I think there must have been a 4:50am/5am stop on the train because I woke at 5am and could not get back to sleep. Right on queue, the chaichaichai men started walking up the train at 6am and slowly the passengers came to life and chit chat came back to the carriages. The train arrived at 7:15am and we lazily stepped off the train. As we turned to the right, along the platform, a group of men carrying a large red banner walked towards us, cheering and chanting. A man at the front walked toward us holding out a flower wreath and a man at the back of the group set of firecrackers on the platform, making everyone panic. The man with the wreath got closer to me and then placed the wreath over the head of the man next to me. They were Union workers. The man next to me was the Union leader. As we left the station, through the large archway, the idiot with the firecrackers set off another bunch of them and Chandra jumped out of his skin. We moved away from the Union workers and waited for our taxi. James peered over my shoulder, behind the cars, and gestured for me to look. A man in just a pair of shorts, with matted brown hair, bare feet, dirty long finger and toe nails and filthy skin was sitting in piles of rubbish, close to a wall that other men had been disappearing behind the cars to wee on. He was sifting through the piles of rubbish and eating scraps. It's the first mentally disabled person I had seen alone in India. 

Our taxi to Candolim took just over an hour and when we arrived at the hotel our rooms weren't ready so Chandra took us for breakfast. The restaurant had burgers AND bacon. I ordered an ‘English fry up’. It came with salami and ham? It was ok, but I had gotten my hopes way too high. The rooms still weren't ready when we got back to the hotel so we chilled in the lobby and I slept on the sofa. I think our loitering in the lobby encouraged the owner to hurry up and sort the rooms. The rooms were ready by lunch and I continued my nap in the room until Beth woke me up to go to the beach. 

The beach was quiet. It was the end of the season and the majority of the shacks were dismantled and closed. We paid two ladies for sun loungers, 100 rupees each and they bought us beers, cocktails and tried to sell us various trinkets. Chandra had asked us to meet him at 7pm back at the hotel but it was 6:45pm by the time we actually left the beach. James called Chandra to let him know we had been drinking at the beach all afternoon and would be a little late. I think the sight of the four of us giggling and trotting along the road toward Chandra waiting outside the hotel, yelling his name as we got closer must've have softened his resolve. We grinned at him like Cheshire cats as we met him and negotiated another 15 minutes more to go get changed. 

The strip we drove down on the way to restaurant resembled Malia, Zante and Gran Canaria. Neon signs and open fronted bars on each side of the road. Music blasting from every direction. Sunburnt bodies, wearing next to nothing walking along each side of the road, navigating between the weaving bikes and the ridiculous 4 x 4s that have no place driving along those roads, other than for the idiot owners to show off their shiny cars. Chandra takes us for dinner at Titos, followed by drinks at Cape Town Café. Around midnight, Chandra and JohnMiller head back. Chandra has a 5am flight back home which he hasn’t even packed for and JohnMiller has nursed a vodka and orange for the past hour and a half, between stifled yawns and loitering around the dance floor. We say our long goodbyes to Chandra, and tell JohnMiller we’ll see him in the morning. Beth, James and I head to the next bar along and I lose to James at pool, a couple of cocktails, a little dancing and some chatting with locals follows. Finished with a Dominos. We get tuc tucs back to the hotel and head straight to bed.