The End

So thats it: we're finished. Polly and Dan are no more, our relationship a whisper on the wind. It's a tragedy but my immediate concern is what I'm going to do at weddings when I get a plus one. Polly will obviously be fine but what about me? I'll probably have to employ a cheap prostitute and then never get invited to a wedding ever again.

I should mention that we are still technically a couple but it's only a matter of time now until we break up. How do I know? A fat little mechanical Buddha told me. We were out shopping in Krabbi - a particularly stressful affair because Polly was crippled by her bad back and I was suffering from stomachas eruptis - when I happened on this pleasant looking chap.

If you've seen Big then you'll understand this guy's the equivalent of Zoltar. I gave Polly our only five baht piece and she sent the Bhudda a-whirling until he gave us the fateful number 21. It turns out all fates can be categorised by 30 succinct descriptions because there were that many choices of destiny to be taken from the counter under the big man.

Unfortunately all the fortunes were written in Thai; fortunately, our very generous host at our hotel spoke excellent English and was able to translate. I was coming down the stairs as he finished translating for Polly and when I enquired as to the outcome he was very abashed and refused to tell me. After some struggle I was able to squeeze the prophecy out of Polly and it turns out she's going to be very lucky and then have a new lover very soon. My only guess is that she'll win the lottery and be able to upgrade to a far superior model; Tinchy Strider I expect.

So with this grave news we set off to Koh Lanta and landed on our feet with a small resort that had only been open two months. Very reasonably priced, it had the most comfy bed we've seen in weeks, air conditioning, mini-bar and hot shower. Thank Vishnu it did because the next night was full moon. Prudence requires that anyone interested in that night's events apply in person, but suffice to say we have never needed these creature comforts more than that day. Polly only left the bed once and that was during a power cut when she crawled to the balcony to breath.

We packed up and sheepishly left for our next destination, Koh Ngai. Beautiful place, very rustic and probably the loudest place we've ever been on account of the jungle creatures, which meant we got about an hour's sleep every night.

Even when the sun rose the wildlife found a way to torment us, my particular favourite being this guy that Polly found in her trousers.

My least favourite was a slightly smaller version I encountered on a morning jog; I hadn't spotted his massive web and went face first through it. Needless to say I took the whole thing in my stride and after few mere seconds of having a proper fit I got the spider off me.

If we thought we were safe when we ate at the restaurant, we were wrong. A couple of extremely bolshie mina birds joined us every lunchtime after Polly had made the mistake of feeding them scraps on the first day.

After that they decided our food was fair game and landed right on our table and tried to pick off morsels of food when we weren't looking.

Exhausted from our battles with nature we set off to Koh Kradang where we've been spoiling ourselves at a posh resort. Turns out we couldn't have timed it better because it's been crapping it down. It's really not a problem though, we've taken advantage and spent our days in the gargantuan bed and had our own little filmathon.

Despite the size, as you can see Polly wasn't that keen on sharing.

In other news, it will be to everyone's delight to know that I've acquired a vest.

Cardamom mountains and Koh Kood

Every communal tv has been playing the 24-hour tsunami coverage since Friday. It’s strange being in Thailand while this is happening in Japan; there doesn’t seem to be any fear here, but everyone is obviously hugely concerned for the Japanese and it’s a surreal replay of 2004.

No-one here seems fussed about the nuclear problem, but we overheard a conversation between a Canadian and Italian yesterday while on Koh Kood. The Canadian said his countrymen on the west coast back home were all preparing for radiation poisoning and had bought up all the Potassium Iodide supplies, so he was going back to Thai mainland to get some to send home. We later agreed with the Italian that this all seemed a little bit neurotic.

We’d just come into Thailand when the disaster happened, having spent our last few nights in Cambodia at an eco-lodge in the Cardamom mountains. What is an eco-lodge you ask? Well, in basic terms, it’s a shack in the rainforest. But, because it’s an eco-lodge, the inconveniences you usually pay to avoid – animals in your room, animals dropping off the ceiling while you’re eating, animals attaching themselves to your skin and sucking your blood – you apparently pay to enjoy.

