The Backpacking Housewife

by Janice Horton

  Here I am; a stranger in a strange land full of strangers.

  Yet this feeling of total anonymity has ignited something within me too.

  It’s a weird feeling. What is it? Excitement? Freedom?

  I realise I could start my life anew. I could be someone else entirely, if I wanted.

  Because no one knows me here. No one knows anything about me.

  Marcie and Joanie continue chattering. They tell me how they’ve been friends for years but they both now live in different countries. Marcie lives in Australia on the Gold Coast. Joanie lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Both their husbands, they tell me, are in banking.

  ‘Boring men who’d rather stay at home than travel!’ they chorus gleefully.

  ‘Sounds like my husband,’ I agree, wondering why I’d even mentioned him.

  ‘So, we meet up in a different place every year and tick something else off our bucket list,’ Joanie tells me. ‘Last year, we met up in Hong Kong.’

  Marcie roars with laughter. ‘Oh, yeah, we had a ball in Hong Kong!’

  When we part, the ladies go off laughing and chatting and I go back up to my room.

  I sit on my bed and plug my phone into its charger, thinking about my own bucket list.

  I do have one. I’ve had one for a long time. Only, until now, it’s been more of a wish list.

  My phone suddenly comes back to life and I see I have two new messages.

  One is from Sally, the traitorous whore, and one is from my lying husband.

  I can hardly believe their nerve in texting me.

  Especially as it’s so obviously coordinated.

  I open Sally’s first. In it, she says she’s sorry for the way I’d found out about her and Charles, but apparently, she’s not sorry about their affair (which she calls a ‘relationship’) that has been going on for over a year. I want you to know Charles and I are in love and that he was planning to leave you. I feel like her hand has just come right through the phone and slapped my face.

  My anger flares up again. Tears of betrayal fill my eyes and pour down my cheeks.

  How can this be true? For over a year? How could I not have known about this?

  Have there been any tell-tale clues, that I’ve missed?

  Receipts for things I hadn’t known about? Meals, hotels, gifts?

  Has Charles’ behaviour over the past year been an indication?

  He’d been a little distant. Uncaring on occasions. Indifferent, certainly.

  Should I have been going through his pockets and secretly checking his phone records?

  We hadn’t been having sex. Was that a factor?

  I’d just assumed we were typical of all couples who’d been married a long time.

  Charles works long hours for seven days a week, running our business. He often complained of being tired. I understood when he fell asleep in front of the TV at the end of the day. But what kind of wife doesn’t have a clue that her husband is fucking another woman?

  A busy one? A preoccupied one? A trusting one?

  An incredibly stupid one?

  I open Charles’s message next. It’s written in short, sharp sentences, exactly the way he speaks in real life. Lorraine, I’m divorcing you. We haven’t been happy in a long time. Let’s keep things amicable. Best of luck. Charles.

  Divorce! Amicable? Luck?!

  His reason for having an affair is that we haven’t been happy in a long time?

  On the contrary, it sounds to me like Charles has been very happy indeed.

  Going balls deep in Sally behind my back while planning to leave me!

  But he’s right about one thing. I haven’t been happy. I’m not happy.

  I’ve been bloody miserable for as long as I can remember!

  It seems clear to me now that I’ve spent my whole life waiting to be happy on his terms.

  Charles is eight years older than me. I was only twenty-two when we met and started dating. We both worked at a travel agency office in town back then. He was the branch manager and I was on the sales desk. It was my dream job and he was my dream boyfriend. He seemed so worldly. Charles and I fell in love over our passionate plans to explore the world together.

  During our working day, our job was to plan detailed travel itineraries for our adventurous clients. But in the evenings, sitting in our local pub over two half pints of beer, we would talk endlessly about all the faraway countries that we wanted to visit one day, the interesting places we wanted to see and the incredible experiences we wanted to have when we got there.

  We’d plan routes across India, taking in the Golden Triangle of Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. We’d look at flights to exotic destinations like South East Asia, Japan, Korea and China. We’d investigate travelling by train all the way from Beijing to Hong Kong. We’d even fully researched and planned a three-thousand-mile road trip all the way from the Canadian Rockies to the Mexican Border. Charles used to say to me: ‘Don’t call it a dream, call it a plan.’

  And it seemed that the whole world was ours for the living and for the travelling.

  He filled me with wanderlust and inspiration and excitement.

  I thought we were soul mates and kindred roaming spirits.

  Every summer, on a limited budget, we used up all our holiday leave and money travelling.

  We mostly backpacked around Europe: France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Greek islands… Charles and I were always talking about and planning and saving up for our next trip. At work, we were surrounded by glossy travel brochures and the spirit of travel and the promise of exotic adventures in lands far away.

  Then, a few years later, everything changed. We got married.

  Charles and I moved into a flat in town above a shop where we’d decided to set up our very own travel agency. Those were the days before the internet made independent travel possible. Back then, everyone expected to book their holidays through a high street travel shop. We were good at selling the idea of travel and our business boomed. It was the early Nineties and people at that time were starting to look further afield for their holidays. It was a time when those who usually went to Malta and Gibraltar were choosing to go to Turkey and Cyprus instead. Families who would usually opt for the Costas in Spain were starting to consider Florida, for a change.

