Sawat dii kha Samui!

In Dublin and across Ireland, the life of Irish writer James Joyce is celebrated on the sixteenth of June. Bloomsday, as it is known, relives the events in Joyce’s novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the sixteenth of June 1904 in Dublin. In 1956 Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath were married on the sixteenth June. Two years later in Accrington, Anthony Maurice Cross entered this world, and fifty-three years later (!) on the sixteenth of June 2011 he celebrated his birthday with his wife and son, and a joyful reunion with his middle child and her boyfriend in Koh Samui, Thailand (unfortunately the eldest child was missing, but she was very much missed).



Forrest and I woke on the morning of the sixteenth, hot and sticky from a night sweltering under the irritatingly useless ceiling fan in Koh Tao. A mixture of irrepressible excitement and a desire to leave behind the hottest room in the world behind meant that we had organised to leave on the first boat across to Koh Samui. Our slightly hungover and dazed rush to get organised of course meant that we misplaced the key to our room and had no choice but to pay the 1000 baht fine as we were already rushing by this stage. The boat trip across to Koh Samui, via Koh Phangan, passed without incident despite the graffiti scrawl next to my chair declaring that the boat was ”unsafe and put terrified passengers life's at risk”! We then had a hot and dusty tuktuk ride up to the northern tip of the island to Six Senses, where we were to check in and wait patiently for the rest of our party to join us later that evening.

Pulling up at the hotel in a dilapidated tuktuk and piling out in a sweaty mess with our dusty backpacks and shopping bags over spilling with excess items was to say the least a little embarrassing, but the staff at Six Senses, although they must have believed that we had come to the wrong place, were far too polite to voice this and treated us with the utmost respect. Despite the fact that we looked like bedraggled urchins, we were ushered to the bar and given the first of many complimentary drinks, in the form of a welcome dragonfruit, lychee and rum cocktail… cheap rum buckets at beachside shacks already becoming a memory of a distant past (“Forrest Dear, do you remember that time when we went slumming on our Gap Yah…?”) There was apparently some confusion regarding our arrival as the hotel had thought we weren’t arriving until the evening with the others, and our villa WASN’T READY and even more disgracefully our PERSONAL BUTLER JOY HADN’T STARTED WORK YET. Despicable and atrocious though this was, we succumbed to spending a few hours down on the hotel’s beautiful private beach while our private villa was prepared. We splashed out on a beautiful lunch at the “beach bar” but had another embarrassing incident when we were asked our room number for the bill and realised that we hadn’t yet been told this information. Now even more positive that everyone thought we were imposters and were going to escape without paying, we apologised and reiterated a number of times that our villa wasn’t ready yet so we didn’t have a number to sign for the lunch and that my parents were meeting us later that evening from England but we’d been on Koh Tao…yadda yadda yadda. I’m sure they believed our story to be highly suspicious but luckily our room was ready by this point and we escaped to the safety of our villa.

Anyone stepping into Hideaway Villa 02 would have been overwhelmed at the luxurious beauty of the place, but for Forrest and I having spent the past five months in grotty dorm rooms and sweltering bungalows it really was Xanadu. Unable to contain the urge to lay down in the cloudlike heaven that was the king-size bed in our room, Forrest yielded to his greatest love – sleep, while I spent my time wandering around the Villa in awe, pacing back and forth in excitement for seeing my family and sharing my excitement with my friends at Oceanside Wellness (AKA Private Practice).



As the Cross family arrival time grew closer, Forrest and I got ready and cracked open our complimentary bottle of sparkling wine as we chatted to Phoebe and then Semily, before heading to reception to greet them on their arrival. Although some unsuspecting hotel guests very nearly got the full brunt of my hugs and kisses when they pulled up to reception, I restrained myself just in time to realise that it was not in fact my family, and therefore had plenty of joyful and emotional love to go round when they eventually turned up! Once our weary, crumpled and hot travellers had checked in we all went to their Villa, which was even more wonderful than ours if that was even physically possible, and opened another bottle of sparkling wine, many beers and sang a late night happy birthday to Daddy as we presented him with a birthday chocolate cake that we had organised through the hotel (we had forgotten about the paleo palaver but Forrest, Louis and I were more than happy to eat it all ourselves). Once we had caught up with their travelling stories, which included D breaking bad with almost every Thai tradition and custom when their duty free champagne and tequila was taken away at Bangkok airport, we set off to explore the hotel grounds in the dark, which culminated in a midnight stroll along the beach and a last orders beer at the bar before we headed to our Villas to sink in to bed, exhausted from the excitement of the day.




The next morning, unwilling to waste any precious time with M, D and L, I woke at the crack of dawn and woke everyone else up and arranged to meet them for a family swim before breakfast. Even M joined us in the stunning infinity pool for what was to become a regular occurrence throughout the holiday, although managed not to get a strand of hair wet! Breakfast, of course another regular occurrence, was always a highlight of our day and definitely deserves a vigorous mention. Smoothies, cereals, nuts, fruits, yoghurts, salads, sushi, dim sum, dumplings, pastries, donuts, breads, thai noodle soups, pancakes, waffles, crepes, vegetarian food and eggs all had their own “stations” in a Willy Wonka breakfast buffet. Overcome with choice on the first day we flitted about from one station to the next, unsure of what order to go in, but as the days went on we quickly formed a routine, of which mine went as follows: freshly made smoothie, bircher muesli with dragon fruit, mango and pinapple chunks and a guava puree, dim sum with chilli sauce, an egg option (the highlight being a softly boiled egg topped with teriyaki caviar!) and then if I could squeeze anything else in I would treat myself to a small pancake or waffle with maple syrup, passionfruit sugar or chocolate sauce. And then I would resemble Augustus Gloop. While F, M and D experimented each day with soups and sashimi, and I at least strayed a little from the norm with my dim sum, L started each day with a bowl of Frosties, two eggs and bacon and then a croissant and a danish pastry, just as he would at home!




With breakfast done, and don’t worry I won’t be going through the whole breakfast buffet rigmarole as I describe each day, although I would be able to mention something new and brilliant each day – did I mention the honey came directly from a piece of honeycomb?, we headed down to our private beach where we spent a few hours catching up on news from home, snippets from our Gap Yah and relaxing in the beauty of the day. Unfortunately that pesky southwest monsoon was to put an end to our sunbathing, and one minute we were basking in the sun and the next we were running to safety through torrential rains. Of course what is the best thing to do when it’s raining on holiday? Eat and drink of course, so we made our way through the rains to Dining on the Hill where we overate tremendously, especially since we had already indulged ridiculously just a few hours before at breakfast. After a delicious Thai meal, we waddled back to our respective Villas to doze away the calories we had inhaled that day along with any traces of jetlag (F and I had sympathy symptoms),arranging to meet up later on to go out on the town.



Feeling fully rejuvenated we reconvened in the early evening and headed to Bophut Fisherman’s Village to the “walking street” where the array of food stalls, cocktail stands and clothes shops were a delight to experience. With a fifty pence cocktail always in hand (L’s favourite being the “Pina Carrada”), we wandered through the crowds, watched the women grilling, barbequing and steaming a plethora of questionable snacks and finally settled at a lovely little beach bar for beers and buckets as we watched fireworks and chinese lanterns light up the sky. After a good few drinks, we jumped in a cab to get some more, yes you guessed it, food! This time in the form of cheap cheap Thai food in a funny little deserted restaurant aptly named The BBC as we proved to M, D and L that Thai food is unfailingly excellent wherever you are, whether it be a five star resort or at a grotty little roadside stand. Not wanting the first wonderful day of our holiday to end we all went back to Villa 35 where we attempted to teach them ‘Durach’, one of the card games we had learnt on the boat down the Amazon, which proved to be slightly more trying than we first thought but I was confident that by the end of the holiday they would have at least grasped the concept of it!



