Lamai

With the good comes the bad, and with the bad comes the good. This is what travelling taught me. The sun shone in on our room the next morning, the toilet incident was far behind us. I waded through our oversized netting which hung over us. Laura was very regimented on the building of the net. A previous plague of puss blistered bites had brought her last holiday to an abrupt halt, and this would not happen again. Each night we shielded ourselves from mosquitoes, and other biting bugs.

I eventually found my way through the netted web, and looked out over our Ibiza town, and was taken aback by the beauty of the mountains that sat only miles away from the little village. I had only ever seen beauty like this in books or on wild life programmes. It’s a cliché but it took my breath away. The greenery which spanned the entire distance as far as the eye could see looked painted on the trees to create the most perfect green I had ever seen. Picturesque does not sum up the view that I was looking out onto, it only cheapens the beauty by making it seem like an over exaggerated claim of a moderate image.

We headed out almost immediately, and jumped in an open air taxi. This was a truck which had bars going the length of the back and over our heads to keep us as “safe” as possible. We travelled along the road and down along the coast, where the views became more beautiful and more incredible than I could ever imagine. It’s difficult to write about the views and the beauty because to put it in words only brings the feeling of failure that I cannot in good conscious justify with descriptions what we saw. The awesome sights of nature. The piercing blue of the sea that stretched across the horizon. The white sands that appeared to have never been walked on. It was fantastic. We couldn’t stop smiling as we spun around in our seats, desperately trying to take in every inch of landscape. We drove for twenty minutes until we came to Lamai. Amid palm trees, and through a path of sand, were large bungalows. It slept four and was right on the beach, it was perfect.

We spent the days there relaxing and acclimatising ourselves to doing nothing with our time. These were the days that we chosen to simply be idle, spend some time just enjoying the beach and the cuisine Thailand had to offer. The spices, the freshness of all their cooked delights. A pure taste of paradise, lying on the beach, waves lapping over your feet, drinking cold beers. What more did we need in life. Um, a Thai massage please. This I have to say was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had with a masseuse. We all lay in beds next to each other, as they played relaxing, soothing music. The massage started like any other shoulders, back arms, neck and so on. Then out of nowhere this little woman began pulling at my feet like she was trying to pop them off. I could hear my bones cracking; she stood on me and entangled our bodies together like vines from a jungle plant. She pulled at me like I was some sort of Stretch Armstrong! Up and down my body, at some point I even winced in pain.

It was the best massage I had ever had. It was definitely caught on the pleasure/ pain ratio of things, and for some reason I could not hold in the giggles that erupted from me every time she pulled on an arm or a leg. The fact that this tiny little woman was jumping all over me just gave me a nervous feeling. No area was restricted. At one point I even believe she was doing back flips on me. It was a great but painful experience. From then on I stuck to having my feet massaged which came with a lighter, less vigorous massage. Yes some say I needed to toughen up, but I felt the fear, and her name was Yau.

KOH SAMUI

We had arrived in Koh Samui. Honestly it wasn’t what I expected, but it was 9pm and hot! The memory of the cold night in Abu Dhabi was merely embers now on the fire of my mind. We shopped around for an hour looking for accommodation for the night before we got our teeth stuck into our trip.

The first thing that sparked my love affair with Thailand was the polite and friendly people. The first man we met was a taxi driver. I began to get weary as we wound our way down dark lanes, deeper into country, with no light or any other cars around us. We were four women in a foreign land, and apart from Alysha’s yoga flexibility we didn’t have much defence on our side. We arrived at some hut apartments and the man urged us to follow him along the dirt path, leaving our stuff in the car behind us. We watched as he began talking to a group of men, continually turning to point at us, and shaking his head as the group of men and him exchange price rates. This was it I thought. Just like on television, just like that film TAKEN! We were going to be sold! What were we thinking getting into a car with this man? I looked at my sister Laura who was holding my hand. She didn’t seem worried. My life flashed before my eyes. My first thought. I haven’t really done anything. It was true. Thailand was going to be my first great experience, and this is the price I pay. Damn me for grabbing life by the balls. With that the man walked back to us. This is it I thought. Whatever had happened he didn’t seem happy. He rounded on us, I had no Idea what to think. He stopped in front of us. The men started to walk off their porch and edge towards us. I could feel sweat dripping down the back of my neck. (Looking back it was probably the heat).

“Not for you lady. We go. Too much. Too much.”

We walked back to the car. Guilt and stupidity washed over me. What kind of cynic had I become where I immediately see the worst in a situation. Is that what western civilisation had done to me? Make a suspect of this man who, for the same amount as we would probably spend on a bottle of cheap wine was going out of his way to make sure we had somewhere nice and cheap to stay. This was only the first of many experiences on the extent of human kindness I would come to see again in this beautiful Country.

After a few more stops we arrived at an apartment. We sat in the car, while our man went and arranged prices and duration of stay with the owner. He came back out satisfied that we could stay there. We thanked him and went in. We split into the two rooms, which were clean, refrigerated, and out the window we saw row after row of bars and clubs. We were jet lagged and exhausted, but it was only 10pm, and it was the first night of our holidays. Before we had even thought of going out, Alysha in all her extravagant glory bounded into our room, eyes sparkling, gave us our half hour curtain call before we would leave for drinks. She was right, she was what we needed, so we got out there as ordered.

The strip was not what I expected from all I had heard of Thailand, and what I had read. I wasn’t expecting to see anything like this until we hit Bangkok. It reminded me of something that you could easily see on Ibiza Uncovered. We walked the strip looking for somewhere to get our first drink, the streets were lined with people, the music blasted out of each club that we passed. Beautiful ladies (well what I thought were ladies at a first glance) called us into their club. It was manic. We walked into a little bar and got two jugs of Chang beer. Chang would be our sponsors for the entire trip! We sat and toasted to everything we could think of. By the end of the jugs a couple of beers had turned into cocktails, and we paid our pennies and headed for a huge open air club down the street.

We danced in to the club, more relaxed from our trip with a buzz of energy from our Chang, maybe a little delusional from the jet lag, but ready to enjoy. Cocktails in hand we hit the dance floor. In a stereotypical “woo” girl fashion we partied it up, dancing to track after track, forgetting the tired, forgetting everything except the here and the now. The fun and the feeling. The people, the excitement. The bladder! Logically who can continually dance in a euphoric style with a couple of pints floating around their system. Toilet break was called. Pretty much the end of the night called as well.

I stepped into the toilets, looked down at my submerged feet. I prayed it was just water and continued in. Where I was greeted by the worst toilet I had ever seen. Kim and Aggie could not have tackled this one. All I could think of was thank god my Long time OCD suffering sister Gemma had not joined us on the trip. This. This would have killed her. The flushing apparatus was made up of a cup which sat in a bucket of water, which was then poured into the toilet. This I was fine with. Only in this case, the bucket overflowed with urine, and little drops of, in a polite manner, faeces. I retched into my hand turned on my heels and was ready to go. The 18 to 30’s aspect of Thailand I was ready to run away from. Onwards to the Beauty we went!