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!

After neglecting my blog for so long following weeks and weeks of trying to get ideas and stories written for my new big freelance career, by the way that’s my big idea! I have decided to write down my Thailand trip and blog it in a range of stories as so much happened on that trip one giant blog would never do it justice. It was the most amazing time of my life, and I have great memories that I want to share. So firstly a little intro to the people.

Ab Dhab Cold!

The sun was shining down on us as we stepped out of the car, faces lit up, and excitement radiating off our bodies. Giving hugs and kisses, we said goodbye to our parents, thank god they could drop us off because all our money was being spent on this dream trip. Taxi’s were out of the question. A stiff breeze whipped through our farewell duet, and reminded us we were still in the UK. This only added to our excitement. Soon all this would be behind us. We threw our backpacks on, and began walking towards the entrance of Heathrow Airport.

I was a novice at this backpacking game and so walked a few paces behind my sister adjusting straps and clips so it would fit me right, truth be told I never figured it out the whole trip. I totted after her, doing that stupid half jog that people do when your arms can only go side to side because they’re restricted by your backpack. Then the the area erupted with squeals. We’d found our travelling companions. My sister, who by the way I refer to as Laura, went to college many many many years ago with Alysha, who is one of the craziest girls I had ever met in my life. She’s fun, outgoing, and made ...................seem like a nun at Sunday school. Laura’s a lot like that, except I would never give her any kudos on her personality because we’re sisters, I’ve been around her all my life so it’s second nature that she’s the way she is. Then there was Lauren. Now in this risky game of blind date, I was out of the loop, everyone knew everyone, but not everyone knew me. That’s where Lauren comes in. My Blind Date. Now Lauren studied her Teacher’s Training with Alysha, there is link one, and then Lauren and Laura had become friendly through Laura living with Alysha. Therein lays link two. If you got all that we’ll move on. What dawned on me was I wasn’t a friend of anyone’s I was a sister. Who knew if me thrown into the friendship mix would create harmony. Would I revert to my childlike ways because I was in the company of my older sister? Like the way everyone does when they visit parents, you forget you’re your own person and you become someone’s something. Anyway I digress.

After hello’s and how are you’s and nice to meet you’s from me and Lauren to one another we headed inside, and got ready for our trip. We didn’t have long to wait for our plane to board, so we had time for a quick bite, and a chat before getting on the plane. I was still shell shocked. It didn’t seem real. Even as we got on the plane and took off, I watched as the monitor showed us views of the ground below us, I still couldn’t believe it. It had only been 11 weeks since Laura had called me up on my way to work to tell me she’d bought me a ticket to go to Thailand as a graduation present, I know what a sister. Everything was perfect though. The airline was posh, we had individual televisions with choices of games, radio, TV shows, and films, and with 7 hours to kill I was more than grateful for this entertainment. Of course we chatted among ourselves, and the seven hours went by pretty easily. Not to mention I got to watch Zac Effron in “17 Again”, which to be honest was where the holiday started for me! Now what I’m coming to is the little gap in our air travel, an eight hour stopover in Abu Dhabi. And what none of us had thought to prepare for, and will never forget. The awesome power of Airport Air Con!

With such a long trip we all agreed on a nice sleep on arrival to Abu Dhabi. Eight hours was like a full night, and we were pretty tired already. Especially me and Laura who had gotten drunk and stuck in London on my graduation the night before, but that’s another story. We lay down in the waiting area, with pillows and eye masks that the United Emirates Airline had unknowingly provided for us, we settled down for the night. Drifting into a nice dream of what was to come, culture, sand, sea, and sun. Until an hour later!

