Apologies to the legions of fans who must be desperately wondering what has happened to us since the somewhat laboured arrival into Goa late on Thursday evening. And things have indeed happened. Maybe not quite as originally planned but they've happened. First, the biggest failure of an evening since the infamous debacle of NYE 2K14. Expectations were high of achieving 2 simple ambitions: 1) getting a good western feed and 2) having a good night out, both normally challenging in India but supposedly what Goa is all about. Suffice to say neither ambition was achieved. A gloriously continental menu offered a lot of early promise on the food front, but calamari without batter, crab without meat and a naaaaasty mushroom sauce on Gees plain chicken quickly buried ambitions of a good feed. Nevertheless, after stocking up with bottles of vodka and rum for less than the price of a tetleys bitter back in the UK we were still at least confident of a good night out. Games were played (Backlasher being an innovative adaption on the more teetotal normal Backpacker) and our usual bedtime of 10pm was soared past with gusto (amazing what a cheeky voddy mixer can do...) leaving everyone to put on their best dancing shoes and head out into the raucous Goan nightlife...Ambition 2 took a similar length of time to squash as a 30 minute wander around Anjuna revealed about as much nightlife as Roppongi on a Sunday night. At one stage deep into the walk we did hear music in the distance but an unnaturally high tide had destroyed the beach leaving swimming as the only option to reach the bar at which point we thought it was probably best to call it quits.
Little did we know this would turn out to be the highlight of social activity in Goa as things took a dramatic turn for the worse (even by our fairly low standards) the next morning after Fiona was taken to hospital after vomiting through the night. So began a fairly terse four days in hospital with a lack of information seeming to be the enduring speciality of the staff. Midway through day 2 and after much rigorous questioning they finally deigned to diagnose which revealed she had a worm infestation in her stool (and stool on her hands after trying to poo in a cup...) and more importantly a stomach infection that had reduced her electrolytes levels and was causing inner turmoil. With PB having stayed the night with Fi on the first night, Gee emphatically volunteered to stay the second night in hospital by throwing up repeatedly in Fi's hospital loo until they were positively forced to admit her. Thankfully they both made relatively full recoveries, with Gee leaving earlier his morning and Fi mere hours ago leaving everybody ready and raring to get on the road again tomorrow.
Much as it hasn't been a particularly exciting few days with the focus primarily being on Fi and Gee's recoveries, the team have still found ways to amuse themselves and provide entertainment. HKC, Rockstar and PB checked themselves into a luxury resort after which hospital visits became notably sparser as they chose to show their support from afar whilst drinking cocktails by the pool. They were also introduced to a new type of Indian sausage* when having ordered BOGOF cocktails during happy hour, they discovered that the cocktails were in fact 75% more expensive than outside of happy hour rather limiting the advantage gained from the deal. Within the hospital, entertainment initially seemed limited to TV and cards before the healthy members of the team took it upon themselves to raise spirits by providing their own entertainment. PB kicked things off memorably, if not joyfully, by having a gigantic wahh and storming out of the room after not getting his own way in backpacker, leaving everyone to wonder why they had invited a 5 year old onto the trip. Alice then stepped up and managed to annoy somebody for the first time ever by being irritatingly persistent in her pursuit of information and refusing to leave the poor nurses alone. Everyone was also consistently cheered up by a fantastically happy and kind waiter, who served 10 meals in a row to the team and never failed to serve up an extra smile with our dishes. The final piece of Goan entertainment came in one final sausage when PB, HKC and Rockstar 'accidentally' sent Gee to the wrong hotel (having been discharged from hospital mere minutes earlier) leaving hotel staff to surmise about the imaginary friends that she claimed were waiting for her by the pool. Overall not the perfect time in Goa but at least everybody is fit and healthy again with the final push to Kochin starting early tomorrow morning.
*http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sausage see third usage for those unsure of what a sausage is in this context - we can confirm it is in fact not referring to the foodstuff.
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