Goa: sit down and be quiet sir

(Here I am bottling the Goan sunshine to send your way)

Goa is huge. Goa can be anything you are looking for in a holiday, or everything you’re not: apparently it all depends on choosing the right beach. I’m sure frequent visitors to the Costa del sol could have told us this a long time ago! So where to go? The answer really depends on who you’re talking to, Goa can be cliquey. We discovered that if you’re looking for the 90’s trance DJ party scene with a sprinkling of illegal narcotics Anjuna’s your place (albeit a smaller scene these days).

But if finding enlightening and massaging your third eye, while stretching yourself into a hero pose is your thing, then Aranbol is definitely the right place for you. And those just looking for an Indian Style Costa del Sol, well Baga or Palolim are right up your alley. Then of course there are all those secret 5 star resorts, about which nobody we came into contact knew anything of! To the dismay of the travellers we met we were heading to Baga; package holiday and rich Indian weekend getaway central! Why? - because that’s where Malachy’s hand making guitar course is.

A henna painted dog hanging arround the guitar workshop!

The only available train deposited us to a station called Madgoan at 2am, far from where we needed to be. We boarded early the previous day to a full compartment, where we had to move extra people from our beds and all our luggage space was used up. We eventually almost squashed our bags under the seat, under the watchful eye of a rude Indian man who insisted that the bag taking up all our space wasn’t his.

Mal: Well whose is it then?

Rude man: Another passenger, he’ll be right back. Sit down over there.

Mal: (Private comments to me)

Twenty minutes later, long after our departure

Mal: What did the man look like who owns this bag?

Rude man: There’s no problem, don’t worry about the bag.

Mal: Well there is a problem, the bag is taking up all the room, I have no space for my legs and they are touching yours!

Rude man: just sit over there (pointing to where I’m sitting)

Mal: My wife is sitting there, this is my seat, that’s not my bag and if it’s not your bag, and we can’t find the owner, it’s dangerous.

Rude man: (Laughing) it’s not dangerous, that’s impossible.

Mal: I’m going to find the conductor and report the bag

This is a few weeks after the Mumbai attacks; bombs on Indian trains are unfortunately a frequent occurrence. Mal eventually finds the conductor, who ignore him at first and then tries to reassures Mal that the bag is safe (even thought he hasn’t seen the bag).

Conductor: It’s not possible to be a bomb sir, don’t worry sir, it’s very safe on this train. I will check it shortly.

He never did check the bag, the ‘owner’ never appeared, the bag disappeared when the family left.

This is India.

The taxi vultures were waiting outside the gates at our arrival to take advantage of us weary souls, but we weren’t to be broken! A budget’s a budget and the train or buses are our only options (until my sister Demelza arrives!). Unfortunately those options don’t avail themselves at 2am and even if they did, who wants to look for accommodation at that hour? So a bench for a bed until 6am became our home (once again!).

The train we arrived on was full full full of small cockroaches and after the second one crawled across my hand/face that was the end of attempted sleep for me. A 6am train, followed by a tuk-tuk, then a bus and one more bus left us in Calangute, right next to where we wanted to be with the usual search

for accommodation ahead! Nobody said travelling was easy!

Accommodation sorted, and after a nap, we checked out Calangute, it’s right next to Baga (where the guitar course is) you can walk from one to the other, or they really just merge in one busy shop/restaurant road. As said, Calangute is really the Costa del Sol for rich Indians. It was Sunday and it was PACKED with Indians completely dressed looking around at each other and staring/perving at any foreigners in a bikini. We didn’t really like the vibe there.

We then walked down to Baga beach, which was similar but not as busy, but then again it was getting late in the evening.

But I’m happy to report that Baga is actually really nice. It’s less hectic, I guess a lot of the Brits on holiday returned home after Christmas, but there is still a good vibe around.

The guitar workshop is a few minutes walk from the beach in a jungle area, hence the name: Jungle Guitars. We decided to stay close by thankfully finding a nice room in a lovely quite corner. From our room, we can walk over the little jungle hilltop and get to Anjuna beach, which takes about 10-15 minutes. This beach is nice with a chilled out hippy vibe- although some of the sun bathers look like walking skeletons. I guess taking lots of drugs and parting all night has some benefits!! Unfortunately I can't resist yummy foord!

