It was like the beginning, the beginning of Apocalypse Now. I awoke like Captain Willard, staring at the rotating fan. In the film, Willard gets up and opens the curtains and looks at the street scene below and says..."Saigon, ****, still in saigon.."...I do a similar thing and look out of our window at a scene not too dissimilar..and I say "Goa, ****, still in Goa"... we've been here now for seven days and have been cursed by not getting train tickets......but as in the film, "Everyone gets their mission in the end.." and in our case it was gleefully handed to me by the portly Mr Rasjani of Rasjani Travel Agency. He was only 5 minutes late from our agreed time. He had just done a 60 mile round trip on his scooter to get the tickets. Due to the online reservation system, any spare tickets are allotted at a certain time and it's a scrum to get them. Mr. Rasjani's agents at yesterdays' scrum werent up to the job and hence missed getting our tickets. I shook his hand......grateful finally that our ticket out of here was in my sweaty hand. I made him go over the details until I understood everything......everything was in order.

We then had to jump back in the taxi to checkout and find a new place to stay and we did it the old fashioned way, by walking around and being told lies by lots of hoteliers. Then we found a great place, an old colonial place that was very spick and span. I managed to get an okay rate for our last night here. We did our usual thing and headed off down the beach and watch the waves, then when it got dark, we headed to our regular eatery, the imaginatively named "Curry House". We've eaten well in Goa and the food has been superb....well it has if you like curry and fish tikka. Dont expect to see a thin Mr. Gibbs next time you see me. Later when we got back the new hotel, we were introduced to the Goan Fruit Bats. Jesus, it was like being dive bombed by a bunch of Count Draculas, their bodies were about 10 inches long and very well built, the wing spans were over 3 foot long.

We had tried to do things in Goa, but it's not really pedestrian friendly, they're not too keen on pavements here and so you end up having to walk past the cows and dodge the traffic...and there was plenty of that. Due to the Indian Holiday, lots and lots of Indian Tourists were here and there were sometimes endless traffic queues. Even when we walked to the restaurant on the beach, we would look like the remnants of a ragged battalion from the Foreign Legion. We tried to find this paradise that everyone back home was talking about, but we didnt. It may be there, somewhere?