For example, we had a family of Tokay Geckos living in our room. Not a problem, as we quite like these weird chaps, even if they’re a little bit big and bulbous. We did freak out a bit when there was a huge thud beside us at dinner the first night and we saw one on the floor next to us. Until this point we’d been happy thinking they just worked their way round the tasty mosquitoes and bugs while hanging upside down from the ceiling, but it turns out they sometimes make a suicidal leap if they see something really tasty. Whether they take into consideration where they land we don’t know, but we spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling.

This turned out to be just the preemptive remedy to our jungle trek the next day. We were warned by our host Janet that there would be some leaches on the journey and she advised us of what clothes to wear and gave us some tips on how to get them off. Everyone else had sophisticated anti-leach leggings, walking boots and trousers, but we knew right from the start the best option would be to wear Reebok Classics and Hawaiian shorts.

I don’t know if you’ve encountered leaches before, but they’re bastards. They hang around dank leaves and mud, attached by one sucker to the floor while the other end spins round like a maniac windsock smelling out its next victim. Once it catches a whiff it moves like lightening across the floor, flipping over from one sucker to the other like a possessed Slinky. Once it gets you (we had about 50 confirmed attachments each on the trek), you’ve got about five seconds for it to move from the base of your standard 2010 edition Reebok Classic to the ankle.

These little worms can get in anywhere too – even through the Classic’s patented ventilation system! Only one survived long enough to suck any blood out of us, it somehow infiltrated through the backdoor and ended up on my ankle, but was gone pretty sharpish. The dog that came along with us wasn’t so lucky and, lacking any urban footwear and sporting only a keen nose, ended up with fat leaches in its mouth and between its toes.

Anyway, we spent the whole day staring at our feet and flicking these blood-suckers off and so it was a welcome relief to get back to base and stare at the ceiling to avoid flying Tokay. Oh, and we saw a waterfall and a lake. We went in them both. They were nice. And we went out on a kayak.

We waved goodbye to Cambodia; quite literally in my case as I bode farewell to a toothless old woman on the back of a moped who kept telling me she loved me as we rode our tuk-tuk to the Thai border. We thought the border crossing – normally a long, tedious affair – had gone a bit smoothly and were proven right as we waited two hours in the belting midday heat for a minibus to fill up to take us to our next destination, Trat.

We decided to spend another day in civilization to organize our next leg of the trip, then got on a speedboat and headed to Koh Kood, Thailand’s fourth largest island. Very nice it was too; we chose a resort and unpacked the Speedos.

On day three we decided that we’d do a bit of exploring and rented a motorbike. The first one had to go back after about ten minutes because the back wheel was falling off, but then we got stuck in, braving rickety wooden bridges and vertical mountain roads. So excited was Polly that she clean forgot the map after one stop, but seeing as there was really only one road we didn’t think we could get lost. After seeing the same junction for the third time as we tried to get back we decided that even if we couldn’t get lost we could certainly get confused and had to flag down a Russian couple and relieve them of one of their many maps. All a bit stressful at the time but what does it matter when you look this cool?

The following day was just another day in paradise – until disaster struck. The morning we were due to leave, we decided to have a game of bat n ball and were on top of the world having broken the world record with a score of 245! Polly was busy showboating after this famous result when she lunged for the ball and froze in pain. Her back was out. We barely got her back to the room and she had to lie down for a good hour before she could move again. I did some remedial back rubbing but it can’t have made it worse because we finally got her on the speedboat back to the mainland. I wasn’t that popular when, not realising she was asleep, shouted to be heard above the engine and started her out of sleep, convulsing the muscles in her back. We didn’t talk much after that.

One visit to the hospital, several shock therapies and prescriptions later and gladly Polly is on the mend. Just the two flights to Bangkok and Krabbi today, shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe we’ll get a wheelchair and bump her up to those expensive seats with all the leg room!

Me and my beaches

Finally we can stop pretending to be interested in temples and history – we’ve hit the beaches. It’s all tanning oil, Speedos and girly cocktails from here on in. Our last port of call inland was Chao Doc in Vietnam, a town on the other side of the Mekong River from Cambodia and there wasn’t a European in sight. We spent a couple of days getting taken around on motorbikes looking at rice fields (wet) and temples on hills (hilly) but the real fun was in the evenings.