Anjuna used to be the happening place for massive raves and trance parties, but due to the clamp down on loud music after 10pm these parties have moved further away. You’ll see more beautiful Russians on the beach-taking advantage of their new special visa gateway- then ravers. Anjuna also has the ‘famous’ flee market every Wednesday, which we went to but managed to avoid parting with much money. There is nothing like a heavy backpack to discourage shopping and accumulating crap. The market reminded me of going to car boot in England- minus the car boots!

So Baga became our home for the next three weeks while Mal laboured over the birth of our first born, and boy is she a beauty: Indian rose wood back and sides, Sitka spruce top, mahogany neck and rose wood fret board. I think he loves her more then me right now!

Kerala: Varkala, Kochi and the Backwaters

Varkala- we’re in love

Another infested train traversed us across the country, with a connecting one leading us to Varkala.

One look at the cliff toped beach and line of friendly café’s and our disenchantment with India began to fade with our speckled bites.

Varkala is wonderful, a Dharamsala in the sun. It has a lovely beach although a swim is a work out against the crashing waves.

Atonement for the body and mind can be reached through courses in yoga, Ayurveda, meditation and a host of others, with an on site guru and ashram. We could see ourselves living here for some time. We stretched our stay from a day and a half to three, reluctantly leaving the spectacular sunsets. We highly recommend here for your holidays, great food, chilled vibe, friendly locals and accommodation available to suit all budgets.
Bliss.

The Backwaters

We're such train geeks! A crack-of-dawn train brought us to the town of Alappuzha (Alleppey), the best place to organize a house boat to cruise the backwaters (a 900km network of waterways) and catch a snippet of local life.

These houseboats don’t come cheap, they have their own chef, double bedroom, living room and mod cons, taking you out on the canals for a night under the stars. We couldn’t afford the luxurious option and anything cheaper … well you probably remember we’d already had our starry night in Jaisalmer and paid the price!

Instead we opted to take the public ferry for a whopping 10 rupees each (20 cent) which like a water bus cruised the varied beautiful landscape collecting and depositing villagers along the way. After three lovely, if a little sleepy, hours we reached Kottayam. Really, how different could the scenery be on the 150euro cruise?

We talked to a couple who after their trip were disappointed that they only drove for a few hours, moored for the night and returned the next morning. Sure they had a nice room and food, but I don’t think we would have been satisfied with the splurge.

Kochi

From Kottayam we made our way to the train station, met a nice German girl on her way home, discussed India over lunch and continued onto Kochi. Our extension in Varkala was to the expense of Kochi, but not a travesty. We arrived via the mainland at Ernakulam and took a short ferry to the island of Fort Cochin/Mattancherry. Here they have not heard about queues! The ticket box is opened five minutes before the ferry docks creating a mad scramble, then after purchasing your ticket you’re pushed by the crowd to the gate, which opens and everyone runs down the jetty to the waiting boat. One man took the opportunity, as I was separated from Mal in the crowd, to reach through the anonymous throng and grope my inner thigh trying to aim higher. I managed to thump his shoulder but with my rucksack holding me back and the loud screaming mass of people around he slipped away not to be seen again.
Dirty bastard.
I was fuming and naturally upset by the incident. But these things happen; now my weapon is a full plastic water bottle in crowds and I’ll pound it down on the head of anybody who tries that again. I’d choose glass, but I’d probably be thrown in prison.
Fort Cochin is recognisable by the Chinese dock side fishing nets which paint a pretty picture against the lovely town.

Visiting is like wandering through Europe. It’s influenced by the Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and British. It has a Hindu muraled palace, mosque and a synagogue in Jew Town. The restaurant selection is vast and they like to call their guesthouses ‘home stays’ but you’re kidding yourself if you think that’s what you’ll get! Kochi is a well discovered place and as we travel up the west cost of India we are beginning to see where all the tourists are hiding. I think most people just skip the east cost, and perhaps the midlands, and most of the north… actually the south and west cost are where they confine themselves to and from travelling all around we can see why.

