Hi everyone, I hope you are all well and happy. Sorry it has been so long since I have written but getting back into the swing of actually working again was a bit of a shock to the system and I am just shattered all the time.
Firstly I just want to say thanks for reading my last blogg. More people read the 'Tigers amongst the Vultures' than any other blogg I have ever written. In fact more people read it than 3 bloggs put together, approximately 120 people indulged in the smutty life of Jacquelina getting mucky in Bangkok which is incredible. I'm not sure who all of you are but if it gave you a giggle or helped to waste a way a few moments of reality and boredom then that's good enough for me.
I guess that means that you lot like a bit of filth so I will try my best not to get too sensible in my old age. Some things I cant really talk about because I am still here with the people evolved and it could make things rather embarrassing so you will all have to wait for the book to get all the nitty gritty smutty details.
So the next chapter of my trip is in full swing.
I returned to Sihanoukville Cambodia a few weeks ago. It was so strange coming back after 3 years. Allot has changed, some things for the better, a nice walk way has been built along the beach so you can run in the mornings which I did and loved it. The Serendipity dirt road that takes you down to the beach is finally finished so the place looks a little more cared for and together. There are lots more lovely restaurants dotted about town and little boutiques selling pretty bags and clothes and the place just looks cleaner and fresher. Of course it is still a town brimming over with brothels, prostitutes, sexpats and stoned backpackers but Sihanoukville will always be like that I'm sure.
I met up with my ex boyfriend Tha and we went back to Bamboo Island where I used to live and work to see my dog Murphy. It was a wonderful day. The island was so so beautiful, it looked like paradise as we pulled up in our little fishing boat. The tall palm trees and the golden sand and little bamboo huts hiding in the shade.
I felt really overwhelmed seeing my old home again. Its so strange that you don't really appreciate how lucky you are until you look back on things. I had lived here on a beautiful tropical island for 7 months and I don't think I ever realised completely how lucky I was and how blessed because I was always running around stressing out trying to keep a business running.
I spotted my dog Murphy on the beach sniffing around the day trippers and their picnic baskets, I was nervous to shout his name I was was worried he wouldn't remember me so I waited until I got off the boat.
Once on the beach I called him and his head span around, his ears pricked up into the air and he ran for me. I could see at first the first few sniffs he was surprised and probably amazed, it had been 3 years after all and then he went nuts, he jumped on me knocking me to the ground covering me in a cloud of sand and then he ran off at 100 mph and then back jumping on me again it was beautiful and I have to say I was happier to see my Murph than I was to see anything or anyone.
He was the most loyal dog to me when I lived on the island. He would wait for me to finish work walk me back to my hut in the dark, sleep on the floor by my bed and if me and Tha had a fight which we regularly did he would always come with me to a different bungalow lol...good dog that Murph , the best.
I started work at the Moonlight Rock bar and guest house about 3 weeks ago. It's quite strange really how I went from living in an ashram doing yoga and meditation every day to living in a rock bar and swinging on the poles and dancing on the bar....but I have.
I have found myself right slap bang in the middle of an environment which is everything that I didn't want to be part of, but somehow it feels right for me to be here. No body forced me into it or talked me into it, it just kind of happened that way.
I met one of the owners when I was up in Phnom Penn when I first arrived back in Cambodia and we got on great and he said he needed someone to work the bar and take care of the place when he was busy or out of town and I had spent lots of my budget getting from India to south east Asia and working for bed, food and drinks meant that I wouldn't actually be spending much of my savings so I agreed to come down and see how it went.
I was of course concerned that I would start drinking again and I was right to be concerned because I have drank since I have been here but somehow it feels the right place for me to be at this moment in my life and I am by no means drinking excessively I have kept Jacquelina under relative control, well for a rock bar staff member anyway.
I have not been drunk everyday or anything like that and am still running on the beach and doing my yoga just not as often but I am happy and I know that is a blessing.
I do miss peace and solitude though. It is hard to meditate in your room when Nirvana is blasting out downstairs but I walk across to the beach when I really need to get away and find a quiet spot and meditate there.
