26 January - GOA

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GOA

Ever since the Bourne Identity we have wanted to come to GOA and stay in one of those beach huts, but its reality time now - that beach is down the South of GOA and the beach huts don’t have ensuites! So we head to North GOA. We start at Candolim where there is a long line of beaches with each one a few kilometers up the road, split by distance but not by a break in the shops. Basically it is just one very long road behind a very long beach with a couple of points jutting out along the way, it is covered in beach umbrellas and loungers in front of heaps of beach shacks serving food and drinks.

Candolim and Calangute were like strips on the side of an ocean channel and swimming was closely supervised and discouraged, but at Baga Beach, being sheltered by a point, you could swim. One hotel at Calangute had a notice in the room “Swimming is dangerous. If you want to swim, notify the Tourist Police and Life Guard before doing so”.


These beaches are inhabited by the English, it seems the Europeans go down to Kerala beaches and the English to GOA. The majority of tourists in Candolim were English, Calangute were Indian and Baga both.

Candolim Beach

Leading off the main road down to Candolim beach was Beach Road which was lined with restaurants, shops and guest houses, no different from the main road, but quieter. This was a lovely little tourist village, it was very clean, quiet, and had lots of eating and drinking choices. We ate, read and got in some sunbathing. Carl is very brown now merging in with the locals, it’s hard to pick him out, I just look for the silver hair!

It appears that the main tourists who inhabit Candolim are the English who flock there on cheap package deals. Generally they were not a pleasant tourist to be around, the men - middle aged lager louts with beer guts doing justice to the many 1000’s of pints they have consumed. On several occasions we saw them being loud, aggressive, and abusive, taking the piss out of the local populace, who always managed to smile and take it with good grace. The English middle aged lasses were a little less aggressive and spent their days on sun loungers on the beach squeezed into a ‘many sizes too small’ bikini bottom. Their topless saggy breasts well passed their “use in public” date littered what was otherwise quite an attractive beach. Our loungers were like hemmed in by a crowd of droopy tits and cellulite buttocks! We are just not used to those sights in New Zealand, public nudity is restricted to the pretty young slender girls, the rest hiding in nudist camps I thought. There were no hawkers allowed on this beach, but I thought that maybe it was their choice!

But then there are some nice English tourists as well of course, we past a couple on our way to the beach. So we moved on ……..but

A week on and after going further up the coast we found the beaches better, deserted a little too quiet at this point of the trip, we needed internet and more restaurant choices (Carl does love his food!) we got a bit bored so we came back to Candolim moving further down the main road south towards Fort Aguada and we found a great English Pub to stay at with good old English food and entertainment and the tourists were nice English people. So it seems it is just that area, the nicest and more attractive part of the beach attracts the worst tourists.

Accommodation Review
Coqueiral Holiday Home - nice room, cleanish, good location, conversatory, back entrance to beach and 1 minute to Beach Street. It had a pool which is excellent if you want to numb your body. It cost 1200 rupees (NZ$40). There is even a supermarket on the main road.

Coqueiral Holiday Home

Ruffles - When we came back the second time we stayed at Ruffles and it had an excellent pool although they did not clean it daily, but when they did it sparkled. They had a great pub and lots of entertainment, served English breakfast and bangers and mash! The food was a little expensive for us, again the pound driving up prices. Rooms were good for the price, cleaned daily, deck, only 1200 rupees ($NZ40). Carl agreed at 1500 when searching for a room, but when we booked in for some reason the owner said I give you surprise only 1200 - hhhmmmm maybe we leave fly spray alone. But great room, good value, good enjoy.

Ruffles

Calangute

A few kilometers further up the road and we turned into another Beach Road to Calangate Beach -Yuk, Yuk and Yuk! It is very popular with the Indian residents for holidaying but is covered in rubbish. The town, the beach, sand, everywhere there is rubbish. The Beach Road is very long and has hundreds of shops, but really all the shops sell the same stuff.

Accommodation Review
Falcons Resort - this place was lovely, it was an Oasis in the middle of a dessert rubbish dump. Behind the fence was escapism into a lovely garden, restaurant, and clean guest house. Shame there is no reason to stay there.