Puducherry: Bon Jour India

On reaching for our toothbrushes, the first morning back in India, I found a huge cockroach had made his bed upon the damp bristles during the night. I wonder what the French think of their old colonial town now, fifty years after the hand back? We were curious enough to make the five hour bus trip from Chennai after touching back down again in ‘Incredible India’, had the French treated the place differently then the British?

Puducherry, formally Pontichery, isn’t much different to the rest of India, but along the promenade was nice. Walking it reminded us of home, Salthill, Galway more specifically, on a summer’s day – hosting an Indian convention! We walked along with all the Indian tourists, surprised by the amount of international foreigners actually the most we’d see gathered together since the Taj Mahal. Turns out the annual International Yoga Festival was starting the next day. Presumably also why accommodation was so scarce and we had to settle for a crawling room in a crappy guesthouse.

On our second morning Mal awoke to the carnage of his night’s molestation. In the dark hours we sensed the creepy crawly presence and continuously purged the beds, finding strange black bloody (on squashing) bugs. We hardly slept and they loved Mal, he was covered in bites, I also had a few.
Sick and disgusting.
This was a very low point in our trip. We questioned was it worth it, stretching our budget for months staying in latrine-esque rooms where we could just have a few weeks of niceness? But the problem as experienced is that the mid-range places aren’t much better than budget. To stay anywhere nice you have to hand over a lot of money. Should we skip the next part and head straight to Goa? We’d have taught of heading straight for the airport only that Malachy’s dream of hand making his own guitar lay in Goa. On sleep depravation, hunger and crawling skin the best decisions are not made, so we headed out for some food and antihistamines.

After some tea and real French croissants Puducherry seemed slightly brighter. In the French quarter there are some lovely European buildings, fine restaurants and bakeries but the streets are consistently Indian in their squalor.

After seeing a watching pair of eyes follow us from restaurants, shops and doorways, we invariably had to investigate. They belong to The Mother, and like Big Brother, she is always watching, best to do as mother says (even if we’d already spent the night in room 101). She was a French woman who founded an ashram with Sri Aurobindo in 1926. The ashram seems a mix of yoga, religion and science. We did the obligatory walk around their shrine and were led into the gift shop and through to a photo gallery. Mother seemed to have a lot to say in her 97 years of life, with books of her opinion on everything from childrearing to science. She seemed incredibly intelligent breaking into the Indian and international psyche. They also set up Auroville a sort of 20 km commune with about 1800 residents of multi-nationality living in self sufficient peace and harmony. Sounds intriguing or cultish? We unfortunately didn’t have time to investigate.
We did however cross the divide from the French section (basically the tourist section along the beach front) to the more Indian side of town (everywhere else) to visit the botanical gardens; an extremely disheartening experience. It’s run down, over grown, dirty and the toy train circling the garden doesn’t run, although its little platform is scattered with as much litter as if it had been Mumbai’s busy CST station. A huge padlocked-at-night gate guards the gardens, but one of the back corner walls has been knocked down, leading directly to the river lined slums. Here we witnessed emaciated dwellers climb through and gather the rare species of trees they have previously felled for their fire wood! It’s an outrageous situation but hard to wear the environmentalist hat when the people aren’t fed, sheltered or educated. Conservation of a once beautiful botanical garden falls far behind their daily hard won necessities of life: all of which even further behind India’s space race.

I contemplated the irony of India on our door-less bus ride back to Chennai, thinking on one of my last sites of the town before leaving; a huge statue of Ghandi on the prom where rich kids ran between his legs, while their parents swat the beggars away like flies.

Dizzy diving

Cowboy Divers

Yea, we’re now Advanced Open Water Divers; a qualification that seems easily won in Sri Lanka! While we’re conscientious divers, I’m not sure the outfit we dived with share the same standards! Malachy likes to call them Cowboy Divers, I’m sure they had some names for us also, priggish probably being one. But honestly, we didn’t think it to unusual to read the accompanying manual, or watch the video; neither of which the dive shop had, having to borrow elsewhere. We also have this annoying habit of wanting full equipment, preferably in working order, oh and also wanting to follow world safety recommendations, they seemed amused at our worries and surprised at our request to discuss a dive before commencing.

