Well well. We went to travel the south east of Asia. Many people go to different countries so fast and visit more than four countries in a month. They would be so surprised with our decission of staying two months and a half in the same country. Even more two months in the same area. But it had its beauty. We are trying to travel slow. Not only because flying regularly contributes to the pollution in the planet, but also because we think that to get to know a place you need to stay in it and try to live like a local. Only so can you really see the place. After two days in Bogmalo, Colva beach was our next destination. I tell you here what we found and did the first month there.
Our stay
So, the next stop was Colva beach, in south Goa. Rather than going to luxurious places we also try to keep it low. We rented an apartment for the first two months that is between 20 and 30 minutes away from the beaches near by walking.
We decided to have this apartment as our "base of operations", as we wanted a fixed place for the adaptation period, and also for Christmas. We arrived in November, so the math made it until the middle of January. We had a looooong research about places, because being for that period of time we did not want just anything. We wanted to be completely comfortable in the place without needing to go to something extra expensive. We found this apartment in Airbnb. (If you do not have an account, contact us and we will send you a discount code for new users).
Renting this apartment was the best decision. It was cleaner than what we have seen in India in its price range (both before and after the apartment). We only did a superficial clean when we arrived. The host is SUPER nice and she did everything in her possibilities to make our stay amazing. The apartment has a laundry machine, which is not something all apartments have. The bathrooms were also clean (it has two). We could go whenever we wanted to the gym and the pool in the residential area, and we had really good internet. We had so many good experiences there, and lived many moments. When the time was over, we felt the house as our home. It was a little hard to leave.
The only bad experience we had in the apartment was something out of the control of the host: termites. The good part was that they put a quick solution with the pest control services in the area. The bad part, the smell. We had few days in which the house smelled. We had to wash most of our clothes although we had them well covered (as the pest control guy told us).
How we ate
Our apartment had a kitchen, so we did much cooking. We bought in supermarkets near and made our version of some local dishes or the closest possible to our European dishes. But we also ordered online (actually, the first month we mostly ordered). We used the app "Zomato", that works really good and so many restaurants deliver through them. To order in some places you need an Indian phone number, though. For this you can either buy a SIM card to have your own number and internet outside of the stay or use the trick we used most of our time there to pass the verification step.
When we ate out we tried different restaurants that called our attention in the area where we were in each moment. We will be giving more details when we tell you about specific trips we did :). One thing we learnt really fast is that the fresh juices there are AMAZING.
The area
The apartment is located in a residential area where many families live and some apartments are also for tourists. Because of its distance to the beach we could see much of the local life and how little by little it transforms in a tourist dedicated area as you get close to the coast.
The apartment is two minutes away by walking from a supermarket ("Borkar's superstore") and our favorite cafe in the area ("The Chocolate Room"). There is a supermarket ("Compras") a little farther (five minutes away), that complements Borkar's. We mainly did grocery shopping in those two supermarkets.
The Chocolate Room was our second home because of its good vibes, the amazing coffees/chocolates and tasty food and how good we could work there on our website. Also thanks to Darren and Anais (the owners), who made it even nicer going to the cafe and soon enough became our friends.
The beach
The beaches in that area are long and with a large area of sand. Some have more restaurants/bars at the beach, others not so many. Some have free sunbeds and others ask you to pay or to order something to eat or drink in order to make use of the sunbeds. Careful with this last one, as they normally do not advertise it that way. They call you to use them, and once you have occupied one for a while they tell you. So always ask first :D. Our favorite one is in Colva beach and is called "Boomerang". You can eat and drink really well there and really good quality/price.
The owner is such a nice guy and the general attitude of the crew invites you to come back. One day we went to the beach in the morning just to take some pictures. After the shooting we were thirsty and tired and decided to stay for a while on a sunbed (at Boomerang they are free of charge, no small letter). The waiter came, we ordered two amazing watermelon fresh juices. Then we thought "ok, let's also eat something". The photo shooting was for the first release of this blog, so we had reasons to celebrate. Well, time to get the bill. We took all the equipment we needed from the apartment, but we did not take money. They had seen us more times, so they trusted us and insisted on us not going back to take money, and we could pay the next time we visited, no problem at all. That is how familiar the crew is and how good they can make you feel.
If you go to Benaulim beach in the morning you might have the privilege of swimming with some dolphins that will just join you. HOW COOL IS THAT! Another thing at the beaches there are some special people who, for some reason, always want selfies with you xD. They also use some tricks sometimes to get to you, like asking you to take a pic of them. Then they call you in the picture or turn around to try to take a selfie, even if you say no.
The first month there
We tell you more about places to see and things to do in other stories. It will be in fact in other stories because what we tell here is all we did the first month.
When we arrived to India we had in mind dedicating around two or three weeks to the blog. We had decided the technology to use, the hosting and other topics already before traveling. But we still needed to design, to research about laws that apply to blogs, and to develop. We did not want to use WordPress because we wanted to create something on our own, designed by us and I wanted it developed by me. Also, I did not want to use the technology used to make templates for WordPress. We decided to use another technology, completely new to me because of what it offers.
It was all good during the design, we were really fast getting to what we imagined to have. Then, because of some typical troubles during the development, added to the lack of experience with the new technology, we ended up a month working almost two shifts on it and eating so many days just food ordered on Zomato or cookies and milk xD. Shaving was a low priority task during the development, as can be noticed.
After we finished and we took a day off, we could not really believe it. It was so weird not discuss some concepts or designs. Not write any line of code or style rules. But on the other hand, we could not wait to go to the beach and spend the whole day with no worries and no tasks.
If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading us :). We tell you more in other stories.