Hey Reader,

Welcome to the July edition of our travel journal, this month we're coming to you from Phuket, Thailand.

So grab a brew and settle in for this month's adventure..... 🧉

Why Thailand?

Some of you may remember the purpose of our trip to Thailand. After eighteen months of Vanlife, we wanted to focus on work and studying for a while. With Vanlife being a particularly time-consuming lifestyle, it made more sense to be location-based for this part of our journey. The snag for us? We didn't want to be in the UK and we had maxed out our 90 days in Europe. 🇪🇺

To make this a viable idea, we knew we would have to head somewhere with a more affordable cost of living. And after a winter of ski-touring in the harsh Norwegian conditions, we were ready for some sunshine. ☀️ Plus, we've been dying to get past the beginner stages of surfing and never had enough time in the right location to do so.

All my research pointed to Thailand, with an affordable cost of living, a thriving digital nomad community and surf beaches suitable for our level, it ticked every box. 🏄

Off to a Rocky Start

After our 'interesting' five days in India, we arrived in the land of smiles full of enthusiasm and ready to scope out Phuket to find the best place to base ourselves. On the first day, my runny nose which I suspected was aircon related, had progressed into something a little more cold/flu-like. In the following couple of days, my symptoms morphed into aches and pains and I realised that I had picked up a bug. 🦠

Between travel fatigue and flu-like symptoms, I was goosed. On our third day, Sam declared that he was also starting to feel a little under the weather.

This put us in a tricky situation, I had only booked accommodation for the first four nights, in the hope that would be enough time to find a more permanent solution. We wanted to get a feel for Phuket rather than relying on online research alone. 💻

"Not to worry," I said to Sam, "I'm sure we can extend this room if needs be. As I have a little more energy today should we at least go check out the location at the top of my list, before you get any worse?" 🤧

Nailing Our Accommodation

Incredibly, the only place we went to view, was the one we settled on. The manager Tony, (likely his Western name, not his real name) is possibly the happiest, most helpful guy we've ever met. After a quick tour, we paid for two months upfront, on the spot. This sort of thing doesn't happen often when travelling and it almost felt too good to be true. 🤩

We found the hotel in one of the smaller surf towns, close to the beach, with all the amenities we could ever need and within walking distance of the gym. Although nobody walks anywhere in Thailand. 🛵

Our original plan was to get an apartment but this hotel stood out for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, the rooms are big, the bed is the good ole Swiss style of two single mattresses in one massive bed frame, which we love! 🛏️

We have a smart TV, hello Netflix! and the usual culprits like fridge, kettle, free tea, coffee and drinking water.

Our room is equipped with its own wifi, so no sharing with other guests, which makes it the perfect place to work from, no coffee shops or coworking spaces for us, we even have a desk! This reduces our costs, but also the number of people we meet, however, this is rectified by the industrial-sized community kitchen we have access to. 🔪

Shared kitchens can be gross, people don't always clean up after themselves and you often have to fight for fridge space. But this kitchen is spotless and with each room having a fridge, there's no need to store food downstairs. 🍕

The added benefit of staying in a hotel is the cleaning, each morning as we head to the gym or to surf, our room is cleaned and fresh towels and bed linen are provided at our request.

And the best part? As it's low season and we came to strike a deal in person, we're paying hostel prices. Under £11 per night! 🙌

From Bad to Good to Worse

Thinking we had nailed the accommodation in a timely fashion and would soon be surfing waves at the local beach, we both got hit hard by the lingering virus. We soon realised that I had symptoms from the third day in India and all the evidence pointed to the current wave of Covid doing the rounds in the UK. 🤒

"I must have picked it up on the plane from London" I explained to Sam, "yeah, that makes sense" he responds. And so we spent the first two weeks of our Thailand chapter unable to surf or go to the gym. Thank goodness for Grab food deliveries! (Uber Eats for Asia) 🍔

At the end of the first week, we were mostly bedridden with fever and flu symptoms. Then the second week was plagued by lingering fatigue. Fun times! More than anything else, this left us feeling extremely frustrated. 😫

