Ah!Weary Traveller

Did you say "Pearl of the Orient?"

Goa also could probably present a friendlier face to our tourist visitors. You get off a plane in Singapore, and you're greeted by a spacious, clean, modern airport with futuristic skytrains whisking people between terminals. You get off a plane at the Dabolim International Airport And Regional Alcoholics Anonymous Convention Centre, and you half expect to be run over by goats.

We are talking not Third World but about a possibly Fifth World situation here, a seething, babbling mass of confusion that can be very scary if you just got off a plane from, say, Tokyo.

There you are, Mr Sockitome , wearing your brand-new active swimwear, palm-printed shirt and straw hat, all set for a restful tropical vacation, and suddenly you find yourself in a dirty, ill-lit, confusing airport, trying to thread your way through surging hordes of people shouting and gesturing in numerous languages and pidgin English; massive extended families carrying an astounding variety of baggage, including tyre tubes, washing machines, giant TV's, pianos, livestock, house parts, etc., and forming huge disorganized clots in front of counters representing dozens of tour operators (proud motto: "If The Engine Don't Start, We Share This Rickshaw, Hokay?").

What bothers me about these tour operators is, in all the times I've been to the airport, I've never seen any of their tour buses, COMING IN, only some going out. I'm convinced that some of them don't HAVE any buses or their own. The way they work is, they wait until they've gathered a bunch of passengers, then go around to garage sales looking for buses in their price range. This causes lengthy delays, sometimes resulting in the formation of whole refugee passenger villages in the main airport lounge, with primitive huts and chickens roasting over open fires.

This is the scene that you, the Japanese tourist Sockitome San, must fight your way through in an effort to reach the Baggage Claim area, only to find it littered with mildewed inactive swimwear, printed shirts, and straw hats, costumes containing the remains of former tourists who perished while waiting for their baggage to arrive, apparently from the planet Jupiter.

And miraculously, when you do get your baggage, and fortunately you have your own car, you will find yourself out in Goa Velha, on the NH17, God forbid, dealing with: North Goa returning evening traffic -- the states last true lawless frontier; a place where you're not even certain that the cops are licensed drivers, a place where you are passed on the left, passed on the right, passed by bikes driving right on top of your roof, cars that were last inspected during the Liberation, buses on which the only maintenance activity ever performed is that occasionally the road transport department slaps another layer of what appears to be blue paint on the windows, cars without doors, and some with the doors welded shut – oops that's a hearse from Bosco Modern Funeral Home ( they have internet access) traveling along briskly with a marching band, a lot of them seem to be going out of their way to hit you, which they probably are because, as an out-of-town car owner driver, you may well be the only person in all of Goa who actually has insurance.—Banzaiiiiiiiiiii ! -------------------------------