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‘Here … I have plenty’ I say, offering Summer a sandwich, a packet of crisps and a bottle of water. For some reason, I’ve bought double of everything and far more than I need.
She thanks me and then rummages through her own carrier bag and produces a couple of cartons of cooked noodles, two hard-boiled eggs and a bag of fruit, which she offers me in return.
‘Well, I guess we won’t go hungry!’ I laugh.
Like everyone else, we return our trays of train food untouched when the grumpy Thai lady returned to clear away. She practically snatches them away from us and slams them back into the trolley, glaring at us as if we’re all ungrateful ‘farangs’ (white tourists).
‘Are you planning to stay in Bangkok or are you travelling on?’ I ask Summer.
‘I’m staying in Bangkok tonight then heading over to Krabi and Railay Beach first thing in the morning,’ she tells me. ‘I thought there’d be no point in dashing off to the airport tonight, when none of the boats to the beach will leave Krabi once the sun had gone down.’
‘You have to take a boat to the beach?’
‘Yes, Railay is surrounded by tall limestone cliffs, so you can only reach it by boat.’
‘I’m sure I’ve heard of it,’ I say, thinking aloud and digging out my guidebook.
‘Well, it looks awesome. If we had wi-fi right now I’d show you some photos on my iPad. It looks stunningly beautiful. You simply can’t go to Krabi and not see Railay Beach!’
‘I’m flying to Krabi tomorrow morning too. Then heading on to Koh Lanta,’ I tell her.
‘Me too!’ Summer says. ‘I’m heading to Koh Lanta after my one night in Railay.’
‘Oh wow, that’s a coincidence,’ I say, finding Railay Beach in my guidebook and ogling the photos.
Summer laughs. ‘Not really. If you are doing the islands then most people will head to Koh Lanta first, which is fine. But if you are really savvy then you’d take a detour to Railay – it’s not as busy as the other beaches, but it’s supposed to be one of the best in Thailand.’
‘It does look amazing.’ I groan, seeing a photo of towering cliffs and a white sand beach and palm trees, and feeling like I’d missed a trick here and that I really should research more.
‘Why don’t you come along?’ Summer offers. ‘If you’d like, we can go together and then we can both take the ferry from Railay to Lanta together the next day?’
‘Really?’ I say, feeling thrilled at receiving such a kind invitation from a stranger.
‘No, Railay!’ She laughs at her joke, showing off her small perfect white teeth.
With her suntan and aura of casual freedom in mind, I ask where she has been and how long she has been travelling. Mainly so I can guess how long it might take me to acquire the same attractive qualities. Summer tells me she is a yoga teacher.
‘Before I came to Thailand, I was in India for a while,’ she says, sounding so effortlessly well-travelled that India just rolls off her tongue. ‘I went there to deepen my practice and to learn meditation with a guru in an Ashram. Then I came to Thailand because I was offered a job teaching yoga at a retreat on Koh Samui. I did that for a couple of months. Then I did a visa run and came straight back here so I could go to Koh Phangan for the full moon party.’
‘Well, it must have been very sunny because you have a great tan,’ I tell her enviously.
‘Yeah, it’s been really hot over the past few months. After Koh Phangan, I went over to Koh Tao for the scuba diving. I did my divemaster internship there and I’m planning on going back as soon as the monsoon season is over to do an instructor course.’
I open up my trusty and well-thumbed guidebook and looked up the islands mentioned.
‘You mentioned scuba diving, Summer. That’s something I’d really love to try, as well as yoga, of course. Is it hard to learn?’
‘Not really, but it’s important to find a good teacher. That applies to both yoga and diving.’
After several more hours of chatting and snacking we chug into Bangkok at sundown.
And, along with everyone else in our carriage, we’re all leaning over each other to get a westerly window spot and to point our phones at the spectacular sight of a fiery red sunset filtering through the city smog before its time to disembark. Suddenly our long journey is over.
‘Summer, I’m so very happy I met you and I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow at the airport.’
‘Sure. Me too. I’m so glad we met, Lori. I’ll see you at the gate for Krabi tomorrow.’
We hug each other goodbye as if we’re old friends and I head straight to the taxi rank.
I see Summer making her way down to the bus station to take a public bus to a hostel where she’d said she’d be spending the night. I’m looking forward to getting back to the Holiday Inn and taking a long leisurely soak in a bath. I’d been sitting on the train in the same clothes for so long that I can’t wait to get freshened up.
But the traffic is slow through the congested city and the taxi ambles at a slow pace.
My fingers are absently playing with my sai sin bracelets as I look out at the bright lights of the city that looks a little less scary to me this time around. My thoughts again wander over the events of the past week. I consider how fate has played such a huge part in everything I’ve done. I reason that if I hadn’t met Polly on my last morning in Chiang Mai, I wouldn’t have thought to get the train to Bangkok because I’d have taken a plane instead.