The owners are both great to me and I get along great with them both but they are so so different. Vanja is calm and cool and so laid back that she is almost horizontal and chilled and Chris is fiery and loud and full of energy and laughter and craziness a bit like me really probably we are too much alike, but it works and it works well they balance each other out and I'm enjoying spending time with them both. We all just seem to fit well together so that's cool.
It just feels right that I am here at this time and that's all I can really go with. Even though my lifestyle is so different to the life I was living in India I know that I am only here at Moonlight Rock for a short time so I am just going to enjoy it and try and keep myself under-control and then I will leave and go back to the loving arms of Mother India.
The Khmer staff are lovely. I feel like I have been here for months. I feel I have just slipped into the family like I have always been there, it just feels right.
I know I wont stay here, I know I will return to India and the sobriety and discipline I had so enjoyed but I know for now, I want this, this wildness and laughter and music and dancing and I want to be with people again. Its strange because for months in India I did not want to talk with anyone. I wanted complete silence and solitude and now I am spending every moment talking with people from all over the world and I love it.
My life here is so so different to how I was living in India and it has made me realise even more how extreme certain aspects of my personality actually are. I crave peace and solitude, space to meditate and do yoga and then I go and get a job in a rock bar, I don't understand how it happened but I know everything does for some reason or another. I'm glad to be here and I am grateful that I have been given this job and a home and a family because that is how it feels. I feel like I have a safe place to be and a family that loves me and how can anyone be ungrateful about that. I know there are lessons I will learn here and that is why I am here of course and I am ready to learn them and I will take that knowledge with me on my trip to the next place.
Maybe I can be all of these parts of my personality. Maybe I will find the balance between wildness and calmness or maybe I will have to choose between the two, I'm not sure about that yet.
I must admit I have had some wonderful times in the last three weeks. I have swam in the ocean with guests gazing up at the beautiful full moon, laughing together and feeling free and invincible.
The bar is right across the street from the beach so some nights we just wander over and strip off and swim in the warm dark ocean. A wonderful girl Athena that was stopping with us said something that I found really profound and beautiful as we were swimming under the full moon. She said "Ï will never be the same now that I have seen the moon from the other side of the world"...isn't that beautiful???
I really felt what she meant in my heart and I feel so so blessed that I have looked up at the moon from dark mysterious oceans around the world and I know each time I have seen the moon from a different place in a different world it has changed me and molded me and sent me in some other new direction with some new feeling and that is what is so wonderful about being free and being able to travel, it brings these incredible moments of complete happiness, peacefulness and clarity.
One night I actually ended up skinny dipping with a gorgeous hunky man from Australia, I had no intention of stripping off naked but when I got to the beach I realised I had no bra on only knickers, so it was only half a skinny dip so I had to go in with only my knickers on holding my boobs....very classy lassy!
We just floated on our backs looking up at the stars and I gave up trying to keep my boobs covered as I think he was probably more impressed with the stars than my nipples anyway.
A lovely man from Wales Endaf has been teaching me the guitar which is something I have wanted to do for a long time. He has actually got a eucalalia and that is probably spelt wrong but it is beautiful, a little tiny guitar and she sounds so sweet so I have been learning on her and she is a real sweet lady.
Endaf is so kind, he went into town which is a miracle actually because he has only managed to drag himself away from the bar about 4 times in 12 days. So off he went in to town to buy new guitar strings for a guitar we had in the stock room. He cleaned her up and changed the strings so I am starting to practice on her now. She is not as sweet as Endaf's little eucallalia but at least I can practice everyday.
There have been some wild nights were we have all been singing and dancing and of course you cant keep me off a pole if there is one in the room and I have had half a larger so yes I have been swinging around the poles, dancing on the bar and trying to do head stands whilst drunk wearing a dress and a g-string, so have I behaved????? I would say yes....very badly indeed and it was great.
