Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious..
A smooth arrival at Bangkok was a good omen for things to come. Sri Lanka had provided a lot of experiences, but it was quite hard going in places. The kids were tired, I was irritable, and Leone's leg had now become quite extensively infected. I hadn't been to Bangkok for almost 20 years having had a short stint working for Freshfields there as a trainee lawyer. 3 months of fun in Bangkok in my mid 20s had made it one of my favourite cities in the world. But it is a city that completely invades your senses and is exhausting, so I was a little apprehensive that it might be too much for both Leone and the kids in their weakened state.
Wow! Bangkok is still a great city. It has changed completely in 20 years; cleaned up, professionalised. Westernised, yes, but it has still retained that craziness that leaves you exhausted at the end of the day. We were breaking our own rules here - staying in a very nice boutique hotel in Suhkumvit - but I knew how tiring Bangkok can be and you need to be able to retreat and regroup. Thank god we were. Leone was really quite ill by now. Through her own stubbornness in Sri Lanka, she had kept running when a blister was getting more and more infected. On landing in Bangkok, in the time it took to drive from the airport to the hotel, a scratched mosquito bite also went from irrelevant to oozing pus filled horror hole. Leone's entire left leg was now highly infected and any new scratch or bite quickly developed into something pretty nasty. So the next morning, we had to go to a pharmacy and stock up. Gosh, you can buy anything in a Thai Pharmacy. Despite being dosed up on Amoxicillin, poor Leone was knocked out in bed and so the first day and a half it was just me and the kids. We didn't do anything in particular, just went around Bangkok with the kids enjoying a bit of normality, eating well, shopping at the malls and the weekend market and generally feeling clean. The kids were on great form and really happy and it made me realise how hard Sri Lanka was for them. What a contrast it had been for them compared to their life to date. Bangkok is much cleaner than it was 20 years ago, but it is hardly Tunbridge Wells. But compared to Sri Lanka, the kids were in heaven. The food was great, there was aircon everywhere, there were pavements where we needed them, and the showers ran in between hot and cold, not either/or.
For me, a real highlight was taking them to where I had stayed 20 years ago, going to the roof bar next door and then to the "posh" restaurant I used to go to when I was a trainee solicitor, living it up. The rooftop bar was fantastic and the kids stayed up much later than they should have. So Bangkok perhaps hasn't changed that much at all. It still keeps you up past your bedtime - it's fast, hot, exciting and fun - but it has just got a bit easier.
It was during our last day in Bangkok, that the first real bit of good fortune of our trip came our way. I happened to send a message to Merlin, an old friend who is living in Hong Kong. He happened to be in Koh Samui that week with his friend Jake and their families. The next day we were tipping our caps to proper travelling families and taking the overnight train to Surat Thani, a town that is a short ferry-ride from Koh Samui. Following some frantic reorganisation, we found ourselves some 36 hours later sipping beers overlooking an incredible bay in the south of Koh Samui, as our children met for the first time, hopefully becoming the lifelong friends their fathers are.
Before we set off, I had proclaimed in my normal self-assured and misguided way that we would minimise the number of friends we saw around the world and really use this time to come together as a family. Leone, in her normal quiet way, realised that not only were the two things not mutually exclusive, but actually sharing our trip with friends would massively enrich our time with the kids. And so it came to pass.
We had a wonderful time with Merlin, Laura and their girls and his friends Jake and Tory and their girls. It is rare for us to have the oldest kids and so our gang relished in being followed around by the younger kids and for Olivia, she had 2 girls her age with whom to play. It was amazing to be treated to such luxury and generosity when travelling and will undoubtedly be a highlight of our trip. Snorkelling trips and Thai dancing was bookended by wonderful food and company. The fact that Jake's topographical skills led me to do a 8 km run up and down a near vertical hill will be forgiven.
I was foolish to think that our trip would be anything other than better if we were to spend lots of it with friends. This is particularly true for Leone whose energy is derived from the countless wonderful friendships she has built up over a lifetime. But, we learn as we go on and so already we are trying to arrange to meet up with more people as we make our merry way around the world. Be warned....
Thus, it was with a heavy heart that we set off from Koh Samui. A heavy heart and an inner ear infection, as it turned out for me. Our next stop was one of the few things we had organised through a travel agent in the UK before we set off - a jungle experience in an eco lodge in the middle of the Khao Sok national park in central Thailand. An activity-filled 5 days awaited us. The best laid plans......
It was a pretty dire experience, which we cut short by 2 days. The activities were completely inappropriate for our children. Thailand's recent record with caving is mixed at best, and so we were alarmed when the guide warned us that our upcoming trek would require our children to wade through small gaps in water levels above their heads. The sturdy pairs of shoes and head torches we were advised to bring seemed to lack the necessary respiration system our kids would be looking for, so we sat that one out. This necessitated a 3 hour wait in the midday sun on a floating village, which is where my inner ear infection chose to really make its appearance. Anyone who has experienced the displeasure of the dizziness of an inner ear infection (which I now know appears to be many people) will find it highly amusing to imagine experiencing such a sensation, whilst gently roasting on the undulating bliss of a bamboo floating village, cut off from modern civilisation by a 1 hour long boat journey.
It was a shame that the jungle experience didn't really work as the scenery was incredible and we had a memory-bank afternoon feeding and bathing a retired elephant. A moving experienced accentuated by him delivering one of the largest poos next to Olivia's and my head as we swam with him in the bathing pool. No wonder the elephant poo paper industry is thriving so well with this volume of output of source material. But the kids were in their element being up so close and interacting with such a huge animal. They light up whenever a monkey, a monitor lizard an elephant or a frog crosses their path.
Thailand has been amazing so far. Whilst the jungle trip was not all that we had hoped for, other than that we have had a spectacular time. The children are beginning to understand why on earth we wanted to do this in the first place and we are getting better at it. Slowing things down. Not trying to see everything. Not trying too hard generally. Just spending time together, time with friends and enjoying ourselves. Leone has rebounded with typical gusto from her infection - maybe now she will use antiseptic (we're all learning). I wobble on, but have been assured that inner ear infections go within 3 weeks. But god, I am going to enjoy myself once it has gone - the Sri Lanka perspective effect touching us all in different ways.
“We are so constituted that we can gain intense pleasure only from the contrast, and only very little from the condition itself.” - Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and Its Discontents
Yes
Ban Sairee?!