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.