  Then the recession hit, interest rates went through the roof and for the next few years, instead of travelling, holidaymakers stayed at home and we ploughed all our time and money into our now struggling business. Instead of all those inspiring travel quotes, Charles’s mantras soon became ‘success is a journey, not a destination’.

  Well, that’s what happens, isn’t it? When you get married, your life and priorities change.

  Free and single becomes, well, something else, and life gets in the way.

  Then our kids came along and the business picked up and life was steady again. I loved being a mother and family life was blissfully happy. But, of course, it was all-consuming when it came to my time and energy. Soon, we needed to move ‘up in the world’ by selling our little rented flat over the shop to buy a detached townhouse with a garden for our two rambunctious little boys.

  We certainly needed the space, even if it was going to be a struggle to afford the mortgage.

  When our boys were a little older, we decided to invest in their future and put them both through a very good private school. This was a good decision, which paid dividends in the long run, with both our boys going on to achieve straight As and places at top universities. Everyone said we had it all. And, indeed, it seemed that we did.

  A lovely home. A successful business. Two wonderful clever sons who made us proud.

  Charles went on to expand the business by investing in the new technology of the time.

  Money was tight, so again, we forfeited any holidays or weekends away.

  But soon, we not only had the shop in town, we also had an effective and profitable travel website too. I didn’t have to work anymore. I was a homemaker. A housewife.

  I
threw myself into any voluntary work that came my way so that I could feel purposeful.

  I did two afternoons a week in a charity shop in town. I helped out at the local hospice and at the homeless shelter and the food bank. At weekends, I worked at an animal shelter.

  It made me feel good about myself when I was helping those less fortunate.

  I sincerely hoped that I could make a difference in the world.

  Then, before we knew it, the boys had both graduated from university and left home.

  We suddenly found we were empty-nesters with our mortgage finally paid off.

  But instead of taking time out for holidays together or even mini-breaks, like other couples our age seemed to be able to do, we were still scrimping and saving every damned penny.

  What for this time, you might ask?

  Well, for our retirement and our much-promised trip around the world, of course.

  Not as backpackers as we’d always planned, but as ‘flashpackers’ according to Charles.

  He’d decided he didn’t want to ‘slum it’ at his age and he delighted in telling anyone who’d listen all about his considerable and epically adventurous bucket list. When Charles retired he wanted to see the Grand Canyon in Arizona, watch the changing colours of autumn leaves in New England, walk along the Great Wall of China, marvel at the Taj Mahal in India, see the Northern Lights from Iceland, scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef, trek to Machu Picchu in Peru and climb Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. His list was the subject of every dinner party we attended, and I was getting sick to death of hearing about it and not actually doing it.

  My own bucket list was a little different as I really hate being cold and I’m not so keen on heights. But it was still the stuff of dreams. I wanted to walk barefoot along white sand beaches on tiny tropical islands. I wanted to laze about on a hot afternoon in a hammock with a good book. I wanted to sit in the shade of a palm tree and drink a rum cocktail from a coconut shell. I wanted to find hidden waterfalls in the midst of steamy jungles. I wanted to sit in golden temples and experience inner peace and to meditate until I had a quiet mind. I wanted to see the world’s most endangered species – not in a zoo, but thriving in the wild. I also wanted to learn to scuba dive in warm seas and to swim through a colourful coral reef garden with turtles and dolphins and whales (I draw the line at sharks) – not in a water park but in the open seas.

  And I honestly thought we’d have all the time in the world to tick every single dreamy wish off both our bucket lists, because Charles had always promised me faithfully that he would sell the business and take early retirement when he reached the age of fifty-five.

  Well, the bastard will be fifty-five this year – and now he’s leaving me!

  I scream into my pillow until my throat is sore. Then I stare out of the window again at the sprawling, hot and chaotic city beneath me and I realise that I am in the wrong place to deal with this kind of shit. I need somewhere I can pull myself together.

  I need a golden temple to meditate in until I have a quiet mind and can contemplate a future.

  I know there are plenty of places in Thailand far more laidback than Bangkok.

  I decide for my sanity that I need to go to one of these places until I’m ready to come back here.

  So I pick up my phone and book a flight to Chiang Mai in the northern part of Thailand.

  I know from all the countless trips to Thailand that I have arranged over the years for our clients, that Chiang Mai is very different to Bangkok. It’s known for its slower pace of life. It’s an ancient moated city which, thanks to its conservation laws, has mostly stayed intact with it seven-hundred-year-old walls and lack of high-rise buildings. The city is filled with beautiful old buildings, golden temples, sacred shrines, galleries, museums, restaurants and coffee shops.

  It’s a place that seems like the perfect fit for my current mood.

  Chapter 2

  Chiang Mai

  The flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai takes a little over an hour. When I arrive, the sun is shining in a clear blue sky and, although it is still boiling hot with temperatures in the high thirties, I immediately find it less humid and polluted than claustrophobic Bangkok.

  I take in great gulps of the fresher air and feel my head clearing.

