Dear Dave,
By the time you get this I’ll be in a Thai resort
with a bunch of Aussie tourists and their children, who will no doubt have names
like Ragan and Shylar. It will be a type of hell to be sure, but not all
together unpleasant and one must be grateful for the bogan as well as the lovely things in life, I guess.
Besides, beneath the crisp white of resort
bed sheets, lies no imprint of someone who is not there… It’s a time to starfish
the fuck out of that King sized bed.
But I’m not there yet.
Right now, I am in Bottle Beach – a small shack-filled village on the coast Koh Pha Ngan where the wifi and
electricity are unreliable at the best of times and the toilet paper is not
necessarily included in the price of a room. But with a cold Singha beer, a plate full of Pad Thai
in front of me and the gentle lapping of a turquoise sea at my side - it’s
certainly a small slice of paradise.
 |
| A small slice of paradise - Bottle Beach, Koh Pha Ngan |
It has been 10 hours since we parted ways. And
I imagine you are in transit somewhere, heading home. And I’m here, writing, because
without wifi or electricity there’s not much else to do except hand write a
letter or 6. And time alone, even when spent in paradise, can get a girl
thinking about what has gone before and all those mistakes she’s made.
If saying ‘Nah. Thanks though’, to your
offer of a pre-bought breakfast from 7-11
last night, was my first mistake, my next was less a lack of good judgment and
more a rather flakey-girl-vaug-o-how-the-hell-did-that-happen type of mistake.
The type I have unfortunately become famous for. Funny. I always thought I’d be
fabulously famous, but you take what you can get at this late stage.
As you know, the day began with our sleep-encrusted
farewell as you left at 6 am.
And I waited, with an empty stomach and visions
of black coffee to keep me company.
The mini bus arrived and after a fight to
the death with a cloud of mosquitos and some whingy Canadians, I made it to the
ferry port, scrunched and stiff after my ride. Here, I and the other hundreds
of baggage laden tourists were herded onto the awaiting boats. I positioned
myself to overlook the water as we pulled away from the port, bound for the
east coast islands of Thailand.
As the boat surged onwards I became lost in
a thread of thoughts as intricate as a Tolkin map. Now, I am not comparing my
trip to Koh Pha Ngan to the Fellowship of the Ring - my toes might be a little
hairy but I’m in no way Hobbit-like. But Tolkien, Pratchett and Adams were nerd
authors we had gushed over as we sat in the hotel lobby in Krabi. And since
nerd gushing is the best kind, I wanted to reference it.
There were many conversations in Krabi. Some
of them interesting, some hilarious and others of not much import, but they
were easy.
Inevitably though our exes began to swim
around in our cocktails and conversations. And exes are a dangerous topic of
conversation, especially so during a surprising and light Thailand fling. I
know that everyone has exes at our age. So I can’t explain why the cocktails
and conversations in Krabi made my boots so heavy.
It was this conversation I stopped at in my
thoughts on the ferry to Koh Pan Ngan.
I remembered that I had once declared that
I never wanted to get married. I just wanted to travel and have wonderful love
affairs around the world. I was young and romantic and probably slightly
retarded back then. But, in a way, that’s sort of what I have been doing – so a
double fist pump for achieving one’s goals. And a small sigh in honour of the
lost loves along the way.
I guess, when I had made this wish I didn’t
realise how much of a short stop these ‘love affairs/one night/three week/six
month stands’ would make me feel or how much I would long to be important to
someone. It would seem, these ‘lovely love affairs’ are always ‘nothing serious’
and while I have been travelling around the world, and whisked away with
romance, I have also been talking about men’s ex-girlfriends.
A lot.
I have been held long into the night, while
comforting men about past, present, or future relationships… with other people.
I have been kissed tenderly by men who have made me the ‘other woman’ without
my knowledge. And I have had dirty, long weekends smeared with chocolate and
champagne with men who were not my boyfriend and never would be.
And there I was.
With you.
For two nights.
In Krabi.
Half way around the world.
And talk.king.exes.
Was this just another one of my short stop bad
decisions? Was it the conversation or the cocktails that made me feel a little
lonelier?
The boat smashed through the moundy waves,
spraying me as I kept a keen eye on the horizon so as not to puke as I have a
want to do on boats. And my thoughts continued to wander around. And landed
unexpectedly for a moment with my friend Tim.
Tim is older than me. And after a mega
serious adult break up, he moved to Berlin. He wasn’t ‘running away’ (a term we
railed against for ourselves when describing our overseas adventures), he
wasn’t trying to ‘reinvent’ himself or squeeze love out of the situation. He
just wanted to discover something else.
Why did we seem so afraid of this
‘something else’?
Tim is one of the most intelligent and
grounded people I know, and of course completely mental (a quality you and I
had enthusiastically upheld because the most interesting people and partners
were always mental). But there we were slamming down conversation and cocktails.
Together. In Krabi. And we weren’t embracing our ‘next’. It felt we were caught
in acid-like looping in a labyrinth of ex lovers. A type of hell to be sure.
Exes are a terrible topic of conversation.
The boat splashed some more and the water
made funny shapes on my t-shirt where my boobs and belly protruded. Like a
whacky wet t-shirt competition where I was the only competitor. I thought you’d
laugh at this. And I remembered that despite a short melancholic aberration, we
had laughed a lot in Krabi.
I let the water splatter my sunglasses and
the wind billow my hair to aero- dynamic effect. Here, I wasn’t afraid nor was
I sad. Maybe Thailand was good for a person. Maybe our little rendezvous in
Krabi was not a mistake – maybe it was just company for two slightly mental
people and a lovely moment in time.
Or maybe I was just light-headed from having
not eaten anything for 18 hours.
The ferry docked; I disembarked.
I was in a sawngthaew on my way to somewhere when I was told I was on Koh Samui. And not my intended port of Koh Pha Ngan.
I was on the completely wrong island.
Fuck.
Big Buddha pier was the only place the next
ferry would leave for Koh Pha Ngan that same day. The ferry would leave at 1:30.
It was now 12:30. And Big Buddha pier was on the opposite side of the island. And
so it was a race against time of ‘TheAmazing Race’ proportions.
I jumped on a motorbike taxi and we balanced
precariously, and admittedly rather dangerously on the bike with my oversized
luggage and set off, clock ticking.
Then.
It started to rain.
This was not a saggy, dampening drizzle.
This was a tropical storm downpour with big, fat drops smacking against
everything and leaving nothing dry.
Yet
another of my many mistakes. I thought as my
fingers twitched convinced I was not going to make it.
But, soaked to the core, I made it to the
pier in time for the next ferry. I made it to Koh Pha Ngan and finally I made
it to a longtail where I traveled
into the setting sun and turquoise sea, bound for this small slice of paradise.
***
I’m staying in a shack literally on the
beach. The sea is warm, the sun not too stingy and the coconuts are fresh.
My beer and dinner are finished. And as I
listen to the gentle lapping of the sea against the white sanded shore, I have
no doubt you’ll find your wildly adventurous, intelligent and kind-hearted
mental woman. She’ll appreciate your gentle, sexy-as super smart brain and she’ll
get your jokes (and hopefully you get hers too because otherwise it could get
awkward).
We’ve made mistakes Dave, and we’ll
probably make them again but mistakes as I’ve learned today – however many or
few – lead to an interesting adventure, a good story or just somewhere else –
which sometimes, is just as good. And the beer just as sweet.
Chok Dee to that.
Love,
Sarah.
