Phuket for beginners: don’t look down

You’ll notice we go away rather a lot. That was kind of the point of this relocation exercise – that we burn runway fuel as often as we can in the short space of time that we are here. I won’t excuse it any further, that was the plan and it’s going nicely. I give write-ups about things I have enjoyed and tend to leave the disappointments blank. I’ve written only a few Tripadvisor reviews, nine in total, to date. Four of those were pre-Singapore trips. Six of the nine have five stars; one has two stars; two have four stars. You can see that I really hate giving a bad write-up. So I won’t do that for Phuket, the location of this weekend’s Chinese New Year break, but I can’t say I’ll be rushing back.

It wasn’t the Newquay factor – I quite like Newquay, in the same way that I also like Scarborough, and also Herne Bay. Patong was flagged up as being a bit similar to all that, coming with several gaudy warnings, but it was alright in the end, a jolly strip of colour and sand, which SM loved as this is where he learned how to haggle, spending his CNY hong bao on a pair of flashy shades.*

In fact this was a holiday of firsts, and there’s a lot to be said for some of them: the haggling for SM, the ride in an ox cart, and also on an elephant – ours was called ‘Margaret’ and she was quite tall and loved our bananas. We also took a ride up a fast A-road in a flat-backed truck, that was another first.

The sun was very nice and our beach, Karon, was pretty, and the hotel not bad at all, really very pleasant give or take a spot of mould and a lack of authentic local cuisine. I mean, though, what’s to nitpick about, really, when you’re on a lovely short break like ours? If the staff are lovely, which they really were, just float into the pool again and leave the catty reviews off. Here I must quote a fellow Singapore-based blogger who writes about how she goes all-out to avoid the local hotel culture – it’s just not her thing: http://www.bedu-mama.com/ – I won’t stop HavingFunAtHotels, K, but I know what you mean.

Along with all the good things came not-such-good things: the chained monkey riding a trike, the skeletal oxen heaving us along in the cart, the poor old elephants trained to wiggle dutifully from side to side before popping a load of balloons with darts (I didn’t know whether to burst into tears or shout out ‘180!’) and then pretending to step on a number of small children lying prone on the ground, our son included, lightly tapping their huge feet on the lined up little backs; another first for SM, who of course loved all the animal antics. And no, I didn’t intend to see any chained-up chimps. ‘An elephant ride,’ was all they told us, and even that was something I had my moral doubts about.

Could it have been the pre-election road protest literally set up right beside us as we walked along Patong Beach road – causing a mile-long block and all the street vendors to come out and stare? Or the fact that my right arm muscle is now so much stronger than the left thanks to the bizarre position I adopted while we sped along in the truck, last passengers to get in so first ones, presumably, to risk faling out. Sat loosely on benches in the back of the open-air vehicle going very steeply up a massive A-road way too fast with nothing to hold onto but the ceiling strut above us and the rails on either side, I adopted a He-Man position, getting SM to put his little arm tightly round my waist while I kind of hung on over him. Every time the guy stepped on the clutch to get his tin death machine to motor on we were shrugged back towards the tarmac. I never want to have to do that again and wasn’t comforted when I found an online news report about the decline in Phuket road deaths not being down to drivers adopting a more sensible approach, but by the roads being jammed thus preventing instances of speeding. The taxi driver on the way back to the airport hammered this home, dashing us alongside a motorway ravine as his lids lowered again and again in the rearview mirror. Finally he decided to keep himself awake by repeatedly phoning-a-friend for the remainder of the hour-long drive. I’ve never really had a religion but I crossed myself when we got out. SM, after a spot of white-knuckle caution at first, of course wanted to do it all over again: blissful ignorance.

We weren’t entirely sure where to eat and should probably have done some homework, but Singapore has spoilt us with Thai restaurants like Esarn and Mai Thai and I suppose we were expecting something along those lines. We ate burgers and chips, a bit of floppy Pad Thai – I suppose if you choose to go to Newquay then you eat what Newquay offers. All credit to the Thai Airways restaurant on the upper floor at Phuket airport: really delicious food, finally, and a nice view of the end of the runway as well.

I’m not complaining though. I’m just saying. We did have such a nice relaxing time that I forgot (again) to write postcards but if I’d managed it then I would have genuinely wished you were all here. Or there.

