Tuesday 20/3/2007
Back a day and another test down. This morning was our RDBMS test and i got a B+. Already in a week we will be done with the generic stream and onto learning J2EE and then around the 1st week of June head out from Mysore to Bangalore. So now onto the good stuff....

This weekend was a blast. We left Friday after work at 6:30 on a tight 10 person bus to go to Goa! We had a 3 day weekend because of a state new years holiday or something. It took us a good 14 hours by bus to arrive at Goa and we were there by 9:30am and ready to eat. Our first breakfast consisted of a sweet fried eggs and bacon. This was the 1st time we have had bacon in India so it was soooooo good. It was more like ham because of its thickness but delicious like no other. The hotel offered some sweet "Continental Breakfast" comprising of free coffee and toast. I wish sarcasm could be expressed with written type... oh well.

Promptly after bfast we check into our rooms and immediately rush to the beach. The beach is pretty nice... not too dirty but the weather and the calmness makes it sweet. The water was hot tub warm as well but real salty.

So the gang decided to soak up some rays and soak up some beers. It was either kingfishers or fosters but interestingly enough the kingfishers were Goa state specific so it was lighter than the ones we would get in Karnataka state (where Mysore is). Every 10 feet was a shack that served food and drinks so we would get a beer here.. walk for 5 min.. get a beer there... walk for 5 min... get another beer... and repeat.

Another weird thing about the beach was that there were a few broken down cargo ships pretty close to the beach. Some of the guys actually swam to it and back. Takes a bit of the beauty away from the beach but if you walk down the beach far enough you don't see it anymore.

Since we didn't eat lunch we were hungry and ate dinner at a local joint close by. I had a nice steak... yes that's right... steak... with mushrooms. Not bad but as expected after ordering medium i got well done, oh well. After dinner we retreated to the hotel to play some drinking games before we went out to this hot spot called Club Cabana.

Once at the club we were angry at first because it was on a hill and you had to hike up a good kilometer to reach this place and the steps and lighting sucked. The next sucky part was the 900 rupee cover. DAMN.. haha nah its only $20 but its all you can drink open bar with Bacardi, vodka, and some other stuff i didn't get. Great deal! Once up there, this place is HUGE. It looks like a mansion that the Brits had and was bought by the club so there was about 4 levels outdoors including a pool area. Then there was a kinda small dance floor inside and some huge sofas outside. It doesn't rain here in India until the monsoon season so i can see how this is manageable. Apparently we missed the good season to visit when all the youngens go which is around December and January. The majority of the people there were either Russians or Brits. Fun times were had by all.

After descending from the mansion we lost our drivers! Turns out our sleepy drivers were passed out inside the van. One was in such a position that he probably got stepped on about 3 times and nobody noticed. I definitely accidentally whacked him on the head with the door that separates the drivers and passengers. The other driver was actually passed out on the back seat thought.

The next day we got up and again enjoyed our bacon breakfast and once more headed straight for the beach. This time less drinking but same amount of walking and tanning. Once sitting you were always hassled by a beach merchant selling useless shit but i decided to get a massage. First it started that i was going to just get a foot massage for 150 rupees for 20 min but it turned into a 400 rupee full body massage for 45 min. Pretty sweet.

At 5 we decided to go shower and browse some local stores for souvenirs. To our disbelief there are no touristy shops in sight except for wooden statues. I could not find any magnets, shot glasses, or good quality T-shirts (except for the memorable one that said "Lets get drunk and kill god"). So no souvenirs were bought from Goa except my sweet towel.

Time for dinner. We went to a place called the Mermaid and what a dinner that was! I ate the best calamari i have ever had and then a sweet surf and turf. All in all the food in Goa did not totally disappoint.

No one really wanted to go out tonight so we hung out around at a few places with a couple of drinks here and there and then crashed. The next day was all driving back at 9:30 ... we nicely made it back to campus in 12 hours this time. We also stopped at a high point on the mountain to take some pics.. and i did.

And that was my Goa vacation. The beach, the food, the fun, the white girls, were all worth the 26 hours of cramped bus action.