I actually don't feel guilty about any of it which is unusual for me as usually I would be torturing myself with regrets and shame but I feel cool about it all. I realise I am not the Mother Superior and if I was I would probably still have a pair of hold up stockings on under my smock or what ever the dress is called and I realise that its ok to be wild sometimes as long as you are happy with yourself and you are doing what you want and you are not hurting anyone else or yourself and most of all that you have it under control, that you are treating yourself with love and respect and I think perhaps that is why I have found myself in this environment, because I need to learn that yes I can party I can have fun and dance and sing but it doesn't have to end up in a 3 day drinking binge or a dirty dark sad place of self pity and depression. I think knowing I have a job and responsibilities is helping me to.It gives me a reason to say ok that's enough I'm off to bed I have work in the morning.
I am just trying to keep it all together and under control. I don't drink everyday and I am drinking gallons of water and if I do indulge with a little Rastafarian old holborn I wait until after dark when all I am good for is bed and that's all I can do...stumble up the stairs to bed.
I actually slipped through the stairs the other night and was completely sober. The stairs are wooden with big gaps between each step and it had been raining so the stairs were really slippery so as I walked up the stairs my right foot slipped and drove straight through the staircase out the other end and my second leg went straight through the step underneath. So there I was up to my groin in a staircase which I know must sound hilarious but it fuking hurt like hell.
I was screaming to everyone in the bar to come and get me the hell out of there but the music was on and everyone was dancing and no bugger could hear me so I just sat there in agony legs scrapped and ripped to ribbons crying into the stairs. It was completely mortifying and probably a good job no one had heard me because I don't think I could handle the shame of all those people coming running out to find the bar maid trapped up to her gusset in the stairs. I mean I have been up to the groin in some strange things over the years but a bloody staircase, even I could not see anything kinky in that!
I eventually pulled myself out of the stairs and went to bed and cried for a few minutes at the state of my legs and then I saw the funny side and started laughing and laughing at how funny it must have all looked lol.
I am up every morning around 7am and I work until about 5 most days and then I'm free to do what I like. I usually go across the road and sit and watch the sunset which is always wonderful. Sometimes I do the night shift which I love too because I can get up and run on the beach and do some yoga or sit in the sun and then I work and have a few drinks with the customers and have a laugh. We have had some great customers, really wonderful people and it is always sad to say goodbye, that's the down side to travelling you are always saying goodbye but it is worth it just to have a few wonderful days and some amazing moments that create exceptional memories. So for that and for all the guests that have stayed at the Moonlight Rock over the last few weeks I want to say thank you for making it so much fun and for making me feel alive and happy.
I have a very very strong feeling that this is it. This is the last big trip of my life solo. I just feel that my life is about to change dramatically. I feel like I am on the edge of something amazing and I feel already happy in this moment with all the craziness around me I feel in control and balanced and happy but I really feel that a few more steps will take me somewhere really special. I have a feeling that the next trip I take because for me life has been for the last 20 years one trip after another but I think the next one will be one I will not do alone. I really believe that a wonderful soul is making his way to me as we speak...I can feel it very strongly....who will he be...only God knows!
I feel like I am really ready now to settle somewhere. I know it is not here in Cambodia, even though it is beautiful and I have some wonderful friends here, I know I will not stay. I really feel I will go back to India. I really want to visit my Indian friends there and see Rajasthan and a few other places I missed but I don't think I will settle there either.
I am excited about the future but to be honest I am enjoying the present and that is all we really have.
I am amazed that I am living a completely different life than one I was living just a few weeks ago but somehow I know Moonlight Rock Is where I am supposed to be right now. I just know that for some reason I am here and I will stay for a little while. I am sure that something will happen soon that will change everything and then everything will slot into place like it's supposed to and I'm excited about that.
Life is full of amazing things, so many people are walking into my life every day and I am happy and feel blessed to have met the people that I have over the last three weeks and I realise that I do actually have more self control than I thought. I can say no and I can stay sober if that is what I have decided to do and if I want to party then I will and I have but Im ok I'm not jacking up heroin or anything, I'm just drinking a few beers and laughing with friends...I don't think I have to hang my self in shame for partaking in a little wild fun.
There have been a couple of romantic shin digs but I wont go into that, but I'm cool with it, I'm a passionate woman and we all need some loving from time to time.