*Mr PC’s lesson in haggling for SM amounted to: ‘take a third off and then halve it’. Sadly he didn’t supply SM with a notebook for all the workings out, and SM didn’t have the required 20 minutes to do such a sum, or access to a table to sit and make the required spidery mathematical diagrams, but he did a great job of sweetly asking the price and then sucking air through his teeth theatrically until the sunglasses lady caved in. I’m taking him with me next time I have to haggle, and pushing him to the front.

Sydney has a frilly, seaweed-shaped coastline with the edge of the land dipping in and out around its many little coves. On a map I lost count at 28 beaches within a 30k radius of the city centre, and I was being lazy and not zooming in. It is very easy, as a result, to spend the days mooching on the sand and drinking coffee. Luckily we know a lot of people who live in Sydney and so we spend a lot of time drinking coffee around kitchen tables as well as on the sand. It’s a tough life.

It’s been busier here than on the other side. Western Australia was a chilled, peaceful and intimate time for us three, with two small stop-offs to see people and nothing else on the menu, but the East coast has had a different pace. There’s the friend who is local and who I met in London through work. Another set of friends is just visiting, like us, and they are mutual friends of the local one and we always visit her at the same time, for some reason.

Then there’s B, my family school friend who gave us a lovely Christmas Day, and who’s smallest is my god-daughter. Being with her is like being at home. Then there’s another friend from Singapore who is visiting as well so we’ve seen her a few times. Then there are two cousins, one from each side of the family, and we’ve had lunch and dinner with them too. Of course the local friends all have other friends who we meet up with when we’re in town. It’s a bit Singaporean like that. Or London. Home-ish, anyway. The confusing map of who is where and when got so tangled today that we ended up sitting at one end of exactly the same beach as our friends without managing to meet up. I only know where they were sitting because I saw the pic on FB.

Our first trip here was ten years ago, then six years ago, and each time we collect more connections. We’ve had all sorts of times here: road trips with friends, weddings and birthdays, memorials and, if I unscrew the lid on one of our most private memory stores, a loss for us right here in this town that re-opened when we landed and will close over when we go, turning to sepia again and returning to the back of my mind, where it is probably best kept. It has been nice to take it out and examine it again, though a little sad. The pull and the connection of all these things is always here, and maybe that’s what makes this place so very special to me and Mr PC.

We are on the other side of the world from home but it’s all very familiar, and it’s reminded me a bit of what it’s like being back in the UK. I like to think I don’t need home comforts in Singapore but the truth is that if you are going to stock the supermarkets with familiar stuff then I will probably cash in. As a result I am going out tomorrow to get stupid things like tea bags and conditioner and I’m also having a cut and colour just because I can. It’s not that, though, is it? It’s having familiar people around me with whom I have a history, to whom I don’t need to explain myself and who I simply just miss. Our two-day extension that will allow us to stay here for New Year’s Eve is exciting but I fear may just be prolonging the reconnection with reality.

I’m making it all sound stressed and busy but it’s anything but, it is relaxed and happy. We are chilled, chubby, slightly unfit, but peaceful. I’ve ditched the coursework and found my brain again – my one, not the museum’s, mine. Mr PC has discovered ocean swimming and a passion for cliffside houses, thanks to the amazing one we have been allowed to stay in (a house-swap with a family who’s home is so lovely that it’s really made the trip).

I’m getting better at goodbyes these days and if anything these trips of ours teach me that the world is small. I want to go to Melbourne next. I might persuade some of these lovelies to come south with me; B already sounds keen. I’ve checked flights, though, and they are expensive so perhaps my new year resolution needs to be: Get A Job.

I think the reason why Britain gets caught out by TheWeather ALL the time is that we are too arrogant to assume it will affect us. Other countries change their plans every day according to what is going on OutThere – you know, in the world. Over the past three weeks we have learned to wake up and just see, in fact now I think about it we’ve been doing this over the last 16 months, since moving to Singapore. TheWeather is enormous and you do what it wants, not the other way around. A small Cornish neighbor, when I was a girl, was taught a little Q&A mantra by her big sister:

Q: What’s the sea? A: Sea’s the master

So I don’t mind that our fishing trip with friends is cancelled today, I can see from my view all down the cliff road that the Clontarf palm trees are bending and the kookaburras are clinging on. We will just take a picnic to a shady cove instead.

It’s good, this travel thing. Makes you think.