  I take a taxi from the airport to the old part of the city and watch the wonders of Chiang Mai unfold in front of my eyes. Here, at last, I can really feel the benefit of time and distance working in my favour. My thoughts this morning are heavily focussed on self-preservation.

  It has occurred to me that if I’m going to be alone in future then a positive mindset is going to be my strongest tool for survival. I don’t have to be a betrayed wife and a sad empty-nester – I realise I have a choice. I can be the old me, or I can be set free.

  It’s simply a matter of shifting my perspective.

  A small, dirty child runs to my taxi as we wait in traffic in the narrow streets. She bangs her tiny fist insistently on the window where I am sitting. The driver yells something and waves his arms dismissively to scare her away. In her hand, the girl has a small packet of tissues to sell and she waves it at me. Her pretty face is imploring me to buy from her. I wind down the window, much to my driver’s irritation, and give her a hundred baht note – the equivalent of around two pounds in sterling. In exchange, she throws me a delighted smile and the tissues and I smile back at her. I don’t need the tissues. I suppose I just wanted to do a small act of kindness in the remote hope that karma might smile back on me and provide a little compassion in return.

  I feel like I need all the help I can get.

  My accommodation of choice is a family-run homestay. It’s ridiculously inexpensive for a three-night stay when I consider what I’ve just paid for one night in Bangkok. The moment I arrive, climbing out of my taxi in a quiet shady side street just a few minutes’ walk from the old square, it’s glaringly obvious to me that I’d underestimated how long I should stay here.

  The place is simply gorgeous. The house is of a bygone age. Traditionally built in the local thick, honey-coloured stone, it has a first-floor terrace overlooking the street and its long oak balustrade is covered with twisted flowering vines. It looks so weathered by its history and by everything around it, and so reflective of what was once here in the ancient capital city of the Kingdom of Lanna, that I feel immediately enchanted.

  I’m welcomed at the kerbside as I get out of the taxi and led into the house by a barefoot old man who insists on carrying my rucksack. I’m assuming he is the grandfather of the family. I slip out of my flip flops and trot along behind him as he shuffles along a cool hallway lined and scented with incense sticks, where the floors are inlaid with beautiful mosaics and where all the doors have big, heavy, wrought iron latches, making the place feel like a safe haven.

  At the far end of the hallway, I glimpse a small shaded garden with wrought iron tables and chairs and tropical plants. At the reception area, I meet the mother of the family, whose name is Noon and who speaks very good English. I explain to her straight away how I’d initially booked for three nights but that I might now like to stay longer if that’s possible.

  She smiles and tells me no problem and just to let her know by tomorrow.

  She hands over a heavy iron key that looks like it unlocks a castle gate and bows to me graciously. ‘Yours is room seven. Breakfast is served between 7.30 and 10 a.m. in the garden. Enjoy your stay, Miss Anderson.’

  And there it is again; the assumption that I’m single and unmarried.

  My room is on the upper floor and set back on the terrace that overlooks the street. Inside, it is deliciously cool thanks to a stone tiled floor. I look around to see a double bed and simple bamboo furnishings and a clean and functional bathroom, with a toilet, a vanity sink, and a walk-in shower. It feels strange to be here on my own but I’m not scared.

  I’m feeling something else now. Liberated? Excited?

  I spend the afternoon walking the streets of the old town. I sto
p for a delicious Pad Thai washed down with a cold local beer at a busy and popular-looking street food stall. I devour the meal. Anyone would think that I hadn’t tasted food in weeks. I hadn’t realised how hungry I was. The soft noodles and the fish sauce and tamarind and fresh lime flavour is exquisite in my mouth. How can such a basic dish that costs so little taste so good?

  With my hunger satisfied, my thirst quenched and my mood lifted, I explore the bustling market, primarily looking for a few more items of clothing and some underwear, but to my dismay, the only undergarments I can find are tiny slips of silk and lace. As my knickers of choice are usually plain cotton from M&S, I flick through all those on offer looking for comfort.

  With none to be found, I actually consider buying some men’s cotton underpants instead, reasoning that besides the baggy Y-front bit at the front they look like my sort of thing.

  You’ll be relieved to know I didn’t. Instead, I give in and buy several pairs of colourful silk and lacy ones, although I’m convinced they’ll be uncomfortable and scratchy.

  I am, however, pleased with my other purchases of loose-fitting cotton shorts in lovely bright colours, a pair of elasticated, baggy, hippy-style, elephant-patterned trousers (everyone seems to be wearing them and they look so comfortable), and several floaty cotton dresses and skirts and silk scarfs and sarongs – and all for such ridiculously cheap prices that I can’t bring myself to barter for them even a little.

  In a second-hand book shop, I browse and manage to pick up a tourist map and a Lonely Planet: Thailand guidebook. Then, with my bags of shopping, I wave down a tuk-tuk to take me back to the homestay. I’ve never ridden in a tuk-tuk before and I’m really looking forward to the experience. It’s one of those things that everyone says you must do in Thailand. I suppose it’s like a rite of passage. No matter how dangerous and foolhardy it might seem at the time.