Falcons Resort

Baga Beach

We had read about Baga as being the same as Calangute but rowdy with heaps of bars and nightclubs thumping until the wee small hours. We had to move on so we took a tuk tuk down to Baga to have a look around and was amazed at how the scenery changed as we got further up the road. The clean street was sheltered by arching green trees, modern shops and bars lined the street with heaps of restaurants with inviting décor..…this place is really nice. So we walked around and found a room for a couple of nights at the top of the main Beach Road where the nightlife is. It obviously leads down to the beach but is lined with the normal shops but mainly bars, even the famous Titos bar - the most famous club in India where the Bollywood crowd hang out.

The beach is an extension of the others with beach shacks and loungers, just not as classy looking as the first area of Candolim we stayed, but even better no tits flapping in the wind! There is a Coffee Day, Barista Coffee, a short walk to Baskin Robbins and even a Subway! The tourists are great here as well, a range of all age groups. For NZ$3.00 you get 2 loungers and an umbrella for the day, but we never last that long. The shack behind have staff who run after you all day, but you do get child beggars and heaps of hawkers. The other day all at once the hawkers just jumped up and fled, running up the back of the beach to the shops behind the shacks. They explained “police coming and if they get caught on beach they will take all their stuff for free”.

We could not understand where all the crowds at the beach during the day disappeared to at night, obviously they go back to their hotels for the evening, as the beach shacks are pretty deserted and so are some restaurants. The bottle stores here are very cheap so maybe they drink in their rooms being an older crowd. Anyway we went down Beach Road last night to get a glimpse of the nightlife only intending to stay for a couple of drinks but ended up there to 12.30am. We started at Tito’s which is very very nice and we were serenaded at our table by a Jazz Sax, at a cost obviously. But moved on as it was too expensive for us, so we found a cheaper bar across the road and spent the rest of the night there. When we left we could not believe the crowds at the local bars, it was packed with 50/50 foreign and local tourists. It was a Friday night and the place was humming, even our hotel had music and a full bar.

Accommodation Review

Hacienda Beach Hotel -Well we spent our one day in Calangute searching for a room in Baga and found this great place for only 700 rupees NZ$25 a few seconds walk to the top of Beach Road and next to the restaurants and bars on the main road. It was one of our best value for money rooms, not bad for space, deck, and a small bathroom, and its cleanish. I am not sure what cleanish means anymore, I think not fit for use at home, but pretty good in India. In the first hour (yes it took that long) we found a used condom on the floor Then 2 hours on Carl saw a cockroach at the back of the wall between the bathroom roof and the room roof. So before we went to dinner I sprayed the room for mosquito’s as we always do the first night in a room. But with the cockroach and an open tunnel up into the roof visible I sprayed extra, especially up the tunnel. We opened the door later that night to the horror of a sight - the floor was covered in cockroaches lying upside down wiggling their legs, I mean like about 40 of them. There were even some outside the room where they had run under the door in the hope that fresh air would clear their lungs. All we could think was thank god we left the room after we sprayed, imagine sitting there with that lot falling out of the roof and scurrying everywhere. It worked out well though we got upgraded to a bigger room for the 2 nights at the same price! Decided we might carry a bag of dead cockroaches around with us and try it at the next hotel! Cannot find website for them.

Obviously we thought we might move out of that hotel so we went searching for accommodation with a pool and found this real great deal on the main road near the end of Baga Beach, so it’s a 7 minute walk to Beach Street, but worth it. Called Cavala, we nearly did not go in as it looked too expensive but was under budget at 900 rupees including breakfast. Large rooms, pretty very clean you know the tiles just need a bloody good scrub. Rooms are serviced daily and there is a fridge - a real luxury - we get to drink cold water instead of warm. It has a really nice bar and restaurant and the pool even has bean bags to sit on and poolside service. I definitely recommend the Cavala, you can get upstairs rooms for 1400 rupees. It also has wireless, but as soon as we got here our card stopped working. The pool was cold though, seems we hunt out pools and never swim in them cos they are too cold.

