What Westerners have for breakfast

It would be fairly safe to say that five years in Goa changed John McBeath's world view. He and his partner Sue had gone to the sub-continent with the dream of opening a B&B (or more correctly a pensione) and Goa, although tropical, seemed to have the former hippie haven, European ambience they were seeking.

Of course, they found even more than they were looking for - colourful locals, eccentric expatriates, sex, drugs, gossip and intrigue, unfathomable innuendo - played out in the steam and heat against the backdrop of brilliant bougainvilleas and shady mango trees.

This memoir of the five years they spent chasing, realising and finally releasing their dream is a funny, crazy and bittersweet account of what should have been perhaps an impossibility.

Now a music critic, NZ-born McBeath and his wife Mary live overlooking The Gulf of St Vincent in Adelaide. He has also managed community radio stations in Cairns and Alice Springs and run a small importing business, dealing in coffee beans from Laos.

Despite his five year sojourn in Goa, to this day McBeath is still unsure, really, just what one local meant when he said 'I know what Westerners have for breakfast'!

Reading this hilarious account may provide readers with a plausible answer. But then again it may not. Goa is like that.

What Westerners have for breakfast, by John McBeath, published by Transit Lounge Publishing, 2013; rrp $29.95, paperback. ISBN 978-1-921924-484.

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