Our morning swim the next day was followed by yoga, set in a beautiful little hut down by a rocky alcove on the beach. Our Yogi very quickly intuited who the yoga novices amongst us were and made M, D, L and F sit on blocks during the first very tricky exercise – that of sitting down cross-legged. At least L and F have the excuse of being tall, what was your excuse Shorty?! L and F had been worried that their yoga experience was going to resemble the scene out of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (very funny - watch it!), but luckily the Thai yoga that morning was a much more spiritual affair and our Yogi had us doing simple stretches, holding our breath for long periods of time and listening to the waves crash on to the beach. A very horrible start to the day indeed! After a delicious breakfast as per, we all retreated to Villa 35 to chill by the pool, read and catch up with a neglected Gap Yah Chronicles. Poor L was dragged off by D for a run down to the nearby village, carrying our dirty laundry on their backs on the way there and drinks and snacks on the way back, with the old man making L lug the heavy Bacardi bottle and six pack of beer in his bag whilst he struggled back carrying crisps! Two very sweaty Cross’ returned just in time for our complimentary foot massages, just as an almighty thunderstorm crashed in the sky overhead. Before the massages we were given a chilled herbal tea according to our birth month, and the descriptions were hilariously accurate; for L and F (November) their characteristics read, “Dark, Tall & Handsome, Wide Forehead, Hairy & Powerful Voice” and for M (February – so Phoebe this is for you too!), “Dull skin not healthy, rapid to turn silver gray hair, biggish joints, rashness. Mouth & body have bad odour”! Unfortunately we neglected to get a record of mine and D’s for May and June but I seem to remember it was something like “Practically perfect in every way. Apart from height”! The foot massages were bliss, and we topped them off with complimentary afternoon tea in Villa 35 of mini sandwiches, fruit tarts, chocolates, fruit bread and banana bread – yum.



Our day of “free” things concluded with “Meet the Management” cocktails and nibbles from 6pm – 7pm, so you can imagine with F leading the initiative that the Management (one of whom was Ms. Trunchball’s long-lost German sister) and the other guests were not entirely pleased at our sophistication as we commandeered the majority of nibbles and took advantage of the free drinks as we played a game of noisy jenga! We had planned a big night out in Chaweng, culminating in a late night clubbing at The Green Mango, but we quickly realised that this wasn’t going to happen. Stepping out of the taxi we found ourselves in Thairremolinos, with neon signs advertising burgers, beers and prostitutes as creepy old men wandered around hand in hand with young Thai girls. Determined to give it a chance we wandered around for a bit being propositioned by Ladyboys, before admitting defeat and headed to the beach in search of some more sophisticated entertainment, provided by F and I in the form of ‘Celebrity Head’ – a Gap Yah favourite! After a few rounds of CH (L – Jonah Hill, B – John Terry, M – Sarah Ferguson, F – Martin Scorsese) we ate a beautiful dinner at the restaurant recommended by Six Senses, Eat Sense, and then had an exciting but bumpy tuktuk ride away from Thaidorm and back to civilisation.



Father’s Day. Swim, yoga, breakfast. Chill by the pool at Villa 35. Poor L once again forced to partake in exercise despite the weather being incredibly hot and humid, but D was insistent that L improve his general fitness level (luckily he couldn’t say the same about me without causing an almighty row and ruining the holiday) before starting full time at Blackpool. Having borrowed a tape measure off Joy (our lovely lovely butler) and to the great amusement of the Six Senses staff they then proceeded to do the Beep Test in the driveway of the hotel. L beating D by a tremendous amount of course – perhaps D should improve his general fitness? Mum and I then did a little exercise ourselves and walked in to the village to collect the laundry. M read out every single sign, stopped to take photographs of absolutely everything and dawdled along aimlessly as I lost more and more water and became increasingly weak in the heat. At one point we were charged at by a buffalo but I was so hot and sweaty that I wouldn’t have been able to find the energy to run away had it not been on a lead. We did however pass some interesting temples that we vowed to come back and visit when we were less sweaty and then practically collapsed in the “Boring Fish” restaurant where we quenched our thirst with ice coffee (me) and beer (M). In the land of the tuktuk we were unable to get one to take us back to the hotel, so we ended up walking all the way back again much to my disgust, but I quickly perked up back in the air-conditioned haven of Villa 02 and with the thought of food to come. F had a pre-dinner Father’s Day Skype with Howard, Rick and Shan whilst I got ready and then we went to meet the rest of the clan for our Father’s Day ‘Dinner on the Hill’. I would love to say that this was a treat from the children but it was in fact another “freebie” from the hotel, so F, L and I bought D a bottle of red wine to accompany the beautiful meal instead. D was outraged that we all opted for the more Western cuisine on offer (Thai food is outstanding but sometimes one needs a burger) and in protest chose to have a seven course Thai taster meal while we tucked in to our lamb racks, steaks and burgers!



After a quick swim and a less leisurely breakfast than usual we were picked up from reception by Mu (one of the two men we called Mu from Boring Fish) who was to be our chauffeur for the day. The first stop were the temples that M and I had seen the previous day. Extremely beautiful, colourful and ornate Buddhist and Hindu temples; a dream for F’s love of ‘expressive colours’ on his camera. As Mu spoke very little English we had absolutely no idea what we were actually looking at, so we were a little confused as to why Buddha was seated next to Shiva but the Hindu Gods proved to be excellent backdrops for photos so we weren’t too bothered about the actual religious implications of the temples, they were just pretty to look at! To our amusement and further confusion there was a stand offering a fairground-like game, similar to ‘hook-a-duck’, but instead of a duck you had to hook a contact lens case which contained a number which corresponded to a prize. We all performed splendidly and came out trumps with some excellent prizes… F won washing detergent, D won a disposable razor, M a tin of condensed milk, L won some loo roll and I was awarded for my hooking prowess with a pair of flip-flops! After a brief moment of confusion we realised that this bizarre combination of prizes were in fact gifts for the monks, rather than very odd reminders of a Thai holiday and we happily handed them over in return for a thank you bracelet. We also bought a tile for the roof of one of the temples and inscribed it with our names (‘da cross family woz ere 2011’), eager for Koh Samui to remember us just as we were sure to remember our wonderful holiday on her beautiful shores.



F and I were keen for M, D and L to experience the white sands and turquoise waters that Thailand is so renowned for and as none of us were willing to go back to Chaweng, the best example of this albeit obliterated by Westernized tat, Mu took us to Choeng Mon beach which was a beautiful alternative. Not quite the paradise we had been hoping for but a stunning beach nonetheless and we soaked up the sun, read, swam, had massages and pedicures (not a great idea on a sandy beach) and L was even accosted by a monkey! After a few hours of beach bliss we jumped back in Mu’s truck to get back to the hotel in time for Dad’s reiki massage at the hotel spa. While D indulged in yet more pampering, the rest of us chilled out by the pool before Forrest and I, joined later on by D, had a yoga class with Dr Serge. Quite unlike the chilled out yoga we had experienced with our Thai yogi Dr Serge, an extremely bizarre Belgian/South African/Moon expat living in Koh Samui, practised the more Western method of yoga that we had been expecting – so we spent the next hour trying, and failing, to contort ourselves in to the various yoga poses such as ‘downward dog’ and ‘back-to-front-upside-down-monkey’! Although I wasn’t Dr Serge’s biggest fan (he was a patronising plonker in tight short shorts) I did enjoy his yoga class and we made plans to go to his pilates class later in the week. More ‘Meet the Management’ cocktails ensued before an unplanned walk to Boring Fish where we ate a beautiful meal of pineapple rice and some very non-boring fish and played cards – M and D still not really understanding the game at all, and L who had originally picked it up quite quickly seemed to be deteriorating!



The following day was memorable for two important reasons; 1. it was the infamous ‘boiled egg with teriyaki caviar’ day and 2. we went on a Samui island day tour with Mu. M, L and I hopped in the back of the truck, keen to stray from the norm (what. a. mistake.) while F and D helped with directions and road signs from the luxurious air-conditioning. We eventually found our way to the Magic Garden, a stunning sculpture garden entirely designed and created by a Samuian fruit farmer when he was the ripe old age of 77, which was an oasis of shade and tranquillity after the hot and dusty truck ride up the dirt paths.



