So since I'm in India and the Away Day for India was last weekend they kindly allowed me to go. The destination was Goa, which is a state in India basically the equivalent of Hawaii and Florida combined. We stayed in a 5 star Holiday Inn resort, and don't think because we are in India that 5 stars is any less awesome. One of the cool things about India is labor is CHEAP so what normally you would hire one person to do they have at least 3 people to do. This doesn't quite equate into triple efficiency (or even just efficiency) but its a good approximation. Below is a picture looking back to the main building of the hotel with wings of rooms extending to the left and right. The beach is about 1/4 of a mile behind whoever took that picture with a soccer field and some pretty gardens in between.
To get to Goa they arranged for us to go by train. There are 3 offices in India the furthest being 23 hours away by train and the closest being Bangalore at only 12 hours away. One of the benefits of being paid a US salary while staying in India is I have really no expenses back home and a dollar goes a LONG LONG way here, so me and one other guy named James from Australia decided to fly to Goa instead of going on a train for 12 hours with no AC. I somewhat regret this because the train ride is supposed to be very beautiful and its supposed to be quite an experience, but missing out on 24 total hours crammed together with people I am already spending a lot of time with was just too attractive.
James and I decided this about 2 weeks before the Goa trip so the airlines really bent us over for flying to a resort town on almost no notice, charging us a completely unreasonable 100 bucks for our tickets. We also would have had to pay a frustrating 12 dollars to get to the airport (well actually there were 4 of us in the car so 3 bucks per person) but one of the other trainers that was also flying just expensed it. The Bangalore Airport is pretty nice, and pretty much brand new and we were on a mostly empty 737 flight to Goa a few hours later. Once there we hired 2 more taxis for the 7 of us that chose to fly (3 trainers, 1 boyfriend, 1 guy from Australia that had been working in India, and James and I) which someone picked up the tab for.
The ride to the actual resort was somewhat uncomfortable because there were 4 of us jammed into a tiny taxi vehicle van the size of about the front seat of my maxima. Despite no AC and close quarters it was pretty damn cool because we were driving through tiny villages not too far off the waterfront and we saw all kinds of cool things along the way. I got to see the tiny villages first off, which were not exactly picturesque but seemed like a shot from a National Geographic magazine. I also saw wild hogs, in fact at one point a mommy hog and her 10+ children hogs began crossing in front of our taxi. These hogs were of pretty decent size so I was kind of worried at first but the pig showed more sense than our driver and quickly backed down when she saw us coming. Said taxi driver quickly proved he would brake for no animal, or even large buses or motorcycles that happened to be coming in the opposite direction. At most places the road was wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other without slowing, but there were a significant number of places were it was not going to happen. There were also enough blind curves to make me wonder how effective honking as you turn the corner REALLY is.
At one point we strayed into the oncoming traffic lane to miss a slow moving hand cart and bicycle completely disregarding the fact that there was an oncoming motorcycle. The dude on the motorcycle had balls of steel however cause he never veered even a bit. I was thinking about how I was going to deal with my PTSD after we had to scrape this dude off the front of our cheerfully yellow and black taxi, but this taxi driver was not about to waste valuable time cleaning off his vehicle and had the situation well in hand. He veered at the last POSSIBLE second to the left (yes careful readers will notice they drive on the "wrong" side of the road") clearing the hand cart and oblivious cyclist by centimeters (sorry those are like inches but smaller) and the guy on the motorcycle sped past us without even slowing a bit.
Before this the ThoughtWorker who had been working in India was having a hilarious dialogue with the taxi driver trying to convince him to stop and let us purchase beer to drink as we drove to the hotel. The taxi driver seemed confused by this proposition, which I don't think is legal. He was also apparently unused to driving westerners that were not new to India. He pointed out to us that there were animals in the road, by which he meant the dogs. Having a typical westerner fear of rabies we had all of course already noticed stray dogs (see post: Disturbing Things) and were unimpressed with his ability to teach us something new about India. Later we found that stray dogs may not be the most dangerous thing in the road, as we rounded a curve and saw some dude cocking his rifle to his shoulder to take down whatever animal happened to be lurking to the side. I am not sure how strictly legal this is because he looked like he was trying to be stealthy about it, but maybe he was trying not to scare off the animal. I just hope the animal in question wasn't a stray dog. I try to be accepting of other cultures but I have some preset notions about what should be eaten I find hard to ignore.
After about an hour of driving we arrived at the resort where we were greeted by helpful hotel staff. They took my bag walked up 6 stairs and set it down on the floor. Its not like I gave them my bag, they insisted on taking it. When you have 1 billion people meaningful jobs for all them has its own challenges I suppose. Then an attractive hotel staff person greeted me by marking me with a red dot on my forehead...which apparently originally meant you were married (no not to her, just in general) but at some point became common / fashionable or something? I am really not sure. They then started the process of checking us into our rooms, which apparently involved manually checking every room in the resort to see if someone was staying there because we stood there for about 20 minutes. I shouldn't complain, since the room was free and pretty much amazing, but right next to the check-in area was the hotel bar which several of my friends had already taken up semi-permanent residence in. Despite using international sign language for bring me a damn beer these hotel people are making me stand here
my friends did not quite get the message and beer thirty was tragically pushed back. Once I got my stuff put in the room I journeyed back to the lobby area. It is hard to see from that picture but the hotel bar is on the second floor overlooking the pool and is open air, with the wind coming in off the Arabian Sea. The temperature was amazing and the breeze was pretty much heavenly. The only thing that could have made it better was if the beers were half off because it was happy hour until 6, oh wait it was! 76 rupees divided by 2 comes out to 38 rupees which is approximate 80 cents per beer. About 10 of us gathered around and sipped on Kingfisher or Carlsbergs for a couple of hours talking about a lot of nothing. The rigorous work schedule for the nights events began at 5:00 pm (we got there about 2pm) and the first thing on the schedule after all the hard work we had been doing at the bar was a break. Yes I am serious we started our organized activities with a break. Of course no break is complete without coffee, tea, and ice cream.Speaking of breaks it's 1am here and I could use one so I'll pick this up the next time I'm feeling non-lazy.
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