I was considering going somewhere yesterday, but then realised this would be conformist and might make me some kind of `traveller` or something.
I kind of mean that and kind of don't, but in any case it has been a week of foiled schemes. I tried for about 4 consecutive days to get my hair removed and in the end I was going absolutely stir-crazy, sat in the restaurant attached to my lodgings waiting for the couple, Zoe & Mike, who had lined up to do it. I was a little crazy about the whole affair because on the evening it was set for I got myself invited with a couple of car-fulls of fellow travellers to go to Vagator, to a place called 9-Bar.

Afficionados of the magical herb will appreciate the pun here.

And after that there was a club, and a lot of silliness The next day everyone was feeling so fucking rotten (they occupied themselves that night by sitting around on the beach and drinking in heroic quantities). I think an average of about 2.75 bottles of wine went down each of their gullets, they then fell over repeatedly and hilariously, and lost worrying amounts of fluids from a variety of orifices, such is the nature of drinking wine on beaches in India.
Understandably they were all quite ruined after that, so no-one could bear to wield the brain-buggeringly noisy, wildly buzzing clippers, and I was half-demented myself after what turned out to be a fascinating, troubling, thrilling, terrifying, somewhat beautiful and completely bizarre experience. Oh yes. This is why we go to Goa, kids, although almost breaking your toes merely from dancing so hard wasn't something I thought was even possible, let alone might ever happen to me.

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It has been an interesting week; I finallly managed to get a handle on the game of poker, something I have only ever been embarassingly bad at and probably very annoying at, being so inquisitive and retarded with regards to the rules so most of the poor people I played with before have had to listen to very silly questions all through every single hand, and we were inevitably dtrinking and smoking the whole time so the questions became ever more inane, and irritatingly familiar.

The questions were still asked this time but overall I actually now `get` it, and at some point I had a worthy stack of `chips` in front of me. I use the inverted commas there because we were actually playing for bottle caps, an item every bar, restaurant and probably household has in magnificent quantities - I mean these collections are something special; we asked for a few caps to play with and were given a full bucket of them from a stockpile of buckets uncountable by anyone with the regular number of fingers and toes (given that they couldn't just count like normal people). And once you chase the 'roaches away (and keep a careful light on them while you pick yours out, lest you get a few roaches instead of bottlecaps between your fingers) they're a damn good substitute.

Inevitably I lost in the end and had to fork out a whole 50 Rupees (a stunning 60pence or so) but I wasn't the first to go, and after winning 7 or 8 hands, some with extremely good hands indeed, I had a whole night of gambling for that price. Quite chuffed, I was.
Good job I know well enough not to get too good at the game, you know me and bad habits...

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I’m building up a picture of the whole town here, slowly – it’s not easy really because everything pulls you towards the centre, or at least to certain bars and hut/restaurant complexes such as The One That Shows Cool Films Each Night (The Blue Seahorse. last night was of a Denzel Washington flavour – John Q; The Manchurian Candidate; Training Day. Tonight’s features include something fairly arty containing some Billy Bob Thornton, and Matrix: Reloaded. Well, 4 out of 5 isn’t bad ) or The Place All Those Guys You Partied With Live At, which is utterly inevitable and pretty much forgiveable.

Having said that, I’ve wandered through quite a lot of the little lanes and alleys between places and there are a surprising number of little temples, churches, sunken pools, hotels, wells and hideaway neighbourhoods even in this tiny beach town. Some of them are stunning beyond expectations but I wont be able to remember where any of them really are, but hey.
So, things were pretty staid and stagnant in fact, and expensively so too which is why that planned trip to Kerala must be embarked upon pretty soon!! Wildlife sanctuaries in a state that doesn’t have much alcohol in are gonna be the best possible thing for me I think.

Speaking of which (wildlife that is) once again, the insect life has staged a pretty full-on invasion over the past 5 days or so, and it’s hard to move anywhere near standing water for all the 3” long dragonflies and wading birds with multicoloured feet. And, of course, the ubiquitous dogs.

The dogs here lead a part-private, part-unavoidable, all-noisy life of their own with drama, crises and howling battles that weave in and amongst all the upright monkeys who are at times both fond, and bloody sick of their way of life.
It’s nice to have friendly dogs collapsed under half the chairs in every bar or hut-O-land you wander into, and having something dopey, cute and strokeable always hanging around makes things all the more homely.
But.
They also love to take part in howling matches, pitched street battles and prolonged growling contests at any given moment of day or night when one or more of them meets another, and there are about 40 million of these dogs in Goa, half a million apparently just in my favourite bar.
And they’re all the same dog. 99.995% of them are the same anyway, with the occasional more pedigree-looking pooch to be found, but the dogs of India, from what I’ve seen, must be the benchmark for the concept of the mongrel, as they seem to have all shared around so much genetic material that they are now a totally uniform, generic shape; something like a small Labrador crossed with a longer-legged Jack Russell, and they are to a dog soft, soppy, and far better beggars than the humans.
I think the humans here learned from the dogs in fact.

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Anyway, in further attempts to beat the stagnation and instinct to sit on my arse doing nothing much different from what I did in England, I have also designed another little tattoo and I went and spoke to a very professional guy (the only real tattooist in Arambol) and saw his work, which is impressive, agreed a price, which is no cheaper than a good artist in the UK, and so tomorrow or the day after (whatever day that is, I have literally lost track of that whole `week` thing) I’ll go down and hand over about 4000 Rupees, around 50Quid, for a nice little tribal bit of genius (though I do say so myself) on my leg. In colour, too. Ooooh.

