Goa

This summer break, my family and I took a trip to India. More specifically though, outside of visiting my family in Chennai, we went to Goa. Not gonna lie, I just thought Goa would be an Indian version of Hawaii, but it was way different and definitely filled with a lot of unexpected surprises.

The first day once we landed, we took a taxi to the airport and since it was night, we just relaxed and slept late. Because we went with my cousin's family and there were three rooms, three of us teenagers stayed together in one room, while my parents stayed in another and my aunt and younger cousin in the third room.

The next day, once we woke up, we first went to the beach. The resort we were at had access to a private beach, so we walked for a solid thirty minutes without practically any crowd at all.

Afterwards, we got breakfast and then got in a taxi to do a day's worth of exploring. First, we went to Goa's famous spice plantations. The weather was so hot and humid that I felt like collapsing throughout the entire tour, but I did pay attention enough to see the richest spices in the world. Afterwards, the guides gave all the adults some local alcohol medicine, and I complained the entire time because I couldn't drink any. Also because of the heat, the guide actually poured water on everyone's backs to cool down everyone. We then got lunch there, and then headed onto the next location, a temple.

Because of the dress code that we didn't know about beforehand, my sister had to wait outside and my mom stayed with her while the rest of us went inside. There wasn't much exciting about the temple, but the street it was on was filled with tons of shops selling literally everything imaginable. There were even cows walking along on the road and no one seemed to mind at all.

After visiting the temple, we went to the Basilica of Bom Jesus. We got to see the actual bones of St. Francis Xavier, but the display was kept far from us. The interesting thing about him was that there were no preservatives keeping the 400 year old body together, and so it was only relying on some wax to hold it together. There weren't even any specially regulated temperatures or anything. Through our guide, we got to learn about how St. Xavier came to Goa as part of exploratory missionary trips and the work he achieved here, causing him to finally be buried at Old Goa.

By the time we finished these three main attractions, we were pretty tired and just wanted to go back home to the hotel. However we did decide to still go to our last destination, FontainHas. Located in Panjim, my dad told me it was known for having colorful houses that belonged to the descendants of the original Portuguese voyagers. We got to walk through the streets and see the names of peoples' houses out front. We were able to take a couple quick pictures, and got coffee at a nice cafe at the end. The cafe was actually one of the descendant's houses but had been renovated into a cafe for it to become profitable. I learned that that had happened to many of the houses at FontainHas but the original Portuguese culture was still preserved, with many of the signs and architecture being in a Portuguese style.

We finally returned back to the resort around 8pm and immediately went to the restaurant for dinner. Afterwards, we all separately went to our rooms and went to bed around midnight.

Now we did have plans to fully explore the resort the next day, but all of us four kids ended up getting really sick, most likely due to food poisoning. We spent the entire day doing sick activities at the hotel room and didn't get the chance to step out at all.

On the last day, Sunday, we finally got the chance to get outside the hotel room, but spent the majority of the day in the game room at the hotel lobby. We got to play pool, carrom, and table tennis, and there was even a library upstairs for us to relax in. Later in the afternoon, when we were all feeling much better, we finally got to use the pool with the swimsuits my sister and I had gotten from one of the stores near the temple. After relaxing for the majority of the day, my sister and cousins went for a final walk on the beach with my dad, but I felt too sick to join along, and so I instead just spent my time in the hotel room. In the evening, we checked out and took a flight back to Chennai in the night. We spent another week in Chennai visiting family and going shopping before returning back home to the U.S. I really missed the U.S. at that point, but our trip to India was definitely interesting, and most definitely memorable to say the least.