Paradise Prison: Part One

When family travel plans don't go to... erm... plan

Hello Restless Ones,

Happy Thursday to thee!

I’m sitting here at the end of a bananas day, having dashed to London and back to deliver a couple of talks. This afternoon, the business I was speaking to had ordered 200 Llama Drama books to go along with the talk, to be dished out to the audience once I got off the stage.

That was great, because I had allowed plenty of time for them to arrive from the printers…

Except they didn’t show up.

So I spent many days in loops with the printer and delivery company, trying to locate the books and then pleading that they be diverted to a different address, closer to the talk.

That address was my parents house.

So at approximately 1.30pm this afternoon, my mum (the SHERO of the hour) drove the books for 40 minutes across London to the venue, in her little pale blue Fiat 500 and — while I was in a distant room giving a talk about embracing the unknown — she steamrolled over all unknowns and delivered the books.

DPD delivery can jog on. I’ve got M.U.M delivery and it’s much more reliable.

Anyway - to the post! It’s about an event in our family travels from a few years ago. I never shared the story in full at the time, and it’s a cracker - so I’m eager to share it now.

It’s this month’s open post so it’s available to free and paid peeps. If you enjoy it - please spread it far and wide before it gets locked away in the Restless archives.

Lorra Love and catch you next week,

Anna xx

Paradise Prison: Part One

It’s approaching early evening on the island of Phuket, Thailand. I’m sat on the floor of a small hotel room, doing drawing with Storm and Jamie is on the bed, anxiously awaiting a phone call.

We arrived on the island this morning but haven’t yet made it out of the room. We need to stay here and wait for a phone call that says it’s okay for us to leave. I had hoped that call would come at midday and then, mid-afternoon, but now the hours have ticked by and we’re all starting to get cabin fever.

We need out.

We need air.

We need to move our legs and I need to convince one-year-old Storm that we haven’t flown halfway across the world just to put her in a small room and drag crayons across a teeny hotel notepad.

‘What time is it now?’ I ask.

‘Five pm.’ says Jamie

‘Okay, I’m sure they’ll call soon. And when they do, we’ll go out and get some dinner. I saw a place just at the top of the street that looked ni—’

Just then, the phone rings. Jamie shoots his arm  — it’s a catlike reflex — and grabs the receiver.

‘Hello?’ He says.

I can vaguely hear a female voice on the other end, but I can’t make out what she’s saying. So I just listen in to one half of the conversation. ‘Yes, this is Mr McDonald…. Mmm Hmm. Right. Okay. No, no, I understand. Thank you. Is it just me? Oh. Okay then. We’ll wait to hear, thank you.’

Jamie hangs up the phone, sits back on the bed and stares into space.

‘What’s happened? What did she say? Are well all good?’ I ask, half-distracted as I try to stop Storm from taking a bite out of a particularly delicious looking green crayon.

‘The Covid tests were positive.’

‘What? Who’s test — yours?’ I ask.

‘Yes, mine. And yours. And Storm’s too?

‘What?’

‘Yep.’

‘How the hell…?’ I say.

‘I know. I mean, I don’t know. They said we have to isolate for 10 days.’

‘What?!’

‘But they can send some food up for dinner.’ He sighs.

In the winter of 2021, the world was only just opening up. After a year of being in lockdown, and having birthed a child during that year, we were eager to spread our wings as a family of three.

Pre-babba I’d spent many a month abroad on exciting adventures. But the logistics of getting a mini family abroad, at a time of never-ending change, were mind-boggling.

To even to be in that hotel room in Phuket, I had done a truckload of research. I had changed plans, chopped plans, done battle with visa forms, covid forms, insurance forms and time and time again cursed my restlessness and wondered if we should just give up and stay at home like normal people seemed to be doing.

So we got vaccinated up to our eyeballs and we got on that plane. Largely because I had decided that this is life. It is wild, fleeting, precious, and it is too short to stay put, wondering what could have been.

And yet, in the space of a thirty-second phone call all the months of planning had gone up in smoke. We’d moved from ‘oh let’s go out for some nice local Thai food for dinner…’ to ‘oh let’s spend 10 days cooped up in isolation.’

I soon joined Jamie in staring into space, because I just couldn’t compute what had happened. And I had questions. Many questions.

‘But we tested negative when we left.’ I said, referring to the fact that, in the day before getting on the plane, none of us had Covid. That was part of the criteria for even being allowed into Thailand. So I couldn’t understand how, less than 24 hours later, we’d all had a positive test.

‘Well, either that test before we flew was a load of crap or we all picked it up on the plane. I don’t know…’ Jamie said.

