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Published: August 17th 2010
This trip was more than a holiday, I was going to stay at my girlfriend’s dad’s place (he spends the winter months in Goa) and whilst there I was going to do the gentlemanly thing and ask him for his daughters hand in marriage. My plan was to ask him at the start so I can get it out of the way and actually enjoy my holiday.....that was the plan, in reality I asked him towards the end of the trip and had to get blind drunk to do it.
As we were staying at my soon to be father in laws place we only had to pay for flights and spending money, he had told me about how cheap everything was but I knew I’d still want to go on some trips so I took a little extra to be on the safe side.
When we arrived we went to our apartment, on Baga Creek just inland from Baga beach, it had been along flight and we landed at around 8am local time so I decided to have a coffee and a traditional Indian breakfast and head for the beach. The father in law turns to me and
says “I’ve organised a moped for you so we can get around”, I’ve never driven a moped in my life and my other half told him I couldn’t drive, “it’s fine, I’ll teach you how to ride it”, I was a little nervous but didn’t want to rock the boat.
That evening I got ready to go out for dinner, I got ready a little early so I could have my driving lesson “pull this back and you go” he said “have a practice for five minutes and then we’ll be driving to the restaurant, it’s not far, only takes about 20 minutes to get there”. I had five minutes to learn to drive and then I had to drive for twenty minutes, with my other half on the back arrrrggghhhhh, if that isn’t pressure I don’t know what is. The drive was a little scary at first but I didn’t kill or seriously injure anyone so I did well and what made it even scarier was the fact the speedometer didn’t work and neither did the petrol gauge.
Nikki’s dad knew all the good places to eat as he had been going to India for about 15
years, every night a different restaurant followed by a bar with a live band (did I mention my father in law is a hippy?).
One day we went to Anjuna beach, a beach a little further north of Baga beach, when we got there it was fantastic, there were only a few people there and it was in a quiet cove. I lay in the sun relaxing then I heard tap, tap, tap I opened my eyes and saw two naked men, with pony tails, both aged about 65, playing tennis on the beach, that is something I never thought I would see in my life!
I decided to lay back down and relax in the sun again, then I heard “massage” a guy walking along the beach massaging people for about £3-4 for a full body massage “No I’m ok thanks, maybe later” I said to him, “I will come back later, you promise I can massage you later” “Yes maybe later” I said, big mistake. About an hour past and I heard “massage”, this time it was a different guy “No thanks” I said, “I give you free massage for 5 minutes if you like you
pay for more” before I could answer he began to massage me, after a couple of minutes I heard a shout “you promised me massage”, the first guy was back, all of a sudden I had two Indian guys massaging me and arguing at the same time, I not only felt uncomfortable but this was not a relaxing massage in the slightest. As it was only a few pounds I paid both and asked them to go away and I didn’t want any more massages.
Everywhere served crepes for some reason, not that I’m complaining, I have a sweet tooth and they were delicious, so with almost every meal I had crepes for afters. One day we went into Panjim, Goa’s capital, for lunch, we went to a little restaurant off the beaten track, I didn’t hold up much hope, four of us ate, not a massive meal but still a meal, we had coffee’s and imported coca cola, the real stuff too and when we asked for the bill it came to 78 rupees, that’s less than £1 in total for four people!
One morning Nikki’s dad told us we were going to a beach that was
about an hour and a half drive to get to, so seeing as the petrol gauge didn’t work we guessed how much petrol we had to put in and set off. There aren’t petrol stations like in the UK, there are little shacks on the side of the road where the locals fill up water bottles with petrol and sell a bottles worth to you. We set off on our drive, I was actually feeling quite confident on our little death trap now, it struggled going up steep hills with my weight on it but we made it up....just.
After a day of chilling out at a beach, where we were literally the only people and in order to get to it we had to cross a rickety bridge, we made our way back, as we were about to cross a quite steep bridge the moped started to shake “come on we can make it”, no we couldn’t we had run out of petrol. I beeped Nikki’s dad but he was in the distance and couldn’t hear us, we had no mobile phone and didn’t have a clue where we were, we just had to hope they would notice
we were gone and come back. After about 15 minutes Nikki’s dad returned and then went to get us some petrol, turns out the gauge did work, only when we got the bike it was so empty that when we poured 2 litres of petrol in it the gauge still didn’t move, once we poured about 5 litres in we were ok to set off again.
