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Published: December 2nd 2010
I'm thinking about the style of this blog... the writing style. I'm not a great writer so I'm never sure how to put things. I'm sure, given a little time, I'll find the right 'style' so bear with me and they may get better. remember this is aimed any anyone who wants to read about what I'm up to. It's accessible to everyone including 84 year old ladies and 14 year old girls...
Day 1.
Apparently I can sleep with air conditioning roaring away, albeit with earplugs, but I'm impressed! So today, I ventured to the beach. Woke up so late as I was really tired from travelling yesterday. Went and had tea and toast in the hotel cafe... I'm not sure if everything in Goa is like this, but this particular hotel, if not, is really quite westernised. Normal toilets, clean swimming pool, normal tea, chips, proper tomato ketchup, not the weird stuff I've had before in other countries (weird runny orange sweet stuff) they're even using mozilla firefox (get in!) on their windows XP computers. Mr Lucky is very helpful and tell me where the beach is and it's not far to walk. There's a jungle outside my room.
I smothered myself in sticky suncream as it's amazingly hot in the sun, then left the building to walk out into a road full of waiting taxi drivers, moped drivers and cows. On the way to the beach, people ask 'are you english?' to which I say 'yes', only to be then faced with a stream of apparently english words... Lovely jubbly, wayne rooney, manchester united... i tell them 'okeedokee' is another one they can use and that I'm not interested in football. They seem to leave me alone after that!
I see the sea very quickly and under the shade of some palm tree I sit and talk to 'Tiffany' who is a girl from Karnataka, as I later find out most traders here are. In 'season' she sells clothing and jewellery then out of season goes to work with her parents in peanut fields. She is 23 and has two children. She's interested that I'm 27 and have't even gor a boyfriend, let alone children. In hindu culture, the parents pick their children's husbands/wives and they are married for the rest of their lives. If the youngest girl is married first, the older girl will probably never get married as the men believe the girl is then too old. Tiffany was married when she was 15. She warns me of certain dangers in Goa - men offering drinks and drugs then taking them onto the beach for what I only assume is 'foul play'. Then of course, she asks me to buy some things from her stall. I bought a couple of pairs of trousers and surprised myself that I can actually haggle quite well! Got her down from 950 rupees for one pair, to 300! Then 500 for two, although I later find out the second pair is a bit too small for me! Dammit! Doubt I'll be able to take them back... all part of the experience though isn't it!
Then, onto the beach through more stallholders asking me to have a look from under tarpaulin covered wooden trames with palm leaves resting on top and cows standing around inside. A pregnant woman sits in the blistering sunshine and asks me for some water so I gave her some, while she then tried to sell me some jewellery. She holds on to the bottle, presumably to make me stay longer and give her more of a chance to sell me things!! The water bottle tactic - I'll remember that one! Every stall I walk past has a lady inside telling me to 'just have a look', but I don't crumble...
The beach isn't quite as I expected. The sand is browner and the sea is cooler. The rocks are dark, dark brown and there weren't any funny crabs like there are in Kenya. Maybe the dogs have scared them all away. I make a little doggy friend and am looking forward to meeting the dogfaces tomorrow!
The beach is ridiculously hot, so I quickly find a sunbed with a parasol over it - I remembered Jen telling me that the sunbeds don't belong to anyone and anyone is welcome to sit there...so I do. Jen was definitely right. Along come a few girls from nearby stalls and this is pretty much how each conversation with every girl and boy on the beach goes...
Where are you from? What is your name? What do you do for a job? Do you have any brothers and sisters? I like your dreads. How do you do them? Did your piercing hurt? (or as they say 'is this paining you?') did you get this tattoo in england? i do tattoos in henna, do you want one? Look at my designs... Everyone's tring to sell something - jewellery, clothes (can i ask you something if you don't mind? Will you just come take a look in my shop just over there? Tomorrow Promise? India promise?) fruit, massages, ice creams... but no coconuts I find... disco balls? Even those. Random things happen here - cows wander along the beach, dogs jump out from under sunbeds and bark them away, little boys run around naked, Indian men hold hands, one cow came over to steal a man's dinner and did a massive wee right next to a Russian lady... MASSIVE WEE!!
One woman called Shanta tries to sell me some ankle bracelets... she gets them all out (even after me saying no quite a few times) and lays them all out on my legs... then asks me which one i like... I tell her I don't want one... she puts different ones round my legs... even with me joking at her that I'm not going to buy them so she'll only have to take them off again... then continues this for about an hour. This is all while I'm having interesting conversation with two young girls about how they come to be here. One girl, Sunita is only 13 and is very kind and tells the others to leave me alone (even though I think they're very sweet and just interested in me). I find out they are all from Karnataka and come here until the monsoons when the sea is very dangerous and tides very high. Then they all go to work in the peanut fields which is very hard work. They seem t be having problems selling things today... Shanta still hasn't managed to sell me her jewellery but decides that this one which is round my ankle is a present... then tells me I can pay her tomorrow!
A row breaks out with one girl who tells me I shouldn't be sitting here if i'm not going to buy anything from her stall as the sun beds are for her customers. Sunita tell her off and a big argument breaks out where they tell her she has no right to say that and to leave me alone. I find this all very funny and tell them to calm down - Chup ka! (stop!) They seem to only be winding each other up and then they are all friends again doing their nails with my emery board, which I end up tearing into three pieces and giving them all a bit.
After meeting a french and a russian lady, i head back to the hotel after taking a few photos where I have Goan fish and chips for 150 rupees - 2 quid or so. I get the feeling my hotel isn't one of the cheapest so am thinking about where to go next.
What's next? A party? Is it too dangerous to wander aroud to some of the bars alone? I'm now going to ask Mr Lucky and find out. Maybe I'll have to get a taxi... Tomorrow I'll hire a scooter as everyone's got one.
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Jen
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Nice Blog Mate!
Good blogging skills Emma Hanid. You describe it well. I like the way you just say everything that happened and don't appear to be judging or analysing or comparing too much. Wish I was there xxx