I was dreading the day I had to leave India, I thought I would cry and be hysterical, but I didn't cry, I mean I was sad to leave India it had been my home for six months but I knew it was time for me to go and I knew there was more exciting adventures ahead.
I had some concerns about being off on the road again, my drinking had become a real problem for me before leaving England but as soon as I left England I stopped drinking. I realised that it was my situation in England that was making me so unhappy that I was using alcohol to numb the pain. I am not blaming anybody for that, I allowed certain situations to happen I allowed myself to be manipulated and blackmailed and I paid a heavy price.
I wanted yoga to become part of my life, something I did everyday, a way of life so that is what I did. I found a really good yoga teacher in Goa as soon as I arrived there and went everyday getting stronger and stronger. I stayed away from party people I always made sure I was home before dark so I would not be tempted to drink and I prayed all the time.
India gave me the shelter I needed to get well again. It gave me space and being amongst people that love God and worship every day inspired me to strengthen my own devotion.
I started meditating every day and each day I felt more at peace and more happy within myself.
India is a relatively dry country. It is impossible to buy alcohol in some districts and for this I was grateful. Of course it is wildly sold and drank in the tourist areas of Goa and Kerala but I just avoided the whole scene. I did drink a handful of times in India but the next morning I always wished I hadn't bothered because I was unable to go to yoga and unable to meditate and I felt that my healing had to be put on hold until I was sober. Drinking just complicates things for me and it holds me back and just drains me of my enthusiasm.
So for me the six months I spent in India have been the best of my life. I have loved other countries that I have lived in like Mexico and Greece and Egypt and others but the most profound changes, positive changes have occurred within me in India. I believe it has given me the direction I was looking for it has given me a strong foundation to now build on. I feel now that I can return to England and see my family without allowing myself to be hurt and I can now settle in Brighton and create a life for myself that I can be happy with.
And for all of that, to India I will always be grateful.
Returning to Thailand was not something really I had any desire to do. I just did not know were I wanted to go after India, because I didn't really want to leave India but as I boarded the flight I started to feel excited. I knew it would feel strange initially jumping from one culture into something completely different, like jumping out of the chapatti pan and into the wok, that thought came to me as I sat on the flight and made me giggle.
I had had a few bad experiences in Thailand the last time I was there three years ago and I really hoped nothing like that would happen again. The last time I was in Thailand I was drinking most days as most people do and alcohol usually leads to trouble and it did. I had met a guy and a girl from Canada and we travelled together for a little while. They were nice enough but I always felt like the outsider and to be honest they really were not my cup of tea. The whole Canadian thing of "Lets go hiking, lets go zip lining in the jungle, lets go paragliding lets do everything in the bloody book so we can tick off the whole bloody list of things to do in South East Asia and tell everyone back home", just well pissed me off!
They had this exhausting itinerary of all the things all their friends had done so they had to do and I just thought what a crock of crap. I like to chill out in a place, relax for a few days, get to know the local people, I don't want to be on buses constantly just so I can tick off somewhere else I have been that I can not even remember because I only spent a few hours there.
I should not have stayed with them as long as I did they got on my bloody nerves.
Anyway I will tell you a quick story of a pickle I found myself in three years ago in Bangkok.
It was the Canadian guys last night in Thailand and he said he wanted to go to see a ping pong show. I don't know if you know what that is but it's gross and I didn't want to go but they both talked me into it and I gave in. I had a gut feeling that something bad was going to happen. I had a feeling deep in my stomach telling me not to go but I ignored it and I shouldn't have. We spent 30 minutes in a taxi travelling to some God awful place that was wall to wall lady bars and brothels.
The place was full of naked Thai girls swinging around poles with plastic tits and plastic western style slim noses tottering around on cheap shoes covered in dodge diamantes. There were groups of hostile touts approaching from every direction shoving menus in our faces of what was on show and believe me everything was on show. Girls popping ping pong balls out of their vagina's, live sex shows, girls pulling well everything but the kitchen sink out of every available orifice.