We spent an hour or so here, before we went on a completely useless and fruitless search for either of the waterfalls that Samui is famous for, but our tour guide proved to be slightly inept in his duties and after half an hour we gave up and went for a refreshing drink at Liverpool FCs biggest Samuian fan’s restaurant! D, L and F got great amusement out of chatting about Liverpool and the Premier League with Thai Gordy, before we made the decision to abandon the waterfall hunt in favour of an elephant ride. And before you say it WATSON, aside from the caged monkey that was let out once a year, the place we went to was tremendously kind, caring and considerate to their animals, and the elephants especially were treated with the utmost respect deserving of such gentle giants. While M, D and L squished on to one elephant, F and I went on the other, and we did a short thirty minute circuit through the jungle which was both terrifying and wonderful. And hot. We rewarded the ‘phants with bananas (which F thought he had to peel first!) and then rewarded ourselves for such an excellent day with an evening of Forrest’s caprioskas, an exceptional array of snacks (including room service fish fingers) and Scrabble! F just scraped a win by one point with 96, I came in second with 95, D somehow managed 92 and M trailed behind with 88. L, not Scrabble’s biggest fan, played for about a minute and got 6 points for the word ‘fun’, which he quite clearly did not find the game to be!



After our hectic day the day before, Wednesday’s itinerary was a little less frenetic; swim, breakfast, beach. I blogged from a beautiful vantage point in a little beach cabana overlooking the sweep of the bay, while the others lazed about doing nothing productive in the slightest. The boys did attempt the world’s shortest and most disorganised game of organised beach football before we (sans mama) went to spend an hour with Dr Serge for a very funny Pilates class. Serge did nothing to redeem himself in my opinion, if anything I found him to be even more abrasive than in the yoga class, but it was good fun watching F, D and L struggle with the exercises whilst trying desperately not to laugh, both at our uselessness and at Serge’s teeny shorts. Complimentary drinks by the pool once more, and then we went for a great Thai meal on the beach in Bane Po to top off a lovely relaxed day.



My controlling organisational skills proved to be a success with the day-on-day-off method, as after Wednesday’s relaxing day on Thursday I herded everyone out of bed and into a minibus for another big day – this time to Angthong Marine Park, a fascinating archipelago of 42 islands. The speed boat out to the islands was fun, although M and I seemed to be the only two people on the boat that got wet! The snorkelling proved to be a little bit of a palaver, as we were practically dumped in the ocean with no instruction so everyone was standing on the delicate coral and touching things that they shouldn’t be in the shallow, petrol-coated water. M threw a small paddy when she found it especially found it difficult to grasp the concept of breathing, and returned to the boat in a sulk while we snorkelled. D claims he saw a turtle but I have reason to believe he is telling porkies, as all I saw were sea urchins and tiger fish, eating the bread proffered by sulking women on the boat. After a pretty unsuccessful snorkelling sojourn, we headed over to the highlight of the day and Alex Garland’s inspiration for The Beach – an emerald saltwater lake in the middle of one of the islands. A small climb up some rickety steps brought us out looking down on to the lake, and the view was absolutely stunningly incredible. Even M who was still in a bit of a sulk that we hadn’t helped her breathe managed to crack a smile at the inspiring scenery.



After a lunch and a doze, it was time for a spot of sea kayaking. M and D, who claimed to be expert kayakers due to their dates on the lake in Corporation Park (how romantic!), went in one kayak while the children went in another. Much to my dismay only two people in each kayak were allowed to paddle, so I just had to sit back and enjoy myself as I was paddled around by two strapping young men. Two strappingly useless young men as it transpired, as we continuously crashed into the rocks trying to navigate our way through the caves. The mood got a little tense when I tried to offer my advice for getting unstuck which wasn’t best appreciated by L and F, and neither was D’s smug kayaking knowledge, as they huffed and puffed our way out of difficulty. The dolphin surfacing in the distance and the unequivocally breath-taking surroundings meant that we were unable to stay cranky for very long, and the rest of the kayaking passed without incident, although L claimed that he was going to stick to activities using his legs in the future! We got back on the boat just as the skies turned thunderous and the heavens opened. Suffice to say that M and I weren’t the only ones getting wet on the return journey! Sopping wet but smiling we made our way back to the hotel to dry off, and then F and I experienced our first Dirty Martini at the fabulous Dining On The Rocks before we headed to the Country Bar down the road for another delicious meal and another amusing game of cards!

Friday. Swim, breakfast, beach. Followed by another highlight (can you have so many highlights when the entire holiday was a spectacular highlight?) – the Thai cooking class organised by F and I as a birthday present for D. Having chosen our three dishes the day before, when we arrived the ingredients and cook books had been laid out for us and our mouths began to water in anticipation of the delicious food we were sure to cook. The organised array of ingredients however was simply a ruse and it took a little while for the madness and chaos to dissipate, probably sometime around the third course! The ‘menu’ was as follows, with the unanimous winning dishes (not that it was a competition or anything!) highlighted in bold:

B – ‘sepicy’ beef & eggplant salad / crab fried rice / sticky mango and banana rice

F – ‘sepicy’ seafood salad / red duck & grape curry / sticky rice dumplings

L – clear chicken soup / pad thai / sticky rice dumplings

M – coconut chicken soup / fried sweet basil and chicken / water chesnuts in coconut milk

D – pad thai / thai green curry / bananas in coconut milk

An honourable mention must go to L for his wonderful soup and pad thai – not bad for a boy who has only ever cooked cereal and toast! That evening we had a final hurrah in Bophut Fisherman’s Village with lots and lots of mojitos at the Carpe Diem hotel. L’s tolerance for family fun was waning slightly by this point and his lack of enthusiasm was rewarded with an involuntary midnight dip in the pool, fully clothed! Carpe Diem indeed.



Saturday was the last day so I woke in a pretty sombre mood and performed the “tasks” of our Samui morning routine with some sadness. M, D and L weren’t flying until the evening so we had plenty of time to relax on our beautiful beach, squeeze in another ridiculously delicious lunch and enjoy each other’s company. We lingered on the beach until we were forced to face reality and go and get showered, packed and leave paradise for the airport. Of course, we managed to find the time for one last cocktail on Six Senses before our transfer to the airport arrived!



Saying goodbye to Mum, Dad and Louis at the airport was pretty difficult, and I spent a good while sobbing even once they had gone through to board their flight. We had a fantastically amazingly wonderful Gap Ten Day’s at Six Senses Koh Samui, and this blog entry can only serve to do a miniscule percentage of the holiday justice. The photos on facebook really do compliment the narrative here so if you haven’t already then please check them out, and for another amusingly witty perspective on the holiday then also check out Mum’s JoanneLikesFood blog on the CrossFit Clitheroe discussion board - 15th - 25th June.

All that’s left to say is a humongous Kawp Khun Ka from Forrest and I. We love you and will see you soon!

Forrest's Fankyou...

What more can I say but a humongous big big big fankyou to Joanne and Tony (Bea and Louis as well!) for 10 days in paradise and a truly unforgettable holiday! x

Joanne's Judgement...

As I sit here in Clitheroe listening to the Big Rains bouncing on the decking my mind is transported back to those heady 10 days spent on Koh Samui with the Forrbeas.............

Do's and dont's......

1) Don't take champagne and tequila on a flight from Bangkok without it being officially sealed at Duty Free, crying won't help and raising your voice certainly won't.
2) Do stay at Six Senses if there is one available, in fact don't go anywhere where there isn't one!
3) Do eat as much breakfast as possible so you won't need lunch
4) Do have lunch
5) Do take full advantage of complimentary drinks and canapés - have a little game to see how many you can down in the allotted hour.
6) Don't go to Chaweng
7) Don't go chasing waterfalls
8) Do ride an elephant - they bring luck apparently - but not to monkeys.
9) Don't use environmentally friendly bug spray - the higher the percentage of Deet the better - those little bastards are not only"noseeums" they are "nohearums."
10) Do let experienced Gap-Yaher's take over all organisation, negotiations and translations

Khawp khun Kha and Laa gon x

Anthony's Addendum...

