A spicy museum with maritime monsters

In Jakarta's north, in the Sunda Kelapa area, is the Museum Bahari, the Maritime Museum. It's a nice place to spend a couple of hours, housed as it is in a series of fine old colonial warehouses.

It tells the story of Batavia and its maritime history, and lots more.

It's even got rooms full of sea monsters, mermaids, and other sea legends from around the world.

And here are a couple of  'English travellers', who passed through Batavia at some stage, looking very imperious.





It was largely spices that made the Dutch East Indies what they were. I particularly liked the spice room. It smelt terrific.

Kerala's fabulous food

There's lots of fresh seafood, exotic fruits and vegetables, beautiful subtle spices, about 37 different types of rice. There are dosas, appams, Malabar biryanis, and there's coconut with almost everything. And yes, there's chilli. I was a bit worried about that at first, but it was never out of control, and usually in visible chunks, so I could remove most of them if I needed to.

This was my fourth visit to India, and not only did I not get sick like I usually do, but I even put on weight for once!