Cavala

8 February 2008

Access to internet has not been great for us, and the problem with the wireless adaptor has been frustrating and limiting, so I never got around to publishing the above entry so am adding to it below after a couple of weeks from writing the above …………

We cannot believe we are so far through our holiday, it seems along time ago we started in Thailand, but home still feels so close and familiar to us that it does not seem we left it nearly 5 months ago. We miss our sons Kiel and Liam, and family and friends, although we are having a fantastic time and will definitely do it again! The north was an eye opener and a real insight into the traditional and historic India, but since we came South its like we have been in a different country and have spent most of our time amongst European tourists sharing their annual overseas holiday.

Today we walked further down the Candolim beach towards the TAJ hotel today and the beach had like eroded away, beach shack poles were dangling in the air, like 8 feet of sand had been sucked out to sea - weird. This part of the beach is not as nice as the beach we stayed at first down the other end of Candolim, the water, shacks, loungers or umbrellas. A rusting old ship sits in the ocean a few meters out from the beach, it seems the expensive tourism end of the beach is the worst. There are some expensive resorts here, like hundreds per night, and if I was going to spend that type of money it would not be in GOA, I would search for the crystal clear waters. Most the tourists here come back year after year after year. Today they are booking January next year and by the colour of their skin they must like stay for weeks.

It was interesting to speak to the waiter at the restaurants. The beach shacks are dismantled at the end of the season, before the monsoon and everyone packs up and goes home for the 6 months, so they need to earn enough to survive during that time. They come from all over the country and jobs in the newspaper say about 3000 rupees per month (NZ$100 - we get 30 rupees per NZ$), but they all sleep in a room and they get fed. So we leave like 10% tip and if they do like at least tables a night then they could pick up like NZ$20 (600 rupees) tips per day. But I am just assuming this. Call Centre jobs in the paper are 6000 rupees per month but within like 6 years you can increase this to like 24000 - 30000. So although not much it seems to be enough to provide for a family, educate the children, pay a mortgage on an apartment and save a little (quoted from newspaper stories). To actually go on holiday and pay the prices we are they would have to be extremely well off in rupees.

Arambol

After Baga, we headed further up the beach to Armabol. Picturesque with stalls/shops and restaurants set back in the rocks lining the point of a sparse beach, fishing boats resting up on the sand shading cows, old hippies and the young Rastafarians. Shops selling rasti goods - pipes, knitted hats and you could get dreds really cheap. The beach shacks stunk and were covered in flies, the wind carried the smell of urine, the back pathways were lined with open sewers, the stagnant water with its pungent smell wafting through the restaurants. Old male hippies walked the beach wearing only a g string with a front pouch admidst the harmonious thud of the drums ringing out from a cross legged circle of spiritual tourists. Indian woman thrashed their washing in a small puddle of water in what was left of a creek filled with rotting rubbish. It seemed anything goes on this beach. But the Europeans youth seemed to love it, getting stoned, playing music and residing in really cheap rooms, eating cheap food - why the hell not! I think they were mainly Israelis but not sure, if not, Europeans of some type, make and model - no English here mate. Unfortunately we worked out it just smelt too much for us post getting lodgings, but nice room, NZ$16.00, great deal just very small room and tiny hard bed. So one hour after we arrived we spent the rest of the day walking down the beaches finding somewhere to stay. From Armabol Beach around the point is Mandrem Beach and from around the next point is Asvern Beach and the next point is Mojim Beach- we never got as far as Mojim though.

Mandrem

Mandrem was a lovely stretch of beach, with very few tourists, Candolim to Baga are just choked full of layers of loungers and umbrellas. Mandrem, Armabol and Asvern were deserted in comparison. Unfortunately just like all the other beaches in North GOA not really a swimming beach and very windy. The water was brown, great waves, strong pull, very salty - just nothing like those beautiful Thailand crystal clear beaches. We also walked around to Asvern Beach which was very much like Mandrem if not better, younger tourists as the huts were more basic - shared bathrooms.

