Great Expectations

"You'll be fine after two weeks. Everything will seem normal. Give it two weeks." Not quite, guys. Try again.

We asked a lot of ourselves after only a couple of weeks, we're still watching the bikes whoosh past carrying families, whole stalls and furniture and thinking..."hmm. Health and Safety would have a field day." I'm still reaching for my HTC phone whenever something interesting happens, thinking "damn that was interesting, I'd better let Lewis know about this interesting thing which happened to me IN THAILAND!" And then reality comes back and I'm standing in the heat, surrounded by people giggling at my excitement over their normality whilst oogling my alien paleness with the same wonderment.

It'll take much longer than a couple of flimsy weeks, to get used to this.

Uthai is strange, or rather, what it makes me think is strange. One day I'll be sitting under a much needed air con, feeling sorry for myself and thinking "this town is my hometown...in Thailand. Might as well have stayed home." "Urgh! There's nothing to do here!" (never mind that at this moment I am sat inside, not actually making any effort to explore...) and of course, the unwavering "I want my teddy bear!" All these I'll think and then I'll start a new day, such as today, and I'll see the little side streets, the scurried away stalls of glittering wonderment, the wooden trails of colour leading to glittering white shrines of religion. Inviting exploration. Senses increase and I can see that every place will always have secrets to be discovered, you just have to step outside of your insular security long enough to find the love in them. 

Sarah and I have had a full on few weeks in Thailand, to say the least. I couldn't have coped without The Hives, Florence, Band Of Skulls and every other beauty. We arrived, we went to stay in a host house, with our host family, who we loved - we couldn't help but love them - but circumstances meant we had to move, and we had to move as soon as possible. Now we inhabit a small, deliciously clean, hotel room. Our toilet flushes. It's heaven. But I feel so temporary in a hotel, so out of place. I'm excited to move into our house. OUR house. Maybe then everything will fall into place and I'll feel a lot more like I belong. Despite the daily gawpings and "BEAUTIFUL [WHITE] GIRLS". 
 
The key to finding this town's inevitable treasures is to get lost, and I fully intend to spin myself into disorientation and discover its glitter.

Listening To: II by Unknown Mortal Orchestra (if you want to stay sane, some Beatles-like psychedelia is your medicine)  

And So It Begins

Hello, little blog of mine. It’s been a while. Let’s dive in, shall we?

First, leaving the UK; thank Thor and all good things all the volunteers were together for that! Saying goodbye to my family was...a gut-wrenching, physically tearing five minutes. If I'd had it my way at that point, I'd have clung onto my man for the whole year, rather than leave him. But leave I had to, and leave I did. It hurt, but thankfully there was everyone waiting with cuddles, tears in their eyes, the same pain in their hearts and adventure on their lips. We got each other through, again. Shortly after, we were chatting, taking our minds off things and things started to feel normal again. We could finally get excited. That first plane journey was a treat, so comfortable, a vast, empty airborne locker of cosiness, plus Kevin's hand to hold when it took off, which was a necessity. We flew over Dubai and saw the whole island, lit up like trails of fiery soldiers headed to battle, it blazed with the glory of decadence and life. That was a good moment, the young island which felt so full of promise and life, radiating up to us in our metal bird, very exciting. However, then we came to change at Mumbai...things went downhill, immediately we were hit by heat and stench, pure India, I suppose. The men in our party were inexplicably separated from the women, to be let through security without sign of fuss or suspicion. While we, the women, were huddled into a compact line, made to remove items from bags, despite being very obviously overloaded, then made to wait even longer while they let through Indian women with token wheelchairs. They didn't need them, one woman was wheeled straight to the front of the security queue, ahead of all the sweating, drooping, baggage-lacerated foreigners, just to be plonked in front of people actually standing in line for the beepers, where she stood up with no difficulty and strode right on through the machine to collect her bags at the end and waltz off like a swan sprung from the womb with full mobility. So after that trip to security took the full two hour layby we had in Mumbai, we legged it to the gate, to our tiny, tiny jet plane which we shared with a lot of disrespectful, demanding, impolite Indian men, all apparently intent on getting bladdered on complimentary booze and groping the stewardesses. Safe to say we've all been put off India now. (Sorry India vols!)

That took four and a half hours, I believe. One hour would’ve been too long, it wasn’t a pleasant ride. Eventually, however we arrived in Bangkok and were met, bedraggled and yawning, by Lucie. Wonderful, wonderful Lucie, who shepherded us through the airport and onto beautifully air con’ed mini buses to a lovely clean hotel, where she said the most glorious, longed for words we’ve ever heard from human lips…“Today you can sleep for the day, no need to do anything but sleep.” Glorious, and exactly what we did. Those couple of days in Bangkok were lovely, so relaxed and Western-friendly…we had a toilet that flushed. I miss that toilet. And we got toast for breakfast! Toast…two things, friends, to never take for granted; clean, flushing toilets and toasted carbs. You truly don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone. I love you, toilet. I love you, toast. Wherever you are.

Ahem…moving on.

Okay so, second day in Bangkok was brilliant, lots of touristy sightseeing and market-buying, etc. Relaxed. Then we had to say goodbye to a few people, as they headed off to their projects that night, the rest of us stayed the night and then headed to ours in the morning. Morning came; we hoisted our life-heavy bags onto our tiny, frail bodies and headed to the train, waved goodbye to Lucie, our guiding light, and spent the next five hours sweltering on a rickety old tram-train. Food vendors walking up and down the tiny, narrow aisle singing their products; buckets of ice carrying questionably coloured fluids, stacks of even more questionably coloured meats, wandering up and down and up and down, while we dosed in and out of consciousness, leaves stroking past the windowless sides, the smells and sounds of the city ever diminishing and becoming green country while our tired, foreign eyes tried to make sense of it all. After many awkward attempts at Thai “where are we?”’s with the security/conductor people, who really were very friendly considering how annoying we probably were, we finally did arrive at Nakhon Sawan, where we were met by gorgeous Pe Ae, Pear, countless others, all so excited to see us, like being welcomed home by our families. And there is the end of our feeling completely comfortable for quite some time.

The ongoing story of our struggle to adjust continues in the next instalment with “The Woeful Misadventures Of A Geordie Away From Greggs.”

Peace.