I did not want to go inside but I did not want to stay outside alone either so in we went. It was a dark and dingy place with the regular white western old perverts sat in the dark with their mucky paws on their crotches and the scrawniest looking Thai girls parading around on the stage looking like they had spent the last six months in a concentration camp. I was disgusted the girls were obviously on drugs, eyes rolling in their heads, their skinny poor bodies covered in bruises and scabs and when the first ping pong ball popped out and flew across the room in my direction I was up out of my seat heading for the door like shit off a chrome shovel. That is when I realised that there was going to be trouble.
A big Thai woman the size of a brick shit house blocked the door and shouted over to a group of Thai guys that were stood in the far corner of the dark room by the stage. I looked behind at my so called friends and they were laughing and enjoying the show I was disgusted how could they find anything to laugh at. The girls were battered drug addicts, there was nothing funny about it or sexy it was just wrong on every level. I tried to open the door again and the brick shit house blocked it again and then the Thai guys started asking me for money. I had left the price of my beer with the Canadians but the angry group of Thai guys that had surrounded me were saying in their broken English that I owed them money for ping pong money for ping pong. I was terrified I had heard of people being beaten up outside these places and robbed and killed and I couldn't believe I had listened to that stupid pair and gotten myself into that mess. Eventually the Canadian couple came over and again our exit was blocked. The Canadian guy was quite drunk and he started arguing with the Thai guys and I thought what a daft prick there was about six Thai guys there, he was vastly out numbered and all he was doing was making a bad situation worse. In the end after me pleading with him to shut his face they robbed us of all of our money and threw us out of the door. We were lucky to get away with just that I really thought they would beat us up and they probably would have if that Canadian tool had carried on with his trap. I was so upset when I got out of there, I was shacking from head to toe and totally pissed off with them and myself for being talked into this. I told them I wanted to get the hell out of there but they said they wanted to stay. The guy had his bank card so would get more money out, I couldn't believe it they wanted to stay in that deviant sex grotto, so I jumped in a taxi straight back to my hotel of course the other two did not give a shit that I was getting into a taxi alone in Bangkok they just wondered off together. We went our separate ways the next day as you can imagine and I hope I never see either of them again. I was more angry with myself than I was at them because I knew that something bad was going to happen. I could feel it, I knew I was being warned not to go. I went against my inner voice my intuition and I vowed never to do that again. Anyway that was last time that was three years ago and this time I would not be allowing those things to happen. I was not going to be drinking or hanging around with anyone that I knew was not good company for me to keep and who obviously didn't care about me at all. I was not going to ignore my own survival instincts. I was determined to see something beautiful in Thailand this time. I had been robbed ripped off and left heartbroken the last time I had been here and I didn't want that to ruin this time for me. So I came back to Thailand with an open mind wanting a fresh start not allowing the bad experiences three years ago taint this trip.
I was literally in the country 1 hour when I was robbed WTF!!!
Now I know you are going to think for Christ sake Jaq it is only a yoga mat, but as any yoga loving bunny knows your yoga mat is your life! No body should touch your yoga mat. I have had to restrain myself from breaking a birds jaw in a yoga class because on her daft way to the loo she stood on my yoga mat, just walked straight over it. You just don't bloody do that shit. Your yoga mat is your personal space, your sanctuary your bloody territory , STEP AWAY FROM THE BLOODY YOGA MAT BITCH!
Anyway some bugger stole it, it's gone, it's history it has disappeared into the black hole of Bangkok or into somebody's black hole, that would probably be more like it and so is my beautiful vibrant orange yoga mat holder I bought in Kerala at the Sivananda ashram...wounder!