And, if the first-class carriage hadn’t been full on the train today, then I wouldn’t have sat next to Summer and I wouldn’t be going to Railay Beach tomorrow.
Some people call it fate or they credit a guardian angel or a spirit with such guidance.
I’m pretty sure I’d found this special pairing in a temple somewhere in Chiang Mai.
I know how ridiculous that sounds. Just a week ago, I’d have dismissed it as complete rubbish, but I now strongly believe that this is all happening for a reason and I think I’m being guided and helped and that one day soon, I’ll open my heart and be given a sign that will lead to finding my place of happiness.
That evening, in a standard single room this time rather than a decadent suite, and after a shower and dinner ordered from room service with a nice glass of wine, I sit on the bed flicking through my phone and looking at all the photos I’ve taken in Chiang Mai over the past week.
There are some simply stunning ones. The sky in every single shot is a clear backdrop of deep blue against a myriad of wonderful and ancient things made of gold and precious jewels and intricate mosaics and polished bells and monks in saffron robes. The light in every photo is so soft that it makes everything appear dreamlike and glowing.
I post all my photos into an album on my Facebook page. I struggle to choose a favourite but then pick the one I’d taken of the old train in the station at Chiang Mai as my new Facebook cover picture, replacing the rather boring one of a tub of flowers from my garden back home.
Then I delete Charles and my ex-friend Sally from my friends and family contact list and update my current location to Bangkok, Thailand. I guess if my loved ones know where I am and what I’m doing they might worry less. They also might give me some space and time and leave me alone for a while.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_9d924280-ddb2-5b39-8319-c10b2709cf22)
Railay (#ulink_9d924280-ddb2-5b39-8319-c10b2709cf22)
The next morning, I’m saved the expense of an expensive taxi by the free hotel shuttle bus to Suvarnabhumi airport. Once there, I find transiting through the domestic avenues rather easier than navigating the international ones. At the gate for the Krabi flight, I see Summer waiting.
Today Summer looks all bohemian and quite beautiful in a pair of light-cream flowing harem trousers and a white vest that shows off her deeply tanned skin. Her long dark hair is loose about her shoulders. On her arms, she wears lots of jangly bangles. In contrast, I’m wearing a baggy white cotton blouse and my old jeans that this morning I’d decided to turn into knee-length cut-off shorts. I’ve scraped back my humidity frazzled hair and tied it into a tight chignon, the way I’d always wore it at home. I had thought I’d looked chic as I left the cool ambiance of the hotel but now, having spent almost an hour travelling in a hot minibus with a dozen other people, I feel both overheated and underdressed at the same time.
I rush over to greet Summer and I’m full of apologies in case I’m late.
But she tells me our flight isn’t even in yet and it might have been delayed. I offer to buy us both coffee and a muffin while we wait. A couple of hours later, our flight departs and we arrive in Krabi to sky-high temperatures and blue skies and body-soaking, pulse-pounding humidity.
‘How far away is it to the boat?’ I ask. My heavy denim shorts are now sticking to my thighs and chafing me uncomfortably, and sweat from my hair is trickling down my beetroot-red face.
‘It’s about half an hour on the bus.’ Summer replies, coolly taking it all in her stride.
We walk past the taxi rank, ignore all the touting drivers, and we buy a bus ticket each for just a few baht from the transport office in the arrivals hall to take us from the airport to the pier. Soon afterwards, we are escorted to a minibus already packed full of passengers and we’re ready to set off. It’s hot and stuffy and crowded. Even with the air-con flowing it’s quite suffocating on the bus. But everyone seems to be in a jolly mood and so there is lots of laughter and enthusiasm for seeing the famous Railay Beach.
In the bus with us are several young couples and a group of five young lads. The lads all seem to know each other well. Summer immediately gets chatting with them. They tell us how they all started out travelling solo around South East Asia but had met up in Vietnam and for the past few weeks had been travelling together. Three of them, Chad, Rick, and Brad, are loud chatty Americans with the same short, choppy haircuts, who all seem very keen on outdoing each other to impress Summer. Another lad is German and called Peter who, being European, speaks very good English. The fifth fellow in the group is a Brit who introduces himself as Nate, but the others immediately tell us they’ve nicknamed him Prince Harry, because of his short red hair and clipped British accent that makes him sound rather royal.
Poor Nate. To compensate for his poshness, I notice how he’s finishing all his sentences with ‘man’ or words like ‘gross/cool/awesome’ to try to fit in with the laidback Americans.
I guess they’re all around the same age as my sons and suddenly I feel rather old.
