It's Better in Goa

I had this t-shirt when I was a child of a neon green, pink and orange sunset of Goa, and the caption was "It's better in Goa". I have always thought of Goa exactly like that t-shirt-- exotic, balmy, a calm paradise destination. Our New Year's trip to Goa was like that nice simple t-shirt spray painted with a tag that said "Daytona is better"! As you near the beach (we went to Baga beach), the traffic becomes menacing, there are no sidwalks for people to walk, it's dirty, there are open sewage drains, and the Goa police just block off random streets as they please. The main attraction of course is the beach, the sand was packed down, there were boats moored about 20 feet from the shore so you had to be careful not to get caught in someone's propeller, and the sand was littered with beer bottles and garbage from tourists and locals. Oh, and the most traumatizing part were the select Indian men who decided that white chuddies would make suitable swimming trunks and would come out of the water dripping wet and stand right infront of your beach chair. It gives a whole new meaning to "beach balls"! Needless to say, the whole experience was very disappointing, especially since it was so perfect in my imagination. But there were some things worth noting. For one, you can get served anything but the kitchen sink while lounging on the beach. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, beer, tattoos, massages, coconuts, sarongs, you can even get your ears cleaned as you lie there soaking up the sun! And the sunset, although marred by dozens of rows of beach chairs and umbrellas, is certainly worth waiting all day for. Ken liked them so much he kept hoping for two sunsets in one day! Another pleasant memory of Goa is that we got to spend time with Ryan who should be re-named the Australian Party Animal! We had the pleasure of meeting all of his cousins and it made our time there so much more fun. The hilight of the trip was New Year's Eve and in Goa you either go hard or go home it seemed. So we started the evening at Ryan's guesthouse, having drinks on the terrace. We laughed so hard we almost peed our pants! We had dinner and then ventured to the beach. I can't even describe how crowded it was. The beach itself was huge, and there were people on every square inch of it! The creepy part was they were mostly men, and the girls had to literally have the guys make a fence around them when we walked just so we wouldn't get groped. (Relevant the end of my last blog). We, in typical Indian Standard Time, only arrived at the beach at like 11:30. So we had to scramble to get drinks and decided to just stay on the beach for New Year's. With so many shacks around, and blasting music, there was no really definitive countdown, so we just created our own. I really believe the only way to spend New Year's is with lots of people in a really loud place, it's the best feeling. All of the beach shacks had fireworks shows, so we watched fireworks for about 20 minutes. After fireworks we had to join the mobs of people that seemed to be just roaming around aimlessly to find some outdoor club that Ryan's cousin had found. We had to pay a whopping Rs-1000 per person, but it was all-you-could-drink-and-eat. Needless to say I didn't really take advantage what with my 3 drink limit. But it was really fun. We all took over the stage and jammed to house music, which I always say you can only tolerate when you've had a few. The deejay was really annoying and wouldn't shut up. It's funny hearing these guys try to sound cool when they speak English with a really thick Indian accent. It would have been better if he just spoke Hindi or something. Kudos to Ken for outlasting us all on New Year's (he didn't get home til 10am). New Year's in Goa was certainly worth the experience. Though I will say the Goa beaches don't even deserve a mention compared to the white sand beaches of Mangalore or Thailand. I guess you could call me a beach snob.