We learned these outrageously high standards during our Open Water certificates in Thailand three years ago on Kho Tao island. There we had to watch endless safety and instructive videos, study diligently from the manual, answer written knowledge reviews, learn to use dive planners, compasses, practice and repeat skills in the water until everybody was comfortable and performing well; ending in a final exam having completed all our dives. We left Koh Tao knowing we had earned and won our certificates.

Our cowboys in Hikkaduwa worked by a different set of rules! We almost had to instruct ourselves. The premise seemed to be; do the dives, we’ll then sign for your certificates. However this is not what we had in mind. We’re not interested in just getting the cert, we want to earn it and feel confident in our diving skills. There are only two dive instructors and seven dive shops. We have the impression that they all run courses, and our dive instructor, or the other one, signs the necessary forms, but I’m ready to be corrected on this. Maybe this signing off is acceptable practice?

After locating the book and video, apparently we’re ready to begin. We told the instructor the dives we’d like to do, he agreed with our choice and said we could begin today with a night dive. We stole a look at each other having just read the section, where it implicitly said: know your dive site well before diving there at night, trust your equipment and partners. We’d barely been in the water in two years, had never dived with the instructor, didn’t know their equipment and had never seen the site, would we dive there tonight?
Ah we’d prefer to start with something else.
Really? Ok. Sure, how about peak performance buoyancy?
Perfect.
Let’s suit up and go, we’ll dive to ‘The Cave’, you were there with Sarath the other day, its nice right?
Yeah lovely but, we’ve forgotten how to use the recreational dive planners, can we review them?
It’s not necessary I know the site; you can do that tonight if you like. Here’s your wet suit and ..
Ok so what do we expect when we go down, what do we do first?
Jayathan, the instructor sits down again and looks at his two pedantic studious clients, seems like he hasn’t thought in a while. Laboriously he opens the book and talks us through the dive.
Feeling more confident, we readied our gear and headed for the boat.

After back rolling into the water, a loud hissing was heard from Mal’s BCD (Buoyancy control device, like an inflatable life jacket that houses the tank and keeps you afloat on the surface and helps regulate your buoyancy underwater). We had checked the equipment first but things are different in the water; no matter how many times Mal pressed the inflation button he began sinking. The hissing we discovered was coming from the back valves, a puncture or tear evidently, Mal was to swap with one of the Sri Lankan boys who accompanied us; they were diving for fish. So in the water, Mal had to remove his weight belt and BCD, change equipment and strap up again. Just as well we’d practiced previously!! This done, we checking our weights and down we went. We spent some time practicing skills in a sandy clearing at the bottom, Jayathan seemed satisfied and moved on. I wasn’t, while Mal was bobbing like a metronome lever up and down with every breath, I felt I hadn’t quite fine tuned myself. But follow Jayathan we must as he raced around the site. We looked at each other and shrugged, this wasn’t on the dive plan. The current was strong and our faltering had him meters ahead, he didn’t bother to check our progress behind. It was a lovely dive site, nice to swim around, but I’d have preferred to practice my lotus levitation.

On checking his air supply I saw Mal suddenly tapping his pressure gage anxiously. Our tanks were full on 200 bars of air, the gage needle drops as it depletes and on our last check we were about equal on 120 bars. Another check had me just below 100, where Mal’s was still high, he realised that unless he had grown gills- there must be a problem. He’s usually a few bars lower than me and considering he used a lot of air practicing his buoyancy, if must be les than shown. After a few taps on the glass front, the needle suddenly dropped to 40 bars, where 50 is in the red and time to surface! Shocked we catch up to Jayathan and show him, pointing to the surface suggesting we go up for our safety stop. Totally unfazed, he shows us that he has over 100 bars left and suggests they swap BCD’s. So Mal must swap his regulator (air supply mouth piece) underwater, with the instructors and then change BCD’s! We were confused about this as normal procedure would be to surface when your air is running out! Perhaps Jayathan didn’t want Mal to panic during the safety stop, hence the James Bond manoeuvre swapping tanks underwater? But alas, safety was far from his mind, he just wanted us to enjoy the dive for as long as possible and he would make Mal’s 40 bar of air last! Eventually it was time to surface and I wondered about a safety stop as he wore no dive computer, no depth gauge or even a watch, and was almost out of air! But I guess years of experience let you approximated 5 meters and three minutes, although I wouldn’t recommend this!
Considering the dodgy equipment, the lack of structure and recklessness to safety, we were apprehensive about the next day’s diving, particularly the deep dive!

