Regant Lake Palace Hotel in Kollam

Ok, back to India again. I never really finished blogging about my trip with Yvonne down India's west coast. I'm still missing the entire Kerala portion. So, after the bomb on the plane from kingfisher airlines (still bitter that they have an airline by the way) on the plane from bangalore, we made it to Trivandrum (thiruvananthupuram) and had booked a hotel in Kollam. Kollam is only about 80km north of trivandrum, but the bus takes a long time to get there. Somehow, everything is really slow in India, even on good roads.

So we get out of the airport, find a cab to the bus station, and find the bus to kollam. Luckily these buses go every few minutes. So, for a matter of $2 or something small like that, we were on our way to the Regant Lake Palace Hotel on a small bus with all our luggage. Fast forward 2 hours later and there we were.

Regant Lake Palace Hotel, somehow evokes everything that a tourist should expect from India. It's a beautiful hotel in the middle of nowhere (actuall between the arabian sea and a lake) which is horribly decorated and has a staff full of people who WANT to be helpful, but simply aren't. They really were sweet people, but simply not a clue about anything. Quick example: It was the Malayalam New Year or maybe the Kerala New Year (I can't keep them straight) and this meant 10 days of blaring devotional music playing at ear splitting level. We were put on the side of the hotel where the music was. The speaker blaring this annoyance was hoisted way into a tree that was approximately 40 ft high (ie the level of the hotel room). We asked to be moved to the other side (as there were no other guests in our hotel) and the bellhop said the music was coming from the other side and it would be louder there. What a f'ing idiot. He didn't even check, he just called the front desk and described (incorrectly) where our room was. Did I mention this music starts at 5AM and ends at 1AM? Did I mention that most of it isn't really music, but more high pitched wailing and drums? Did I mention that I hate high pitched indian singing? Did I mention that they didn't change our side of the hotel? Did I mention that this was the second new year this year? Bizarre.

Anyway, the hotel was really lovely, great breakfast (included in the room price) and was on a lake. Did I mention they have their own private island (about 5000 m^2 which is to say extremely tiny for an island)?