Thoughts and Reflections on My Gaptendayyah in 91 words.

Beautiful Bea inside and out. Mature, capable, caring, clever, lovely B. And Forrest a man of talent with whom I could be friends irrespective of his association with darling Beatrice. Sensational Six Senses. Koh Samui. Shared with marvellous company; location chosen by Joanne as stylish in her choice as reflected in her own beauty and intimate style. And possibly Louis’ last family holiday of any sort for a good while? We will miss him at home and how often we said we wished that Phoebe was with us? And Chris. Hurry home Bea. x

Louis' Last Word...

Fun.

Bitch.

Trust me, it's paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven't tried before. So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It's probably worth it. - Richard, The Beach.

Forrest and I met in our first AS German class with Herr Mountford in Sixth Form when we were sixteen. The first thing we bonded over was Dominic O’Connor, when I found out he had gone to QEGS and was mates with him. I didn’t hesitate in telling him that Dom was one of my best friends and that we planned to travel the world together. It wasn’t long until we discovered another shared interest – a love of Alex Garland’s The Beach and Danny Boyle’s movie adaptation of the book, and that this would help to cement our friendship and eventually draw us together through our shared wanderlust (definitely not a word taught by Mounty, but definitely daydreamed of during the lessons). Who would have guessed that eight years later we would be on our way to Koh Phi Phi, following the footsteps of Richard in search of paradise?

Following in the footsteps of Richard, and it seems the rest of the bloody world. Although Alex Garland’s inspiration for the book was actually taken from Angthong National Marine Park on the other side of Thailand, Danny Boyle filmed the beach scenes on Koh Phi Phi Lei, on Maya Bay, which has since become a Mecca for Gap Yah’ers. The boat from Phuket to Phi Phi kindly slowed down as it passed Maya Bay, and Forrest and I braved the gale-force winds and sleeting rain for our first tantalising glimpse of our paradise. But, as Richard says in the book: “the only downer is, everyone’s got the same idea”. The bay was obscured completely by longtails, speedboats, catamarans and sailing boats which had all transported in bazillions of day-trippers all as keen as Forrest and I to experience paradise. The sand was undetectable beneath the hordes of tourists and the turquoise water was hidden by all the boats bobbing about in the waves. The blowing monsoon didn’t really help to create the perfect atmosphere either, and dejected we returned to the comfort of the boat to watch Mr Bean.



Arriving at the port on Koh Phi Phi Don, we were bombarded with the usual harassment that is the curse of the tired and disoriented Gap Yah’er, but we quickly escaped on a longtail to Long Beach, accompanied by Kiwi Bede. We wasted no time in checking in to a cheap bungalow set back from the beach, and once we had sorted ourselves out and had some lunch the sun was shining and we hit the beach. Unlike the jam-packed Maya Bay, Long Beach was practically deserted and we basked both in the glorious sunshine and in the knowledge that we had found our own paradise away from day-tripping Japanese (“konnichiwa!”) and school-bus loads of eighteen-year-old British Gap Yah’ers. Unable to do nothing for more than a minute, Forrest bought himself a snorkel and went off in search of reef sharks, while I relaxed, read, listened to music and slept – it’s a tough life! After an exhausting day of doing nothing, we got ready for the night and went to the small cocktail bar down the beach from our hostel. After a couple of delicious Pina Coladas, we were joined by Bede, who was having a holiday in Thailand from his Gap Yah in India where he was learning to play the Sitar. We mused over the difficulties of the Gap Yah life (“Sometimes it’s hard to decide between a Mojito and a Caiprihina – is the mint really necessary?”!) whilst we had an outstanding Thai meal and then returned to the bar for lots more drinks and hanging out with local Thai guys as they put on a fire show for us on the beach. I took a moment in between cocktails to reflect, and realised that this was exactly as my sixteen-year-old self back in Herr Mountford’s class had imagined my Gap Yah to be, and one look at Forrest’s ridiculously happy grinning face told me that he felt exactly the same.



The pervasive aftereffects of a night well spent meant that the following day was spent feeling slightly worse for wear, however there are worse places to nurse a hangover than on a stunning beach, utilising the refreshingly beautiful water as an alternative to nurofen and the Hollyoaks omnibus! Once our hangovers had been fully vanquished, we headed over to Hat Yao, the main stretch of beach on Phi Phi, for a reccy of Long Beach’s competition. After a slightly gruelling thirty minute clamber across tree roots and through questionable local “villages” in the stifling dying heat of the day, we finally arrived in Hat Yao, extremely sticky and ready for liquid refreshment. As you know Forrest and I are pretty sociable creatures (well, Forrest more than me!) and although we have met some amazing people and friends throughout our Gap Yah (not to mention the ones who didn’t quite cut the mustard but nonetheless are an integral part of our experience) there are times when it is nice to stray from the crowds and just be on our own. However, despite the fact that we had had a wonderful night the previous night, when we arrived in Hat Yao we debated our decision to stray from the main stretch of beach, as it often means that it’s harder to meet people. As you can imagine, this can sometimes be a cause of contention between the two of us as I am often more keen than Forrest to move away from the crowds of Gap Yah’ers. I do understand his hesitance to do this, and obviously a balance must be found (which I believe we have done pretty successfully thus far) but as we weaved our way through what could have been Clitheroe on A Level results night, albeit on a stunning beach with an incredible sunset, I think we both realised that staying away this time had been a wise decision. But you know how much I love a night on the tiles painting Clitheroe red, so it was hardly a chore to plonk down in one of the beach bars with a cocktail watching the world go by, but it was nice to know that we had a little slice of quiet paradise, away from the Singha vest top-wearing Rahs, to return to afterwards. Over pizza we spent some time evaluating visiting Maya Bay, weighing up the pros (it seemed ridiculous to come to Phi Phi and not go – after all we had been planning this pretty much since we were sixteen) with the cons (basically everything I have said above, coupled with the fact that I hate most people, especially when they’re in crowds, and our Maya Bay day-trip might be in danger of ending as successfully as The Beach). Our decision was made for us though when we saw a sign advertising an overnight camping trip on Maya Bay, arriving once the crowds have left and leaving the next morning before they arrive – what could be more ideal! We booked the trip with renewed enthusiasm, and prayed to God that everything would be perfect.

We woke to rain. And when I say rain, I mean wet rain. The black skied, inescapable, torrential, tropical, terrible downpour of the southwest monoon. Needless to say our mood as we nervously waited for the skies to clear and the sun to come out was as black as the sky itself. Not even the four-week old kittens padding around could alleviate Forrest’s thunderous mood. As we weren’t able to postpone the trip because we had to head back to horrible Phuket to sort out our visas, we made the decision that if the weather didn’t clear up then we would have to go and get our money back and get the afternoon ferry. After all there was no point of a paradisiac camping trip on a remote beach if we had to huddle under a palm tree to uselessly avoid the rain – and let’s not forget the scene in The Beach where it is raining and even beautiful Leo looks grumpy. And then he gets attacked by a shark, so forgive me for not wanting to relive that particular scene! We waited, and waited, but the rains showed no sign of abating and we resigned ourselves to the fact that instead of camping on Maya Bay we were probably going to be spending the night hot and grumpy in the tourist hellhole of Phuket. BUT… by the time we had trailed miserably over to get our refund the skies had cleared, the sun was shining and Forrest was smiling again! We celebrated by buying a couple of bottles of rum to take camping with us, after all the weather had proved to be unreliable and if we were going to get caught in the rain then it was probably best that we were drunk.

