i want to go to goa
any tips/advice etc
I was in Goa December/January in 1998/2001. I ****in love the place.
You can go North/South Goa. They are very different.
The South is where the 'luxury' Hotels are with the all inclusive and not much else **** going on. Visited it for a look see, got bored, left, and that was it. So from now on I'll talk about North Goa.
The North, is at first horrific. It was to us in '98 when the 5* Hotel we booked into should have been spelt 'hovel'. It was like the worst hostel. We both sat and cried in the room. But then, wow. I have never been, or expect to be, ever so relaxed and happy in a place for no ****in apparent reason. And that was with no drugs.
I'm not a beach person, but there is 10 miles of amazing beach, and the bit I liked was the beach huts. Basically pub/restaurants along the entire beach. That is where we ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. Fantastic food. You can eat a crab that wants to fight you 10 minutes before you eat it. Take plenty wet wipes, cos their idea of a toilet is a toilet bowl planked on the sand behind a dune. Seriously. Yet they maintained high standards of cooking hygiene in these shacks. No food poisoning or dicky tummy that happened in the Hotels where they were re-cooking the previous night's food.
There is not a lot going on of an evening. No 'entertainment'. It's all about having dinner in a restaurant or in a beach shack and mixing with the tourists and locals. If you get lucky you get to eat dinner in the house of a local (we did).
We were in Candolim, and that is where we returned to.
It's near Baga which is the party central for the druggies and where the hippies set up a commune back in the 60's.
It's near Panjim, which is a city, and frankly blew my mind. Huge, toot-toot smoke filled complex where something of interest was everywhere. Plus you can wander into a wee cafe and have ****in **** hot food and drink for pennies.
If yer missus likes a shop, then the markets are the places. Baga and Panjim have huge markets and then there is Anjuna which is a market by day and a pish up on the beach by night (a legacy of the European hippies).
Candolim, is where my heart is. I've never felt so good anywhere else and for no reason. I will go back. I may one day stay there. There is in fact an expat community there these days.