Family Holiday: My Prison in Paradise
This is how I felt the entire time
We were going on a highly anticipated, once in a lifetime, family+boyfriend holiday to Thailand, for one month over Christmas and New Year!!!!!
D.I.S.A.S.T.E.R
It all went tit's up from day one. Turns out I'd booked my own mums name wrong on the ticket and she couldn't fly with us.... So my sister plus boyfriend and I had to wave her goodbye at Heathrow and hope she could get another flight soon. What kind of person gets their own mum's name wrong?
My brother (lets call him Bill) had been in Thailand for 3 months and greeted us when we arrived, then together we headed to the getto of Bangkok to wait for mother. . Less than 24 hours later my boyfriend suddenly and quite spontaneously decides he desperately needs to go 'find himself' and abandons me and the family holiday with no destination or explanation.
My brother (lets call him Bill) had been in Thailand for 3 months and greeted us when we arrived, then together we headed to the getto of Bangkok to wait for mother. . Less than 24 hours later my boyfriend suddenly and quite spontaneously decides he desperately needs to go 'find himself' and abandons me and the family holiday with no destination or explanation.
Obviously I completely understand and let him go into the world without me, thinking after a week of soul searching he'll get board.
Tumbleweed drifts by for 3 weeks........ All I could think of was my stupid boyfriend having a whale of a time, doing all the stuff we should have been doing together. But instead of love on sandy beaches, I was trapped by my family and mentality in the arse end of Thailand, the English equivalent of Boscombe.
Internal/mental/physical turmoil sets in.
To distract myself from this devastation, I spent my days as a recluse-locked away, customising postcards with religious paraphernalia as well as some of Phuket's finest entertainment and adventure brochures!
Some of what I was doing turns out to be actually very illegal and carries hefty sentences.
In Thai law all images of Buddha are sacred. Nothing bad can be said or done to do with the royal family either. We're talking 3-15 years in Thai prison here baby!
This is a personal favourite that
never made it through the boarder.
Complete with topless model straddling Buddha for breakfast, offerings of massive fish, money and the King crowned with their ladyboy's famous head adornments. PHUK could have got me in a lot of trouble.
Phuket dosen't look like this. It's covered from head to toe in beach chairs and umbrellas and massages and restaurants and tourists. There are elephants but they don't go on the beach.
The crowning glory is the elephant fashioned into a penis.
My brother spent 3 months 'traveling' Thailand but ended up living in a Lady Bar. He would make sure they were safe.
Apparently it's not as bad as it sounds. Depends what your into.
Considering we had traveled 6000 miles to see him and spent many months apart, he didn't really put much effort into being a good 'host'. Everything I wanted to do was rubbished, deemed too much effort or generally boring. I wasn't allowed to go out in the morning on my own because it was too dangerous, I wasn't allowed out at night on my own for the same reason. I wasn't allowed a mo-ped because even that was too dangerous ( my brother had come off his bike quite a few times drunk with potential wives or involving stray dogs, which have a tendency to appear in the road snarling rabidly) and I definitely definitely wasn't allowed to touch or even seem remotely interested in anything dead.
During my 'amazing' trip to Thailand, I sent 27 postcards, collected 7 squashed toads, a lizard, numerous comic books, religious and royal images +pretty stones and rocks. Only a few postcards made it through the boarder.....
On the 27th of Dec I was officially dumped.
I was officially 100% dumped by telephone conversation.
I swiftly made my plans to escape and I was back home safe in the arms of London the very next day!
So all in all it was pretty crap really.
I'd go as far as to say it's now at the top of my worst holidays ever. Previously the title was held by Australia in 2000. My second to last family holiday.
Remind me to talk about it when I see you.
Love from
Charlie Gates
x
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