On arrival to the dive shop the next morning, our equipment was set up and we appeared ready to go.

Am … are there any special safety issues to consider as we’re doing a deep dive this morning?
Don’t worry it’s like a regular dive, just deeper, Kiralagala’s a lovely site. Sarath will take you..
You’re not coming?
Sarath is a divemaster, no problem, I’ll go on the navigation dive with you this afternoon.
Can we talk about the dive, what’s the plan?

We discuss the dive, I ask about nitrogen narcosis and emergency procedures (our life is in their hands!). Also enquiring about the basic requirement of a first aid kit with oxygen on the boat, and the not so basic decompression chambers, where the nearest one was located, how to get there, helicopter? Ambulance? I was assured all these were entirely unnecessary but available. I was actually surprised when we were told there would be a full tank of air suspended at the five meter mark in case, as is highly possible on a deep dive, that someone could run low on air- this is standard practice.

The dive site was spectacular, the visibility improving the deeper we went, beautiful. It honestly felt like we were in the movie Finding Nemo. The aquatic life was colourful, abundant and immune to our presence. I loved it! We hit 34 meters, where 30 is the limit and 40 the absolute maximum dept for a recreational deep dive. The current was strong and dragged us far from the boat for our safety stop, Mal was down to 10 bars of air and dropping, but Sarath seemed to think this was ok; he had air to give if necessary. Even if we had reached the boat the tank was not suspended as it should, some of the lads had used it for fishing, hiding their booty of lobster and calamari in a t-shirt under the bench, where the first aid kit should have been. I hate this practice, if they pillage the site for fish, what will be the point in diving there recreationally?

The other three dives followed a similar pattern; the wreck dive was cool, visiting a 100 year sunken oil tanker. Unfortunately visibility was bad and current strong for our navigation dive and again the strong current hampered our night dive, followed by New Years Eve the next night, followed with us flying out, thus we had to change to a naturalist dive. This is not to be confused with a naturist, we were fully suited up, looking at the aquatic and plant life.
I think we had given ourselves a misleading view of the advanced course, instead of an introductory to five new dive styles, we were expecting to become fully competent in them, but that is not what the course is about, for that type of knowledge you need to enrol in a specialist course for each area. So apart from safety issues and reoccurring dodgy equipment the course was really good and we met some lovely guys. We even celebrated the New Year with them on the beach, where they offered to take us diving independent of the shop, highly discounted the following evening-
We do this for friends
Sounded great, until they elaborated on the description-
We’ll go out around sunset
Oh sounds nice
Yeah, we’ll have a few splifs and some beers, then talk to the fishes
Oh yeah, well we’ll see, we have to pack and there are a few last minutes things to take care of…

Humm, while we’d come to trust them, if not the dive equipment, the idea of stoned drunken diving was not really our thing; especially when Sarath proclaimed that he could dive to 100 meters and it would be no problem to him, you gotta love impulsive youth!

We left Sri Lanka telling it- we’ll be back.

Diving into Christmas and My Birthday

Christmas day

This isn’t our first Christmas away from home, but it was my first ever Christmas under the sun. Such a different experience, it wasn’t really like Christmas at all, but that could have a lot to do with the absence of hordes of people, family and any Christmas memorabilia. We were beginning to think the festive season was to be overlooked until Christmas Eve. They can’t really be expected to deck the halls with bells of holly, as 70% of the population are Buddhist, with only 6% being Christian- and a local woman told me most of those live around Colombo. But what the tourist wants, the tourist gets, so on Christmas Eve great activity could be observed in all the restaurants as trees were decorated, tinsel hung and blackboards advertised Christmas dinner.