We did go to the famous Anjuna Market, started by a bunch of hippies years ago who ran out of money and wanted to stay in India, so they sold their belongings to each other - not sure how that worked? The taxis and motor bikes cause traffic jams every Wednesday whilst taking tourists from all corners of GOA to this market to see all the same shops they have already walked past group in one place (they just move there on a Wednesday). There was nothing new to see and the prices were so much higher than in the streets. I saw one lady pay 800 rupees for something you could buy on the beach for 50. So we lasted 30 minutes and left. There are so many shops lining the streets in India and they all sell the same stuff, looks good here, but when you get it home, it’s just junk.

Accommodation
Sunset Paradise - We stayed in a bamboo hut which was great, bed, couch, coffee table and bathroom just the walls were like made of flax. It was nice and had concrete floors and bathroom half walls. Insects were really not a problem and we had a deck, it was really peaceful and quiet, but 2 days was enough for us. The restaurant was good food, not like the one next door at Riva. Carl needed more eating options, I was a little bored and we needed internet. There was a river in front of the huts and restaurant with a bridge over to the beach, where they had a beach shack restaurant and loungers. So we read and sunbathed……..and then we went back to Candolim. It was 1200 rupees per night, but you could get them as low as 800 if you used shared bathrooms.

Food
Fantastic food in GOA, consistently good tasting Indian food but you need to ask for spicey or you get mild. You have to hunt for the reasonable food and drink prices as the British pound rules here, which does not work in our favour. Recommend Sunny Side Up in Candolim down the Beach Road, serves fantastic Goan food at reasonable prices, has a great singer and very modern décor, and grass all around it, a strange sight walking down to the beach. Also Stones further down is great. In Baga, O’Pescados is definitely worth a visit - we loved the elegant Italian type outdoor dining decor. There are heaps and heaps of beach shacks that serve good cheap food for breakfast and lunch but appear deserted at night. You can get English breakfasts everywhere but not cheap, and no golden fried hashbrowns. In India in the north you order a hashbrown for breakfast and get boiled potatoes mixed in a brown gravy with stewed peppers and onion - like what?

News

Funny but the Tourism authorities are investigating reports of a nude party in Arambol.

It was identified that Goa hotels are not registering all their guests with the police like they should, after they found a couple of terrorists in Goa. Politician suggests Hotels get mobile number of guest friend at home, Hotel ring them to identify guests! I mean they are just so naive in their statements at time.

They caught the Doctor behind the illegal kidney operations, he had done 500 surgery’s. How he got found was funny, he fled the country and was staying in a hotel in Nepal where he took a newspaper from reception to read, cut out the article about himself and gave the newspaper back (how stupid). Hotel staff got suspicious, he was wearing hat and sunglasses and he cut article out, so they rung the police.

Children are getting allergies and asthma from the increased pollution and dust. In the north I had asthma everyday, the dust is very bad. So many times a day the shop owners everywhere throw water over the side of the road to stop the dust from the hot red dirt covering their stock.

They are putting in underground drains or wires down the main road at the moment and the workmen are smashing rock at the side the road with pickaxes - wearing jandals. The women put the rubble in a metal basket and carry on their heads. Their children play at the side of the road on top of the direct mounds. At night they leave the great big holes in the roads taking up half the road, no cones, no lights as warning. Last night we watched a motorbike bang into a rock sitting at the edge of the hole, fly into the air and skid for metres down the road. They got up, but must have been badly grazed.

I must admit reading stuff.co.nz every other day makes me wonder which country is the safest! There seems to be multiple murders everyday on stuff. Would not have thought that plane would have enough fuel to fly to OZ but I am sure she had thought of that first!

Whats Next
Well we fly from Goa to Mumbai tomorrow and to Bangkok on the 11th, and Cambodia on the 13th.

See you later….

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Photos

Candolim Beach
The nice end of the Beach - down beach road

Delivery Truck
Dropping goods off at the local Candolim Dairy

Calangute Beach
Full of rubbish

Baga Beach
Near Beach Road, the uncluttered end

Baga Beach
Near the river mouth, the crowded end. Just a sea of umbrellas

Arambol Beach
See the cows under the shade of the boats

Arambol Beach
The point lined with shops and restaurants - of sorts

Mandrem Beach
View from our Bungalow