I of course was not impressed, my first hour in Thailand and history was repeating it self but I had a firm word with myself and thought, except what is Jacqueline it could have been worse they could of taken your back pack too. So I just excepted it and thought I will buy another one. Well looking for a yoga mat in Bangkok is like trying to get blood out of a bloodless cactus. No bugger even knows what I am talking about. I even had the hotel receptionist translate YOGA MAT into Thai on a bit of paper and every where I have been and shown them the piece of paper they are still looking at me and then the paper and then me again with a face on them like they have just smoked a joint, nothing doing! I have walked the width and breadth of Bangkok looking for a new yoga mat to no avail. Isn't it crazy if I had fancied having an afternoon gang bang with a load of Thai ladies or lady boys or even really pushed the boat out and gone for both well that would have been 'no problem madame I'll send them right up' but to find a yoga mat is like pissing in the wind. So very reluctantly I hot footed over to the other side of Bangkok in a taxi to a huge shopping mall, MBK. I hate shopping and I detest shopping malls they remind me of America all those greedy people stuffing themselves and their kids with junk food. Filling their bags with endless worthless junk, all those vain and greedy people on mass, I hate it. And the whole place stunk of meat. It is probably because I have been in India for so long and most people are vegetarian and you don't really see much meat but here in Thailand it is everywhere. All I could smell was the sickly rich meaty smell of cooked animal flesh it was gross. People walking around with bits of dead fish on sticks and tearing into dead chicken flesh, ripping it off the bones with their teeth like cave men in mini skirts. (These Thai girls wear really short skirts and have the skinniest legs and huge platforms shoes with high heels they look like flamingo's in roller boots), It was all making me feel sick. Shelves piled high with bags and bags off fried cockroaches, peppered ants, dried fish just bloody obscene...give me an iceberg lettuce any day. I asked probably thirty people about a yoga mat, showed them the piece of paper were yoga mat was written in English and Thai went through the same ordeal every time of them nodding, frowning, shouting across shops to each other and then directing me in the opposite direction to the direction the last person had sent me in. I eventually got a soddin Yoga mat after 2 hours of being in the shopping hell mall I had the choice of an luminous green one that looked like alien snot or a bright yellow one, so I took the yellow one so I now look like I have a giant banana strapped to my body...how very appropriate in Bangkok, I think I will be every bodies best friend tonight!!!
I think because I know I am returning to India at the end of this year that made my departure so much easier. I have really been focusing on Buddhas teachings since completing my Vipassana meditation course so I am not allowing myself to crave for things or dread things. I am just trying to except things as they are. My tourist visa for India had come to the end of it's 6 months validation so I had to go, I had no choice.
I spent two sweltering days in dirty dusty Delhi before leaving India and even though it looks like a hurricane in a dustbin, I do love it. As I jumped in my taxi at 2am I said a silent sad goodbye to the quiet streets that would at the break of dawn as always explode into chaos and carnage as the hot unforgiving sun blistered above the crumbling city.
India for me has offered solitude, peace and spiritual guidance. If you saw the streets of Delhi or any Indian street you would probably think it unbelievable that anyone could have a moments solitude or peace in a place like that, but for six months I can honestly say I have been more at peace than at any other time of my life.
I know that that is because of how I feel inside not what is going on on the outside. You could be sat on a deserted beach on a beautiful peaceful Island and be in complete turmoil and full of anxiety. It is really just about what is going on inside ourselves and in India I found away to connect my mind with the divine mind. A way to quiet my mind and calm my self and a way to feel peace in amongst chaos. It is of course incredible that I came to probably one of the most populated countries in the world with what I believe has the most vibrant and intense of cultures and found such peace, but for me India is incredible and I will always love India for the positive change in myself I was able to develop there.
I know that that is because of how I feel inside not what is going on on the outside. You could be sat on a deserted beach on a beautiful peaceful Island and be in complete turmoil and full of anxiety. It is really just about what is going on inside ourselves and in India I found away to connect my mind with the divine mind. A way to quiet my mind and calm my self and a way to feel peace in amongst chaos. It is of course incredible that I came to probably one of the most populated countries in the world with what I believe has the most vibrant and intense of cultures and found such peace, but for me India is incredible and I will always love India for the positive change in myself I was able to develop there.
In India because I have not had to work I have not had all those stresses that are concerned with making a living, paying the bills and supporting a family. I have been fortunate to be able to live on my savings and just spend my days doing as I wish. I don't want to piss anybody off by saying that, I know not everyone can just up and leave when they want and travel around free as a bird and I really do know how blessed I am and I thank God every day several times a day in-fact for my very fortunate position. I did work for what I have and I saved like crazy and didn't spend money on the latest fashions. I really was strict with myself so I could do this trip.
