Well I got to Panjim after a short bus journey and quickly found a cute and rustic hotel in which to stay: Hotel Republica.
Deciding that I was quite hungry, having not eaten yet, I walked down the road to a little place called ‘Georges’ and was squeezed onto a table with a couple (This is something that they seem to do a lot of in India, putting you onto a table that already has people on just to get you sat down and eating).
I got talking to the couple: Dippy and Patricia They work the Casino on a cruise ship, very fun. They are both from Goa and have traveled all around the World on the cruise ship. It was nice to meet some locals that had traveled out of their state! They showed me the delights of ‘Fenny’ a local cashew based spirit that you mix with Lemonade and drop some Lime into. Quite potent in large amounts, but fairly pleasant when drunk in small amounts!
After the food we parted ways and I went to visit the impressive church of the Immaculate Conception, which looks HUGE in comparison to everything else around it. It sits in the middle of Panjim but is up a large amount of steps, so it takes a little hike to get to it.
I continued wandering around for a few more hours and found a Canon shop where I could look at camera bags and buy another battery (I thought that having two would be good because I keep running the battery out)!
Eventually I decided to take an evening boat trip through the GTDC (The Goa Tourism people). What I didn’t realize was that it would be a cheesy type of event, with traditional Goan dances. It was like when you go on a package holiday to Benidorm and they bring in the ‘Traditional’ entertainment for part of the evening. Not really my thing! It was funny to watch everyone dancing though.
The next morning I had breakfast in a lovely cafe serving great coffee and interesting food and then made my way up and down the lovely streets, taking photos as I passed all of the quaint steps and overgrown facades of the buildings of yesteryear!
Visiting the cinema to see what films were on, I was surprised to find that ‘Cloud Atlas’ was being shown in English. The other films were all in Hindi apart from Paranormal Activity 4, but I am a first class wimp, so that would not do. It was a toss-up between ‘Cloud Atlas’ and one of the Bollywood films: ‘Student of the Year’. I’d seen the music videos from it at least 100 times on the television and I thought it might be interesting to go and see it.
Eventually I decided upon ‘Cloud Atlas’, not least because I have the book by David Mitchell. The only drawback was that the film didn’t start until 10.30pm, so I had an awfully long wait! When I finally ended up watching the film, it was a little random at times because they do things slightly different in India. To start with I didn’t see any adverts for other movies, only smoking warnings and adverts for life insurance. Another strange thing is that you have to stand for the national anthem before the film begins. There was also an interval, I was thankful because it is a long film and I was bursting for a wee! During the film they don’t censor the swearing like they do on the Indian television channels, but they do blur out bum and boobs.
Some people left halfway through the film, I think that this is because there is a little bit of man love in the film and on all of the television that I have watched whilst here they have seemed to cut things out. I think that maybe the people weren’t used to seeing this. I don’t know, maybe they just didn’t like the film!
I would totally recommend seeing this film because it has Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, James Darcy, Susan Sarandon and some others whose names I can’t remember (one was the man who plays Professor Slughorn)…and they all play multiple characters. The plot is great and the way that it’s been filmed was amazing.
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