At the beach

Today we spent a good part of our time at the Beach here in Goa. It was allright. We got some sunbeds and settled down for a few hours under the umbrellas. The weather was sunny at around 32 degrees so no complaints here. However it was a bit of a challenge to fight off the people trying to sell something or to get rid of beggers. For every tourist here you'll get one or two Indians trying to sell a massage, handycraft or even people with small children or people with lepra begging for a few rupies. That experience is certainly strange: At first you feel very uncomfortable. Then you try to ignore but at the same time it crossed my mind that it's actually not a bad thing: In most tourist resorts poor people are put elswhere. They are "removed" to make sure tourists have a nice and proper image. Here it's different: Expect to go through some dirty back alleys. Expect power dropouts and expect the disturbing. On the other hand people are very friendly. In fact I have so many friends here I stopped counting: Everyone says "Hello my friend.. taxi?" or "Hello my friend... you want a sunbed?". Today we went to the town and ate at a place that was clearly not meant to be a tourist hangout. Hidden on a first floor we had excellent food and followed a bit more of the ICC (the cricket world championship). Speaking of Cricket: India lost against Sri Lanka on Friday which means they are out of the worldcup... a major issue here as you can imagine! I bought a cricket ball today as a little souvenir :)