Wonders and blunders

When King Bhumipol died just before we set off to Thailand, should we have seen this as a portent of things to come?  Though it had little effect on our trip in the event, this has been one of the most accident prone holidays ever. 

Starting of course with Ian’s terrible fall on my birthday, which meant changing our itinerary as he was in too much pain for a long flight (we will draw a discreet veil over the accident that led him to be washing underpants in the shower when he slipped), we were dogged by a series of near disasters, natural and man made.

In Hokitika, the worst rain anyone could remember, lasting 24 hours.  In Rarotonga, a near cyclone out of season; followed by an extreme lightning storm next day. Then there was the M7.8 earthquake in NZ that destroyed the railway we were about to take, leading to more route changes.

There was the car crash we saw and helped the driver, miraculously uninjured, if dazed.  We saw two further accidents on our NZ leg.  People seem to run off the road there very frequently due to lack of attention - and I nearly got us undesirably familiar with a 10m wide native kauri tree after a long day at Milford Sound.

Then I left my camera, including Ian’s birthday gift lens, in a restaurant, only realising when it was closed and we had to move on.  Our hotel kindly arranged to pick it up and courier it ahead to catch up with us. In Rarotonga I thought I'd locked the villa and lost the key (with dinner merrily boiling away on the gas) only to discover I'd put it in the door of the identical unit next door. I also managed to set the pan on fire on another occasion and nearly incinerated the whole tinder box villa, but got it out fast so no damage. As far as losing things go, we have lost 3 hats between us but nothing else of significance.

For a finale, I almost couldn't get the flight from NZ via Malaysia to Bangkok as the check in people insisted I needed a full blank page in my passport for the arrival stamp.  In the event when I arrived at KL this wasn't a problem.  And then when going to board the onward flight three planes were allocated to the same gate, with only one security X-ray machine, so that there was a vast maelstrom of passengers trying to queue in a big spiral, that inevitably dissolved into a frantic scrum as a second machine opened up.

Despite all this, we have had a fantastic time with many wonderful memories that will stay with us forever.  I think particularly of Mount Cook and Milford Sound; an afternoon at a winery high above the lake at Wanaka; the beach at Bang Sak; the villa and view at Koh Yao Noi; birds and plant life rich and strange; spectacular sunsets and dark, southern night skies; and the people in three particularly friendly countries, Thailand, NZ and the Cook Islands. Not to mention my witty and occasionally curmudgeonly Ian, the perfect travelling companion as we start our fortieth year of knowing each other.

Now we have a few quiet and, with luck, trouble free days, as we break our return journey in Thailand.  We'll never forget this trip, for the best and worst reasons.