still queasy after all these years

i suffered from motion sickness throughout my childhood - memories of summer holidays inevitably remind me of all the long journeys in the family austin maxi punctuated by frequent vomit stops and me lying on the back seat with my head on my mother or grandmother's lap, sweating and dizzy and wishing i was somewhere else

then in my early teens it just quietly went away and i was able to annoy the rest of my family by inflicting my music tastes on them over the car stereo just like every other ordinary teenager

it had a brief resurgence one more time during a rough channel crossing on a ferry from dieppe to newhaven in january 1994 when i spent four hours in the early hours of the morning on deck in a force nine gale, watching the sea, as i'd just discovered that the best cure for sea-sickeness was to keep away from the public toilets with all the white-faced people and the smell of fresh vomit and keep the waves in constant view while breathing in fresh cold air

but now after a rather bad experience this weekend on the andaman sea off phuket island which has left both k. and i still experiencing waves of nausea, although with decreasing frequency, i realise that i never really acquired 'sea-legs' after all (which incidentally was the name of the ineffective travel sickness pills i was plied with before any long journeys when i was a kid)

what better way of celebrating our tenth anniversary than a resort holiday we thought, something we haven't done since our friends martyn and jill got married at the banyan tree in 1999 and we had a pleasant weekend break on bintan - k. had earned enough points on his hilton gold members card for three free nights in the hilton resort on phuket - the only good thing that's come out of his frequent work visits to kula lumpur since march

we reached the conclusion that phuket is a mixed bag of some fairly scenic-looking places frequently interrupted by complete shit-holes after driving around the island a bit and visiting the main town, patong, which is a duplicate of the phat pong area of bangkok complete with prostitutes, massage parlours/brothels, trannys, ladyboys and enthusiastic invitations to have massages from boys described on the signs as 'handsome', and although many of them were quite good-looking and attractive, some of them looked as if any application of force to their wrists from pressing down on an oiled-up body would have snapped them like twigs

the resort was fantastic - at 75 acres, it's the largest one on the island - effectively landscaped and dotted with swimming pools, palm trees and cafes - everything needed for a few days of r & r - we were automatically upgraded to a delux-plus room with a free buffet breakfast every morning - we decided in our ill-advised complacency that this was going to be our best four-day break so far

then we rather unwisely added an element of the unknown to our fairly safe tropical idyll

we booked a tour to the phi phi islands for our second full day - k. had decided that enough time had passed since our last disastrous snorkelling experience nine years ago to give it another go - our ill-fated tioman island excursion in 1998 ended with him falling asleep while floating in the south china sea with his life jacket, goggles and snorkel on - he then drifted about half a mile away from the boat and woke up panicking - i had been happily snorkelling round the small island we had dropped anchor near admiring the coral and fish - when i surfaced and couldn't see him anywhere near the boat or the island i began to get worried - once i realised that he hadn't drowned, after spotting him waving frantically and bobbing up and down like a demented frogman, i swam out and dragged him back to the boat - had we known as we boarded the tour group minibus brandishing our swimming shorts and large hotel towels in front of us that this trip would be even more unpleasant, we would have definitely remained on a sunbed and satisfied ourselves with underwater views of the tiled bottom of the swimming pool through my addidas swimmers goggles

the speed boat trip out was quite exhilarating but a little bumpy as we approached maya bay, making k. feel slightly queasy - we were disappointed at the overwhelming amount of tourists on the beach and all the boats anchored in the bay (one of which was blasting out loud house music at an unacceptable volume), giving it a rather unsightly appearance, and the large deposits of litter all over the sand and the surface of the sea up to a mile out from the island - we sat on a log sulking for half an hour and concluding that the dolphins we had seen swimming away from our boat earlier must have been just as pissed off with all the litter and tourists polluting their home

maya bay is a beach on krabi island - very appropriate as that's the way we were feeling while we were there

after this we stopped in a quiet lagoon for a swim surrounded by the vertical rocky slopes of the column-like islands which rose up on three sides of us - i thought the day was beginning to pick up as i jumped off the boat and swam around in the less polluted water - i wasn't counting on the heavy rain which started as we sped off towards another island for lunch, arriving 15 minutes later, drenched through and shivering with cold - we had to spend longer there than planned while we waited for the rain to let up - after a long delay we set off for the snorkellling part of our trip, but when we stopped about half a mile out to sea the waves were beginning to get rather big - vigorous shakes of the assorted heads of the passengers followed our guide's invitation to go snorkelling so we headed off again towards another island

by this time the sea was beginning to get even rougher and the boat began to rock rather alarmingly - this got worse as we were pelted by sea water spray and waves which splashed over the boat - my eyes started to sting and i couldn't get rid of the taste of saltwater in my mouth - i'd been staring out to sea for the whole time, concentrating on the view to stop myself from feeling sick, then as the sea tossed the boat around even more violently, i turned round to see if k. was bearing up all right - he looked quite ill and was on the point of throwing up, gesturing towards our guide for a plastic bag - the rest of the passengers looked as if they were all in the same boat (ho ho) - although i knew the sea wasn't rough enough for us to capsize, it was still a scary feeling every time a particularly heavy wave lifted the boat up and threw it to one side, a feeling reflected in the faces of some of the other people as they gripped onto the edges of their seats and tried to keep upright - you feel much safer on a large car-ferry in a storm than you do on a small speed-boat - three plastic bags were handed out, one to k. who also had eucalyptus balm rubbed onto his lips and temples by our guide, which arrested his nausea enough to stop him from vomiting

as the rain started again, the sea calmed and we arrived at our final island - we had been hoping that they would take us straight back to phuket but apparently the heavy rain had reduced the visibilty beyond a safe level - so we had to wait yet again in the pouring rain on another crappy island over-populated by tourists - i had been mildly nauseous on the boat but it really hit me when we reached dry land, a feeling that lasted until we were back in the air-conditioned minibus and on our way back to the hotel

we have since concluded that it was the worst day trip we have ever been on

we consoled ourselves the next day with some resort pampering - unwisely leaving our sunblock in the bathroom as it was a dull and overcast day, we hung around the pool for the first half of the afternoon and then spent a couple of hours at the spa indulging in our first ever relaxing swedish massages - it was only on leaving the spa and heading off for the airport that we realised we'd both been sunburnt quite badly and spent the next few hours rubbing aftersun on each other at regular intervals - mine was particularly annoying as i'd been sitting round the pool half shaded by a large umbrella, so i had caught the sun only down the left-hand side of my body - i now resemble the look richard dreyfuss sported in close encounters of the third kind when he got half a tan from the lights of a passing alien spaceship

all in all, a mixed bag of a holiday - but one we won't forget in a hurry