The Backpacking Housewife

by Janice Horton

  A real ‘no news no shoes’ kind of place. It sounds perfect.

  I’ve actually managed to plan ahead this time and I’ve booked a room at a small resort on the beach. Many travellers, I know, are not too fussed and will happily just show up and take a shared mixed dorm (and shared bathroom) or even be prepared to sleep on the beach with the crabs and sandflies. I’m not quite that kind of traveller yet and wonder if I ever will be.

  My chosen resort is lovely. It’s one of several set back from the beach behind a line of pine-like casuarina trees and swaying palm trees. I’m met off the boat by a young boy with a wheelbarrow who is waving a sheet of paper with my name scribbled on it. He takes my rucksack from me and puts it in his barrow and I follow him up the beach and through a garden planted with flowering musky-fragranced frangipani. There is a circular tikki-style palm-thatched bar and a reception area and a small swimming pool and all the accommodations are typical of many in this part of Thailand – simple, raised, teakwood bungalows with rattan wall panels and palm-thatched roofs.

  This time, I have paid a bit extra (okay, a lot extra) for air conditioning (I know Summer would consider me a total spendthrift) but I hope it deters the bugs and mozzies and other biting flies that have bothered me in Koh Lanta. Inside my bungalow is a double-sized bed draped with a mosquito net providing double bug protection. My bathroom is gorgeous and has a hot water bamboo showerhead, a sink carved out of a sanded tree stump, and the very best thing of all – my little outside balcony has a hammock.

  I end up spending the whole afternoon in that hammock, reading and snoozing and feeling deliciously decadent. I’m reluctant to move even when I see the sun going down, but I’m suddenly hungry, so I wander inside to take a shower and dress in something light and floaty.

  In the dusky evening light, I stroll barefoot through the trees and flowers and along a sandy path, accompanied by a cacophony of croaking frogs and chirping crickets to the beach where, on a narrow stretch of sand in front of the resort, I see tables for two have been set with white cloths and tealights and little arrangements of flowers. It looks terribly romantic.

  This is when I suddenly get a little concerned. Alarm bells start ringing in my head.

  I hadn’t considered before coming here that this dreamy resort might be the preferred haunt of newlywedded honeymooners and cosy couples. But as there’s hardly anyone around, it’s hard to tell, so I take a bar stool at the tikki bar where a smiling barman asks me what I’d like to drink and I ask for a glass of white wine.

  I sip my drink and browse the menu.

  I decide to go for a spicy rice dish as I’m hungry. I order the massaman seafood curry.

  ‘Table for one, madam?’ I’m asked, which I think makes me sound lost and lonely.

  I’m shown to a table on the beach. The other seat and set of cutlery are both quickly removed.

  I try not to mind being on my own. I try to relax and take in the ambiance.

  I listen to the gentle sound of the waves that are so close they’re almost lapping at my toes.

  As others arrive to take up other tables, I see I’m right. It’s all loved-up couples here tonight.

  Now I feel a bit awkward. I wish I’d brought a book with me although, of course, it’s far too dark to read with just one tiny flickering tealight on the table. My meal comes quickly and is delicious but once I’ve finished eating, with the only sounds being the waves kissing the shore and loved-up couples kissing each other, I want to head back to my hut and lock my door.

  I try unsuccessfully to get a signal on my phone to pick up any messages.

  I sigh deeply. To think that I’d stupidly thought that no wi-fi would be A Good Thing.

  With nothing else for it, I go back to my room, close my curtains and climb into bed.

  I’m not tired but I am bored.

  I pick up my book but with only two chapters left to read, I soon finish it.

  I try to cheer myself up by thinking about what I’ll do tomorrow. I decide I’ll have a delicious breakfast. I’ll sunbathe all morning. Then I’ll have a light lunch. I remind myself to check to see if there is a book swap shelf in reception, so that I’ll have another novel to read while I’m lazing in my hammock again in the afternoon. Then, I’ll have a drink and dinner … again. I’m bored just thinking about it.

  The problem with being bored is you also have time to think. It is a vicious circle.