My previous impression of a beach Christmas; given to me no doubt from friends who had worked in Australia for a year, was of a big party on the beach with lots of food and drink, a bonfire and good music. This wasn’t the case in Hikkaduwa, it was just eerie quite! One of the bigger hotels had organised a dinner dance event and I guess a lot of the tourists went to that, otherwise the beach was pretty much empty, along with the bars and restaurants! So it was a quite, but fun/romantic Christmas for us, we had a morning swim (swimming on Christmas morning, mental!) lazily had our breakfast at a table right on the beach, pursued that with a leisurely walk along the water and rented some body boards to try our luck on the waves.

Those things are fun! You can gather some serious speed if you catch the wave correctly, which I managed to do some of the time! Mal also tried some surfing, having taken a lesson at home with his brothers one summer. He realised he’d forgotten a lot of what he’d learned and took a hammering from the waves to begin with, but a couple of days later he was looking better. I gave it a whirl, and nearly drowned! I think I’d rather a few lessons before trying that again. It doesn’t look easy and it definitely isn’t, but I imagine it’s worth the effort; it would be some adrenalin rush to ride a big wave! We watched a stunning sunset, had a lovely diner and later skyped home to feel some good old Irish Christmas cheer. It felt like pass the parcel where we, via the phone, were the parcel being passed from mother to sister to brother to aunt to cousin to wish and be wished a very merry Christmas. Such activity bursting through the receiver made us nostalgic for home, we did feel the absence, and would have loved to have transported ourselves home for the day, or better yet, have everybody come here for Christmas – ah if only we were rich! But as my auntie Dympna said, we have the rest of our lives ahead of us, and how many Christmases will we ever have alone, just the two of us in such a special place?
Although it also made us realise that we’ll have some difficulty for future Christmases trying to divide our time, between the two families!


My Birthday

The next morning I was awoken to my husband’s sweet voice singing happy birthday holding a yummy lit chocolate cake in his hands. Thankfully he didn’t include all twenty nine candles; nobody needs to be reminded of that!

We decided the cake made a perfect breakfast, so ate that in bed with a big pot of tea. Delicious. Calories don’t count on your birthday, or at Christmas, or on holidays, or honeymoon for that matter, and considering we’re away for a year, and so far seem to have built up a resistance to bacteria (damn that was my slim fast plan) I wonder will you recognize me when I return home?!
Mal had a whole day’s surprise birthday activities planned for us. First it was a boat dive. We had arranged to start our advanced open water dive course on the 28th so I was prepared to go diving, but it was a very welcome surprise that we would be going today. Oh it was fantastic diving again; we hadn’t been in nearly two years so the dive master also took it as an opportunity to refresh our skills before starting the course. Amazingly, it’s like riding a bike, you never forget- but actually just for the record, it’s nothing like riding a bike, the only thing they have in common is that you rarely touch the ground with your feet!

After we finished the dive and returned to terra firma Mal whisked us away to the next activity; an afternoon at an Ayurveda clinic! First we were checked over by the doctor and he recommended to the therapists which oils to use for our therapeutic massages. Sri Lankan Ayurveda is a system of medicine using oils, herbs and massage, it maintains that the five elements (earth, air, ether, water and light) are linked to the five senses and shape your individual life force, thus Ayurvedic treatment restores your balances giving you good health. Like Chinese medicine, this restoration takes a proper commitment of weeks or months to see any positive results. But, like all things in a tourist resort, even the treatments have been adapted to suit the market. I doubt if there really is much of a medicinal benefit in having a single massage, it’s more for relaxation and giving the time restraints for the usual two week holiday, this is all the clientele are looking for. Perhaps the knowledge that it is an Ayurvedic massage, rather than a ‘regular’ treatment is the placebo needed. I don’t doubt the benefits of Ayurveda and would love to have the money (as we have the time!) to explore the treatments extensively.

Anyway, our afternoon session started with a full oil body massage, next a wonderful oil head massage, interjected with some herbal medicine to drink and followed with a herbal steam bath. I didn’t want the session to end! Two hours of heaven. We were told to let the oil work it’s magic for the rest of the evening, and we were given special Ayurvedic tea to finish the session. We came out feeling and (with all the oil) looking freshly birthed.