We’d heard about a local bbq hut that’s a bit of a hit with the locals so went there for dinner and got a raucous reception from one table who kept insisting we went over to try their food and drink their banana spirit. We couldn’t communicate with anyone by any means but pointing and laughing so we sat down and gesticulated at the waiter as if to say ‘bring us anything you’ve got my good man’.

We’re doing this at every meal now because what we got was amazing and included a meatsicle, a sort of burger stuck on a piece of bamboo that we cooked on the tabletop barbeque. By the end of the night we’d been fed a banquet and drunk an awful lot of spirits. I’d innocently partaken in a ritual of drinking half a shot each with the girls on the rowdy table, but I later got the impression that meant I fancied them. Polly wouldn’t let me take any of them home though.

We’ve been away two months now and till this point hadn’t seen a single beach. Makes you sick doesn’t it? So it was with great excitement, water wings and a Frisbee that we headed to Phu Quoc. Apparently this island’s a real bone of contention between Cambodia and Vietnam because it’s much closer to Cambodia but Vietnam’s gone and stolen it. Not that we care, it’s got a beach!

We arrived by boat and got dropped at any old hotel on the beach, but our slapdash attitude cost us dearly in the heat of the day. Turns out it’s pretty popular and despite there being dozens of resorts it took us an hour of schlepping up the beach to find a room. Phu Quoc was grand at the time, we just sunbathed in the day and went to watch the local Abba tribute band of an evening, but the best was yet to come.

Back into Cambodia we stopped off at a fishing town called Kep for a night, ate lots of seafood and drunk too much again. I had a chance to polish my pool skills while Polly chatted to an American guy out there working for an NGO – I’m pretty certain Polly fancied him, he kept going on about how he organises his expenses using spreadsheets, which is right up her street.

From there we went to Koh Tonsay, also known as ‘Rabbit Island’ but I haven’t got the faintest idea why, it’s not got any rabbits and looks nothing like one either. When you consider there are about 20 beach huts with no running water on the whole island, you may see the futility in Polly’s mission to hack through jungle, clamber over rocks and fight off a sea dog in order to find what she claimed was ‘the biggest supermarket in the region’. We eventually found someone who would sell us food, which we were more than grateful for by that point.

Then finally, the jackpot. On our way to a lodge in the Cardamom mountains we thought we should try a place called Koh Rong off the seediest of Cambodian towns, Sihanoukville. No idea why but this place has story after story of people being robbed, drugged, imprisoned and plenty more besides. We didn’t hang about and went straight to the island and what an island it is. I guess this is what Thailand was like 15 years ago; three very nice bungalow resorts and nothing but beautiful sea and white beaches.

We thought we were going to have a bit of a nightmare though as when we arrived the first thing the owner did was come up to us apologetically and say that, despite our three night booking, we could only spend one night there and that he’d find us somewhere else to stay. He explained that the guy that owned the island, not to mention Cambodia’s biggest bank and insurance company, had phoned up that morning to say he needed the whole resort for his royal friend’s birthday party.

Being the lovely understanding people we are we said it wasn’t a problem, but the next day he was getting more and more agitated and we weren’t moving. Then about midday the beach, normally dotted with a dozen sunbathers at most, started to fill up. Not with more tourists, but rather with a regiment of Cambodia’s Army. Armed to the eyeballs with machine guns and pistols, they must have thought us a very serious threat.

As it happened the owner couldn’t find anywhere for us to stay so there we remained with the richest, most affluent group of Cambodians going. They turned out to be very hospitable and invited us to their beach party, where there was a lot of drinking and a lot of dancing – we had a go at a bit of Khmer-style dancing (like raving, but slower) then showed them a thing or two about dancing to the Macarena. They even put on a huge fireworks display, but without the usual health and safety legislation it was all a bit tense when they went off all around us. In summary, the most important lesson I learned was that a hangover in the searing heat is a very undesirable thing indeed.