"Look on the bright side" each of us would say to whoever was feeling more bogged down at that moment, "at least we're not in gloomy England and we live right next to a food market, no cooking or cleaning for the foreseeable, it could be worse." 🤷‍♀️

Those of you not currently in the UK, may not be aware that summer has decided not to show up this year. BBQs in storms have been the theme of UK 'Summer' 2024. 🌪️

The rain here certainly rivals an English downpour, the storms are thick, fast and exciting. Thunder cracks loudly overhead, lightning lights up the sky for a split second and raindrops the size of Chihuahuas gush from above. I think the term raining cats and dogs is far more suited to the Southeast Asian monsoon season than to England. ⛈️

The biggest difference is the rain here comes in relatively short bursts rather than a relentless drizzle and the temperature remains a toasty 26-30ºC. 🔥

Making the Most of Things

We kept our spirits up by joking about how 'this might become a tradition whenever we travel to Asia'. Last year we spent two months in Bali and the first 20 days went like this:

Day 2 - Sam crashed our drone into a waterfall. 🤦‍♂️ R.I.P Drone 1 -we're now on Drone 3, thank goodness for drone insurance. 😆

Day 3 - Sam had an allergic reaction to something he ate, he was rushed to the doctor by our Ubud guesthouse host for an injection and some medication. We never found out what ingredient caused it. 💉

Day 5 - We both got Bali Belly and spent 36 hours incapacitated, luckily for us, this happened over Nyepi, Bali's day of silence when the whole island shuts down and you are advised to spend the day indoors, in silence, meditating, without the use of artificial light. We spent the day crawling from our bed to the bathroom in relay. 🤢 Not the Nyepi experience we were hoping for.

Day 11 - Even with the regular application of bug spray, a mozzie managed to give me a dose of Dengue Fever, I spent the following 9 days with an evolving fever, a rash, and the inability to eat and some days I was unable to get out of bed. 😷

Recounting this we laughed nervously, hoping that a couple of weeks of Covid was all we would have to suffer at the start of our Thai adventure. In the meantime, once the fever had passed, we made two trips to the food market daily to treat ourselves to all the local and international delicacies on offer. 🍡

Once our energy returned, we checked the surf conditions for the coming week and started our gym routine. As it had been over twelve months since I last surfed and almost two years for Sam due to ear problems, we rented a board for the first hour to get our sea legs back and took a lesson the next day. 🤙🏼

Surfing Keeps You Humble

And by humble, I mean beaten up, emotionally drained, frustrated and aware that learning to ride the waves of a temperamental ocean is possibly one of the hardest sports to master. 😳

Thailand is not well known for its surf scene because the waves are small, often choppy and wind-generated. This means they don't always have power, making them hard to catch and even harder to ride. 🌊

Our instructor Wang (pronounced Wong) tells us "The waves in Thailand are hard to ride, if you can surf here, you can surf anywhere". Now we know we won't be progressing from the baby waves of Phuket to the monsters of Nazaré, but what he means is, that if we can catch intermediate waves here, we can catch them anywhere. 👌 Let's hope he's right!

We're using his words as a reminder that these next three months won't be an exponential curve of progress. There will be bad days, days where the waves are so hard to catch that we may have to go back to the white water, just to say we stood up, at least once. 📈

One of the things that has stuck with us from a surf school in Ireland is "It's better to ride the white water 30 times than to not catch a single green wave, in the beginning, it's a numbers game." 💯

I'll have to keep reminding myself of this instead of beating myself up at the thought of 'going backwards'. Progress is often romanticised as a steady, upward trajectory, but in reality, it's more like a winding path with peaks and valleys. Hopefully, embracing this non-linear progression will allow us to appreciate the small victories. 👏🏼

So, while we are balancing our time between the gym, surfing, working and studying, what are you up to this summer? Reply to this email and let us know! 🤗

See you in a couple of weeks with the travel newsletter xox

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An Aimless Walk | Travel Experts, Vanlifers & Sports Professionals

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