Goa

Goa is where all those drum totting, dread-locked, yoga-worshipping, painfully untalented flower children go when they wilt. But in spite of all that, or maybe because of it, it is still a pretty cool place. Around 6:15, when the sun goes down and all the yoga heads have tuckered themselves out after a day of breathing and posturing, the bats swoop out of their caves, twirling and diving, gorging themselves on mosquitoes that spent the previous night gorging themselves on me.

Tourists who passed the day nursing Honeybee Brandy hangovers in their own bamboo caves follow the bats lead. Some pick up beers, others pick up fire and they all twirl and dive into each others arms in a bass-infused, seafood and alcohol frenzy. Like vacationing parents the sun returns to only the faintest remnants of the night’s festivities, a beer bottle here, a cigarette butt there, and an old hippie barely awake in a lawn chair reciting incoherent poetry.