Goa rules

It's been only a few days, but I feel like it's been a really long time. How are you, dear readers? Please - allow me to share some of the wonderful and hysterically funny things that have happened while I've been away.

On Saturday, a pack of us (nine total) flew to the lovely beaches of Goa। First, please allow me to sincerely thank Nicole Johnson for getting married in Mexico this past December. It truly prepared me to deal with excessive heat and humidity - otherwise I would have been really really hurting :P

The beaches were beautiful and the sea warm at night, though. That was the time we went out the most - it was just too hot during the day. The first night, we had the most fantastic garlic butter tiger prawns. The tails were almost as big as some lobster tails that I've had! We crossed a river on foot to get to the beaches easily (we didn't have scooters/motorcycles at that point). Turns out that it had a bunch of rocks in it that I didn't notice in the evening light, but I did notice the ropes and anchors keeping the small boats in the river mouth because we had to climb over them ;)

At any rate, we played in the surf and had a great time. Tim has a great story about his shoes, which I will let him tell himself. All I will say is this: Sometimes it's necessary to let go of everything to get it all back.

On the way back, the tide had come in and the river was higher, naturally. Tim and I had good solid surf shoes on, so the rocks were no problem. However, not everyone else did and I think almost everyone got a cut or two. Poor Mainak had some deep gashes (one of which started dripping with blood the next morning!!) and Bala had some deep ones, too. Shamala got a small cut/scrape on her ankle, but it's since gotten infected and she's really suffering (send her some healing energy, k?). Tim actually had to carry her back to the shore.

The next day, we went to Anjuna beach and I got totally glommed on by vendors ("You're my first customer of the day - I don't want bad luck."). One little girl made me promise to come back to her shop (turns out everyone tries to extract a promise to come to their shop) and when I was trying to haggle with her, she said, "Are you trying to kill me?" I can't tell you how funny it was to hear those words coming out of her mouth after hearing other women say the same thing about lowering the price.

I got some ok stuff - most of it was cheap of course and built for the tourist trade. I got some really cool silver bangles that looked great, but rusted after I swam with them in the ocean. Yeah - threw those away.

We drank some beer and walked down the beach. I got pinged again and again by young women with stalls they wanted me to visit. All of them asked my name, where I was from, etc. Some of them had tattoos on their inner arms with their names and a small symbol (one was a beautiful lotus and the other was a butterfly). One girl came up to me and said, "You are very white...white like a chicken." I laughed and laughed and laughed. Never heard that one before ;P I know that she wasn't actively trying to insult me because she was trying to make a sale - I should have told her that comparisons to poultry aren't complimentary for Western women.

After a day spent hiding from the sun and drinking massive amounts of beer, we met up with the others on the beach at night for more alcohol and food. Funny enough, I still managed to get a little sunburnt - I ended up looking like undercooked chicken ;)

Most of us rode around on scooters Sunday to get places. I was the lucky one who got to ride on the back of a Honda Hero motorcycle with the very capable Hari driving. WOW. It's a very good thing I did a lot of cycle riding as a youngster - otherwise it would have been scary! The traffic was definitely not as bad as Bangalore. I would NEVER do that in town - I'd die of a heart attack before we got to our destination!!

Speaking of which, I'm actually starting to derive some meaning from various honks - like "I'm passing you" and "I want to pass you" and "Get out of the way" etc etc.

We left on Monday and the taxi ride took forever. Imagine if you will nine people jammed into a van in very very hot sun for about an hour and a half. Talk about crank factor!! I know that I was cranky and Tim wasn't happy either. But that's traveling for you. Our flight out was about an hour delayed and required a bus ride across tarmac to get there. Fun!

One awesome thing happened the morning we left. There were three dogs at the place where we stayed and one of them was a total cutie. She really liked Tim and me. The other was an old male who looked grizzled and acted it. The third was this young male with a curled tail. When I went for a short walk to smoke, all three of them followed me and wrestled with each other. I started making the same "rrrrr" noises they were making and they proceeded to try to include me in the fun. Given that the female had been lovingly mouthing a dead rat earlier, I wasn't really into playing along ;)

One last thing before I close - the place where we stayed had the only espresso around and the best omelettes ever!! It was fantastic and fantastically cheap, too :D

Gotta work now. Consider yourselves hugged!!