After my nightmare of a massage on the beach Nikki’s dad took us to a massage parlour so that we could get a massage from qualified people, hour and a half hot oil massage sounded good, I was taken into a room with a huge Indian guy, he put handful after handful of oil on to me and then started. This was not a relaxing massage either, he must have thought I wanted a sports massage, the pain was almost unbearable, at one point I was laying there and thought “why is he putting oil on my head, does this include a head massage” then another thought popped into my head “both his hands are massaging me, how is he putting the oil on to my head” I opened my eyes, turns out
it wasn’t oil dripping on to my head, the Indian guy was so hot he had taken his top off and sweat was dripping from his man boobs on to my forehead, I have never felt so violated in my life!
When we left Nikki told me about her massage and how the woman sat her upright and began to tweak her nipples as part of the massage, it made me laugh but I still felt violated.
A day or so later Nikki and I were driving along on the death trap near our hotel “look at that kid on the bridge” I said to Nikki, he was standing on the hand rail over the creek, I thought it looked dangerous but as I got closer I thought, that’s not a kid that’s a small man, I beeped my horn and the man child turned out to be a monkey the size of a 10 year old child, he looked at me jumped off the bridge and then jumped into a tree, now I know why there are bars on the windows of most places, it’s to keep those monkeys out.
We went on a trip to Dudhsagar
falls one day, it is a 200 foot waterfall and around the bottom you can go to see and feed small monkeys, we went for a swim at the bottom of the falls and saw a little baby monkey with its mother. Later that day we went to an elephant park and had a ride on an elephant, it filled its trunk with water and sprayed us, which was pretty cool, after we got to wash the elephant. Later we went to the German bakery for some snacks, which is an open air bakery which sells loads of herbal teas and the seats were like sofas you could lay on and relax, I was shocked at how many people took drugs in Goa, people were sat around completely spaced out. Tied to all the trees were ribbons in all different colours, this is definitely a hippy’s heaven.
Tonight was the night, I was going to ask Nikki’s dad, a football match was on TV and he loves football, Nikki knew I was going to ask him as we bought the ring together in New York (she picked it out, lol). We were all sat drinking and after a few
I worked up the courage to ask him, I gave Nikki the nod to leave, after a few minutes I was just about to ask him and all of his friends came into the bar to watch the football. Nikki came back after half an hour and I told her I hadn’t asked him yet, we drank some more and his friends left after the match, now was my chance, then all of a sudden a guy from another group came over and started to speak to us about football, he was being quite rude and abusive and at one point I think he may even have asked Nikki’s dad for a fight. Tonight was definitely not the night to ask him, again Nikki came back and I told her I hadn’t asked him, I went to the toilet and when I returned her dad got up to go to the toilet “ask him” she said, “not tonight” I said, “I’ve spoken to him and told him you’re going to ask just ask him”, in her drunken state Nikki had told her dad what I was going to do, now I had no choice, he returned and Nikki got up
to leave.
My heart was beating faster than it ever had before, “I need to ask you something” I said “do you what’s that” he said “I think you know” “no I don’t ask me” he said, he wanted me to say it so I asked, I can’t remember my exact wording but in my drunken state I vaguely remember him trying to talk me out of marriage “it’s not for everyone” he said, should I take that as a good sign or a bad sign? He eventually told me I had his approval, as soon as I got the nod I wanted to leave, I’d done it and got the answer I wanted, quick before he changes his mind.
I went up to the room and Nikki was so drunk she was sat in the bathroom spraying the foot spray into her mouth, I started laughing at her and then she started laughing and spitting the water at me “oh no, she’s going to be hung over tomorrow!”. Eventually we went to bed and we must have been in bed for all of 10 minutes before she got up and ran to the bathroom to be sick, problem
was she couldn’t find the light switch and was sick on the floor which blocked the drain, I’ll leave it for her to clean in the morning, lol.
At the end of the holiday I was amazed I hadn’t got Delhi belly, I’d finally conquered my weak stomach, no I hadn’t at the airport it kicked in, I won’t go into detail but it is the most ill I have ever been, Imodium saved me for the flight home.
Not quite the relaxing holiday we’d hoped for but I achieved what I wanted and it was a really cheap trip, we will certainly miss waking up and looking out of the window and seeing an elephant walk past painted in all different colours and eating curry almost every meal of every day, but I won’t miss having to fish out all of the sticks, bones and seeds out of the curries.
I didn’t ask Nikki to marry me whilst I was there as she knew I had the ring and now she knew I had spoken to her dad so I told her she would have to wait as I wanted to surprise her.
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Love this photo
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