I woke up shaking violently as the temperature had sunk its way through my clothes, my skin, and was now festering happily in my bones. I shot up, and looked around. How could the girls be sleeping? Couldn’t they feel this too? How could I be the only one? It didn’t make sense; my body mass alone meant I should have been warmer than all of them. They had all been Bikini phase one and were beach ready trim. How were they warm? I went through my bag and put on what I had spare, but I was going to Thailand why would I have packed any warm clothes? Precisely I hadn’t. I took off my flip-flops, put on the flight socks, also a welcome unknown gift from the airline, and tucked leggings into them. Wrapping my legs in a thin scarf I also had. I lay down and hugged by body. I don’t know why but I remembered some great survival tips I’d once heard. It was in Batman Begins when a pre Caped Bruce Wayne is in the mountains with Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson), and he advises Wayne to rub his chest, as his arms will look after themselves. Gripped by the cold I frantically started rubbing, faster, and faster. Minutes, Hours, Days had probably gone by, and I was still cold. Bloody Fiction!!! I settled down again, and attempted to covet some of Alysha’s body heat. I manoeuvred around her in such a way that she was moulded to my front, like a little chair. I could only hope she wouldn’t wake up and think her friend’s little sister was some frantic dry humper. Now what I didn’t know was that I wasn’t seeing that everyone else was attempting the same thing without the others knowing. Don’t forget I’m still blind folded at this point, well we all were. Which makes our little cuddly orgie look all the worse to passers by. It was only later that we all revealed we’d been trying the same body warming technique on each other, simply at different intervals. It was survival of the fittest. Us verses the elements. Or well, Air Con. But when you’re so cold, hours have past and you can’t think of anything else but how cold you are, this is when you finally understand what Leonardo DiCaprio went through and start hating Kate Winslet for not letting him on that bloody door! Unlike Leo though, we conceded defeat and went to the cafe for many hot hot things.

We spent the rest of the stopover between sleep, hot things, including, spicy onion rings from Burger King at 5.30 am, walking around shops and trying on makeup that the ladies knew we’d never buy just to make ourselves look a little bit better than the frozen crap you see on streets in the winter, courtesy of a lazy dog owners.

We remained in our frozen hays all through the second leg of our trip which included another 8 hour flight to Bangcock, and a quick flight to Koh Samui. The rickety plane touched down, and I finally got to feel the warmth that I’d been waiting for. At 9pm local time we had landed in Thailand, and it was beautiful. The heat hit us at a force and wrapped itself around us like a blanket. The little hut airport was adorable, and better than I could have pictured, we walked across sand to go get our bags. What was sand doing in an airport! It was amazing! The cold, the boredom, the 14 hours, teaching Lauren the wonders of Six Degrees of Separation. It had all been worth it. And this was just the beginning.

Gardening Shame.

The day started off the same as any other. I woke up. Had some brekkie. Watched a bit of tele. Hold your awe and applause, it gets better. So I’m sitting on the couch when Dad comes in and asks if I fancy doing some tidying in the garden. Seems like an average everyday run of the mill request yes? Wait, you haven’t seen the garden. Right let’s begin again shall we.

My Mum moved to this house, which in all honesty, when comparing it to the house that Jack built is pretty nice. It’s a fixer upper let’s call it, though I think a better description would be a let’s just rip it out and start againer. Well between mum and a couple of other close friends and relatives who were more than subjected to emotional blackmail work got underway and the house was looking good. Inside. That was four months ago, and the outside still hadn’t been touched. The grass had been left to wildly grow for what must have been a year before Mum was even here. It stood just above my waist, quite impressive against my five ft two inch frame, considering Cardiff is nowhere near Jungle territory. It was a hideous thing to behold. The fear I felt when having to wade through the tough weedy terrain just to hang out the washing. Machete in hand I would hack my way through creating a path, hang the washing and run before I woke the snoozing family of lion’s, or accidently tread on a dormant rattlesnake. It’s safe to say that yes the garden needed sorting!

Rakes and shovels in hand, we faced our Everest. And attacked. Our first Father/Daughter activity. Would we make it out alive? I could hear the drums of war singing through the wind, as we walked out the back! (When this is all you’re doing you have to being in some drama). Okay, well maybe it was the kid next door banging on drums in his garden, but you see where I’m going. I stepped in the grass and as I looked down there it was. The test of my resolve was looking straight at me, from my leg. It’s fangs dripping with venom, and I swear it whispered my name. The biggest spider I had ever seen! You may think this a slight over reaction, but let’s just say I was finished with the grass.