And, I even managed to properly go out clubbing as mentioned at the start. Hey it only took 10 days, gimme a break already
The music was extremely good and the dancing was even better, not in terms of anything other than how much I enjoyed it. I probably looked a twat. I usually do. It amazes me how many times and how many people feel the need to to tell me about these things the following day, and I must have been told that I “Was really going for it” more times than I care to remember. I don’t know how to do it any other way to be honest, and quite frankly it has always amused me greatly how little effort people put in – you’re going out clubbing to basically dance and/or pull someone of your appropriate romantic preference, and chances are the second wont happen so why not enjoy the first all the more? I might have taken this a bit far this though as I couldn’t walk the next day whatsoever. It was a wasted day – I hopped, quite literally, to the restaurant of my guesthouse and that was it for the whole day (bar the return journey).
On examination the little toe on one foot had swelled to about twice the conventional size, and both toe and sock displayed a generous allocation of blood.

It wasn’t broken but bugger me was it painful for a while, I still have to wear socks and big shoes now to get about comfortably, and we went out on Saturday night.

Basically, I have graduated from my first night out clubbing in Goa with a short list of small but stupid injuries. I fell off a wall through total lack of concentration on anything but the pretty pictures in my head and thumped my back on a tiny, yet pointy bit of planet Earth, the feet were victims of a cocktail of charlie and overenthusiasm, and because I had left my knife in my pocket – a sure sign of a ne’er-do-well were it to be found on one’s person while entering a nightclub – I had to stash it in the only guaranteed place for a guy to stash things while getting into pubs and clubs, and let me tell you that having a razor-sharp pocket knife dangling along with everything else inside your pants for about 7 hours, while you are dancing, manically, is something doesn’t bear thinking about.
Good job I wasn’t thinking about it – I totally forgot. Thought I’d lost the damn thing until I got back to my room in Arambol about 5am and went for a post-clubbing filth-removal shower. Lucky me eh?
Also my legs, upper and lower on both sides, were truly destroyed by all my mincing and I wasn’t much able to walk on them anyway.
A sharp stabbing pain in a knee only hung around for a day.
A horizontal strip of skin missing from my left shin to the accompaniment of both sharp and dull pains also followed me around until yesterday, or maybe the day before.

It was a truly stupid night out – to strat with I only got picked up by the taxi by chance, because while I set off to meet the guys at the taxi rank, their driver had set things going by ignoring their protests to do anything but drive straight from A (Arambol) to B (Vagator), and only when Simon or Alice or Nick must have screamed in his ear as they saw me come up in the driver’s sights (it really is bit like that with drivers here, they actually do aim for you a bit) did he feel like allowing that middle pedal to enter his little world.
After the first place, 9-Bar, we buggered off early because of the bizarre laws here in Goa governing live music – it all has to stop at 10pm by law, no exceptions. Well, no exceptions unless your rich.
We went on to some half-deserted bar where we happily and freely could buy a wide variety of imported and hugely illegal drugs quite literally over the counter, and indeed the table next to ours sported a bunch of, I think Norwegian lads of about our age chopping up lines of Cocaine on the table and doing them in-between ordering their drinks, with the waiter standing happily at the table all along. He should be happy. He had just sold them the Coke.

The second actually club was a blast, and where I picked up all my battle damage; I found that after buying a round in the last place however I had left myself 150 rupees short – the entrance fee for this place is a massive 500Rs but once you’re in all drinks are free (and of a suitably obvious low quality, unsurprisingly).
So, having completely lost the folks I went with, and after trying to haggle with the bouncers to get in along with a group of guys from Manchester; my theory being that about 9 people going in together might be eligible for a little discount and those lads all agreed to contribute to the total therefore compensating for my shortfall; I was turned away, which again is hardly surprising. There are some things you can haggle, and some things you can’t.

So I ended up having to take my cue from countless shitty 1980’s films involving out-of-their-depth yuppies and I sold my watch, to a guy from somewhere in England. Maddening isn’t it? I had no choice to get in (actually I had plenty of choices, just none to get in [tried jumping the walls – they watch it all. Tried skirting the perimeter – it’s built on a fucking spur of rock overhanging the sea. Place is a fucking fortress, the bastards] and I was buggered if I wasn’t gonna go there after all the haggling, traveling and general aggravation) so I sold the only asset I had.
It’s only a watch, though.

So, after a a slightly depraved night out (and all nights out feel a bit depraved here, what with the squat-down toilets and decidedly public wildlife) I caught a bike-taxi back for the 25 kilometre trip to Arambol, and my word that was quite exciting, what with being hammered to hell and sticking both arms out – a feeling as close to actual flight I’ll ever get without specialist equipment or really good acid – was rather fun too. Yes Mum, I promise to behave myself next time.

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And so, it’s an easy old life – and yes, I did shave my head, or rather Samuel did it in the end and I took off most of them with me trusty knife. It was hugely satisfying, and it’s great to get rid of the constant nagging feeling that you are looking out at the world through the underside of a giant evil spider.
But that’s another story, in a way. Y’see it really is all change – I’m only having 2 beers a day now and only that much because I feel like I’m missing something too badly if I don’t; a sure sign things have gone too far.
And they do hang-gliding here – how cool is that? I just gotta set the date and tell my lovely insurance people what I’m up to that day and I can go on a tandem flight, apparently, for about 1200-1500 Rs. Nice.

Right! I have ranted long enough. I’m off to wander back to the guesthouse through the coconut groves, which are something of a minefield as the hefty green seeds themselves are apt to fall whenever ripe, and if they do so on your head then it’s good night Vienna, or whatever the damn fool saying is. Still, they do make a lovely route home

Ahhhhhhhh I’m bald!! Just thought I’d say that again.