So for now I'm staying put in the Rock & Roll bar and I'm enjoying every minute so thank you Chris and thank you Vanja for giving me a job and a safe place and a family oh and a dog x
Firstly I just want to say thanks for reading my last blogg. More people read the 'Tigers amongst the Vultures' than any other blogg I have ever written. In fact more people read it than 3 bloggs put together, approximately 120 people indulged in the smutty life of Jacquelina getting mucky in Bangkok which is incredible. I'm not sure who all of you are but if it gave you a giggle or helped to waste a way a few moments of reality and boredom then that's good enough for me.
I guess that means that you lot like a bit of filth so I will try my best not to get too sensible in my old age. Some things I cant really talk about because I am still here with the people evolved and it could make things rather embarrassing so you will all have to wait for the book to get all the nitty gritty smutty details.
So the next chapter of my trip is in full swing.
I returned to Sihanoukville Cambodia a few weeks ago. It was so strange coming back after 3 years. Allot has changed, some things for the better, a nice walk way has been built along the beach so you can run in the mornings which I did and loved it. The Serendipity dirt road that takes you down to the beach is finally finished so the place looks a little more cared for and together. There are lots more lovely restaurants dotted about town and little boutiques selling pretty bags and clothes and the place just looks cleaner and fresher. Of course it is still a town brimming over with brothels, prostitutes, sexpats and stoned backpackers but Sihanoukville will always be like that I'm sure.
I met up with my ex boyfriend Tha and we went back to Bamboo Island where I used to live and work to see my dog Murphy. It was a wonderful day. The island was so so beautiful, it looked like paradise as we pulled up in our little fishing boat. The tall palm trees and the golden sand and little bamboo huts hiding in the shade.
I felt really overwhelmed seeing my old home again. Its so strange that you don't really appreciate how lucky you are until you look back on things. I had lived here on a beautiful tropical island for 7 months and I don't think I ever realised completely how lucky I was and how blessed because I was always running around stressing out trying to keep a business running.
I spotted my dog Murphy on the beach sniffing around the day trippers and their picnic baskets, I was nervous to shout his name I was was worried he wouldn't remember me so I waited until I got off the boat.
Once on the beach I called him and his head span around, his ears pricked up into the air and he ran for me. I could see at first the first few sniffs he was surprised and probably amazed, it had been 3 years after all and then he went nuts, he jumped on me knocking me to the ground covering me in a cloud of sand and then he ran off at 100 mph and then back jumping on me again it was beautiful and I have to say I was happier to see my Murph than I was to see anything or anyone.
He was the most loyal dog to me when I lived on the island. He would wait for me to finish work walk me back to my hut in the dark, sleep on the floor by my bed and if me and Tha had a fight which we regularly did he would always come with me to a different bungalow lol...good dog that Murph , the best.
I started work at the Moonlight Rock bar and guest house about 3 weeks ago. It's quite strange really how I went from living in an ashram doing yoga and meditation every day to living in a rock bar and swinging on the poles and dancing on the bar....but I have.
I have found myself right slap bang in the middle of an environment which is everything that I didn't want to be part of, but somehow it feels right for me to be here. No body forced me into it or talked me into it, it just kind of happened that way.
I met one of the owners when I was up in Phnom Penn when I first arrived back in Cambodia and we got on great and he said he needed someone to work the bar and take care of the place when he was busy or out of town and I had spent lots of my budget getting from India to south east Asia and working for bed, food and drinks meant that I wouldn't actually be spending much of my savings so I agreed to come down and see how it went.
I was of course concerned that I would start drinking again and I was right to be concerned because I have drank since I have been here but somehow it feels the right place for me to be at this moment in my life and I am by no means drinking excessively I have kept Jacquelina under relative control, well for a rock bar staff member anyway.
I have not been drunk everyday or anything like that and am still running on the beach and doing my yoga just not as often but I am happy and I know that is a blessing.
I do miss peace and solitude though. It is hard to meditate in your room when Nirvana is blasting out downstairs but I walk across to the beach when I really need to get away and find a quiet spot and meditate there.