We met up with the rest of the group and headed over to the boat, and luckily we seemed to have a nice mix of people, not just the gaggle of Gap Yah’ers that we had feared. Our guides seemed awesome, if a little Thai-crazy, and we set off towards the National Park and Maya Bay in a slightly easier manner than Richard, Francoise and Etienne. While we waited for the day-trippers to disappear we stopped off in a stunning little inlet for snorkelling, where we saw clownfish, pufferfish and touched a sea cucumber, while guys on the boat threw bits of bread at us which sent hordes of tiny tiger fish to swirl around us, going crazy for the carbs. As we were getting back on to the boat, another boat turned up and asked poor Forrest to tie him up to a rope anchor – no easy feat with a snorkel in one hand, a boat in the other and treading water. Forrest says that the big rock covered in sea urchins came out of nowhere, and was unavoidable, but I have a feeling that he will remember to be a little more careful in future when putting his feet down after one of the guides had to wee on him to dissolve the poisonous sea urchin spikes embedded in his foot.



The sea urchin debacle was forgotten pretty quickly as we swam over to the island, and with Moby’s Porcelain echoing around our heads, walked down to the beach. Completely emptied of boats, and deserted of tourists, our first sighting of Maya Bay was not too dissimilar to Richard’s in the film. We spent a good while in awe of the beauty, before taking the obligatory clichéd photographs and listening to the film soundtrack, which could have been playing from permanent speakers in the cliffs. I’m sure that that beach has had to listen to All Saints singing about searching for more, Sugar Ray spinning away and Moby musing on kaleidoscopic minds more times than it would like to, but for once I wasn’t bothered about being a clichéd Gap Yah’er – they formed the perfect soundtrack to the film and they formed the perfect soundtrack to our own little slice of paradise pie. As Forrest and the boys played a game of football (remember when I said after his football match in the Andes on the Inca Trail that he wouldn’t ever play in a more stunning surrounding again – well I was wrong) I chatted to the girls, and we all realised that this night was going to be pretty special.



After the sun set we all tucked in to a delicious spicy chicken curry and then it was really time for the fun to begin. Armed with buckets of vodka red bull we played our favourite game, which appears to transcend all nationalities, ages, backgrounds and cultures – KINGS! Our lead guide M did exactly as his job description implied and took charge of the drinking game, and everyone joined in and we had a riotously amazing time! Thoroughly tipsy by this stage, and having a ball, it was time for the next stereotypical feature of our Maya Bay adventure, swimming in the ocean in search of phosphorescent plankton. The film implies that simply disturbing the water causes the plankton to glow brighter than the northern lights, however nature is not that easy to activate and we spent an hour flapping around in the water like mad men occasionally glimpsing a flash of green near our fingertips out of the corner of our eyes. Nonetheless, despite the lack of bioluminescent plankton, our midnight swim was incredible and once out of the water we dried off around a camp fire as M and Dave played guitar and we had a good old-fashioned sing-a-long under the stars. After a mighnight feast of BBQ chicken courtesy of a crazy local with wide eyes, we settled in to our sleeping bags on the sand as we watched the guides put on our own personal fire poi show, before the excitement of the day overwhelmed us and we all quietly drifted off to sleep.



Although sleep had no trouble finding us, it was more difficult to hold on to it, as the black night sky was illuminated every few minutes with glaringly bright lightning flashes and warning rumbles of thunder in the distance. Around 5:30am we felt the first few drops of rain on our faces and everyone quickly rushed off the beach and under the shelter of the little camp for a couple more hours sleep. I managed to doze for possibly another hour, but the sounds of crabs crawling around in a bucket right next to my head became too difficult to ignore, and I eventually gave in and headed back down to the beach to watch the day break. The others weren’t far behind and we all went for a swim before breakfast, raving about how much fun we’d all had the night before. Of course, it had to come to an end as none of us were keen to stay and wait for the hordes to arrive and ruin our idyllic night and we made our way back to the boat. There was just enough time for another quick early morning snorkel before we docked back at Phi Phi Don, and a quick look at the monkeys on the aptly named Monkey Beach taking a stroll along their empty beach before they too were bombarded by tourists. Our Maya Bay camping experience was definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far, and had been everything we had hoped it would be and more. Yes it was a little clichéd, and yes it was a little corny, but sometimes these things just have to be done.



Unfortunately we then had to leave paradise and head back to Phuket to try to organise our visas, which turned out to be in vain anyway as we were advised that the best thing to do would be to go back to either Singapore or Malaysia to extend it at a Thai embassy there. Unwilling to retrace our steps we decided to head across the country to Koh Tao and then do a visa run from there across to Burma, which would buy us an extra fifteen days, which was all we really needed anyway. Having heard great things about Koh Tao from Gazz, we planned to spend a few days there and possibly, Gap Yah budget depending, do our Scuba Dive certifications there. You might remember that we had considered doing our PADI course in Taganga, Colombia, but had decided to do the Lost City trek instead. Obviously I wouldn’t change this decision, but I was still keen to do my Scuba cert – past dreams of being a marine biologist were never far from my mind! Excitingly, to get to Koh Tao we had to take a, wait for it, night…..BOAT! An exciting change from the exhausting night bus, we were given actual beds and managed to have a proper night’s sleep before arriving at the island at 6am. Gazz had recommended a hostel, which is such a nice change, rather than trawling around with heavy backpacks on trying to find somewhere to stay. We booked in to our little bungalow for one night, had a little rest (the night boat might have had beds but it hadn’t been the Hilton so we were still pretty tired) and then went off in search of a scuba school. Not a hard task as every other shop on Koh Tao is a scuba school, but we found the school attached to our accommodation to be exemplary, and the price of the course included accommodation so it was a double bonus. We changed rooms immediately, going up to our student digs, but reorganised for the room we had just paid for to be transferred to our final night in Koh Tao.

Our course began that same day, and we were ushered in to a tiny room to watch chapters 1-3 of the instruction DVD and told to read the relating chapters in our books by the following day. We must have been watching the DVD for less than a minute before Forrest started complaining that he was bored, falling asleep and needed a coffee. God knows how this boy managed to get through an economics degree and accounting and finance masters! The coffee helped slightly, but he still moaned, groaned and sighed his way through the two hours of instruction and information, and then pretty much flat out refused to read the book or complete the end of chapter knowledge reviews. I on the other hand, being the model student that I am, spend the rest of the evening reading through the book, underlining the answers to the ‘things to think about’, filling in the little quizzes on every page and completing the knowledge reviews, all the while being berated by Forrest for being a huge geek.

My thirst for knowledge and unquestionable desire to be at the top of my game at all times was to be to my advantage, for once on the boat the next morning heading out for our first underwater lesson I was able to answer all of Gina’s questions and successfully assemble my scuba gear while Forrest flailed around wishing he had read the book rather than roll around the bed complaining that he was bored as I became much more advanced at scuba than him before even getting in the water. With Gina and Annette as our instructors, and all our gear on, we jumped off the boat and slowly swam over to the beautiful Japanese Gardens for our confined water preview dive. We knelt on the sand bottom in shallow water while we practiced skills such as taking your mask off and putting it back on, removing your regulator and equalizing etc etc, whilst curious tropical fish swim around you wondering what on earth is making those noisy bubbles. We both quickly picked up how to do everything which meant that there was time to scuba back to the boat rather than swim back on the surface – a very good start to the day and course indeed! That night after a nice Thai meal we went back to our room for some more swotting (me) and much more complaining (Forrest), before I insisted that we get an early night so we were fully prepared for dives one and two the next day.



