avoid another coconut tree.

“Oh yes, thankyou. This coconut is divine!” they all reassured me.

“Excellent….” I smiled.

I sat there watching them all enjoy their coconut and the random lady and the wife started speaking rapidly in Indian and pointing at me. This convinced me that they were all laughing at my folly in not leaving myself a piece. I smiled at them. They started giggling. Everything was getting all out of control and there was nothing I could do. Hannah by now was sure I was sizing up her piece and so was wolfing it down as quickly as she could. The boy had tripped over and dropped his piece in the sand so I wasn’t keen on his bit. I wasn’t an Indian giver so I couldn’t take it off the driver and he looked pretty tough in a scrawny way. Needless to say I wasn’t going to swim back so I needed him still to drive me back. The ladies were still giggling away, so I was coming up with a cunning plan to relinquish the coconut from them when they stopped giggling and speaking in Indian and started talking in English to me.

“We were just saying”, giggle, “how nice you are.” Giggle. I beamed.

“Well, you know, it just what you do isn’t it.” I said modestly, “Feed the ladies first.”

Giggles and random lady covered her mouth with her sari. I decided about then to throw my cunning plan out the window and ride with this instead.

Random lady then started talking with us and what we got was that she was married and her husband was really bad to her and so she had left him for a month to come back to her village and let things settle before returning to him, because they have to. So to come from an environment of an abusive man to a half boy, half man, half monkeyboy (myself) giving all the ladies the coconut and missing out on it myself. It was right about then that I almost felt guilty about the plan to get the coconut back.

Crazy lady spent this time looking really crazy and freaky. I have never seen a wild crazy person before and it was so alarming. I wondered about what she was thinking about. Which kind of made me go crazy. I snapped a few pictures and then the boy ran inside and put on his best clothes and I took a picture and got their address only for it to blow into the river later on. Whoops.

Anyway all my bitches deserve to be respected so I decided to find out a little more about Swiss man on Hannah regard. The one thing of real note I found was the fact that he had a bit of an interest in 15 year old girls and he told me quite a lot about his interest in young girls and experiences which I never want to hear again and made me quite uncomfortable. Although I was a bit jealous because he seemed to have pulled more girls younger than me in the year so far than I had in my whole life and he was about 58. He was no Brad Pitt either. Once back he attempted to get us to all have a massage together but from the stories of the massages in India he had received so far I decided to pass.

When we finally got away from him I told Hannah all this. Before then she didn’t really have any interest in him besides him being an interesting guy. Afterwards she was totally disgusted. Swiss man then came back from his massage and started talking to an ignoring Hannah.

“That was a great trip wasn’t it?” He began.

“Uh-huh” Hannah replied without looking up from her book.

“So I had the best massage.”

“Really?” again without looking up or listening.

“Yes, you should have a massage as well.”

“uh-huh.” The book seemed to be getting more interesting to her.

“How about I get some massage oil and give you a good massage.”

“uh-huh.”

“Ok, I will be back in 10 minutes.” He was really excited.

Once he was out of earshot.

“Hannah! What the hell are you doing? He asked if you wanted him to give you a massage and you said uh-huh!” I said.

“No I didn’t! Really?” she started to sweat.

“Yep he just went to buy some massage oils!”

She was totally out of her mind.

“We have to hide!”

I nodded my agreement. We hid.

Swiss man then decided to try and tempt Hannah out of our room wearing nought but a tea towel. For some reason it failed to entice her out. I went out to explain to him that she didn’t feel very well and so didn’t want the massage right now. This only caused him to look behind me at Hannah jumping around the room screaming wildly and swinging from the chandeliers and talking to the staff in a very animated fashion. Describing how the coconuts were falling from the sky and she had to jump around avoiding death. He then decided to rub his brow with his tea towel and if you do the maths you can figure out what happened to the parts of the tea towel covering his, errrmmm private parts. I bode a hasty retreat and saw Hannah struggling with the door frantically trying to get in, screaming for the key, her coconut story forgotten with the sight of Swiss mans ‘coconuts’.