I love animals.
I love some animals more than others…
Some animals i’m not overly keen on, I wouldn’t go out of my way to hurt those animals, but those particular animals are not on my Christmas card list (I am aware that animals can’t read therefore wouldn’t appreciate a Christmas card)
I do however class myself as an animal lover.
I eat meat, I wear leather (not exclusively leather.. I’m not a pervert) So I suppose I have double standards in terms of being a lover of animals… But still I class myself as an animal lover.
I can’t watch films with animals in because they make me cry, some years ago me and Jo watched a movie called “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale” halfway through that movie I turned to Jo and told her exactly how the movie would end, but still as that film ended I burst into tears. Films with animal death in absolutely destroy me, i’ve made a vow to never watch “Marley and Me” simply because I know it will reduce me to a crying wreck.
So i’m a meat-eating, animal loving, cry baby.
I love living in the city, I also love nature… I love natural beauty, there are not many things more beautiful than the perfect sunset or a sweeping view of an unspoilt landscape… But then, while living in the city you witness something i’ve termed “Unnatural beauty” for example, in a park not too far from my apartment there is a bench where at the right time of day and with just the right weather conditions the blue sky is reflected in the glass windows of a huge building, honestly some days it is simply stunning.
During our time here in Asia we’ve been fortunate enough to visit some beautiful places and see some truly amazing things, in Krabi we saw sea eagles, a bird i’d only ever seen in captivity, we saw monkeys in the wild, where in the past we had only seen them either in a zoo or a safari park, but there in Krabi we saw them in their natural habitat.
This past weekend we went to Phuket, A beautiful holiday destination that I had never dreamed i’d be able to visit, but amazingly here we were.
We went to a quiet resort called “The Village” on a place called Coconut island, it was lovely, our apartment had it’s own private pool (which I used a lot, managed to fall asleep on an inflatable donut and cook myself),a sea eagle would fly over our patio every morning, flying so slowly and low.. An amazing sight.
on Sunday we went on a boat trip to a beach on Koh Rang Yai… Absolutely stunning. White sand, warm blue water… Beautiful.
The beach grew more busy throughout the day, I was amazed at how beautiful it was… A true island paradise.
As the afternoon drew to a close the beach began to clear as people headed back to boats to head back to resorts dotted around the various islands of Phuket, people who had spent the day enjoying the beach, took photographs of themselves on the beach, people who had no doubt posted selfies of themselves on this beach, marvelled at the beauty of this beach all heading off to the boats to leave this island paradise…. An absolute rubbish dump.
I was disgusted. Plastic cups, bottles, food waste just left on the sand… Joanne commented on the fact there were no bins visible on the beach, which was true. But still, people, pick your fucking rubbish up!
During our time at the resort and at Koh Rang Yai I also got to observe the most fascinating of all the wildlife on this wonderful planet of ours… Humans.
[I had to pause while writing this particular blog (is it actually a blog? Or is it just me waffling on? Who knows? Anyway.. I had to pause, I had a good reason why I paused... A reason i’ll reveal later... Anyway on with the blog thing]
One particular creature, an Eastern European (possibly Russian?) female, in full makeup (perfect for the beach) a creature so very precious that her boyfriend carried a little pillow around with him so as she didn’t have to sit on the plastic seat on our boat like us common folk… An absolute princess, here on a paradise island, there’s nothing actually anything else of note to say about this particular creature, except the fact she spent five minutes in the sea with her boyfriend, followed by about half an hour of her with a mirror re-applying her full make up.. Beach 0 — Vanity 1.
The beach (minus the vanity and minus the rubbish) was beautiful, the resort was lovely, I saw eagles, I made friends with the cats that wandered around the complex... I saw my first ever wild snake… Which admittedly I thought was a piece of rolled up rubber on the floor, until we found out it was a snake wrapped around it’s prey (rest in peace little rodent)... In short, I loved our time in Phuket, and I look forward to visiting again.
