In the car on the way to Anjuna, the driver reassures me that we’re in for a sunny weekend, but it seems he’s just saying as much so as not to disappoint. The Indians don’t like to see you unhappy – as a rule, they’d rather say yes than no, even if the answer really is no. This is ok enough in the context of weather prediction, but you can imagine what a headache this approach can cause at work, or when booking flights, etc. End result: I continue to ask questions but never trust the answers I receive. Perfect, if simplistic example: I ask the driver if it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, he says no, and I don’t believe him. Not particularly productive, but second-guessing seems to be an indispensable survival mechanism out here.
When we arrive in Anjuna an hour and a half later, it seems quiet and deserted – hardly the beach rave town I’d read about. From the friendly folk at Villa Anjuna, we find out that the place is a little quieter in the off-season (of course), but that Saturday night at Club Tito’s is where it’s at.
So we decide to take it easy Friday night and set off to the ‘REALLY nice place’ that the guys at Villa Anjuna recommend for dinner. In the two minutes between our ‘hotel’ and the restaurant (which turns out to be a very casual, outdoor restaurant, with sand floors and a thatch roof), we are caught in monsoon downpour. Our umbrellas do little to shield us from the continuous sheets of rain, and there appear to be loads of little frogs skidding across the road in all directions. I try not to step on them, but Andrew says he doesn’t see them at all – so most likely just another malaria-pill hallucinatory side-effect!
Dripping wet, we sit down and get the evening started with a round of vodka shots. I’m a little disappointed that Anjuna has such a tangibly ‘off’ off-season, but I’m not going to let that stand in the way of my party :)
Saturday is the quintessential lazy beach day. Turns out the driver wasn’t lying after all – the sun in out in full force and I, covered from head to toe in factor 40, can’t wait to hit the beach. Predictably, it’s nothing like Thailand’s pristine shores. As much as Goa is famous for its beautiful beaches, it’s still very much India. The beach is practically deserted (off-season), but it’s strewn with litter, and as we walk down in search of a pleasant spot, we are approached by girl after girl, all beckoning us to look at their wares – ‘just look, you don’t have to buy.’ The girls all have great English, as well as Anglo-Saxon pseudonyms (also a BPO call centre trick), and their sales pitches are well rehearsed. One impresses me with a few Hebrew phrases (gotta love Israeli wanderlust). Not surprisingly, her repertoire includes ‘Lechi mi po’ (Go away)!Unable to draw us to their stalls, the girls reappear later with choice items wrapped in big bundles of plastic. Nothing quite like being surrounded by sari-clad hawkers when you’re lying out in your bikini, just falling asleep to the pleasant crash of waves. I try to be a good sport and start chatting to one girl, whose Anglo name is tattooed on her arm (Alixandra) – just in case she forgets.
Andrew’s having one of those famous ‘beach massages,’ I am paging through a copy of the New Yorker (little outdated – July 23) and Alexandra is looking intently at all the pictures (all the interest a prelude to selling us junk, mind you). She asks loads of questions about the cartoons, and soon enough, I’m giving her a proper education: strip clubs, g-strings, styrofoam, and stretch marks! And people accuse the New Yorker of being high brow...
I too have a massage, leaving Andrew to fend off the ladies, who only take their leave once we’ve bought a token trinket from each one of them (we are SUCH suckers). As the afternoon wanes, we find ourselves starting to smell like Indians – the coconut oil from the massages seems to be fermenting into that indisputably ‘Indian’ bodily aroma. The bad news – we smell kinda funky. But in terms of silver linings, at least we know it’s not a lack of hygiene that gives Indians their distinct odor!We’ve reserved Saturday night to ascertain if the Goa party scene really is all that and a bag of chips. As Anjuna’s pretty sleepy until October, we head to Club Tito’s in nearby Calangute. Our taxi driver stops for petrol on the way, purchasing a plastic water bottle full from a street-side vendor and pouring it into his engine! We have serious doubts about [a] getting to Calangute and [b] getting to anywhere that’s less lethargic than Anjuna (judging by the narrow dark roads the driver seems to have a predilection for). But he doesn’t let us down – in 20 minutes we are upon North Goa’s off-season party street (2 club, 3 restaurants). We stake out a dinner table close to Club Tito’s entrance – prime location for calculating the ratio of people going in to people going out. It’s not looking good, so I ‘white girl charm’ my way into the club for free to check it out. Prognosis: not heaving, but respectable.
The bar’s dodge and the vodka shots are quite possibly the worst I’ve EVER had, but the party’s hopping. There’s an especially rowdy group of army boys who are totally breaking out the Bollywood moves. Having spent the former half of the evening watching all the latest Bollywood music videos on Video Patrol (Indian MTV), I am all about getting jiggy with them. I pretend that in a previous life I was a Bollywood heroine.
At about 2am, the club clears out cause the army boys break into a fight. So lame.
Sunday morning is all about the lie-in, followed by a quick dip in the hotel pool. Bit of shopping, bit of shooting (pics, obvi). Andrew gives a cute 6 yr old a ten rupee note, and then all of a sudden 5 kids run after us, clamouring, ‘Give me money’ ‘Give me money.’ That’s my cue to hit the road.
I’m booked on an Air Deccan flight home. Three months in, and I’m finally braving the most ‘no frills’ of the budget airlines in India (also, the only one offering direct service from Goa to Hyderabad). Air Deccan boasts so few frills that the details on my boarding card are hand-written! So while Andrew heads off to Bangalore on 1st class (white skin upgrade), I am stuck behind a whiny baby on a refrigerator of a propeller plane. But I get to Hyderabad in one piece (despite Deccan’s rep) and stop to pick up a Domino’s pizza on the way home from the airport (this is becoming somewhat of a weekend-end tradition).
It’s been a good couple of days: booze, buzz, beach, boys and Bollywood. Can’t complain.
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