My intention really was to come to India, which has been a dream of mine for years and really throw myself into the culture. I wanted to travel the country by train which I did. I would lean out of the windows watching the village people coming and going and tending the vibrant green rice paddies. Beautiful rainbow saris wrapped around pretty woman carrying huge bundles on their heads with long black plaits cascading down their backs. Green hills rushing past dotted with temples and hermitages and energetic children waving excitedly to me from the fields in their dusty clothes.
My train journeys have given me my most favourable memories of India. The people you meet, the Indian families that pass you hot spicy food and ask you never ending questions about your life, your non-existing husband and your occupation back home.
The chai sellers that scream to you all day from 5am until dark trying to get you to buy hot milky tea in small plastic cups the size of a thimble's with ten sugars and a milk scab on the top and the fruity men passing black bananas through the open windows, I loved all of it.
The only thing I won't miss about the trains are the loos, they bloody stink of men and you try squatting over a hole that goes on forever when the train is thundering along a track throwing you this way and that, you end up with a black and blue forehead and piss all over your feet, but it is all part of the experience and I can't wait to come back and do it all again.
The chai sellers that scream to you all day from 5am until dark trying to get you to buy hot milky tea in small plastic cups the size of a thimble's with ten sugars and a milk scab on the top and the fruity men passing black bananas through the open windows, I loved all of it.
The only thing I won't miss about the trains are the loos, they bloody stink of men and you try squatting over a hole that goes on forever when the train is thundering along a track throwing you this way and that, you end up with a black and blue forehead and piss all over your feet, but it is all part of the experience and I can't wait to come back and do it all again.
I had some concerns about being off on the road again, my drinking had become a real problem for me before leaving England but as soon as I left England I stopped drinking. I realised that it was my situation in England that was making me so unhappy that I was using alcohol to numb the pain. I am not blaming anybody for that, I allowed certain situations to happen I allowed myself to be manipulated and blackmailed and I paid a heavy price.
I felt like the weight the size of a hundred lifetimes of depression was lifting off my shoulders as I boarded the flight in England and I am so so happy that I left. I was heartbroken to say goodbye to my niece she is the most treasured part of my life and my nephew also, but very often I was not allowed to see them so I was not prepared to wait around while I was being tortured like that. I'm sure they will understand one day that I love them and always wanted to see them.
In India I was free of all of that pain and anytime I thought of my niece I would push it too the back of my mind so it didn't hurt so much.
I wanted yoga to become part of my life, something I did everyday, a way of life so that is what I did. I found a really good yoga teacher in Goa as soon as I arrived there and went everyday getting stronger and stronger. I stayed away from party people I always made sure I was home before dark so I would not be tempted to drink and I prayed all the time.
India gave me the shelter I needed to get well again. It gave me space and being amongst people that love God and worship every day inspired me to strengthen my own devotion.
I started meditating every day and each day I felt more at peace and more happy within myself.
India is a relatively dry country. It is impossible to buy alcohol in some districts and for this I was grateful. Of course it is wildly sold and drank in the tourist areas of Goa and Kerala but I just avoided the whole scene. I did drink a handful of times in India but the next morning I always wished I hadn't bothered because I was unable to go to yoga and unable to meditate and I felt that my healing had to be put on hold until I was sober. Drinking just complicates things for me and it holds me back and just drains me of my enthusiasm.
So for me the six months I spent in India have been the best of my life. I have loved other countries that I have lived in like Mexico and Greece and Egypt and others but the most profound changes, positive changes have occurred within me in India. I believe it has given me the direction I was looking for it has given me a strong foundation to now build on. I feel now that I can return to England and see my family without allowing myself to be hurt and I can now settle in Brighton and create a life for myself that I can be happy with.
And for all of that, to India I will always be grateful.