[THE PAUSE!]
Right the pause…. And the reasons for the pause… A pause i’ve just realised actually didn’t need to happen (well the actually pause happened) but I didn’t have to make a point of the pause… I could have just carried on writing and made no mention of it... But I did.. And now the pause is a “thing”... The pause exists!
Anyway… The pause.
I was typing up my thoughts about Phuket with the intention of finishing it up and posting it online… The problem was with me posting online I ran the (admittedly very small) risk of someone commenting on it and accidentally revealing a secret….I’ll explain.
A couple of months ago Me and Jo were discussing where to go on holiday (Holiday? Yeah holiday.. Here I am living the fucking dream and still I have the cheek to go on holiday) So anyway, we were discussing holidays… Various places were talked about… Sri Lanka... The Maldives… Disney Hong Kong… Amongst others. But, after looking at these places we simply couldn’t agree on the “perfect” place, then one Saturday morning while talking about holidays in bed (where else?) I said “Bugger it, Lets just go back to England”, honestly out of all the destinations we’d talked about, going back to England was the only one that made Jo actually excited.. “We could surprise your Mum” she said, and there at that moment the biggest secret, plan, scheme we’d ever planned was born, we would travel back to England in secret, go to Dudley and surprise my Mom.
Our sons back at home were told of the plan (this was a risk being as Nick is absolute crap at keeping secrets.. Also we planned to surprise Nicks best friend and pretty much our “adopted” daughter Aimee) So for the first month Just Me, Jo and the boys knew of the plan… We had to make other plans too (we’d obviously need some other stuff to do in England) so after a while, we let a very small number of people back in England and here in Bangkok know of our plans.
We video call my Mom and Dad a lot from Bangkok, during one of these calls we told Mom we had gotten her a Mothers day gift, but due to some problem with the order it wouldn’t be delivered till after Mothers day, we then told her it had been confirmed for delivery on the day we were due to land in England (sneaky eh?)
So… We left our apartment here in Bangkok at 4pm (Bangkok time) and headed to the airport, from the airport Jo messaged the family back at home that she’d just finished work and that she was looking forward to getting Friday out of the way so we could enjoy the weekend… We boarded our plane at 8:20pm and few for 5hrs to Omar to get our connecting flight to London Heathrow... So far so good, the secret was still a secret! We arrived at London Heathrow at 6:30 am (London time… 11:30am Bangkok time) A quick train ride and a shite tube ride and we arrived at Euston train station in London, another train ride and an hour or so later and we were in Birmingham where we picked up a hire car (Oh how Jo has missed driving) and we were on our way to Dudley… Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were waiting for her gift to be delivered (i’d called her earlier and told her I needed her to be at home when it arrived as it was quite expensive and I didn’t want it to be delivered to a neighbour).. The boys were at Moms house with her on the pretence that they wanted to see her reaction to this gift we had gotten her (sadly at this point part of our plan went down in flames as Aimee had told Nick she was ill and wouldn’t be going to Moms with him) So… We drive from Birmingham, we’ve been travelling for about twenty hours, we arrive at my Moms house nad park a little down the road (the last thing we wanted was for her to see us pull up outside in the car)… We snuck up to her door, Jo knocked on the door (doing her very best delivery driver delivering a gift impression)... Mom answered the door, Jo shouted “Special delivery!”.. Mom cried. Mission accomplished!
Dads reaction of “I thought you were coming in June?” was also brilliantly perfect.
The reaction (which we caught on video) was worth all the time we travelled... All the secrets... All the planning... It was perfect.
I’ll no doubt waffle on some more about our week back in England (of course I will) but for now i’ll leave it (we got back to Bangkok today and i’m knackered.. Plus.. I have to give myself something to blog about later don’t I?) .. Anyway.. Until next time….
Oh before I forget…
Surprise YOUR Mom sometime… It’s totally worth it.
SHE’S totally worth it.
Love you Mom x