I didn’t know either. But the fact was, it didn’t matter. My mind was now spinning on the logistics of spending ten days in a hotel room with a one-year-old.

It sounded about as much fun as a boxing match with an octopus.

Storm the eternal fidget — in a single room?! With two hyperactive parents? What were we going to do?

Jamie said that the receptionist would call us back with more information, but I was impatient. I couldn’t just sit around and wait, so I picked up the phone.

‘So how does it work… us isolating? Do we just stay here in the room for ten days and then we come out?’ I asked, thinking that we would emerge from our Covid cocoon ten days later like three beautiful butterflies.

‘No. Not, stay here. You must go to the hospital.’ said the receptionist.

‘Hospital?! But we feel fine!’

‘Oh, you no have symptoms?’ The receptionist said, seemingly disappointed. ‘No cough? No nose dribble? You HOT?!’ she shouted that last one.

‘No, erm we don’t have nose dribble. No fever, we’re feeling normal.’ I said.

‘Okay, no symptoms, so then you go to an isolation hotel.’

‘Isolation hotel?’

‘Yes, hotel government have approved for you. I send you options!’ She said cheerily. Only in Thailand could they be so cheerful about the prospect of a stay in an isolation hotel.

Sure enough the reception sent, via email, three options of hotels we could move to. I read about each of them and in one of them it seemed that you could go outside of your room.

Apparently we had to pay £100 per night for the privilege of this outdoors hotel (vs £89 per night for an indoor one), so a total of £1,000 to be locked up for 10 days, but that seemed a small price to pay for some degree of freedom. I was sold.

Shortly after deciding, reception sent us another email:

Okay Mr McDonald and Miss McNuff — you all booked at Nai Yang Hotel. Van will collect you and baby in morning time. Ten O’Clock.

Happy Isolation. We hope see you again soon. :)

At 10am the following morning a silver van pulled up outside. I felt sheepish as we passed the reception area, all of us in masks, dragging our belongings and waving at the still smiling receptionists as we loaded ourselves and the bags into the van.

I wanted to shout: ‘I’m so sorry! I didn’t know we had IT when we accepted your welcome drinks yesterday.’ Because I wondered if they were looking at us, whispering: ‘Get them out as fast as we can. They’re infected!!"‘

The silver van was fully sealed. It smelled of bleach and was lined with plastic on the inside — the walls, the ceiling, the seats — all of it.

There was also a large sheet of plastic pinned between the passenger section and where the driver sat. The driver was wearing a hooded white boiler suit, blue latex gloves and he had his mask firmly affixed.

As we rumbled out of the driveway of our original 3-Star hotel (our dream hotel that I had spent many hours researching, which had elephants in the pool and EVERYTHING) and headed 45 minutes north on the island, I felt dirty.

Ashamed.

Like an outcast.

And I had watched one-too-many post-apocalyptic films to avoid feeling like I was currently in one.

When we arrived at the Isolation Hotel, we entered via what looked like a back entrance. It was off a small side street and there were no signs to let us know it was a hotel of any sort.

‘Hey, do you think this is actually a hotel?’ I whispered to Jamie as we waited for someone to open a set of padlocked wire gates.

‘I’m not sure. It looks dodgy. But I guess we don’t have a choice?’ He whispered back. And he was right. We were down for the ride — wherever our fully sealed silver van took us.

After checking in at a small outbuilding, which was a reception (but it definitely wasn’t an actual reception) we discovered that the complex was nice, if a little vintage.

Close to the entrance was a white tower block with rooms set over three stories. In front of that were some tall trees and then a garden area — comprised of patchy grass and lots of bushes with brightly coloured flowers bursting from them — pink, purple, and yellow.

‘Hey, J! They have a pool! I said, spotting some blue through the bushes.

‘A what?’

‘A pool!’

‘No way! Do you think we’re allowed to go in it?’ He asked.

‘I hope so. That’d be pretty cruel if we weren’t. Then it’s just more of a pond.’ I said.

Sure enough, at the other end of the complex was a 10 metre pool.

Linking the pool with the reception area was a wavy concrete pathway — lined with shin-high hedges and lights. And all along the pathway were more rooms — laid out, motel style, on the ground floor.

The concrete pathway ran in a neat little loop. It couldn’t have been more than 50 metres through the complex from one end to the other, but despite it being old and faded, it was strangely beautiful.

A little tropical oasis.

Perhaps it wouldn’t feel that way after ten days, but for that moment I was grateful that we were locked in somewhere that beauty was in abundance.

It was as if the world was forcing us to stand still. And to say LOOK. Look at what’s in front of you. Stop and smell the roses (or the unidentifiable brightly coloured flowers), because there’s plenty of time for that now.

