My second day in India, and feeling a lot better. :) I managed to make 2 new friends yesterday, a dutch couple. They were also trying to get to the train station to book tickets to Goa, so we went together. Were all getting the coach to Goa this evening at 5pm (the train was full, gutted). The coach takes 17 hours!!! Thats almost twice as long as my flight here!! It's gonna be a rough trip.... Well, my impressions of india so far are good. From all the stuff I was told, i was expecting a big pile of poo covered in flies with a lady squatting on top having another poo.... But the part of bombay I'm in is clean (by asian standards) and not smelly at all. Obviously there are street kids and beggers, and every stall owner runs out to grab my attention when he see the large dollar sign tatooed on my forehead, but that's just part of the deal when you come to these places wearing white skin. Last night walking back from having dinner, one little street girl came over and gave me the usual "hand to mouth" gesture whilst saying "money", and me being stupid just can't bring myself to completely ignore them, so instead i look at her and say "no, sorry", which to her translates as "yes, maybe", so she grabs my wrist in a vice like grip and follows me all the way home (about 15 minutes) all the way doing her begging routine. So all the way home I repeated the word "no" in as many different ways as possible, eventually turning it into a little song and using the fact that she wouldn't let go of my wrist to perform a little dance with her, which didn't deter her in the slightest. Eventually we obviously reached the edge of her territory and she let me go..... It's really quite hard, but the only way to get anywhere is just to completely blank ppl when they ask you for stuff/offer you stuff, but having been brought up with good manners, I find it almost impossible, as it just seems really rude.... but even offering a smile can be enough to get you trapped in a 20 minute game of "leave me alone please".....

I've just been chatting with my gf online, and she's got herself a webcam! So cool! I can see her now! So now if she uses a smiley face, i can see if she really is smiling... :) Anyway, my back is killing from spending so long at this pc, so i'm off...... See you later!