agentundercover
Active Member
I'll break it down for you:
Benaulim - authentic, village-y, great seafood, great beach, beach shacks/bars, Small amount of Western tourists. 20mins walk to:
Colva - slightly more upmarket, bigger hotels/resorts, shops, fancy beach bars. Variable amount of Western tourists
Anjuna - One of the busiest resorts as the most well known. Established hotels / restaurants / markets etc. Decent beach but one of the busiest too (although busy here is nothing compared to busy in Europe!). Lots of nightlife options.
Vagator - very hippy-fied, beautiful beach with a handful of good bars and restaurants - but lots of stray dogs! Quiet in terms of Western tourists but you will get a lot of hippies banging their drums on the beach Only a 5min taxi to Anjuna
Mandrem / Ashwem - very quiet and chilled, lots of yoga retreats, secluded clean and massive beaches. Limited bars / restaurants, most of the ones there will be veggie / fish and quite eco-friendly. It's a haven for eco-warriors but also heaven if you want to totally chill.
Didn't go to Palolem.
Baga / Calungute VERY busy with Western tourists, but again, the most established resorts in Goa for fancy hotels and bars.
And amazing seafood EVERYWHERE!! Especially in the smaller resorts where the fishermen actually catch it in front of you and bring the fish wriggling into the restaurant, then you choose which one you want. Can't get fresher than that!
Wherever you stay in Goa it's a very cheap taxi ride away to the next town. I personally wouldn't advise too much walking around on your own at night, simply because of the stray dog problems there (we got chased a few times!).
Goa is amazing though, you can't not like it.
Why so anti palolem compared to say baga? not been to latter.