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Tuesday 26th December 2000 Day 14 Well, the inevitable happened! I got diarrhoea! I wasn't expecting this at all. Me, the one who has a stomach of steel, getting the Thailand Trots, the Siamese Squirts, the Krabi Crap, the rapid runs, the flaming shits! It materialised itself in the classic 'follow-through' disaster. What a nightmare! It was meant to be a harmless fart, but ended up with me filling my shorts! What compounded my distress was that my swim shorts were the ones with the netting under pant. So I had to shimmy quickly to the toilet before it came dribbling down my legs! Seriously disgusting! Two rounds of dry toast was all I could manage to eat this morning. Two immodium tablets had to be administered at the breakfast table. Not much of an appetite, surprisingly enough! We had booked a taxi boat to take us to the stunning Rai Leh beach. We thought about cancelling it, as Julie wasn't feeling too good either. Neither of us could make a decision, so we eventually went with the flow. |
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I packed another two immodium tablets in my rucksack in case my arse decided to just go with the flow! Now that would be embarrassing. Shitting myself in the privacy of my own room is bad enough, but the trauma I would suffer from publicly fouling myself would be devastating! |
| It took 45 minutes by long tail boat to reach Rai Leh beach. Along the way we saw some breathtaking scenery, with beach situated right amongst the spectacular limestone cliffs. It was the most fantastic of back drops to our beach for the day. Our longtail boat driver told us that he usually stays by the beach all day, and that we could leave at any time, but the latest must be 3:10pm. |  |
| The way I was feeling we could easily of gone back straight away! But I wasn't going to let this spoil what I wanted, and that was to relax in this beautiful place. As we reached the beach, we had to climb out of the boat, and wade to shore. The water was crystal clear, and as we waded through the water we could see a large school of tiny tiny fish swimming between our legs. We walked down the beach for a while looking for the best shade, and for some space! It may only of been 10:30am but the beach was already busy. This has always been the most popular beach in the area. But as this beach wasn't accessible by road, everyone had to arrive by longtail boat, sometimes the noise of the engines could be deafening. |  |
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We found some good shade beneath a large tree, and we put our towels down to mark our territory. I did the mistake of lying down to try and get some sleep. Every time I sat up I felt nauseas, every time I rolled over, I felt nauseas. "You're not exaclty Leonardo DiCaprio, are you?" joked Julie! But I was fragile! |
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Hannah had brought her snorkels with her, and spent most of the day going in and out of the water. She didn't see much though. There was no coral to speak of, and that shoal of fish had gone somewhere else. I spent the whole day flaked out, absolutely good for nothing, and it seemed to irritate Julie slightly! Although we only decided to leave at 2:30pm, so we had spent a good part of a day on the beach. |
| Walking back towards the longtail boats we noticed how even busier it had become. It was packed. We couldn't instantly find our boat, so we decided to have lunch at the Rai Leh Beach Resort. Hannah ordered her favourite of this holiday, and that's Sweetcorn soup. When this soup arrived we could tell it wasn't going to taste nice. She tried it, and it was awful. It tasted more like Cornflour soup! |
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Whilst we were sitting there, turning our noses up at this soup, our driver spotted us and showed us where he had moored his boat. On the way back we passed a large yacht that had weighed anchor just of the coast, and it was flying the Welsh flag! Oh, what a lifestyle to be envious of! Cruising the Andaman Sea. |
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By the time we waded ashore at the Andaman Resort I was on automatic pilot, concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other, hoping to God I wouldn't pass out. I remember staggering across the beach, but I have no recollection of passing the Thai massage booths, nor walking up the steps to our room. I do however remember crashing out on the bed! I felt pathetic! At about 6pm we decided to go out for supper. I really didn't feel like food, but I thought I could manage a pizza. I was wrong! All that garlic was churning my stomach, and I love garlic! I got a third of the way through it before threw in the towel. It was becoming quite an ordeal. It must have been an ordeal to watch me as well, because Julie couldn't take it anymore, and left early to go to the reception to find out more about tomorrow's transfer. Anything to escape my laborious chewing and swallowing! Hannah and I returned to our room. I went straight to bed, and tossed and turned all night. It all became a blur after that. ©Copyright Colin Owen 2001 |