We proclaimed that this was our very own Paradise Prison.

Our room was in the back corner of the complex, by the pool and, because humans are infinitely adaptable, we settled in quickly. We enjoyed chatting to guests from all over the world — from Estonia, Russia, Denmark, France, Japan and Germany.

Some were on a short break with friends — a two-week holiday that would now be swallowed up by quarantine. Others were on longer travels — in their younger years — footloose and fancy free. So to them, this was just all part of the ‘experience’.

And then there were the families who’d been split up — because Dad had tested positive and Mum and Baby hadn’t. That seemed crazy, and made me thankful that we’d all gone down together.

But it was the man from Russia who particularly intrigued me…

I put him in his early fifties. He was pretty jacked, had grey hair and was tattooed from head to toe — with different coloured stars on his neck, blood-spattered scenes of men fighting on his pecs, the faces of two babies on his left arm and a giant bear across is his back.

He had circular black glasses, sported a black bum bag and wore nothing all day, every day, except a single pair of brown speedos. And they weren’t a pleasant brown. They were camel coloured and baggy. The kind you would hope to avoid being behind when someone was doing breast stroke in a swimming pool.

We spoke to Speedo Man now and then, and he was nice but we only ever managed one word exchanges. When not cruising around the pool in his speedos, he played cards with other Russians. He drank beer in dark corners and tended to his bum bag.

Although our international relations were stalling in some areas, we quickly made good friends with a 20-year-old woman, Emiline, from Denmark — who had arrived just a day before us and ‘lived’ a few doors down.

She was on a three-week holiday with friends and, despite them all having shared a bed in hostels — she was the only one who’d contracted the virus. So we felt responsible for her, and we wanted to make sure that she had as nice a time as possible.

Plus, Emiline had an instant bond with Storm and, let’s be honest, anyone who can entertain our child for more than 10 seconds, is sure to be an instant BFF.

Storm and Emiline from Denmark. BFF's forever.

With paradise as a backdrop, and our new global neighbours, we settled into a neat rhythm at Nai Yang.

Food was delivered three times a day by Thai women — who rode a moped at approximately 2mph along the concrete path — and hung the sustenance in plastic bags on our doors.

The meals were… um… interesting. Largely because someone had decided against dishing up local Thai food and instead opted to give us ‘western cuisine’ which materialised as plastic coated chicken sausage, white bread (which didn’t really resemble bread) and a variety of of other goodies involving many, many e-numbers and preservatives.

I would have been dead chuffed with a cheeky dollop of Pad Thai or some pineapple rice every day, but that never came.

The highlight of the day was breakfast because we got cornflakes. And I at least knew what went into those. I think.

Every morning, we would take Storm out of the room — like a queen on a throne — wheeling her in her stroller and parking her next to the poolside.

We’d grab a couple of white plastic chairs and pull over a matching plastic table and sit on either side of her. Jamie would then make a shit coffee (which is what we call coffee that’s made from powered sachets because we are coffee snobs).

Most mornings, Emiline from Denmark (ever the early riser) would emerge from her room to join us for brekkie and Jamie would make her a shit coffee, too.

‘Oh no, Jamie — you don’t have to! I can make my own!’ she’d protest. But he would reply:

‘Emiline, it would be my greatest pleasure to make you the shittest coffee you have ever tasted. Please hand me your mug.’

It’s amazing how delicious a powdery coffee sachet can be when it’s the only flavoured drink you’ll have all day.

During breakfast with our new BFF from Denmark, we’d discuss how many mosquito bites had been sustained through the night (which was always LOTS) and we’d watch the local birds dance around the pool.

Those birds were stunning.

There were yellow parakeets, small black birds with fan-like tails and a bigger black bird with a tail that was long and slim with two white heart-shaped feathers at the end.

One morning, a huge hawk flew even overhead, and we all squealed in delight. It was majestic.

In between breakfast and lunch, Jamie and I would take it in turns to look after Storm. We’d accompany her in some walking practice in the garden and then take her in the pool — where we would apologise, daily, for her stealing a Russian kid’s snorkel and refusing to give it back. She bloomin loved that snorkel.

In the afternoon there would be more walking practice (much falling practice) general guest terrorising, extra snorkel stealing, ball stealing (this time from the French kid) and more whole family swimming action.

In the evening, we’d slip the pool man some Thai Baht to sneak us in a bottle of Chang beer via the back gate (a tip from the Germans) and then we’d wander around in circles on the concrete pathway with Storm in the stroller, dissecting the day as the sun went down.

And that’s how it went. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Until on day five — something changed. There was an event that rocked the Paradise Prison ecosystem to its core.

To be continued next week…