The owners are both great to me and I get along great with them both but they are so so different. Vanja is calm and cool and so laid back that she is almost horizontal and chilled and Chris is fiery and loud and full of energy and laughter and craziness a bit like me really probably we are too much alike, but it works and it works well they balance each other out and I'm enjoying spending time with them both. We all just seem to fit well together so that's cool.
It just feels right that I am here at this time and that's all I can really go with. Even though my lifestyle is so different to the life I was living in India I know that I am only here at Moonlight Rock for a short time so I am just going to enjoy it and try and keep myself under-control and then I will leave and go back to the loving arms of Mother India.
The Khmer staff are lovely. I feel like I have been here for months. I feel I have just slipped into the family like I have always been there, it just feels right.
I know I wont stay here, I know I will return to India and the sobriety and discipline I had so enjoyed but I know for now, I want this, this wildness and laughter and music and dancing and I want to be with people again. Its strange because for months in India I did not want to talk with anyone. I wanted complete silence and solitude and now I am spending every moment talking with people from all over the world and I love it.
My life here is so so different to how I was living in India and it has made me realise even more how extreme certain aspects of my personality actually are. I crave peace and solitude, space to meditate and do yoga and then I go and get a job in a rock bar, I don't understand how it happened but I know everything does for some reason or another. I'm glad to be here and I am grateful that I have been given this job and a home and a family because that is how it feels. I feel like I have a safe place to be and a family that loves me and how can anyone be ungrateful about that. I know there are lessons I will learn here and that is why I am here of course and I am ready to learn them and I will take that knowledge with me on my trip to the next place.
Maybe I can be all of these parts of my personality. Maybe I will find the balance between wildness and calmness or maybe I will have to choose between the two, I'm not sure about that yet.
I must admit I have had some wonderful times in the last three weeks. I have swam in the ocean with guests gazing up at the beautiful full moon, laughing together and feeling free and invincible.
The bar is right across the street from the beach so some nights we just wander over and strip off and swim in the warm dark ocean. A wonderful girl Athena that was stopping with us said something that I found really profound and beautiful as we were swimming under the full moon. She said "Ï will never be the same now that I have seen the moon from the other side of the world"...isn't that beautiful???
I really felt what she meant in my heart and I feel so so blessed that I have looked up at the moon from dark mysterious oceans around the world and I know each time I have seen the moon from a different place in a different world it has changed me and molded me and sent me in some other new direction with some new feeling and that is what is so wonderful about being free and being able to travel, it brings these incredible moments of complete happiness, peacefulness and clarity.
One night I actually ended up skinny dipping with a gorgeous hunky man from Australia, I had no intention of stripping off naked but when I got to the beach I realised I had no bra on only knickers, so it was only half a skinny dip so I had to go in with only my knickers on holding my boobs....very classy lassy!
We just floated on our backs looking up at the stars and I gave up trying to keep my boobs covered as I think he was probably more impressed with the stars than my nipples anyway.
A lovely man from Wales Endaf has been teaching me the guitar which is something I have wanted to do for a long time. He has actually got a eucalalia and that is probably spelt wrong but it is beautiful, a little tiny guitar and she sounds so sweet so I have been learning on her and she is a real sweet lady.
Endaf is so kind, he went into town which is a miracle actually because he has only managed to drag himself away from the bar about 4 times in 12 days. So off he went in to town to buy new guitar strings for a guitar we had in the stock room. He cleaned her up and changed the strings so I am starting to practice on her now. She is not as sweet as Endaf's little eucallalia but at least I can practice everyday.
There have been some wild nights were we have all been singing and dancing and of course you cant keep me off a pole if there is one in the room and I have had half a larger so yes I have been swinging around the poles, dancing on the bar and trying to do head stands whilst drunk wearing a dress and a g-string, so have I behaved????? I would say yes....very badly indeed and it was great.