Feeling confident about repeating the skills we had learnt the previous day in deeper water, and excited to explore the coral some more, we were in high spirits as we boarded the boat which would take us out to the Twins dive site. As we attempted to set up our equipment, the boat lurched from side to side, causing our insides to curdle and turning our brains to mush. I was obviously proficient enough by this stage to still assemble to scuba gear no worries, but by the time the boat arrived at the dive site I was feeling ridiculously sick and was desperately trying not to chunder everywah. Forrest wasn’t looking too great either, as we squeezed into our wetsuits and lugged the heavy tanks on to our backs. Desperate to get off the boat and in to the water, I quickly followed Gina to the back of the boat where she jumped off with ease and instructed me to do the same. The boat was still lurching up and down uncontrollably and I had some difficulty controlling my shaky body as I attempted to simultaneously let go of the handrail to hold on to my mask and regulator with one hand, my weight belt with the other and my breakfast in my stomach in order to jump in. When I eventually managed it, my stomach heaved a sigh of relief and I did indeed vomcano which was entirely unpleasant but the fish seemed to enjoy my regurgitated breakfast. No further details needed. Once we were under the water, our seasickness evaporated and we were able to enjoy the dive. I delayed getting back on to the boat for as long as possible, but once the rest of the dive groups were back on I dragged myself back on and tried to ignore the returning rumblings of seasickness as we moved on to the next dive spot. Gina quickly went over the plan for the next dive, and mentioned that a turtle had been spotted there a couple of days before and showed us the hand signal for turtle incase we spotted one. We got back in to the water before I got the chance to feel too ill again, and made our way to a sandy bottom to go over some of the skills – no problems there which meant we got to spend the rest of the dive looking for the turtle. We’d only been swimming for five minutes or so when Gina starting gesturing wildly and wiggling her hands together to indicate turtle and sure enough there he was. We watched Crush aimlessly bob about, picking little morsels of food from the coral and swim effortlessly around despite a huge cumbersome shell on his back – pretty similar to our scuba tanks actually. It was an amazing moment and all seasickness was forgotten about, chundering everywah had definitely been worth it for that special turtle sighting. The boat trip back wasn’t too horrendous, and I even managed to use my still slightly queasy stomach as an excuse from revising and swotting that evening, and we just chilled in the hostel after another amazing cheap meal.

Dives three and four were scheduled for the following afternoon, but first we had more of the fascinating DVD to watch, much to Forrest’s displeasure. Gina had said that we only had to watch one more chapter, as chapter five was just marketing garb, but Forrest was so anti-DVD watching that after an hour in to learning about how to plan and record your dives he began to feel unwell. At first I thought that he was just trying to skive his way out of the boring stuff, but when Gina said that if he wasn’t feeling well we should postpone the dives until he felt better, I realised that it wasn’t just laziness that he was afflicted with. We headed back to the room for Forrest to chill and get some sleep, but in the heat of the day and with no air-conditioning our room was unbelievably hot. We did have a ceiling fan but some absolute incompetent idiot had designed it to rotate around the room and there was no way to fix it on one spot, which meant that it came past the bed once every nine seconds for one second, therefore completely impossible to cool down at all. Forrest tossed about getting hotter and hotter by the second before declaring that if he didn’t cool down he was going to die, so we quickly packed our stuff up and moved to a room with air-con. Bliss. We spent the rest of the day chilling (in my case literally at this point – Forrest was still too hot even with air-con so we had it blasting at the lowest temperature which meant that consequently I was freezing) and hoping that he was feeling better by the next day so we could complete our course.

Luckily, after a proper night’s sleep in a cool room he was feeling his normal self again, and we went for breakfast before heading to the dive school. We were waiting for our order to arrive when I noticed a girl walk past the door of the café and make a very obvious double take before screaming “BEA!” I was delighted to see Rachael Jackson, a friend from Clitheroe, who was travelling with her boyfriend Tommy and a friend from university, Emily. I wanted to go for drinks right then and there with them and catch up on all the gossip from home, but of course there was a slight issue of scuba diving, exams and not to mention the small trip to Burma we had to make that evening, so we made plans to meet the following evening. We then bumped in to each other again when five minutes later Emily came crashing off her scooter outside the dive shop and had to be bandaged up by Gina, thus cementing my opinion that Forrest and I were not going to be getting scooters at any point! Dives three and four were amazing; we passed all of our skills with flying colours, went down to 18 metres and saw heaps of cool fish – including an eel, trigger fish and an enormous prawn! Confident that we were now scuba divers, we just had to pass our exam! My swotting, combined with Forrest’s help with the maths calculations meant that we were Gina’s highest-ever scoring students, with a grand total of 88/90! Hopefully we’ll get the opportunity to dive again soon, as we both absolutely loved it, and really want to experience a night dive as well.



As I have mentioned, that night we had a Gap Yah chore to do – hopping over to Burma/Myanmar to extend our visa by a further fifteen days. We organised this through one of the many operators offering the service, which meant that all we had to do was take the night boat back across to the main land where we got picked up and taken by minibus to the border. From there we got our exit stamps at the Thai immigration before jumping on a dodgy looking longtail across the river to Burma. A torrential downpour kindly started when we were in the longtail which meant that we were dripping wet as we waited at immigration in Burma to get our passports stamped, but that was over and done with in five minutes, and it was back on the longtail to Thailand where we got another fifteen days on arrival – sorted! Then the journey in reverse, with the bus and an express boat getting us back to Koh Tao just in time for happy hour! Possibly the easiest visa run ever! Forrest was particularly happy about the fast process as he was unwilling to spend longer in Burma than was required; as Nobel Peace Prize winner and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has called for a boycott on tourism in protest of the repressive dictatorship in power, and of course being politically and ethically concerned Gap Yah’ers we wanted to respect this.

That night we went out for an Indian meal with Al and Annette from the dive school, before meeting up with Rachael, Tommy and Emily for buckets and white Russians on the beach, catching up on all the Clitheroe gossip and generally having a jolly nice time as we watched the fire poi get dangerously close to singing our eyebrows. It was so nice to see a familiar face and made us even more incredibly excited for the next day… Koh Samui and the arrival of Mum, Dad and Louis!



Forrest’s Final Thought…

From an early age I always devoted much time to reading newspapers, be it in print or online; the Guardian, the Sunday Times, the Huffington Post, BBC Sport or even occasionally the FT. However, whilst I enjoyed reading newspapers, reading novels or almost any book for that matter was certainly not my forte. Save a few Enid Blyton books whilst I was growing up, my book shelf always remained largely empty. Of the few, and I mean few, books that I did read during my teenage years, Alex Garland’s The Beach had quite a profound effect on me. Lured by tales of tropical islands, paradisiacal beaches, and the laid back liberal lifestyle of travellers, I can honestly say that this book was what inspired me to travel all those years ago.

In addition to giving me the inspiration to travel, the book gave me the inspiration to read more, something I’ve always regretted not doing. However, in in the end, amidst the partying days of Clitheroe Sixth Form, the inspiration was simply not enough, and stupidly I did not read again for quite some time. It wasn’t until I started going out with Bea “10 books a day” Cross that my book shelf started getting one or two additions. However, whilst I started to read a handful of books here and there, it was studying at university and copious amounts of academic reading, which eventually hampered my efforts. I never found it relaxing to sit down with a book after reading a journal on interest rates and bond yields!

And so to travelling and our Gap Yah adventure around the world; this was my chance. Eight and a half months of doing pretty much f**k all. If I couldn’t fit reading in around lying on beaches, drinking cocktails etc etc then books just weren’t for me.

I started with The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami, whose title was the inspiration for the name of this blog! The Wind Up Bird Chronicle was a gift from my dear Watson, who had read this book whilst travelling himself, and could not recommend it highly enough. And he was not wrong. It was a truly awesome book from start to finish with a crazy plotline and one I’d recommend to anyone wanting something a little different. Suffice to say, the book aroused my desire to read again and I soon set about conquering Gregory David Robert’s Shantaram; a book that follows the true, albeit slightly fictionalised, story of Robert’s escape from an Australian jail and his subsequent fugitive life in Bombay. The life he leads whilst on the run is nothing short of astounding; setting up a health clinic in a Bombay slum, working for mafia and eventually going to war in Afghanistan to fight the Russians are just a few of things he gets caught up in in his amazing story. Bea, who has read about 1.7 billion books, says that this is one of greatest books she’s ever read and I couldn’t agree more.