Mal confided that he thought the massage a little personal. We Irish are a little shy when it comes to nakedness, but in Asia it’s different. I’m not sure about spa treatments at home, never having the money to have any there, but on this side of the world nakedness is not a problem. In Korea I often went to the spa, and there all women must bathe naked. You are not allowed to wear swimwear while bathing. It’s actually very liberating, I think it’s wonderful that mother, daughter and granddaughters can all bathe together; it’s also a lovely day out to go with your girlfriends and spend the day soaking and chatting (men and women are segregated). I found that it helps dispel any body issues you may have as everybody’s flaws are on display and nobody cares. These spas are huge with lots of different baths of many herbal, fruity and medicinal infusions. So when my (female) therapist told me to take off my bikini top and lie down I didn’t have a problem with it.
Mal’s (male) therapist told him to take off his shorts and lie on the table, confirming with him that he heard correctly Mal did just that and he said the therapist was quick to cover his privates with a mini towel. As his legs and thighs were worked on, Mal felt a little uneasy, especially as the towel kept falling off. We couldn’t help but laugh when we came to the conclusion that perhaps the masseuse has meant for Mal to take off his shorts - not his underwear, but Mal was in his swimming shorts and had nothing on underneath. Perhaps the therapist was as surprised as Mal at having him naked on his table! He must have taught us Europeans very liberal!

We lunched on fresh juice and avocado salad, actually that was just me, Mal had something fishy, and strolled back ‘home’. Later we had a lovely meal with a bottle of wine (again I think that might have been all me, with Mal opting for beer), and rang home this time to receive some birthday cheer – and perhaps I rubbed it in a little, gushing about the wonderful day we had had and about my wonderful husband! Malachy certainly pulled out all the stops this year, our first being married, you know what, I’m actually looking forward to being thirty!

Sri Lanka:Beach, glorious beach, glorious sea!

Beach, glorious beach, glorious sea!

Is precisely what I was singing (Mal debates the legitimacy of calling it singing) on viewing our new location.

Spectacular.

Now we are on honeymoon! It rained for the first few days, but I actually didn’t care, the forecast looked good and I was happy. We took a walk along the empty beach that first afternoon, during a break in the rain and we couldn’t resist the urge to go for a dip. It resumed raining during our cavorting in the Indian Ocean and that is a most unusual sensation: having the rain pelting down on your face while in the water. It was warmer under the waves than out in the rain. When the lightening started in the not so distant sky, Mal suggested, like a parent coaxing an unwilling child, that we really should return to the room; unfortunately to face the two

rucksacks full of dirty clothes.

I’d like to remind everybody who has a washing machine how lucky they are. Hand washing clothes is hard work. If ever we decide where we are going to live, and find jobs, and have enough money for our own place, a washing machine will be top priority!

Sri Lanka is more expensive than India, we were prepared for this, but it was difficult to find a fair price for anything. The Sri Lankans are used to having package holidayers paying top dollar for everything and take full advantage of this. So during those first three days we scouted around the beach and town looking for a decent room where we weren’t extorted.

As it was Christmas, and the honeymoon part of the honeymoon, we wanted somewhere nice; and we found it. We had to bargain hard but we got it, a lovely large bungalow room and right on the beach.

Fantastic, and for just over US$8 a night, it really was a bargain, it didn’t have hot water or a TV, but it was perfect all the same! It probably helped us, not them, that although it’s high season, the area is really quite- due in part to the recession and to the ongoing civil war, but also we are told that the country hasn’t really recovered from the tsunami. Pre tsunami, every bar, restaurant and guesthouse was full, but we found the resort like a ghost town. But after the billion people in India, this was nice.

The first few nights in our new room I woke up thinking it was lashing rain, perhaps maybe thunder and lightening, panicking I even went outside to check: but alas it was only the crashing waves, lit by the brightest starry sky! In the deep silence of the night they are loud and hypnotising, Mal had to call out for me to return to bed.

We blissed out, it was simply heaven.

Swimming in the Indian Ocean each day, wrapped bobbing on the water in each others arms, we didn’t need to be told how lucky we were. We also thought about everyone at home in the December cold and were grateful to be in Hikkaduwa.

