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Goa!!! Sun, sea, sand... and very cheap alcohol!!! No seriously it's only 50p for a beer!! Very nice when your a backpacker!
North Goa- Candolim. Last few days with some of the Sangam family. It was really great. We chilled on the beach and by the pool, wondered along the shopping streets and spent a morning in Old Goa exploring the musuems and old catherdrals-not so many temples as Goa was under Portuagese rule for a long time.
The sun lounge seller guy was so funny- he hated us to be at all in the sun in case we burnt (because we were white) so the only way to sunbath was lie on the sand and not the loungers we rented!!! The sea was as warm as a bath and the food was pretty good too. I was however completly suprissed by the amount of Russian holiday makers there were!! So much so that all the menus and signpost were in Russian and English. North Goa was nice but after living in Pune we were all shocked with all the tourism and the tourists in their NOT appropriate for India clothing! Seriously going topless on the beach isn't the done thing here! No wonder guys were starring!!! One night we were in a restaurant and the waiter came over and was like the guy over there would like to buy you all a drink, so we said sure why not, looked around and no he was not some super attractive 20 something year old... He was an old guy 50/60s, but he came over and turned out to be pretty ok, we had a good old chat and then went on our merry way- a very enteraining night!! :D
After saying our final goodbyes it was time for the three muskatears to begin our adventures! Elly, Olivia and Charlotte on the road in India... what could possinly go wrong?! :D
We moved down to South Goa to Benaulim, it was much less touristy and we found this lovely familyrun guest house that was super cheap and it felt like we had a little peephole into their lives. Kids were doing their homework in the restuarant and the little girl was super cute and everyone staying there was really friendly. One night turned into 3 and we spent out evenings walking along the beach,chilling in cafes. In the daytime we walked along the beach up to Colva-the next town and found a second hand book stall so we then spent the next hour in Cafe Coffee Days (our favourite cafe chain) reading! It was a very relaxed way to spend our days and the views were absolutly stunning! It was in our little guest house that we met the one, the only... Crazy Mary!!! She was this older lady from Scotland who had been traveling around India for well I guess almost a year and she was 'not quite with it' High on life was an understatement and she really liked to talk. In fairness she gave use some great advice on places to visit although she also told us that she saw a dead shark and a dead turtle on her walk on the beach... We walked the same area the next day. Shockingly no dead sea cretures!! There was however a large piece of plastic and a plank of wood... :P
She left us with a parting gift of some nose studs- she had got hers done and decided that she didn't like it. Now I'm 90% sure the the stud she gave Elly was the one she had in her own nose the day before, mine was in a packet but they weren't really our style- lovely thought though!!
It was time for us to move on and we went down to Palolem. Hoping to escape all the business and people and chill in a beach hut. Well as some of you alread know this is not what happened...
The thought of staying in a sucleded beach hut a stones throw from the beach and taking evening stolls and spending the days walking, reading and sunbathing is really rather nice. However I have to say our reality was although VERY memorable not quite as picturesque!!
There were so many beach huts along the beach we didn't really even know where to start so after cooling down in a brand new, air condintioned Cafe Coffe Day, we walked along the road and found a man with a plan... His friend had some beach huts, would we like to see them. Sure we had to start somewhere. So we arrived at them and they were bight green and right on the beach, there was a cafe next door and they looked nice enough- i bit like a treehouse on stilts. So we decided that it was fine, even if there was a step missing off the ladder. They even moved an extra mattress in so 3 of us didn't have to squease on the bed! The first thing to notice after we had paid and 'settled in' was that the pipe to connect the sink to to outside drainpipe was missing! A whole section big enough for any unwanted creature to crawl through... There was also no drain for the shower water to go through, so we asked the man how does this work, his answer: "it's ok, there's holes in the floor" or something along those lines. Ok fair enough at least we wouldn't be a flooded house on stilts!!
Refreshed and ready for an adventure we went shopping where Elly brought an interesting array of thigs...some jewlerry, a new rucksack because she brought 1 tiny one with her for almost a month and by her own admission, it just wasn't big enough! It was an absolute bargin and by the time she stiched up the sides and fixed the broken zip it was good to go! (not bad for a fiver though!!) She also brought... a hammock!!!! :D very entertaing!! After dinner and a nice walk we got back to the area that our hut was in... Just so you know I had prewarned them about my awlful sense of direction... We were walking through the maze of beach huts trying to find ours and it wasn't going to terrifacally! We were debating which way to go "it's this way" "No it's deffinatly this way" I replying-of course needless to say I was very wrong. In fact we did have to go past the dog with his knickers in a twist! Just as we were having our debat the thunder storm turned to rain. Huge droplets fell from the sky, soaking us through. We were giddy! You have to remember we hadn't seen clouds for 3 months let alone rain!!! As the rain poured down, Will the Welshman was sitting in his porch "wishing I had a videocamera" He helped us to find our way back which turned out to be at the end of the path-just like Elly said! I'm not sure he believed us when we said we hadn't been drinking-we were just high on life and the bizzare situation we were in.
So back at our hut,suprissed yet relieved that our stuff was still there; the floors weren't connected to the walls and the ceiling wasn't connected to the walls either! And as for the door, well it may have been locked but you could probably still fit a small arm through the gap. Anyhoo we were just sat relaxing after our little adventure when much to our suprise the bathroom door that was shut BURST open and running through it was the biggest RAT i've ever seen!!!! Seriously it wa the size of a cat and boy it could move!! We screamed so loud but nobody came (not sure what they'd have done-we later found it that we sounded like we were laughing... no, no we were not!) So the rat ran around the floor jumped onto a table and ran along the window. It hopped onto the floor again and sat in Elly's bikini and bag for a while. We huddled on the bed, 3 screaming girls, penknife at the ready (wouln't have done much good, the rat was several times the size and there was no way we were going any closer than forced to! ) we depbated ways to get the door open to get it out. Lazooing the door handle with a washing line was my best idea- the girls weren't too impressed with that! and it was at the moment that rat decided to leave...by JUMPING THE HEIGHT OF THE WALL AND LEAVING THROUGH A WHOLE IN THE CEILING!!!!!!!!!!! Oh my gosh I was so scarred i thought i would pee my pants (don't worry I did not!) I also did not know that rats were so athletic! Olivia being the brave one finally went to open the door and checked that we were deffinatly rat free. Desperate to leave we went down onto the beach and chilled out there for a while, avoiding of course all the packs of super angry stray dogs!! What a night!
It would be fair to say none of us slept well that night and we didn't use the extra matress! All night I could here the rats crawling aruond under the bed! The second night was problem free and we enjoyed the rest of our stay in Palolem, the beach was stunning and the locals were friendly and we read lots of books. On our last evening we had the best biriani and hakka noodles that I had in India- they were just awesome! It was then time to board my first ever sleeper bus to Hampi...
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