The campervan has a very simple form, box-shaped and bulky as if a child designed it. It  moves a little like a child designed it, too. I can’t tell if it’s built for driving or living but like most compromises the bit-of-both combination means it’s not really suitable for either one. We ride high with a swaying gait, taking corners carefully (the hire option has a ‘no-roll package’) and listening to our things being knocked about in the cupboards. The movement is like being on a rollercoaster or a boat – down steep hills we all raise our arms (including the driver) and when we get off the swaying never quite goes away. We stand the best chance of a smooth ride when heading in a straight line with plenty of overtaking time, so it’s lucky that the road down south from Perth is a vertical drop.

I’m in the back, strapped loosely to the dining couch, partly to give SM some fun up front and partly to stop me passenger-seat driving. Here on my own I can clutch the sides of my little bench-seat whenever we turn left or right, and keep an eye on unlocked drawers skidding opening and letting loose the kitchen knives at unintentional targets, righting spilled water bottles and checking that the microwave isn’t about to shoot out of its little wooden recess.

Through my mosquito-netted side window, with its little blue curtains pinned back like pigtails, there is a good view of the land bobbing past. The further south we go the greener it gets: firstly a desert plane, dry grassland studded with scorched grey trees sucking up water from deep below ground, greener as we hit Margaret River with its lines of fresh vines, finally a winding B-road that plunges in and out of thick copses, tightly packed rows of trees throwing shadows across the looping way ahead – almost Cornish, we agree.

It gets cooler as we head south too: 38 in Perth, 33 in Bunbury, ‘only’ 25 by the time we get to Hamelin. We rattle along, tarmac unfurling in front like a sticky liquorice strip. Everything in the van has a lock-down option: plates wedged into holders, toothbrushes pegged to the plastic sink, empty suitcases stashed under the bed. We can take it fast or easy as we like it, motor on to make up time, pull into rest stops and knock up a quick lunch in ten minutes then back out again, easy.

At campsites our meals are more thorough, put together in the little galley kitchen that’s sweetly fitted out with smaller versions of cooker, fridge and sink. We dine well: pork chops with fluffy mash, juicy lamb salad, bacon & eggs, tea and coffee from a whistle kettle and perfect tanned toast from a toaster that plugs into the side of the van.

Every three days we have a different ‘home’. At the moment we are parked near a playground on a high-up plot under a low tree, pointing perilously downwards, back-end first. Mr PC assures me we cannot possibly roll back. ‘Trust me,’ he sighs, ‘I’m an engineer.’ You’re a banker-engineer, though, I want to say but keep it to myself as he has That Look. We try parking sideways but then we’re cooking sideways. In the end we put it front end first again, and Mr Longsuffering lets me switch the pillows top to bottom because our bed is the area furthest to the back, and this way at least it’s our feet pointing downhill, rather than our heads. We sleep well, in the end, thanks more likely to several bottles of Perth Pipsqueak than anything directional.

Our patio in Hamelin, a little beach down towards Augusta, is a square of flat sandy scrub, and the beach is at the end of the lane – not just any old strip of water but one of those dazzling arcs from a Caribbean brochure. We take it in turns to go running in the early morning; Mr PC spots a big stingray but I’m too busy concentrating on sand running, a whole new string to my keep-fit bow. The sea is shockingly cold after Southeast Asia’s syrupy depths and this area is currently shark-infested, so we don’t venture too far out. Chubby magpies and pink cockatiels strut under our picnic table waiting for scraps, and every morning we find fine spider-webs lacing the chairs – no extra guests in our beds so far, touch wood. The flies are a problem, sticking to lips, bedding into hairlines, exploring our ears and foraging in eyebrows. I string up tinsel from the van’s exterior to scare them off, a festive double-arc from the awning strut, but I think they like it as they bring all their mates to come and have a look.

Vineyards visited today, and a picnic on a deserted beach. Tonight a gale is blowing in and we’re about to put back the awning on the side of the van as we don’t want to take off in the middle of the night.

Next stop: Busselton

BY THE WAY: Thanks to those who left a comment (ie, ‘voted’) for my entry in a blogging competition. If anyone’s feeling generous please take a minute to interrupt your Christmas plans and visit this link: http://www.expatsblog.com/contests/780/welcome-to-singapore-dont-look-down and leave a comment of ten words or more. The Expat Blog site might want to ‘verify’ you, just say yes. At best, I might win something, at worst the blog will still be promoted a little bit. Or, far more sensible, go on out to the office party and enjoy. Thanks to those who’ve already done this, and thanks to all for your continued reading, a Christmas gift in itself x

This is not how it was last time. Then it was a proper road trip.