  Now that I’ve stopped being busy, I’m suddenly feeling strangely bereft and lonely.

  I’m not angry anymore. I’m not bitter either. I’m just feeling, well … horribly empty.

  I have been so busy preoccupying myself and planning and travelling and sightseeing and praying and socialising and flirting and learning how to scuba dive, that I’ve done a pretty good job of making sure I don’t have any spare time in which to overthink everything and become depressed again. So now I’m thinking about my marriage and I’m feeling like a failure.

  My marriage is over.

  I say it out loud, just to make it even more real.

  I’m one of those women whose marriages has failed.

  I’m going to be a divorcee. A stigma. A sad statistic.

  I start to cry. Marriage is such a big and all-encompassing thing, I tell myself. It’s a husband and a house and a car and, in my case, two children. It takes up such a big space and the longer you are married the more space it takes. I’m now starting to see it as a big black soul hole. It might start out like a bright shiny star that dazzles you with its promise of light but then it sucks you in with its gravitational pull, taking over everything and every single part of you until one day, it simply can’t sustain itself anymore and it starts to implode.

  And that’s when it spits you out and leaves a black hole in your life and your heart.

  My marriage has pulled me down. It’s crushed me. It’s squeezed the life out of me.

  It’s far stronger and much weightier than any Thai sumo-wrestler masseuse.

  I sob for everything I feel has been taken away from me. Not only my marriage and the loss of my home and my dog and all my personal possessions, but the loss of my friends and my boys and my mum. They all seem so very far away now.

  I’m in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but emptiness.

  My pillow is now sopping wet and my face is a red, swollen mess.

  I must have cried myself to sleep because when I wake it’s morning.

  I get out of bed and stand outside in my vest and shorts. I walk down onto the beach, almost down to the waterline, where I sit cross-legged and close my eyes. I tip back my face and let the warm orange glow of the early morning sun’s rays coming over the horizon be the bright light I see through my closed and swollen eyelids.

  I breathe deeply. I stand up and I raise my arms into the air above my head and press my palms together. Then, I open my eyes and I open my heart and I realise I am saluting this beautiful new day. Today, I’m determined to keep busy.

  I’m still in shock over how upset I was last night and although I’m over it now and can see it for what it was – simply another stage in my grieving process – I certainly don’t want a repeat performance. So, I’ve decided that today, instead of sitting around, I’m going to do something adventurous instead. I’ve seen a half-day trip advertised in the reception area, to a nearby island called Koh Muk. It’s part of the National Marine Park and the island is famous for its Emerald Cave. Instead of spending my morning sunbathing on the beach or reading in a hammock, I’m going on a trip. The Emerald Cave is a sea cave, which means access to it is via the sea. I’m told you can swim through the narrow eighty-metre long tunnel of the cave into the inner chamber that is formed from a huge sink hole. Once you have passed through the tunnel, the cave opens out into a hidden lagoon with lush tropical plants and its very own beach. It sounds amazing.

  I read in my guidebook that it is called the Emerald Cave because the light from the sun reflecting on the water in the lagoon shines on the
surrounding walls, giving them a deep green colour. It also used to be a favourite spot for pirates to hide their treasure because the tunnel into the lagoon is underwater during high tide and only accessible at low tide.

  I do love the idea of a hidden cave and a secret lagoon and pirate treasure!

  I ask Mr Lee, our resort manager, if it’s possible to hire a long-tail boat for the morning and head out there myself after breakfast (thinking that I’d rather not be squished up on a boat full of kissing couples), but he tells me that it can be quite dangerous to go there alone.

  He explains that if you get left inside when the tide’s turning, you’ll be stuck in there until the next day when the cave becomes accessible again. Heeding his warning, I sign up for the organised trip that’s leaving this morning at nine-thirty to meet with the low tide.

