The Backpacking Housewife: Escape around the world with this feel good novel about second chances!
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.
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