Category Archives: Tips

It’s the weekend

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Not that you can tell, though there are more Indian families here than there have been during the week.

Last night, we just walked up and down the beach after dinner and chilled with a beer in a bar further up. There are a lot of dogs (and cows) on the beach, all of them pretty friendly and well-fed from the restaurants. The place we popped into also had a puppy, one of only two I’ve seen. It turns out, it’s an import from Mysore. An Iranian girl had adopted it there and is now staying in Goa until the pup is old enough to be vaccinated so she can take it home!

The dogs have one serious downside – at dawn they all start barking and howling like rabid coyotes. On and off for an hour. It doesn’t matter where you stay on the beach, you’ll pretty much certainly get awoken by dogs at around 6:30am.

Today we ran out of cash money as well. If you checked out the tips page, you’ll have spotted one which mentioned getting a Nationwide account if you’re in the UK as they don’t charge a fee for ATM withdrawals. You may also have spotted one which says you should check ATM availability.

Palolem has exactly zero ATMs. This means we had to resort to using a cash advance service from one of many places on the main street. As it turns out, this was remarkably reasonable with only a 2% charge being levied for the withdrawal. It’s treated like a purchase, so you may even find that your bank doesn’t charge a fee.

The way we’re working things is that Hans is paying for our Bhutan trip next month. I’m withdrawing all the cash from holes in the wall as I pay no fees for it, and what Hans spends he knocks off the amount I’ll send him via PayPal once he’s paid for Bhutan. That way as little of our money as possible goes out on bank fees.

Aside from that, I’ve just downloaded a few files and I’m going to try to spruce the blog up even more! So here I am, sat by the beach, waves crashing, chilled Coke next to me and tapping on a laptop making this site better.

I don’t need to get a life. This is the life!

Late on in the evening, after the usual run and lukewarm shower, Caroline, Hans and I wandered up the beach for dinner. We settled on a place near where we started out sunbathing a couple of days ago simply because it was busy. Too busy to get a table! As luck would have it, the couple from two doors down were sat there and they squooshed some chairs around so we could sit with them.

Having said that, I ended up sat at the bar with a chef called Ian watching the ManUre game on the TV. Towards the end of the match, a young lady was standing next to me asking the bar staff if they had another stool so I offered her mine. We got chatting for a couple of minutes as the game was getting a little dull and she said she was waiting for a friend. Then, looking over my shoulder she saw the friend – it was Shauna!

Glad to say she’s looking a lot better than she was, though by her own admission she’s not got back to the whole “eating” thing yet.

After a while, they wandered off for a gossip and I got talking to another girl called Leigh, who I’d actually seen a few times on the beach and in other bars. It’s a small place, Palolem!

I walked Shauna “home” (she’s moved to another block of apartments), got talking to a Swiss guy at the bar for another hour and then wandered home with Hans and the others. That should have been the end of a good night, but the couple at the other end of our row were up drinking with a couple of their friends. Over the next four hours, people came and went and we burned the early morning oil till around 4:30.

If this is what Saturdays are like here, I can understand why people stay for so long!

Tips and Links pages

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I’ve added another page – Travel Tips. This is a collection of things I’ve picked up, been told or read about while travelling. All the tips on this page are general and apply to just about anywhere.

If you’re looking for information on a particular place (such as how to get free internet at Colombo airport), use the “Tips” tag instead. Right now, the only way to do this is to find a post that’s been listed as a tip and click on the link at the end to get all the “tip” posts. I’ll add a list of tags to the sidebar very shortly so this will become easier. Alternatively, use the Google Search box in the sidebar to look for named topics.

Also, I’ve tried to compile all the web pages I’ve used into one list of links. It’s a little rough and ready, but I’ve used every one of them at some time or another so hopefully other people will find them useful.

Again, any feedback, additions and so forth is welcome!

I’d like to thank Dewi for uploading all these files as I just can’t seem to get a working connection to my webspace over here. Cheers, fella!

Back in India

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The flight was very pleasant and the free internet at Colombo airport was welcome. For those with a laptop/PSP/whatever using the airport, don’t head for the internet cafe. You’ll have to pay 200 Rupees per hour to access there. Instead, walk towards gates 4-12 and spot the posh lounges on the right and left. All of them have free internet and you don’t have to go inside to pick up the signal. You should get a couple of bars by sitting outside.

Unlike the inbound flight from Mumbai, we left dot on time and with nowhere near the amount of stringent security. Despite the minimal flight time – around 40 minutes airborne – we got a very tasty meal (some kind of veggie wrap, yoghurt and apple juice). Hans didn’t even have time to fall asleep, we arrived so quickly! Trivandrum, here we are!

On the ground, luggage was offloaded very swiftly, but for some reason someone was taking it off the carousel and piling it in one corner. Weird. We also once again came across the Indian philosphy that the closer you queue, the faster the line moves. Hans and I were near the front of the immigration line and were leaving the polite gap between ourselves and the person being dealt with – maybe four feet. The guy behind kept jabbing our elbows and pointing forward as if he was sure someone would leap into the gap and delay him. Needless to say, no people materialised from thin air, though the time we took to walk those four feet could well have cost him a valuable two seconds.

This must still rank as one of the fastest non-domestic airport departures of all time. From the on-time flight to walking out the destination gate and into a paid taxi couldn’t have taken more than 80 minutes! We were at our hotel (Hotel Ganesh) shortly after 21:30 where the rather abrupt clerk on the desk checked us in. The room’s passable enough but there are a gazillion mosquitoes around as the night progresses.

One bonus was free wireless. Someone nearby seems to have a nice broadband connection that they’ve left insecure, although it logged itself out in the early hours of the morning, so I’ll have to wait for them to log in again before I can download more MP3s. Very kindly, they’ve even left their router with the default – and stupidly easy-to-guess – username and password so it’s easy to check once they’re back home and online.

I sat up nattering to friends on MSN till gone 3am when I sat in bed and read. The “new” Pratchett is coming along nicely, and Hans is barreling through the copy of Airport I finished recently.

It’s very humid here, but finally I zonked out after covering myself liberally with anti-insect spray.