Our Cotton Anniversary at a "Beach Resort"

Did you know that the 2nd anniversary is called the 'Cotton Anniversary'. There, your G.K has improved for the day.

At mid-night, when we were still stuffing our faces with Christmas barbeque, my siblings, brother-in-law and Mom brought out this lovely cake for our anniversary, with candles and all.
Promptly, after the cake was cut it was shoved in my face and into my hair, like I could do with all the moisturising!
Minutes later, Santhosh says that we have to wake up early the next morning because he was "whisking you away and taking you somewhere. No one knows yet."
And I was like, ooh so romantic.; before I could get my hopes too up he said, as a caveat, "Well, we're not going somewhere too far but it's going to be only the two of us."

So after the late night on Christmas day we still managed to wake up quite early on the morning of the 26th. Most in the house were still sleeping but were woken up by my incessant rustling. When they saw us all packed and dressed they were kind of miffed and they wanted to come along too. My little brother (ok, not so little now) was holding onto me and asking me not to go. We did finally get into the car and I was still not sure where I was going.

I was excited and could not stop asking Santhosh questions.
"Where are we going?"
"Where are you taking me?"
"Is it Goa?"
"Is it close to Goa?"
"I hope it's not Summer Sands."

Finally he gave up and told me that we were on our way to 'Paradise Isle Beach Resort' in Malpe. Now, I have heard that the Malpe beach is great but I had not heard of this resort. If I have not heard about it, it probably was new, though I had a nagging feeling , something was not right.

I should have trusted my instinct. When we drove our car into the resort we saw this almost run-down facade. We were still hoping that once we got inside things would get better, but no. We had to wait for half an hour before anyone acknowledged us. We could see already agitated customers yelling at the reception staff. The resort Manager seemed to be pacifying other irate customers.
When we were finally asked to be seated, the lady at the reception didn't seem to have our booking. Right at that time was our window to get on our heels and speed away but we blew our chance. The receptionist then finally got us a room and said that we would have to pay the full amount for the two nights in advance. And the price for two nights at this wannabe resort was (let the band march in please) a steep 14,850 rupees only.
Now, no resort or hotel asks you to do this and we again could have refused and made a dash for it but we chose to stay on.
Santhosh paid the amount in full. We were then told that our room was not ready and they suggested we have lunch first.
The lunch was mediocre, nothing to titillate the palate. After lunch we were back at the reception desk, oh how we loved the reception, the unsuspecting root where our troubles bloomed.

Apparently, our room was finally ready and the bell boy was insistent that he take our luggage (a very small and light cabin baggage with wheels) to the room.
We reach the room and voila! Twin beds! Nice way to spend our anniversary eh? We now had to fight over who got the bed with the best view. Talking of 'best view' we looked out of the window and saw a paan stained wall, which was one of the walls of the resort.

I went back to the reception desk and asked for a refund. But before that they had the brilliant idea of 'joining' the beds (not with magic glue, but just put the beds side by side together). Their plan did not excite me and I thought it would be best if we left.
We were so tired and disgusted we just wanted to go back home. The resort people were also adamant, they insisted that we stay and after about another hour's wait we were shown to what they called the 'suite'.
The floor was still sandy, the bathroom big as it was (we could have played mini cricket in there) didn't have a bath tub and the shower was placed right in the middle of the bathroom. This meant you would create a mini-flood right in the middle of the bathroom and if you had to go really urgently you would probably have to put on your swimsuit to use the loo. Some really bad architect designed this place no doubt. And there was "an extra room that you can use", the resort staff promptly informed us. Yes, that's just what we needed; we were expecting guests and had put on a pot of tea. Extra room indeed.

Once we settled in, we were hoping that we would have no new surprises. We went out to their Restaurant for dinner and man, it is a bloody rip-off like their resort. The food was good though, thank god for that. Anyway, we decided to stop cribbing and complaining and not ruin our little break.

Oh and I forgot to mention this earlier, they call it a 'beach resort' but they don't have private access to the beach. When we asked them about the private beach the manager went on and on about how no one can own the beach. Ok moron, we get that, but you should at least have private "access" to the beach. I tell you, the guys running the resort were a bunch of yahoos who were just cashing in on the holiday season. Their website does look pretty good though but don't be fooled by it.

So the next day we go out to the beach and there were swarms of people, swimming in the beach, building human pyramids and lots and lots of noise. I saw many, getting out of the water, sliding down their underwear and squeezing the water out of it. DISGUSTING!

When we could not take anymore of the underwear removing display we went to resort's swimming pool. Neither of us was in the mood to swim, so we sat there sipping cocktails and reading our books, very relaxing.
We also checked out their billiards room. It smelled funny, the tables were ripped, the cues were bad and the balls were missing. So much for their 'activities' on the resort. From the billiards room we could see the discotheque (actually the badminton court converted to a discotheque). There were two souls trying to make the best of their holiday dancing to the DJ's music. Don't know much about the music, but must say that their sound system was pretty good.

The next morning, which was going to be our last morning at the "resort" we decided to go to St.Mary's Island. The resort actually included the trip by boat in the room rates. So we decided to make the most of it. Luckily for us instead of getting the usual boat we got the speed boat. Santhosh sat right in front, kind of on the nose of the boat if you can call it that. He looked like an excited kid. But going on a speed boat is really fun. At the island we roamed around a bit, saw the carcass of dolphin and got sun burnt (at least I got thoroughly burnt)

We checked out in the afternoon and on our way back stopped at Kediyoor Hotel in Udupi. We had awesome prawn curry and rice, some beer, an ice cream called Honeymoon Special (hyuk hyuk) and the bill was under five hundred rupees.

So yeah, in the end we did have a good time because we resolved to. But I am telling you this and you better listen and listen well, DON'T EVER even THINK of going to Paradise Isle Beach Resort. There is no 'Isle' (at least it's not on an island), there is no 'Paradise' and these people have their own definition of a 'Beach Resort'.

- Kavisha Pinto