I turned my attention to a nice little patch out the front of the house. I didn’t want to completely give up, or show my Dad how much of a pussy I actually was. A nice little patch with my name on it, about five feet by three feet of weeds. They all needed to come out. I could handle that. Dig and rip. Simple! Or so I thought! I began tackling a big thorny thing; it was like a bush only ya know, not as bushy. (I already told you I’m not Charlie DImmock). After two gruelling hours of wrestling with the multi limbed green octopus, I was cut worse than a self harmer after an emotional beat down. Covered in mud and had managed to dig halfway to China! By the time someone came to check my work, I had cleared two large bins of soil and my Mum’s rose bush, which she later informed me she wanted to keep.

I hadn’t quite grasped the concept of weeding in hindsight. The point is to dig across and rip out the weeds. Whereas I just enjoyed digging down, well you gotta get the roots haven’t you? In what has to be the most embarrassing realisation of my own physical fitness I was outdone by my Father. Yeah he’s a man and should be stronger than me, and whatever, and I think I could have taken it. Except this is my 62 year old Dad. My Dad who’s 3 years off a bus pass. So as I stood in his proverbial shadow of weeding awesomeness, he tore apart the patch. My little patch in less than 15 minutes. It was like watching the Tasmanian Devil sweep through, well, obviously Tasmania. He pretty much chewed up my youth and spat it out, while skipping back into the house practically dragging my limp lifeless body with him. Patronisingly he made me a drink and continued to give me the “well done” speech, consoling me that if I’d dug across rather than down, I would have done a “bang up job”. Sitting while he told me more about landscaping, weeding, ploughing, everything to do with gardening. As the information flooded my mind, I tried to concentrate on what he was saying but was lost in the aura that was his green fingered omniscience. It was while he was talking about flowers and maintenance that I really understood; I am no way green fingered, I can never be green fingered. I have no patience, no commitment, and no way of giving that much physical effort. It’s bad I admit. I know this. But I do like to dig. I love to dig. So to date, the little patch is used for me to dig. It’s the most amazing, therapeutic way to relieve life’s little stresses. Bash out your anger, or just aimlessly do something when you’re bored. It is the cheapest therapy I have ever had! And so far the most successful!

An Introduction-ish!

I thought for the first blog of my life that I would just give you a little introduction to me. Well where is a better place to start? I'm ashamed to say that as a writer who has completed many pieces of writing, and of course a degree in writing, I have never had a blog! Apparently in the world of writers this is an unspeakable act of career suicide. Heaven forbid that in the Broadband, Fast Paced, Coffee to Go, Express Line world we live in these days that we can't just write for pleasure in our little notebooks. No. You must put your writing out there to be loved, hated, scrutinised, questioned, or god forbid. Simply ignored. So, this is exactly what I am doing. Just writing. And my blog will be a collection of simply that, um, my writing. Oh I already said that. Okay. SO things I hate, love, feel. Things I think people should know about. My own little adventures. The continual ramblings of things that happen to me in my life, things I question, and don't understand, or more interestingly the things that just pop into my head. Those little things that when voiced incur the reaction of strange looks and people taking a step back, in a sort of I think she just farted kind of way.
So in a nut shell, I've entered this competitive, ruthless and hard hitting world of Journalism. With my post Uni depression behind me, and a thankful realisation that not only students think it's okay to drink cheap vodka which has a paint stripper back taste to it, I think I'm ready for what's deemed "The Real World", and all it responsibilities! Or have some great tales trying!
So this is just a little note to let you know I'm officially out. So keep tabs on me and the different things that will intrigue and delight you, if not you'll get your money back!
Wow, rejection letters and endless temping job, Here I come!
Faye x