Since devouring these two books at the start of our trip, I have read nearly every day. I have got through a whole assortment of books and genres from classics such as Tolstoy’s Resurrection, to crime fiction thrillers such as Stieg Larrson’s Millemium trilogy. I’m extremely happy that I’ve finally started to read books whilst at the same time slightly saddened by the fact that it’s taken me so long to do so. I can’t help but think I’ve got an awful lot of catching up to do! And for me travelling and reading have much in common, they both broaden your horizons and open you up to the world around you. And so to all those Gap Yah Chronicle followers who haven’t yet discovered the wonders of reading, I leave you with a quote…

“The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” - Dr. Seuss – “I can’t read with my eyes shut!”

High Rise & Duty Free Buys

Leaving the relative ease and familiarity of Australia behind, we were heading off on the next leg of our Gap Yah adventure – South East Asia. On the Quantas flight from Cairns to Singapore I experienced the same apprehensive feelings that I had battled with before we left for South America; we were heading in to the unknown and this time our extensive Spanish wasn’t going to be of any use whatsoever.

Arriving in Singapore in the dark, we were impressed by our ability to manoeuvre ourselves around the airport and successfully on to a train towards Little India. It did help of course that all the signs were in English and everyone we encountered was ridiculously polite and helpful, thank goodness for colonialism. We had become a little too nonchalant about booking hostels being the carefree and free-spirited Gap Yah’ers that we were, and were to pay a penance as we wandered around Little India in extreme heat and humidity, flabbergasted at the overwhelming smells, sights and sounds that bombarded us from every direction, trying to find a bed for the night. Joseph and Mary couldn’t have been anywhere near as sticky and sweaty or lugging around such heavy backpacks as Forrest and Bea, as we were repeatedly turned away from hostels. Just as we had resigned ourselves to sleeping in a stable for the night, we stuck gold and we were rescued by the amusingly named Dunlop Street Backpackers, fate intervening for fear that Forrest was going to lose LAD credentials by missing the Manchester United vs. FC Barcelona Champions League Final. We had considered traipsing across town to watch the game at the Reds Bar (unbeknownst to us closed down since the Cross Family visit in 2000), but the heat and stress overcame me and I wimped out, leaving Forrest to watch the game on his own at 3am surrounded by drunken louts in Little India.

Being the kind and generous girlfriend that I am, I allowed Forrest to sleep in a little under the pretence of catching up on his sleep after an exhausting night of travelling and late night football, however it was more due to the fact that I was more than happy utilising the free wifi and catching up with any of my programmes (the list is endless, but to name but a few: Grey’s Anatomy, 90210, Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, Glee, Private Practice, Desperate Housewives) that I had devastatingly fallen behind with due to extortionate internet costs in Australia. Once fully up to date with Meredith Grey et al, I woke the Sleeping Giant and dragged him out of bed to explore Singapore. Having been there before, I took charge of the day but quickly became disinterested in anything other than finding air conditioning due to the farcical humidity outside. We had our first taste of South East Asian cuisine in a food court under Raffles City (beef penang and chicken laksa) before braving the heat to explore the city. Although a fairly disinteresting mix of shopping malls and skyscrapers, we did linger for a while watching a cricket match at the Singapore Cricket Club, founded in the 1850s and once the hub of colonial British society, and admired the astonishing contrast between old and new alongside the river, where bumboats and traditional and quaint godowns (warehouses) are towered over by stainless steel and glass monsters. Obviously something to do with our relevant heights, we were then split over what to do next; I wanted to explore the tiny, squat godowns further, while Forrest was desperate to head over to Marina Bay Sands, a huge new development looming over the city. Tall beat tiny, and I trudged across the city and around the marina, praying to God that there would be a slight breeze 191 metres up.



When we finally arrived at Marina Bay Sands we were momentarily distracted by a stunning art gallery in its grounds, exhibiting Salvador Dali and Van Gogh. Basking in the air-conditioning of the gallery, we spent an hour or so looking for Dali’s famous lobster phone in the excellent exhibition, before we headed skywards. At the reception of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, we had unwittingly acquired two free passes to the Sky Bar at the top of the hotel, simply by inquiring which way we were supposed to be going, so we escaped the crowds, queues and the entry fee which in turn allowed us to splurge on a delicious cocktail, whilst admiring the ridiculously impressive views over the city. After our cocktails we snuck past security to see the world’s longest elevated swimming pool with a 146 metre vanishing edge; we weren’t jealous at all though, especially not when we contemplated the journey back to the hot as hell Little India. We drowned our jealousy with the obligatory Singapore Sling in Raffle’s Long Bar. The cool and calming atmosphere of the bar transports you back to colonial times as you sip the sickly sweet pink drinks and crunch peanut shells underfoot. After a cheap and simple curry in Little India, we hit the hay in our air-conditioned dorm, with dreams of cricket and colonialism making me nostalgic for the motherland.



We woke with no desire to charge out into the heat, so we had a relaxed breakfast in the hostel before descending in to the chaos and capitalism of Orchard Road, described in my RG as “the Fifth Avenue, the Regent Street, the Champs Elysees, the Via Veneto and the Ginza of Singapore”. Obviously our pitiful Gap Yah budget did not stretch to the extravagancies on offer in the huge malls and designer shops, but we did manage to entertain ourselves with a game of “what we would buy if we had all the money in the world” however it only lasted a short while as we lost track of our money after the first shop where Forrest had spent ridiculous amounts of pretend money on an iPad, a MacBook Air and various other electrical pretend purchases and the game got a little depressing. To cheer ourselves up we splurged on a packet of Phizzy Pig Tails from Marks and Spencer and a new top and dress from Topshop (once again, I reiterate GOD BLESS COLONIALISM). We escaped the overwhelming heat of Orchard Road in the open space afforded by the Singapore Botanical Gardens, which provided us with a few hours tranquillity as we wandered around the Gardens, taking our time to admire the National Orchid Garden. Only to be rudely interrupted from our relaxed reverie by the hugest blood-sucking mosquitos I have ever seen.



Around 5pm we boarded the bus which would take us across the border into Malaysia, and one step closer to our desired destination - Thailand. Having learnt from our experience in Singapore, we had wisely pre-booked accommodation as wandering around Kuala Lumpur aimlessly at midnight wasn’t in the least bit appealing. Unfortunately, we hadn’t banked on all the taxi drivers in the city not knowing where our hostel was, giving us the useless explanation of “there are too many hostels in this city, we can’t possible know every one”, which would have been plausible had we not supplied an exact address. Eventually, after circling around for 30 minutes we got out of the taxi close to where we had got in, and found an internet café which informed us that the hostel was a stone’s throw away. We checked in to our wonderfully cheap yet air-conditioned double room, enthusiastic about our whistle-stop tour of KL the next day. We had decided that the best way to see the city in the short time we had available would be the ubiquitous ‘hop-on-hop-off’ city bus, which doubled up not only as effective tour guide but also proved to be an excellent relief from the stifling city humidity. Our first hop-off stop was Chinatown, which although undeniably exciting for the senses was no more impressive than say Manchester’s equivalent, but we did purchase our bus tickets to Langkawi, a tropical Malaysian island, from the impressive bus terminal adjacent to the Chinatown gates – something Manchester’s Chinatown certainly doesn’t have on offer. After fighting our way through the stalls selling bright red pork, suspect looking snacks (I think at one point I glanced the dreaded foetus eggs out of the corner of my eye) and the constant barrage of ‘you wan’ buy dvd?’, we found our way to an oasis of calm inside an ornate temple at the end of the street. The intricacies of the temple were astonishingly beautiful, and it felt as though we had found an example of the ‘real’ South-East Asia that had so far been clouded by colonialism and capitalism. After lighting an incense stick as an offering in the same way one might light a tea-light in a Catholic church, we took a deep breath and fought our way back through the hawkers stalls and back on to the bus.



