Goa, India

As I was having breakfast this morning a crow tossed a fish head from an adjacent roof top, through a window, between the table top and chair next to me, smashing into my legs. I took it as a sign of a couple things; first, I need to sanitized immediately, second, my lifelong hatred for birds is finally coming back to haunt me.

The rest of my Goa experience has been great. A relative of the Silva's has provided me with accommodations at the Royal Palms in Benaulim, South Goa. It's a great 1-bedroom apartment with hotel amenities plus a bonus amenity of organized daily activities, much like in Dirty Dancing; scavenger hunts, talent shows, karaoke, you name it. The other night I got a sober glimpse of what bad karaoke sounds like and I would like to apologize to all my friends for each and every karaoke experience I have forced you to endure. Thanks to my new best friends, earplugs, I was able to quiet an Indian rendition of Stevie Wonder's 'I just called to say I love you' that was so laughably off key, it was barely recognizable. Magnificently horrible.

Chris, one of the Silva's distant relatives, has been showing me around Goa and introducing me to the typical spicy Goan foods (sor patel, rechido spiced seafood, chicken suka, and biryani), the Roman Catholic churches and cathedrals of Old Goa (the Rome of India), and the old Portuguese homes of the Silva's heritage. Since Goa was under separate rule from the rest of India for most of the last 500 years (Portuguese versus British), the culture evolved separately and Goa is vastly different from the rest of India, more progressive and western. Most Goans still think of the two areas separately and refer to Goa as Goa and the rest of the country as India.

The beaches in Goa stretch for miles. The water is like a bath and the colors of the sun just before it disappears are brilliant yellows and reds. Strangely, the sun doesn't actually set, it disappears into a haze about one finger width above the horizon where the Arabian Sea meets the sky. Westerner's generally congregate in one area and swimming attire is worn. The only locals who venture into this area are either selling something or there to gawk at the human flesh so rarely seen in public, mostly the former. In the local sections of the beach, the oppression of women is very apparent and although I have been witnessing it for weeks, I am having trouble getting past it. Men comfortably swim in their shorts or tighty-whities (the later comfortable for them, but revealingly uncomfortable for the rest of us) and women continue to swim in pants, saris and burkas.Gentlemen, a tip for you; just because you are in India does not mean you have to wear a bohemian man purse/shoulder bag. Your stuff still fits in your pockets and it looks as ridiculous here as it does back home.

I intended my next country to be Sri Lanka. Disappointingly, I have cancelled that trip. The state of the country's civil war has caused a few websites to categorize travel in Sri Lanka with that of Pakistan and Kashmir in North India. I leave India in about 2 weeks and head back to Indonesia.