hello all!

sorry i haven’t blogged till now, but its been a bit hectic so far. at present i am in benoulem (sp) scribing this onto the palm whilst reclining on my bed at antoinet’s. fairly nifty place, cheers mama and dod! this guest house and the country side around really reminds me of sychelles, with the whitewashed tin roofed houses nestling in palm tree surounds, and the jolly residence always happy to give you the time of day. the beach is also rather nice. i have had one considerebly refreshing bathe.on the negertive side, the places to eat are filled with every human charcature of the englishman abroard. pink and bulbous, they waddle to and fro talking of mundane matters. this wouldnt be a problem but all the eateries and places drink are designed to cater for this type of cliantel.  this gives the place a bit of a “resort” feel. the food is nice ebough but with little choice in comparison with bombay. yester day flo and i were recling on the beach after a nice swim when a grizzled indian chap came over. he had spotted the ankh around my neck and asked if i was catholic. i wasn’t so i said no. this didn’t seem to be a problem as he was catholic and that would be enough for both of us.and he sat down and chatted to us. it turned out that he was a fisherman and he owned a boat that we had spotted earlier called “jesus lasio” we had been curious about the name and flo asked what it meant. he looked a trifel ambarassed, then admitted that when he was telling the guy who painted his boat, over the phone what he wanted the name to be he had said “jesus loves you” but this was what he got. we found this rather amusing. after that little anictdote he wnet to help his ship mates setup the jesus lasio.a few minutes later a flushed chappy with a distinkly german moustache charged over and asked if i would help another bunch of fishermen push their boat into the see. sure thing. i hoofed it over, and me the german chap and several toothy locals heaved at the boat. it slid towards the sea on what looked like a row of railway sleepers which had been oiled. only broblem was they only had about five so someone had to scurry behind the boat, grab a sleeper and lob it in front of the carreening boat.after seeing us succesfully luanching this boat the crew of the jesus lasio called for our aid and the german chap, flo and i pegged it over and heaved another boat into the sea. they were massivly heavy, but it was fun.bombay was quite nice in the end. arrived feeling like i had not slept for days. which i hadn’t. got a taxi to the fort area were my pristine hotel, which i had booked before leaving england, awaited. ofcourse the taxi driver didn’t know were my hotel was and when provided with the address for the place, cast doubt as to its very existance. i then said it was next door to the regency hotel. aha! he not only knew were the regency was but he could take us there! he dropped us of at what appeared to be the place. i attempted to triangulate my possition and work out were my hotel was in relation to the regency. this would have been considerably easier if the hotel we had been droppped of at was the regency. on claser inspection it was in fact some other hotel called the residency. cursing the blighter who dropped us off and myself for failing to read the sign, we went to get another taxi only to be met by the same problem. no one knew of my hotel or the road it was prosumably connected to. deciding to cut our losses we took a taxi to colaba, and stayed in a perfecly nice room overlooking the harbour at half the price of my hotel. the area we were in was really nice, had very few people trying to sell us stuff and had some classy little cafes stuffed with indians eating away. just a few minutes walk down the dock, was an icredibly taky touristy area, which was best avoided. our bit of town were one could sit at a juice stand and sup on a relaxing lassi and chat to a random indian who was doing the same was much more preferable.we went to see a bollywood movie at one point. i was quite possbly the most dreadfull film i have ever had the misfortune of viewing. far from being all singing and all dancing joyfest it was a bleak tale of abduction and revenge, cut together and directed by someone who clearly dispised the very idea of cinema and all it stands for. and was also blind in one eye.