  After breakfast, wearing a sarong over my bikini, I grab a bottle of water and realise that as I’ll be swimming through a cave, I’ll have to leave my phone behind. There’ll be no photos for Facebook today, unfortunately. The ride to the cave is calm and smooth and so the trip is uneventful and pleasant. There are seven of us on this excursion – myself, our guide, two young Chinese couples who chat exclusively to each other in Mandarin and our Thai boatman who only speaks Thai. I’m grateful to chat to our English-speaking guide and our topic of conversation is our mutual amusement over our Thai boatman’s T-shirt which reads: Good guy goes to Heaven. Bad guy goes to Pattaya. A slogan claiming that Pattaya, a beach resort on Thailand’s east coast, has a well-deserved reputation for debauchery.

  When we arrive at the cave, we’re almost the first. There’s just one other boat at the entrance and around a dozen people already in the water, all ready to disappear into a small crack in the rock face. We are given orange life vests to wear and head protection in the form of Styrofoam bicycle helmets. Once we’re in the water, we’re instructed to follow our guide – who has a flashlight – through the tunnel in a single and orderly line.

  It feels so good to finally slip over the side of our boat into the cool water after sitting under the heat of the scorching sun, despite it still only being early morning. The water outside the cave is calm and crystal clear and when I look down, I can see lots of fish swimming around. We swim into the cave entrance following our guide. Beams from his flashlight make the dark cave look magical and the echoes of our voices sound quite eerie.

  It takes us around ten minutes to swim along the tunnel. I find it really enjoyable but I suppose, if you were in the slightest bit worried about closed dark spaces, it might be rather scary. Soon we reach the place where the cave opens up into a big sunlit lagoon.

  I immediately leave our group to swim out into the middle of the lagoon and lay on my back in the cool emerald coloured water, looking up through a hole in the top of the headland at the walls of emerald rock with hanging vines and tropical foliage.

  It’s beautiful and quite fascinating in a romantic and swashbuckling adventure sort of way. With this lagoon being accessible at low tide, it is indeed a perfect place to hide pirate treasure. As more and more people come through the cave into the lagoon, I head ashore to the little half-moon shaped beach to dry off and warm up. I lie back on the sand and close my eyes and try to ignore everyone else and their shrieks and yells and splashes. I have a little fantasy about being here long enough that everyone leaves and the tide turns and I have this absolute paradise all to myself. But my imagination can’t hold onto the fantasy for very long because more and more people in bicycle helmets and orange lifejackets are flooding through from the tunnel into the lagoon and the whole place is reverberating with their gasps and cries and yells and shouts.

  Very soon, I expect there will be no space left in the lagoon or on the beach and everyone will be swimming on top of each other in an effort to either stay or to go.

  I remember what the lads had said about The Beach on Koh Phi Phi.

  ‘Thousands of tourists pouring out of long-tail boats like lemmings onto what used to be a pristine beach…’ I think about what a shame it is that all these amazing places are now so ruinously popular with tourists that the pristine perfection has been spoilt.

  Soon, I’ve had enough. I decide I’m heading back through the tunnel.

  Going back out, I realise I’m swimming against the current. It’s also problematic to swim in the opposite direction to the infinite line of incoming people swimming in such a narrow space. I’m glad of my head protection, as I’m rudely pushed aside a couple of times, knocking my head on the sharp rocks that are jutting out from the side of the cave.

  Feeling annoyed, I keep to the side saying, ‘excuse me please’ to no avail.

  I really want to get out of there. But just as I reach the mid-point of the tunnel, where I can see no natural light at either end, although there are plenty of flashlights being waved about in all directions, someone suddenly starts screaming.

  The screams are ear-splitting in such a confined space and they ricochet off the walls.

  There’s also a lot of splashing and then even more shouting. It’s chaotic and awful.

  I feel deafened by it all. I try to turn around to see what might be going on.

  I want to see if I can do anything to help whoever it is in a total panic.