What must they think of someone my age backpacking around Thailand?
The topic of conversation between the lads is entertainingly all about which of their bus journeys across Asia has so far been the longest and the smelliest (sixteen hours from Hue to Hanoi with someone who had vomited and missed the sick bag) and how many times they’ve all had food poisoning (at least twice each with bad seafood being the main culprit) and whether Chang or Leo or Singha is the best beer in Thailand (Leo, apparently, and then Chang and then Singha). Then there was the big debate on whether we were all going to find Railay Beach as beautiful as was promised or – like the not-too-far away island of Koh Phi Phi Ley (known as ‘The Beach’ because it has been used as a location for the movie of the same name starring Leonardo DiCaprio and was once voted the most beautiful beach in the world) – we would find it full of discarded plastics and totally ruined by mass tourism.
‘It’s a shame but I hear Koh Phi Phi Ley is now so overcrowded it’s impossible to even take a selfie,’ says Chad (or Rick or Brad) shaking his head in dismay.
‘I hear thousands of tourists go there every day, all pouring out of long-tail boats like lemmings onto what once used to be a perfect beach,’ says Rick (or Brad or Chad).
‘Yeah, I heard that too, so I’ve already decided I’m gonna give it a miss,’ says German Peter, trying to be heard over the loud Americans.
I listen in disappointment, as I too had bookmarked Phi Phi Ley in my copy of Lonely Planet: Thailand as a must see. But now, like the lads, I’m not so sure it would be worth the effort of taking a boat over there just to stand on a beach with thousands of other tourists.
‘Not to worry, I’m sure there are other beautiful islands and beaches to see,’ I say brightly.
When we arrive at the pier, we all pile out of the bus. I wait with our backpacks while Summer goes into the shop to buy us a couple of bottles of water. I’m far too hot. Sweat is pouring from every pore in my entire body, making me pant like a mad dog. I know my face must be a hot red swollen mess and my hair a fizzy muddle on the back of my head. I have my sunglasses on against the dazzling sun, but they keep sliding down my nose and I desperately wish I had a hat too, as the sun is beating down on me like a blowtorch. I scuttle sideways dragging our bags into the shade of the wooden canopy over the ticket office.
When Summer comes back, I see she’s not only bought us a cold bottle of water each, she has strawberry ice lollies too. I haven’t had an ice lolly since I was a kid and thoroughly enjoy sucking and licking it as fast as it was melting off the little wooden stick and running in scarlet dribbles down my chin and over my sticky fingers.
Soon, several long-tail boats turn up. A long-tail boat is named after the long prop shaft sticking into the water at the back of it that propels it forward. The boat itself is a traditional narrow wooden one with rows of bench seats – a bit like a large canoe – and to me it looks and feels wholly unstable. The front, where all our backpacks are being precariously stacked for the journey, has an extended bow and this is decorated with colourful garlands and wreaths of flowers that look really pretty but that I know are specifically there to provide good luck and to ask for protection from sinking from the spirits of the water. There is a roof of sorts, but it’s just a metal frame tarpaulin, designed to offer passengers some protection from the sun or rain.
Our boat has sixteen passengers aboard and one Thai boatman, who operates the ‘long-tail’ with one bare foot while a cigarette dangles from his lower lip. The engine looks like it’s something he’d salvaged from an old car and as he revs it up and steers us out into the open sea it pours out a reek of black smoke all the way from the pier and around the monumental headlands to Railay Beach.
I sit completely still on the wooden bench in the midsection next to Summer. The boat rocks and tilts as it smashes its way through the choppy waters. The large rolling waves that crash against the front of the boat are soaking all the bags and spraying those of us sitting at the front.
I’m petrified but trying desperately not to show it. I try to recall the last time I was on a boat.
It was in the Lake District, I think, when I was about twelve years old. In a little flurry of panic, I wonder if I can still swim? I try to remember the last time I went swimming. Properly swimming, I mean, because I can’t count the time Sally convinced me to take up water aerobics and we never left the three-foot end of the local pool. I tell myself that swimming is like riding a bike. Once you’ve learned, it comes back, no matter how long ago you did it last.
Over the sound of the roaring diesel engine, I ask Summer if she’s already got somewhere to stay at Railay. She shakes her head, flicking her long glossy hair from side to side like a show pony. ‘No, but don’t worry, it’s early in the season. I’m pretty sure we’ll find somewhere reasonably priced to stay for one night.’
I keep my eyes trained on what I can see of the horizon over the large moving expanse of deep water ahead of us. I worry about being seasick. To distract myself, I play a guessing game on where the lifejackets might be kept in case of a capsize. Then I hear Summer laugh.
She’s enjoying another conversation with the gap year lads from the minibus.
They’re all sparring over ‘where is the best … something … in the world?’
