4.In Anjuna there was a sign for Internet service. When we looked in the small shop we saw the usual things for sale on the counter: candy, raw eggs sitting in cartons, deoderant and Lay's potato chips. When we asked about Internet, a young man behind a counter said, yes, please come this way and lead us through several rooms of his multigenerational household. The first room held a double bed on which two teenage girls sat and watched TV, their elderly grandmother, sat on the floor also watching the Indian soap opera. The next room was the dining room - nothing but a long table and chiars. The third was a living room with several ratty sofas and one computer set up on a dusty desk. We checked our e-mail as family members came and went, going about their business. The only one who payed attention to us was the mother, who charged us 40 rupees an hour. When I tried to give her more, she refused and said, 40 is enough. 40 rupees equals a dollar.

5. I've been told that this year Goa had more rain in the monsoon than ever before. But unlike other parts of country where the monsoon causes massive floods and loss of life, here it rains pretty much every day, but because it is on the ocean, the excess water drains into the sea. On most days there's been an hour or so of sun in the morning, followed by medium rains for several hours, and perhaps an hour of sun in the afternoon followed by torrential rains most of the night. For the past three days it's been drizzling most of the day with intermittant downpours that roll in drenching everything in a matter or secounds, and then roll out in 30 minutes or so. And I have to say, to quote my Goan friend, Jason, the downpours "are like rain you've never seen before," - hard, huge drops that are so close together and hit with such furry it's as if someone threw a bucket of water on us from a second story window. Even so, it hasn't slowed us down much, we have our flipflops and umbrellas and carryon as the Indians do, with whatever we planned,

We have another day in Panji, then head further south to another swish beach resort.

B and A