‘Then’ was summer of ’77, when my parents bundled us into the back of our beat-up Buick, me and my sister, and steered the overheated engine from the east coast of the States to the west and then back again in a big loop. I was eight, my sister was nine and every night we charted our route on a map. I can’t remember the exact number of states we drove through (Dad…?) but I think it was about 36 in two months.

Pop, Mum’s recently bereaved father, came too, on a post-funeral visit from the UK, sitting quietly in the back with his pale shoulder turned away from us two girls, blocking off from the squabbles and chatter as the scenery unfurled by his open window.

Pop obviously had a whole tent to himself, which left two other places to sleep – in the other tent, or pegged out on the flat back of the Buick, looking up at the stars. Who slept where each night seemed to depend on the shape of the moon, or the passing of the eastern winds, or the number of crows hopping under a tree. One morning Pop said (and he never said much, especially that particular summer when the grey mood of Nonna’s demise accompanied us on the trip like an unseen pall) – anyway, one morning, Pop said: ‘Did you hear the coyotes last night?’ Prowling up in the hills, we all assumed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘around our tents.’

Another time we bust a tire on the dusty outskirts of some kind of ghetto and had to ask for help. I think my folks thought we were basically all going to die, but the first house we came to was a shrine of kindness, and we ended up sitting on a plastic-covered couch drinking iced water and looking through family albums while dad and the husband knelt in the dirt fixing the wheel.

Another time in Florida, Mum’s back locked (from grief, for sure) and when we pitched up at the evening’s campsite, Dad carried her from the car and put her down on a grassy bank while he set up tent for the night, stepping over his annoying daughters and prone wife. A wrinkled old keep-fit lady in orange pants and a sun-visor came up to Mum, knelt over her, and said: ‘It gets better as you get older’.

If we were very lucky we stopped at a KOA camp. We only stayed at these premium campsites if we were REALLY lost or really tired: there was a kind of ‘F**k it’ mentality to those wonderful KOA stop-offs, when my sister and I would go bonkers in the pools with the curly slides while Mum and Dad – no doubt exhausted – downed beers in the bar.

This trip was the two-month full-stop to our year in America, and it encompassed all the things we had taken on board. I remember unpeeling Hostess Twinkies in the back seat, juggling hot-wrapped apple pies from rare pull-ups to drive-in McDonalds, the taste of Kool Aid at wooden picnic tables under hot pines, rubbing noses under nylon sleeping bags, dodging giant night-time moths in neon-lit restrooms, chewing illict wraps of Red Mountain (probably to keep our mouths shut) – but most of all the lonely sense that I wasn’t sure how or when we would ever get home again, to Baltimore or, for that matter, to the UK, a place I had been desperate to get back to since I arrived on American soil. I think my feeling at the time was that the trip was just preventing us from getting ‘home’.

Either way, our family road trip had one effect on one sister, and another on the other. While it put me off camping for life, it left my sister with a passion for canvas that has resulted in her spending every summer pegging out her tent at festivals around the UK.

So who ever knew I’d be here 36 years later, sitting at a pop-up table in the dark, with a beer by my side and the mossies pestering me, and there is a reason why it didn’t take a lot of persuading to get me here, and that reason is the massive, four-berth, white truck the size of a small terraced house beside which I am sitting. Because of this Goliath of a ‘home’, our nine-day road trip down the west coast of Australia and back will not be like that sepia-tinted American tarmac trail at all.

It’s cheating, really. SmallMonkey has just climbed down the little ladder from his bunk to watch The Avengers on our built-in DVD player. Mr PC is cooking roast pork chops and baby new potatoes with a crunchy green salad and has just set off the smoke alarm – I mean, there’s a smoke alarm for goodness’ sake, and a microwave, and a fridge. I showered in the campsite washrooms just like I would have done in the old days, but if I’d wanted to I could have flicked on the water heater and had a shower in our own van. We even have a can, although the unanimous agreement is to save that for ‘emergencies’ – we haven’t defined that situation just yet.

We’re definitely on the road but there’s no squishing into the back seat for SM. Today he sat up front, map-reading, waving his stick legs around the acres of space between him and the footwell, then messing about with the DVD controls. Now we’re parked up in a slightly frowsy campsite right beside a fast beach road with evening traffic whooshing by, so no, it’s not quite the same. No whispering pines, no night-time mumblings from the open back of a beat-up Buick, no distant guitar picking from someone in the next-door tent, no coyotes yapping up in the hills. Anyway, enough chatter, better switch off my computer – so handy, to have WiFi all the way out here. I’d better go and help by doing the washing up in our proper sink while Him Indoors makes up the double bed.