I enjoy listening to their animated and enthusiastic conversation, probably because they are all so impressively well-travelled and confident. Their parents must be so proud of them, I think to myself, knowing how proud I am of each of my own two sons. This time, German Peter has asked for the consensus on ‘where is the best full moon party in the world?’
‘Without a doubt, Koh Phangan has the best full moon parties!’ Summer tells them emphatically. I can see the lads all nodding their heads in agreement. Although I also notice they tend to agree with Summer whatever she says. And who can blame them?
‘Yeah, you haven’t lived until you’ve been to one of those crazy nights on Phangan!’ yells one of the American lads, punching the air to make his point and to let everyone (most importantly, Summer) know that he’s one of the cool cats who’s actually been there and done it. Almost everyone in the boat nods in agreement with him. I guess I haven’t lived?
‘So where would you guys say is the best for scuba diving?’ German Peter asks.
I listen keenly for the answer, grateful for another distraction. I’m starting to feel queasy.
Summer immediately pipes up again. ‘That would be Geluk Island. I learned to dive on the reef there and it got me totally hooked on scuba. It’s got the best diving in the whole world’
‘Yeah, man, Geluk!’ Nate yells. ‘I went last year with the GGF and did my thesis in marine ecology and conservation. The reef is so alive, man. I swam with dolphins. It was awesome!’
The other’s look at him enviously as they obviously can’t make the same claim.
Prince Harry is suddenly winning big over the Americans.
‘What’s the GGF?’ I ask him curiously.
‘The Goldman Global Foundation. It’s a conservation charity organisation.’
‘That is SO cool, Nate!’ exclaims Summer. ‘I love dolphins.’
‘Where is this island again?’ I ask for clarification. ‘And how is it spelt?’
‘G-E-L-U-K,’ Summer spells out for me. ‘It’s pronounced “gluck” and it’s on the Meso-American reef in the Caribbean, the second largest barrier reef in the world after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, only it’s in much better condition and, like Nate says, the diving there is incredible.’
My eyes are wide with interest. Summer and Nate have painted such a vivid picture of this beautiful tropical island paradise. I immediately dream of going there one day to scuba dive.
I mentally add it to my bucket list.
I mean, why not, right? There’s nothing to stop me because I’m a backpacker too!
Just then, our boat comes around the headland that successfully cuts Railay Beach off from the rest of Krabi province, and we all gasp at the sight of the picture-perfect utopia in front of us. The photos in my guidebook did no justice at all to the incredible beauty of this place.
The soaring limestone cliffs look like giant fingers pointing into a cloudless blue sky.
Having entered the protection of the bay, I see the water all around us is now a flat calm shimmering emerald green sheet of pristine clarity. Just ahead of us is the much-anticipated white-sand half-moon curved beach with its backdrop of lush green forest and swaying palm trees. Our boat takes us right up to the shore line, beaching itself so that we can all clamber out, straight into the calf-deep, bathtub-warm water that is gently lapping the soft powder white sand. I look around me. Happily, so far, the place doesn’t look too overcrowded or trashy.
The boatman throws us our backpacks. I grab mine and trudge with everyone else up the beach until we reach a sand path between the low-lying buildings sitting under the palm trees.
‘Where shall we try first?’ I ask Summer, thinking the hotels on the beach looked very nice.
‘Oh, not here, Lori. Not for me anyway. These hotels are way above my budget.’
I shrug it off. ‘Then they’ll be over mine too. I imagine this place is pricy, right?’
Summer nods. ‘Right. If you stay on West Beach you’ll pay a fortune for the privilege of watching the sunset from your balcony when you could actually just watch it for free on the beach. But don’t worry, I’m sure there are places far less expensive further in.’
‘Okay. Let’s go. I’ll follow your lead,’ I say to her, trying to hide my concern over ending up in a shared dorm with one bathroom and with all the lads from the bus and the boat.
As it is, on East Beach, just a five-minute walk away from the idyllic West Beach, while Summer checks out the shared hostel dorms, I find a pretty twin-bed wooden bungalow with private bathroom for rent. It’s double the cost of the hostel – but when I point out if we shared it would be the same price, Summer agrees it would be far nicer than the dorm.
We decide to spend the rest of the day lazing on the beach. Summer wants to top up her tan and I’m hoping to develop one. Summer, looking the very definition of her name, is wearing a tiny white bikini on her tiny, toned and evenly suntanned body while I’m searching a local beach stall for a sun hat, a tube of factor thirty sunscreen, and a swimsuit.
The hat is no problem but the sunscreen is ridiculously expensive and the swimsuits (bikinis as they don’t seem to do one-pieces) are all ridiculously small and nothing more than triangles of fabric and string.
