Goa Time!

I am writing this from our hotel in Goa. Weather is pretty miserable, been pouring all day. It IS the end of monsoon season, but I thought we'd be safe, especially since it hasn't rained much in my 10 days in India. What makes this okay is this:

UPGRADED! (this comp won't let me watch the video, so a little blind faith that this is what I think it is)

We upgraded hotels faster than a speeding bullet. We checked into the original place yesterday and it was okay - right on the beach, but just okay. This was the plan anyway knowing that Ms. Wu loves to just lay on the beach all day, everyday, and I wanted to give her exactly that. The problem is that this beach (Candolin Beach, Goa, India) SUCKS! For some reason I guess I thought this would be a tropical beach paradise, which its surely not. Tropical, yes, and a beach, yeah, but totally not what I expected at all. Similar to what I have found traveling through India so far (except for the Temple grounds and of course my friends places), there is garbage everywhere. For example, you can tell where the high tide mark is because of the swath of garbage - plastic bottles and plastic toys, flip flop bottoms and glass. Also, again something I've been seeing throughout India, there are wooden shacks right on the beach-edge... people here seem to park down wherever there is room. I've seen tent cities situated right in fields and a mini-city of aluminum shanties next to the basketball courts in a public park. So, in sum, this beach is dirty, not really scenic and populated by some very poor people (asking for money and/or for us to buy their trinkets) and the omnipotent Indian stray dogs.

So, I upgraded with the quickness (which Melissa found very sexy - as she should with a baller boyfriend). We walked right to the beach after freshening up at our original place (which incidentally looks good from its website and got great reviews on ClearTrip, a travel website). We went down to the water, felt the disappointment pretty quickly, and walked left. Luckily as hell a little while down the beach was this fantastic looking resort, the Taj Village Resort. Night and day! I am going to sign off and go enjoy but real quick we went from maybe 2 star to straight 5 star. This place is awesome, and all inclusive - important since it's rained all damn day. They have, I think, 4 restaurants, fitness center, activities, fabulous pool with a swim-up bar. The 19,000 rupees sounds steep but the exchange rate is 45 rupees to 1 dollar = $435 for two nights, including all of our meals, the aforementioned activities and free transport to wherever we want to go, including the airport (the taxi cost 900 rupees to get here). Pretty much all that we could ask for. It just needs to stop raining, but even if it doesn't at least we're not stuck watching Anderson Cooper hurricane Irene coverage on CNN in a dumpy room. 

Time for me to get back to some pampering. I hope everyone is well, given some of the flooding Anderson showed us this morning. Long Beach looks like it took some damage, plus some towns in Long Island. City looks fine. Send me some messages, lets us know what happened.