Soul Vacation

I had forgotten how nice it was here and am really pleased that Claire managed to talk me into spending a little more than I wanted to as the last day at Palm View was a bit of a nightmare. A wave of Indians landed on us and took over the pool and everywhere else at the same time. All of them insisted on shouting to each other all at the same time so I was glad to get out in the end. The air con taxi picked us up at 11am as promised but I had to bring the bike back leaving Claire and the luggage to travel in style. Unfortunately someone was still in our room as check out is not until 12am and then they needed to get it cleaned up ready for us so we decided on a quick trip to Domniks beach shack. Of course, today (Thursday) is still a dry day so nowhere is selling alcohol so Claire asked for a beer in a tea pot like they do in Kerala and Domnik obliged. We ended up having soup and banana fritters while we were there. Today is a national holiday and the last day of voting so the government always ban drinking because the locals only need one or two drinks, start talking about politics and fights break out everywhere. The little boat really struggled to get out past the big waves, just like me.

As soon as we were in our room, I had to have a shower and shave and straight into my white bathrobe, heaven. Claire couldn’t wait to get by the pool but it’s far too hot for me, maybe in the morning I will share one of those double bed enclosures with her whilst I study. The hotel promised us a bottle of champagne but they can’t bring it to us until the ban finished at 5pm today. We found out that the results of the vote will be known before we fly home so I will let you know who won the world’s biggest democratic vote on Saturday. I don’t think that Mayawati will win but she should increase the parties standing for another time. I have already got our ice on the go with the Vodka and mixers chilling. Claire took the rest of our dirty washing to the laundry across the road so she doesn’t have to wash as soon as we get home. It’s so cheap here, only about £2 for about 4 shirts, 3 blouses, 2 towels, underwear and shorts and they come back lovely and pressed in packaging in less than 24 hours.

Jimmy commented on one of the entries about the undercooked fish coming back to bite us and it certainly did; we both needed those little yellow wonder tablets to survive. I think I will buy a load more to take home as they are so cheap and work so much better than ours at home. They even seem to settle your stomach down so you don’t feel ill at all. We might as well get a few more courses of anti-biotic and some sleeping tablets while we are about it.

At least we know the food is good here as before we even stayed here we used to treat ourselves to dinner some nights. They won the Times Lebanese restaurant of the year a couple of years ago. They have a wonderful room service menu at very reasonable prices and the wine is only about £1 more than in the wine garrets if they were open and all served in a large ice bucket so I already know what Claire will be ordering tonight. I see that Sula now do a Zinfandel wine as well which they also have on their menu. Claire just took me to the library which is free and they have quite a good selection of hardback and soft backs in different languages. They also have a dvd library and only charge about £1 each to watch on our dvd player in the room. Maybe I can catch up with some of the films missed like WallE etc. We even have wifi in our room I can’t tell you how nice it is here; but we may not have appreciated it as much if we had stayed in 4 or 5 star all the way. Also remember that we have already paid for a hotel room for 2 weeks so all this is extra really, even when I cheapskate a bit.

Before we leave we really must try and negotiate a sensible price for a 2 week stay here, it might be the only way to get Claire to come back to Goa again as we both feel that we have seen too much of the place sometimes. Even Domniks cat seemed to remember us from our Christmas trip; or was it just our food he remembered?