Despite Kuala Lumpur being not only a capital city, but an extremely popular tourist destination, in actual fact we found little that we actually wanted to ‘hop-off’ and see. Whether this was because we had come directly from Singapore where we had had a jam-packed couple of days being touristy and sightseeing, or perhaps it was a little more to do with not wanting to leave the heavenly air-conditioning inside the bus, but we were more than happy seeing KL through the somewhat murky windows (‘glare-free’ and ‘picture-perfect’ my ass) of the bus. Having heard great things about the Islamic Art and Culture Centre, and being the knowledge and culture hungry Gap Yah’ers that we are, we decided that this would be an appropriate next stop. The Centre was located in a stunning white marble (?) building, right next to the equally stunning National Mosque, and the atmosphere inside was one of such ridiculous calm and serenity that I couldn’t help but wonder whether we had come to the right place. We spent an hour or so wandering around the Centre, attempting to understand the complexities of Islam, whilst admiring replicas of the world’s great Mosque’s, ornate ancient Qur’ans and jewellery that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Tiffany. Okay, okay, if I’m being completely honest it was a little boring, but still a lovely way to while away an hour, and the air-conditioning wasn’t too shabby either! Back on the bus we headed over town to KL’s most famous landmark – the Petronus Towers – where we had lunch and wandered round the shops. It is possible to go up to both the bridge connecting the two towers, and for even more money to the top of one of them, but in order to do so one must queue at the ticket desk from 6am (or earlier) and hope that you manage to fight off very un-British people who don’t understand the concept of queuing in order to get one of the 250 allocated tickets of that day. Needless to say, just waking Forrest up early enough to get there would have been enough of an issue, so instead we had chosen to go up the KL tower, which is higher than the viewing platform of the Petronus and would mean that we would be able to get photographs with the Towers in it. After wandering around the shops not buying anything until it was early enough to see the city in day time, but late enough that we would also get to see the city at dark, we made our way to and up the KL tower. A short head-phone tour guided us around the tower, and informed us as to what we were seeing through each window, and Forrest spent a decent amount of time taking perfectly positioned photographs through every pane of glass in order to capture the entire city (available on Facebook for your viewing pleasure). As far as cityscapes go it was distinctly average, with the highlight of the Petronus Towers being obscured by their own enormity, so Rio De Janeiro’s incredible aerial views remained safely at the top in our Gap Yah accolades.



Once Forrest was satisfied that he had taken enough photographs of buildings both in daylight and in the dark, we walked back to our hostel, via a very tasty thai green curry and pad thai, and back to the bus station to board a bight nus (just trying to mix it up a little!) which would take us to Kuala Perlis. If any of you have ever been on a bus that drives at a thousand miles an hour with the bolts jangling loose out of the wheels so that they feel like they’re going to spin off at any second then you’ll comprehend how well we slept that night. It was a welcome relief therefore to board the dubious-looking ferry at 6am, as a mild storm blew, over to Langkawi where there would be a beach instead of skyscrapers, manic tuk-tuk drivers instead of bus drivers and best of all – the entire island was duty free! When we arrived we quickly checked in to our hostel and rushed down to the nearest beach, desperate to experience the white sands and turquoise waters of South-East Asia, but instead we were greeted with what looked like an entire rubbish truck had dumped the waste of South-East Asia onto the beach. We tried to remain optimistic as we made our way along the beach, avoiding the debris that had been washed up, but in actuality we couldn’t help but feel slightly cheated of our idea of nirvana. Paradise definitely not found.

Things perked up considerably when we made our way across to the next beach along, and although it still wasn’t the utopia we had been looking forward to it was a damn-sight more attractive than Blackpool and we spent a lovely few hours sunbathing, reading and sleeping in the sunshine. When I woke, I was alarmed to discover that clear blue skies had been replaced by thunderous black clouds and barely had time to wake Forrest and pack our stuff up before we were caught in a huge tropical thunderstorm. Seeking refuge from the rain in the nearest bar, we did the only thing we could do under the circumstances – drink. And drink we did, with jugs of frozen daiquiris, beer and cider our tropical island paradise soon turned in to a typical rainy summer’s day in a caravan in England complete with board games and cards! We found an extremely old and dusty Scrabble board, and we didn’t let the fact that it was a German edition deter us as we made up our own rule that if you put down a German word using the ‘umlaut’ tile then you automatically received triple points. Despite both of us having almost ten years of German lessons under our belts, neither of us managed to think of one German word, let alone use the umlaut’, but I of course utilised my English Literature to its highest degree and came out victorious with the highest-scoring word of the game – joint. As in something shared obviously. A moment of respite from the rain gave us just enough time to race across to one of the many massage parlours to indulge ourselves in an hour long Malay massage, before Forrest let loose in duty free and found a bottle of Penfold’s 2002 Vintage Shiraz which was enjoyed with a screening of The Fighter in our hostel room as we prayed for nicer weather the following day.



Mark Wahlberg answered our prayers and we woke to beautiful sunshine, which this time stayed with us which meant we got a full day relaxing on the beach, watching the plethora of paragliders overhead and organising our way up to Thailand. We had received a recommendation of the best Malay food in Langkawi from the guy we had bought our bus tickets from, and after a hard day’s sunning ourselves we had a beautiful inexpensive meal of chicken satay, curry puffs, beef penang and yellow chicken curry, accompanied with the Malay equivalent of blue WKD, which in my humble opinion was far finer than the previous night’s wine! The next day was a travelling day, so armed with fully-charged iPods, inflatable pillows and snacks we embarked on the day-long journey from Langkawi, Malaysia to Phuket, Thailand.

Not wanting to soil the next episode of The Gap Yah Chronicles (‘The one where we find the turquoise waters and white sands’) with Phuket and its awful old men with their Thai brides, I’ll quickly say that we stayed in an Irish bar, had a pretty nice Thai meal across the road and went to bed early so we could wake up in time for the 8am ferry out of Phuket and on to a (slightly) less seedy and destroyed version of Thailand. It was time to follow Leonardo DiCaprio’s footsteps in search of The Beach…

FORREST'S FINAL THOUGHT...

“Taxi Driver: Where you from?
Forrest: Clitheroe
Taxi Driver: Where?
Forrest: Clitheroe, in Lancashire, England
Taxi Driver: What?
Forrest: I suppose the two closest places are Blackburn and Preston
Taxi Driver: Who?
Forrest: Well, I mean the nearest big city is Manchester
Taxi Driver: Manchester!!! You from Manchester?! Manchester United my team!! Wayne Rooney very good, no?
Forrest: Well, yea…
Taxi Driver: Wow… you from Manchester! Manchester United my best team very long time! And you from Manchester! You only pay half price sir”

The conversation above, albeit with slight variations, has become a daily staple of our Gap Yah adventure. And not just with taxi drivers, with everyone and anyone, wherever we have visited. Manchester United have managed to penetrate every civilisation on this planet and epitomise the word ubiquitous (a word that always appears in this blog for some reason?). Even the deep Amazonian jungle or the remote Andean mountains have not managed to escape their global onslaught. I recall a conversation with Francisco, our native Indian guide who came from and still lived in jungle, about who should partner Rooney up front, Berbatov or Hernandez?

The Manchester United shirt is without fail, whether you’re in South America, Australia or South East Asia a daily sight. There’s an endless stream of sports bars showing live Manchester United games, or if not live games, repeats of games. The merchandise is, to quote the Gap Yah youtube clip, “everywah”. As I sit here typing this in Thailand, I could quite easily help myself to a traditional Thai Singha beer, complete with the players (Park, Giggs, Scoles etc) of their global sponsor Manchester United plastered all over the bottle. And therefore coming from Manchester, or at least saying you’re from Manchester has great benefits whilst you’re travelling… excited, smiling faces greet you wherever you go, reduced price taxi rides, half price drinks and a near-celebrity status.

However, whilst Manchester United’s global reach and dominance is explainable, some things remain unexplainable. You may have noticed that in the conversation above I did mention I came from Blackburn. Hello?! Blackburn?! Blackburn Rovers?! Winners of the Premiership in 1994/95? Winners of the Carling Cup in 2001/02? Winners of the FA Cup in 1884, 1885 and 1886? Colin Hendry? Simon Garner? Robbie Slater? Ewood Park?... don’t pretend you’ve never heard of us.