Cassie Brzoza

My apologies for an extremely long overdue post, however it seems I have acquired something called a life where I have not really been spending time at the computer, which is annoying as I have been writing loads of blog notes in my notebook but just never having a chance to post them!

Neung and I celebrated Lek’s leaving party by which we drank till 4:30am and our bus to the airport was coming at 5am. As you can see we’re both very responsible and sensible adults! ;) We got to the airport and it was freezing and I was drunk but on the sleepy edge of drunk but had to fight to stay awake and then I started sobering up and feeling pretty damn awful! I slept the whole flight pretty much and missed all the exciting things. When we got to Phuket we were met by Neung’s cousin Sith who was extremely happy to see us but couldn’t speak a word of English so I mainly sat there watching them both catch up whilst incredibly hungover and tired. I was actually falling asleep behind my sunglasses, but no one could see so I think I was ok! Neung’s friend, Ak (It’s pronounced like Ehk, for those who are English) picked us up from Phuket Central World (a big shopping centre) and he gave us a lift home with some food and then he had to dash off back to work again. I was kind of happy that he had to go back to work as it meant I could just sleep and relax for a few hours. Luckily the spare bedroom we were sleeping in had aircon, so I fell asleep almost straight away and slept uninterrupted for a good few hours. 

I spent the next few days and nights exploring Phuket with Neung as Ak had to run off as his wife was having a baby and Sith was busy with working and family etc. We did all go out one evening to an expensive seafood restaurant where I ate frog (Kinda nice actually!) and discovered that Southern Thailand’s food is much more spicier than Central or Northern Thailand. “Pek maak maak!” (Very spicy!) Overall I have to say that Phuket is a beautiful island, like the rest of Thailand… But, the tourist ruin it. I know that sounds hypocritical as I was technically a tourist too, but for example, Patong beach and round that area at night is nothing but a disgusting hooker meat market with dirty old western men sleazing around. Not my kind of nightlife at all. I did see some beautiful  where I had to seriously look twice and double take to check they were actual lady boys and they put my fat podgy figure to shame! My favourite beach out of them all was Kata Beach, which had a beautiful sunset (pictures to follow in the next post!) Neung and I actually chilled on this beach and went in the sea. Neung had a go at surfing and stood up about 3 times whilst I nearly drowned in the waves. Good times!

After a few days we headed to Phatthalung to meet Neung’s family. The bit I had been nervous about. What the hell were they going to think of me? I can barely speak Thai so cue the socially awkward nodding and smilling and pretending to understand what was actually going on… 

Neung always made it clear to me that he was from the jungle, and I took it all in but I thought it was weird when he kept emphasizing on this and I was like, “yeah ok, I get you… You’re Mowgli from Jungle Book etc” However I don’t think anything prepared me for the shock of what I was about to receive. Neung’s family really do live in the jungle. And I’m not just talking a nice little house next to the jungle… It was like a scene out of Apocalypto. When we arrived it was night time so I couldn’t really see much, however I was picked up in the car by Neung’s brother O (pronounced like ‘Oh’ pretty much.) and his 1 year old daughter Saimai (this apparently means ‘Silky’ in Thai, how cute!) Saimai was literally the cutest Thai baby I had ever seen, and she instantly took a liking to me and wasn’t shy of the fact that I was the first white person I’d ever seen, I got well broody with this little girl! Neung’s Mother and Father were very lovely and so was O’s wife, Su. Overall they were a very welcoming family and even though I didn’t speak Thai they did thir best to make me feel wanted and relaxed. Saimai had my attention most of the time as I was on a level with her as she couldn’t talk yet and I couldn’t speak Thai so I just made silly baby noises at her!

Most of Neung’s family are from Phatthalung so I met a lot of his relatives. He has so many cousins that he doesn’t know exactly how many and everyone I met was very nice and I love how we would just turn up to someone’s house and all of a sudden they would be very hospitable and be offering us all sorts of food and climbing up trees near by and cutting down fruit so we could just eat it. This is real living people. None of this commercial corporation supermarket bullshit. (Pardon my language!)

The only downside to Phatthalung was that we went from really hot sunny beaches in Phuket to torrential tropical down pouring rain and it never actually stopped. I don’t think I have ever seen so much rain in my life. When it rains in Phatthalung, it rains hard! Also I come from the city and not just any city, a city in England. I’m totally not cut out for all the jungle life. I don’t normally get bitten by mosquitoes, or if I do - I don’t feel it and they don’t really itch. However here I got eaten alive. Also there were ants everywhere. Not just tiny black ants, the red fire ants too, plus the huge big ones that are 2 cm big that cut your flesh open when they bite you. Oh yes! How I loved them! Not! My bed was crawling with the small ants and they drove me crazy, Neung said to just leave them be and ignore them. I found this difficult when there was about 100 all over my body at one given point easily. Urgh! Also I saw a scorpion in the jungle. I always thought scorpions were about 2 inches big, nothing major… However the one I saw was 15 - 20 cm big and I nearly stood on it. Totally not down with that at all. Also the big wasps which come a variety of either black and red or orange coloured. They are about 3 inches long so as you can imagine they’re huge! Everyone in Phatthalung turned into ninja’s and set about killing them when they saw one near by as their stings are horrendous apparently. Also we had a one year old child around. (Highly dangerous!) 

I took quite a few photos but the internet here is incredibly slow so I will upload them via an internet cafe when I get the chance.