I actually don't feel guilty about any of it which is unusual for me as usually I would be torturing myself with regrets and shame but I feel cool about it all. I realise I am not the Mother Superior and if I was I would probably still have a pair of hold up stockings on under my smock or what ever the dress is called and I realise that its ok to be wild sometimes as long as you are happy with yourself and you are doing what you want and you are not hurting anyone else or yourself and most of all that you have it under control, that you are treating yourself with love and respect and I think perhaps that is why I have found myself in this environment, because I need to learn that yes I can party I can have fun and dance and sing but it doesn't have to end up in a 3 day drinking binge or a dirty dark sad place of self pity and depression. I think knowing I have a job and responsibilities is helping me to.It gives me a reason to say ok that's enough I'm off to bed I have work in the morning.
I am just trying to keep it all together and under control. I don't drink everyday and I am drinking gallons of water and if I do indulge with a little Rastafarian old holborn I wait until after dark when all I am good for is bed and that's all I can do...stumble up the stairs to bed.
I actually slipped through the stairs the other night and was completely sober. The stairs are wooden with big gaps between each step and it had been raining so the stairs were really slippery so as I walked up the stairs my right foot slipped and drove straight through the staircase out the other end and my second leg went straight through the step underneath. So there I was up to my groin in a staircase which I know must sound hilarious but it fuking hurt like hell.
I was screaming to everyone in the bar to come and get me the hell out of there but the music was on and everyone was dancing and no bugger could hear me so I just sat there in agony legs scrapped and ripped to ribbons crying into the stairs. It was completely mortifying and probably a good job no one had heard me because I don't think I could handle the shame of all those people coming running out to find the bar maid trapped up to her gusset in the stairs. I mean I have been up to the groin in some strange things over the years but a bloody staircase, even I could not see anything kinky in that!
I eventually pulled myself out of the stairs and went to bed and cried for a few minutes at the state of my legs and then I saw the funny side and started laughing and laughing at how funny it must have all looked lol.
I am up every morning around 7am and I work until about 5 most days and then I'm free to do what I like. I usually go across the road and sit and watch the sunset which is always wonderful. Sometimes I do the night shift which I love too because I can get up and run on the beach and do some yoga or sit in the sun and then I work and have a few drinks with the customers and have a laugh. We have had some great customers, really wonderful people and it is always sad to say goodbye, that's the down side to travelling you are always saying goodbye but it is worth it just to have a few wonderful days and some amazing moments that create exceptional memories. So for that and for all the guests that have stayed at the Moonlight Rock over the last few weeks I want to say thank you for making it so much fun and for making me feel alive and happy.
I have a very very strong feeling that this is it. This is the last big trip of my life solo. I just feel that my life is about to change dramatically. I feel like I am on the edge of something amazing and I feel already happy in this moment with all the craziness around me I feel in control and balanced and happy but I really feel that a few more steps will take me somewhere really special. I have a feeling that the next trip I take because for me life has been for the last 20 years one trip after another but I think the next one will be one I will not do alone. I really believe that a wonderful soul is making his way to me as we speak...I can feel it very strongly....who will he be...only God knows!
I feel like I am really ready now to settle somewhere. I know it is not here in Cambodia, even though it is beautiful and I have some wonderful friends here, I know I will not stay. I really feel I will go back to India. I really want to visit my Indian friends there and see Rajasthan and a few other places I missed but I don't think I will settle there either.
I am excited about the future but to be honest I am enjoying the present and that is all we really have.
I am amazed that I am living a completely different life than one I was living just a few weeks ago but somehow I know Moonlight Rock Is where I am supposed to be right now. I just know that for some reason I am here and I will stay for a little while. I am sure that something will happen soon that will change everything and then everything will slot into place like it's supposed to and I'm excited about that.
Life is full of amazing things, so many people are walking into my life every day and I am happy and feel blessed to have met the people that I have over the last three weeks and I realise that I do actually have more self control than I thought. I can say no and I can stay sober if that is what I have decided to do and if I want to party then I will and I have but Im ok I'm not jacking up heroin or anything, I'm just drinking a few beers and laughing with friends...I don't think I have to hang my self in shame for partaking in a little wild fun.
There have been a couple of romantic shin digs but I wont go into that, but I'm cool with it, I'm a passionate woman and we all need some loving from time to time.
So for now I'm staying put in the Rock & Roll bar and I'm enjoying every minute so thank you Chris and thank you Vanja for giving me a job and a safe place and a family oh and a dog x
