Four escape to Thailand

I haven’t stepped foot off European soil for more than a decade after I visited my mother in Florida shortly after Jonah was born. So it’s with some excitement and trepidation that we’re planning our first proper family holiday abroad – by which I don’t mean France, Spain or Devon (where our holiday home has taken us for the past few family breaks). I don’t even mean Florida, which is where we were thinking of going to Disney and Universal to take our Potter-manics to HP World, possibly via my mothers’, which thankfully wasn’t swept away by Hurricane Irma. Yet the state’s (I pondered over a capital letter, but no, I’m correct with lower case, but it equally applies) recent propensity for megastorms rather put paid to the idea of a Halloween themed trip next October – why pay the best part of £10,000) (and the rest) to hedge your bets against nature’s wrath over baby boomer overconsumption?

So instead, we chose to contribute to 2nd world overdevelopment and ride (hopefully well-looked after) elephants rather than rollercoasters, and take them to Thailand.

The reality, of course, was more strategic, and with Jonah’s climbing skills going stratospheric, and without said ten bags to blow on an orgy of underpaid cast members in costumers and overpriced fried food, we thought it would be perhaps even more of an adventure to return to one of my favourite travel destinations from my misspent youth. A tip off from one of Luca’s mate’s mums, whose dad comes from that part of the world and who is heavily into climbing saw us zero in on the Railey beach area, known for its sublime sandy beaches, and lush, jungle-fringed cliff edges perfect for Jonah’s first foray onto a proper rock face.

It’ll be my third time there. The last time was with my ex from uni, who was lovely, but who I was ready to leave having spent two years restoring my confidence to the point I was a more comfortable single than I was the first time around, when I’d been left heartbroken after a gap year romance turned sour, and I was set footloose up the Mekong without a paddle, learning to get by in the big wide world with just the skin on my back.

Second time around, I was still feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders, and unsure what to to do with the rest of my life. By then, a seasoned traveller, I was probably tiresome company for a fresh-eyed newbie – disparaging, rather than good humoured when he accidentally got monged eating the wrong type of pizza in Vietnam, hysterical after a Bangkok facial (not *that* kind), which went wrong and left me pockmarked; and blasé about beaches and temples when I couldn’t see the point of being a tourist in someone else’s world when my own felt so unstable. I couldn’t even be bothered to get to mystical Ankor Wat before sunset; but then though depressed, I was also slightly spoiled yet couldn’t understand my own privilege.

This time, it will be different – yes, because traveling with kids puts necessary restrictions on you (which to me feels better than the cavernous freedom of being cut adrift in the big bad world, as I was before) and travelling with aspie kids can be unpredictable at best (but with enough preparation, should help prepare them for the world’s unpredictability better in the long run.) but I at least, have learned, from the reality of adult life – the grinding, pounding, day after groundhog day gruelity of work, with its necessary submission to the white collar, shouldn’t moan, glued to your screen eye strain that constitutes post graduate, post parenting adulthood – to appreciate my hard won ability to fly away from it all, even for such a short time as two weeks, and do it all (as I did it the first time but better) with my own hard earned dosh.

So yesterday, dear reader, we booked it – two weeks of high adventure, flying into Bangkok (direct, because, well faff, with Eva airlines (which have Hello Kitty livery!). Then, after a night’s acclimatisation in the, with luck, very nice, brand new (did I mention 2nd world overdevelopment?) Arte Hotel in Central Sukumvit, not too far from the airport, and chosen to appeal to sleep deprived and culture shocked kids whose idea of a good holiday is a pool and chips with everything, where we can, hopefully, just chill out and be pampered, ready for the next leg of our adventure.

Internal flights in Thailand are, by western standards, cheap, so the next day, we plan to fly to Krabi, where we’re booked into the Tropical Family Cottage at Ban Sanai resort (which is bigger than our old house for six nights, then on to Railay beach, a more secluded part of the island network, famed for its rock climbing, snorkelling and general sumptuous beauty, where we will stay at Railay Sand Sea resort for a further four nights before heading back to the capital by which time we hope the kids will be acclimatised to a different culture enough to expose them to the delights of the various sights, sounds and smells of the city.

Staying for our final two nights at the five star, but excellent value Chatrium Hotel, Riverside (we booked a river view suite), we hope to take them to a night market (The Asiatic is meant to be family friendly) as well as investigate some of the proliferations of malls that have sprung up since last I ventured this far East, and a few well beaten tourist attractions, such as the Reclining Buddha, and Khao Sahn Road – but not so near Patpong they get a glimpse of something unnerving.

Taking this trip represents-for my children, a chance to test of their blossoming maturity and ability to handle the unusual out in the real world a little; for us, a chance to relax the purse strings a little (a lot! – the whole trip should come in at just under £5,000) after the years of straightened circumstances, of which the hangover, in the form of regular Lidl shops and careful clothes recycling, persists to this day.

I’m hoping it’ll be the honeymoon I never had – two nights in Babington House with an 18- month old (though lovely!) and a rain soaked Glastonbury didn’t quite cut it!

But now I’m older and wiser – and I know we’ll have our challenges – the heat, mosquitos and simply the frenetic energy of a foreign city and unknown culture will no doubt take its toll on my kids’ – and my own sensitivities – much as it did when I was in Thailand all those years ago. But I hope that going somewhere out of the ordinary is possible even for a slightly extraordinary family and showing our children the privileges we do enjoy might just help them appreciate their everyday lives just that little bit more when we get home.