We had plans to visit other beaches and cities down the cost, but we couldn’t drag ourselves away from this beautiful beach or lovely room; not to mention re-packing our bags as I had fully moved us into the room, making it homely, putting our books on the shelves, folding away our clothes and such. Really, we thought, could anywhere else equal the location we had? Was it possible there was a nicer beach, with a perfect room, right by the water front, for such a bargain? We didn’t think so, thus we stayed put in our little paradise for the next two weeks, eating, swimming, surfing, body boarding, sunbathing, diving and generally just being really happy!

Mumbai – Chennai – Colombo: Trains, Planes and Automobiles

The Mumbai Shuffle Express to Chennai

From Mumbai we boarded our 2pm 26 hour train to Chennai. You might think what a nightmare journey, but I was actually looking forward to it for some time previous! 26 hours to do nothing but lounge around and read, my two favourite past times! We had treated ourselves to AC3 bunks. Usually we opt for sleeper class, which means no air conditioning, no sheets and usually overcrowded. AC3 is generally a little cleaner, has air conditioning you are provided with sheets and pillows and extra passengers can’t pop into the carriage for a few hours. Only once in all the trains that we’ve taken have we gone for AC (AC2) and that was because they were the only tickets available. Considering you are paying up to ten times more for your ticket it’s generally not worth it. The difference between AC2 and 3, apart from the price is the space. AC2 means two tiers of beds, instead of three. Also your bed is closed of with a little curtain so it’s private. The trains are infested with cockroaches no matter what class you take, but in AC you won’t find as many in the compartment, but go to use the toilet or sink and there they always are!
So loaded up with food, water and snacks we alighted the train, found our bunks, marvelled at our luck that this was the cleanest nicest train we’ve taken in India, chatted with our neighbours and settled in to the journey … bliss.

After a few hours Mal started to feel crap again, just as he had been getting better. We couldn’t understand the digression, he was taking medication, had talked to the pharmacist, was drinking plenty of fluids… fluids there was the problem again! He bought 5 litter bottles of water at the station, checking the seals, but would you believe that when we examined the bottles later, only two of the five bottles contained mineral water, and the other three had been refilled with tap water, and to Mal’s misfortune he had once again drank contaminated water – I had been lucky drinking from a fresh one. You can imagine the litany of abuse Mal expressed on discovering this. That shop keep is lucky we had long since pulled away from the station (no doubt the ploy he usually relies on) as Mal was fit to strangle him. Thus poor Mal passed the journey between the toilet and fitful sleep while I could do nothing for him but worry and read.

Chennai

Nothing much to report on Chennai, only for we were flying from here to Sri Lanka we would never have visited and we feel we wouldn’t have missed much. It was hot, the beach was dirty, the water polluted, if you even thought about sun bathing a crowd of gawking on lookers would form around you and at one end of the beach a slum town had formed. We never found a centre of Chennai, as much as we looked. We did however find an awesome restaurant, which we couldn’t help returning to for lunch and dinner and lunch and dinner again! We’ve formed a new rule; if a restaurant is good go back. We generally like to try out new places see what’s around, broaden our horizons and all that, but in India, if it’s good, reasonable and doesn’t make you sick; go back! We also fed our souls visiting San Thome Cathedral, a huge Roman Catholic church containing in it’s basement a chapel housing the tomb of St. Thomas the Apostle. We had masses said for our families for Christmas Eve, a Christmas present our mothers greatly appreciated.

To Colombo

Chennai is served by a great train network and we were able to get one from the city to the airport for about 6 rupees or 3 cent each, a journey of 45minutes! Unfortunately our flight with Jet Lite, India’s version of Ryan air, didn’t depart until 1am leaving us in Colombo at 2.20am. A horrible arrival time as nothing is open. As we’d no intention of staying in the city, our only option was to wait it out until we could get a bus to the beautiful beach resort of Hikkaduwa three hours further south from Colombo.

On arrival in the airport we were happily greeted by our first signs of Christmas and this was December 18th! I guess they don’t go in for it much in India.

Pan piped Christmas carols were playing softly in the background as we waited for our luggage, Christmas trees were scattered around, decorations hung from the ceiling, a nativity scene was present and Santa with his sledge! Yea, it’s Christmas!