Monday, January 09, 2006

Christmas and New Years Our Tales of Woe continue

Christmas - we were in Chennai to visit the family, muggy heat and gray skies everyday, to treat ourselves and because neither of us had a work Christmas party this year we decided to have a grand buffet meal at one of the five star hotels. The meal was lovely, nothing special but both of us we overjoyed by the sight of lettuce and just ate several plates full.

Later that night Greg started vomiting and pooing and did not stop for days. Christmas day, we had been up all night and arrive to my Uncle Pats place exhausted and over it, Royapuram the place where I was born is grubby little port town and rather a sad sight on Christmas morning. Uncle Pat is joyous to see us but informs me that the family does not get together for Christmas and so we have to get around in the one day to see the three families. Greg tries to eat a bit of breakfast - throws up and then needs to go lie down. I try to make small talk mainly about what I remember which is nothing and long for home....I start feeling a little sick myself.

Next stop is my Uncle Joes, we get there and he insists that we drink some juice, and we are presented with juice of which I have no description that neither of us could drink, more talk about what I remember, Greg swaying nauseously in the corner....Joe insists we have lunch and we awkwardly tell him that we have to go to my Auntie Maree's for lunch.

We get to auntie Maree's my Grandmother is there and I am happy to see her after so many years...we hug and kiss and Greg takes a few photo's before exiting to throw up and lie down. Conversation is slow and then we start watching a Karaoke video, which takes all of our attention. My family insist that we go out and get some medicine for Greg which I think is a good idea we go out and I discover they have taken me out to buy me a gold ring, horrified I beg them not to buy it and even walk out of the shop and refuse to try anything on, they buy me a ring anyway.

Another hour of the Karaoke video and we are off back to our hotel, Greg collapsing and me in a daze.

New Years Eve and the plague continues, we arrive in Goa after 22hours on the train on the 31 first of December. The train ride itself is an event, thinking that our train was at 11pm on the 30th we were cruising around getting some things done when we discover at 12.30pm that our train is leaving at 2pm, after packing at break neck speed we arrive at the station in time for train, hot, hungry and tired. All of the trains we have been on so far have had a continuous stream of food sold by porters walking up and down the carriages so we were not disturbed by the fact that we have had no lunch. An hour into the train ride and not a porter to be seen I asked the conductor if there was food, only to be advised that there was no food on this train an we would have to wait 8hrs until Bangalore to get food. Thankfully he was wrong and food was available at a station about 3hrs into the trip, but we were so scared of possible starvation that we over ate for 22hrs of our trip and arrived at Goa stuffed, exhausted and not really caring about partying for New Years.

Knowing that it would be busy there we booked a room well ahead, but India being India they gave our room away and so three hours later we found a hut on the beach and sat down to relax, a quick swim and we got showered and dressed for the festivities. At dinner started sneezing uncontrollably and kept going this way until about 11pm when I had to go to bed - so missed the count down and fireworks and had a fierce cold for the next three days.

But we are in Goa the sun is shining, the sky is blue, the ocean is bright, cornflakes and lettuce are in plentiful supply and things are looking up.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home