  But once again, I’m slammed into the wall of the tunnel by someone rudely trying to push past me and in my attempts to right myself, I manage to hit my knee and catch my foot on what feels like a very hard sharp rock. Cursing at the pain and the discourtesy of some people, I can only hope that the screaming and claustrophobic person has managed to get themselves dragged either in or out of the tunnel, because there are so many people in it now and so much chaos and yelling and thrashing about that it’s impossible for me to swim back in and offer any help. So, in pain with my knee and with the cut in my foot stinging in the salt water, I make my way back outside. Once I make it, I find myself swimming amongst what had to be twenty or more long-tail boats all at anchor outside the cave and they all look the same.

  I haven’t a clue which one is mine.

  I swim around for about half an hour or more, searching for my boat and the one and only recognisable feature amongst them all – our boatman wearing the Good guy goes to Heaven. Bad guy goes to Pattaya T-shirt.

  Eventually, I find him. Thank goodness. If I hadn’t, I’m sure I’d have been swimming around outside the Emerald cave until I bled to death from the deep gash in my foot. When our boatman sees that I’m injured, he looks very concerned and takes me straight back to Koh Ngai.

  Back on the island, I thank him and wade from the boat to limp my way back up the beach with my bashed knee and my bloody foot. I know there’s no pharmacy or medical facility on the island, but I hope the resort manager, Mr Lee, can offer me some ice for my knee and an alcohol wash and bandage for my foot.

  ‘That is a nasty gash. No get wet,’ Mr Lee advises me when he sees my cut foot. ‘Seawater full of germs. So keep foot always dry so not get infected.’

  I return to my room and grit my teeth while I apply an ice pack on my bruised knee.

  I give the graze on the top of my foot and the cut on the side a good clean.

  The top of my foot, with the loss of several layers of skin, looks like a slab of raw liver.

  All in all, I suppose it could have been worse, but it annoys me to think that I now wouldn’t be able to go swimming or snorkelling or diving again until it heals up. Damn it.

  I limp back over to reception with my foot bandaged and with my finished copy of The Beach. I need something else to read to while away my afternoon in my hammock.

  Disappointingly, the only books left on the swop shelf are in every language other than English. I limp over to the bar for a drink instead. I order a glass of white wine and, after a couple of reviving sips, I’m feeling perhaps a little less sorry for myself.

  A young woman wearing a sarong approaches from the beach and orders a couple of beers. She has short dark hair and a friendly round face. Sh
e says ‘hello’ and smiles at me and, realising she speaks English, I say ‘hello’ back and we strike up a conversation. She spots my bandage.

  ‘Did you cut your foot on the coral here?’

  ‘No. I did it this morning in the Emerald Cave,’ I tell her.

  ‘You’d better watch it doesn’t get infected,’ she advises.

  ‘I know. No swimming. No snorkelling. No diving. It’s depressing,’ I lament.

  She winches in sympathy for me. ‘I’m Jodie, by the way.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Jodie, I’m Lori. You don’t happen to have a book you might want to swap, do you? I’ve just finished this one.’ I wiggle my book at her hopefully.

  Jodie smiles. ‘My girlfriend just finished a Wilbur Smith she picked up on Koh Lanta. It must be good because she’s hardly had her nose out of it these past couple of days. I’ll ask her for you.’ She takes her two beers back to the beach but soon comes back to the bar accompanied by another girl, who she introduces as Laura, and who is carrying a big hardback book. Her eyes light up once she spots my battered paperback.

  ‘Cool! I’ve always wanted to read The Beach,’ she enthuses.

  ‘Great. I’ll swap you,’ I say.

  ‘Jodie tells me you’ve cut your foot. You’ll need to keep it away from the sand. If you get sand in it, you’ll get an infection.’

  ‘Yes. I know. No sand and no water. That rules out everything to do around here.’

  The girls sit at the bar and we chat for a while. They’re really nice and friendly.

  With the book swap done and their beers finished, they make a move back to the beach where they’ve been sunbathing. Feeling brave and dreading another evening in my own company, I ask them if they’ll be coming back over to the bar later, and if I might join them for a drink.

  I realise I’m missing Summer and the lads and all the people on my dive course and I’m even starting to think about Jack and to have regrets – which I know can’t be a good thing.

  I feel like I need cheering up with some interesting company and conversation.