I left for Thailand because I could live there and went with a friend of a friend who was already going and had his trip planned. I went along with him less than a week after talking about it. I was on a plane going. I thought I was going to be away for 3 months; I thought I was going to have the absolute vacation of a lifetime, and I was going to see tigers, elephants, jungles, the rainforest, and all that wonderful stuff! We decided that we were actually going to walk to Bangkok because it was a nice day and it was 5 o’clock in the evening, so the sun was not going down for hours because the sun doesn’t go down for hours in the middle of the British summer.
So we started to walk along an eight-lane highway, passing loads and loads of bus stops full of people and children going home from school, and taxi drivers would pull up and say, "Do you want a lift?" Oh, no, no, no. When I first went there, it was totally overwhelming; I was excited and anxious, a little nervous and cautious, but all I was was sensory, with the sites and smells and everything that was going on around me, and I just felt like I was living an adventure. I didn’t stay in Bangkok very long; the guy I went with went south, and that was the end of that relationship; it wasn’t an intimate relationship or anything like that, thanks to add, and that is when I saw the Khaosan Road, which was some sort of young preppy backpacker area, and I was quite disappointed with it really because it was so western; it was not like being in Thailand at all. And I honestly didn’t stay in Bangkok very long; it was a bit too much.
So I bought a ticket, a boat ticket, to go down to one of the islands. I didn’t know which one to choose, so one woman picked the boat going to Kasamoi. You know, when that boat brought in the hub the next day, I honestly had to start pinching myself because I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I have landed in absolute paradise on earth. I have never seen tropical beaches, but after a couple of days of being there, I just knew I was born to live on a beach because I just came alive on that beach; I loved it, the white sands, the water spots, the volleyball on the beach; I just loved it, and for another five weeks I stayed down there, my life just drifted by; I became the stereotypical beach bum, got my hair all plated up, and I really was beginning to fall totally in love with Thailand! As I was laying in my little bamboo bangloo this one night, the person in the bangloo next to mine was playing some sort of tingling music, and as soon as I heard that music, I realized I hadn’t had enough of this incredible country. I was not ready or prepared to go back to what I remembered as that miserable place I was supposed to call home.
I went to the city, got work, got an apartment, had a social life, and got a boyfriend. It used to take 3 hours to get to this school that I was working at if I used the road, so I rode the canals, but the trouble with canals is that you are riding on an open sewer, an untreated, unfiltered open sewer, and the Thai people just take a book or a piece of paper and fold it in half, and they put it over their mouth and nose, and it protects them from the water. Such a simple solution, but it works, and I was not very diligent with my book or piece of paper, and I remember getting splashed one morning. I was sure that a little dirty water would be okay, but of course it wasn’t. I woke up the next morning, and I was so violent that I honestly wondered whether I was in the process of dying. But I am prone to anxiety and overreaction, so I told myself to just be calm a bit; it will be okay. I went to see this doctor, and she said you got an amoeba; you picked it up from the canal water. I was horrified at the idea of having parasites inside me. My life seemed to be going from bad to worse, and I was getting more and more miserable. I woke up the next morning and I was really sick. I had a headache and a fever and really wasn’t feeling 100 percent at all, and of course I got dengue fever. It’s a bit like malaria, but the biggest difference is that you can’t treat dengue fever. The headache was so intense that I used to sit in a shaded area wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses and still feel like my head was going to explode. I just wanted to come home; I didn’t have any money and had nothing to survive on; I was literally counting the pennies. So I am down on this Thailand island, and paradise has actually turned into hell on earth. I felt so alone; I had no connection with any of the foreigners who were there. They were all on vacation, enjoying the beach; I wasn’t on vacation; I wasn’t enjoying the beach; I just didn’t want to be there.
But during this time, this Chappelle (a white man) moved next to me, and when I look back, that man was like a refreshing British fresher. He was so English! He looked like he had just stepped out of a plane from the country, which at that moment of time I would have probably crawled over just to get too. We didn’t spend a lot of time with each other; we didn’t get to know each other, but it was nice just to stay near him and talk about the weather, which you do when you meet an English person. I can say I clicked with him, but I can’t say I actually connected with him in any deep way; we didn’t really have a lot to do with each other. I had been away from home for a long time because I didn’t have the money at that time for a ticket home. He told me he traveled around Asia; he went to Japan; he went different places; he dealt with jewelry, gems, and things like that, which isn’t uncommon because a lot of people are involved with import and export businesses. Now I have no idea that he is going to be the person who changes the rest of my life. I am quite a judge of character, but I think I am a good one because of where I have been and the sort of people I have met. At that time, I was still very naive; I was certainly very gullible and very immature; I didn’t see people for what they were; I saw people for what I thought they were. I certainly had my suspicions, but to be fair, a lot of people who do that backpacking route through Thailand and hang out on beaches for a long time are partial to drugs.
All Credits goes to the Sandra Gregory.