Thursday 27th December
After breakfast, I decided to head into Palolem again and take another look around the shops. I walked in and back to get some exercise, having done little walking over the last week or so. There wasn't much of interest but it was good to get a change of scene.
I went back to the beach and met Pete, who gave me a lift into the nearby town of Chaudi on the back of the scooter that he had rented. We went to the Hotel Udupi for some food, a locals' joint which sold cheap but very good food. We had masala dosas (pancakes fill with vegetables and served with various sauces) and they were very good, and the whole meal was ridiculously cheap, coming in at 66Rs (about 85 pence) for everything. There isn't much else to Chaudi, so we headed back to Patnem.
My attempts to buy my onward ticket to Kerala were proving so frustrating (at least using the online booking system), that I decided to pay a travel agent commission to sort out a ticket for me. After two weeks on the beach, the prospect of getting back on the road again was a welcome one, and I hoped to see as much as I could while still in India.
After hanging out on the beach until after the sun set, we met for dinner in Namaste, a restaurant that we hang out in most evenings, but where I had not previously eaten. I shared a tandoori kingfish with one of the girls, and it was very tasty indeed. The standard of the food and quality of the ingredients in Patnem is very high, perhaps more so than anywhere else in Goa that I have visited. It is also very cheap compared to what you might pay at home for the same kind of food.
It had been a busier day than usual, although simply standing up now and then to scratch my arse would have taken it to a higher level of activity than the standard day in Patnem. I was feeling quite sleepy by the end of the day, so I had an early night. There had been talk amongst the group of people going to a party at a place called The Bonkers Bar, but I didn't feel quite so bonkers myself and left the rest of the group to it.