Returning to Thailand was not something really I had any desire to do. I just did not know were I wanted to go after India, because I didn't really want to leave India but as I boarded the flight I started to feel excited. I knew it would feel strange initially jumping from one culture into something completely different, like jumping out of the chapatti pan and into the wok, that thought came to me as I sat on the flight and made me giggle.
I had had a few bad experiences in Thailand the last time I was there three years ago and I really hoped nothing like that would happen again. The last time I was in Thailand I was drinking most days as most people do and alcohol usually leads to trouble and it did. I had met a guy and a girl from Canada and we travelled together for a little while. They were nice enough but I always felt like the outsider and to be honest they really were not my cup of tea. The whole Canadian thing of "Lets go hiking, lets go zip lining in the jungle, lets go paragliding lets do everything in the bloody book so we can tick off the whole bloody list of things to do in South East Asia and tell everyone back home", just well pissed me off!
They had this exhausting itinerary of all the things all their friends had done so they had to do and I just thought what a crock of crap. I like to chill out in a place, relax for a few days, get to know the local people, I don't want to be on buses constantly just so I can tick off somewhere else I have been that I can not even remember because I only spent a few hours there.
I should not have stayed with them as long as I did they got on my bloody nerves.
Anyway I will tell you a quick story of a pickle I found myself in three years ago in Bangkok.
It was the Canadian guys last night in Thailand and he said he wanted to go to see a ping pong show. I don't know if you know what that is but it's gross and I didn't want to go but they both talked me into it and I gave in. I had a gut feeling that something bad was going to happen. I had a feeling deep in my stomach telling me not to go but I ignored it and I shouldn't have. We spent 30 minutes in a taxi travelling to some God awful place that was wall to wall lady bars and brothels.
The place was full of naked Thai girls swinging around poles with plastic tits and plastic western style slim noses tottering around on cheap shoes covered in dodge diamantes. There were groups of hostile touts approaching from every direction shoving menus in our faces of what was on show and believe me everything was on show. Girls popping ping pong balls out of their vagina's, live sex shows, girls pulling well everything but the kitchen sink out of every available orifice.
I did not want to go inside but I did not want to stay outside alone either so in we went. It was a dark and dingy place with the regular white western old perverts sat in the dark with their mucky paws on their crotches and the scrawniest looking Thai girls parading around on the stage looking like they had spent the last six months in a concentration camp. I was disgusted the girls were obviously on drugs, eyes rolling in their heads, their skinny poor bodies covered in bruises and scabs and when the first ping pong ball popped out and flew across the room in my direction I was up out of my seat heading for the door like shit off a chrome shovel. That is when I realised that there was going to be trouble.
A big Thai woman the size of a brick shit house blocked the door and shouted over to a group of Thai guys that were stood in the far corner of the dark room by the stage. I looked behind at my so called friends and they were laughing and enjoying the show I was disgusted how could they find anything to laugh at. The girls were battered drug addicts, there was nothing funny about it or sexy it was just wrong on every level. I tried to open the door again and the brick shit house blocked it again and then the Thai guys started asking me for money. I had left the price of my beer with the Canadians but the angry group of Thai guys that had surrounded me were saying in their broken English that I owed them money for ping pong money for ping pong. I was terrified I had heard of people being beaten up outside these places and robbed and killed and I couldn't believe I had listened to that stupid pair and gotten myself into that mess. Eventually the Canadian couple came over and again our exit was blocked. The Canadian guy was quite drunk and he started arguing with the Thai guys and I thought what a daft prick there was about six Thai guys there, he was vastly out numbered and all he was doing was making a bad situation worse. In the end after me pleading with him to shut his face they robbed us of all of our money and threw us out of the door. We were lucky to get away with just that I really thought they would beat us up and they probably would have if that Canadian tool had carried on with his trap. I was so upset when I got out of there, I was shacking from head to toe and totally pissed off with them and myself for being talked into this. I told them I wanted to get the hell out of there but they said they wanted to stay. The guy had his bank card so would get more money out, I couldn't believe it they wanted to stay in that deviant sex grotto, so I jumped in a taxi straight back to my hotel of course the other two did not give a shit that I was getting into a taxi alone in Bangkok they just wondered off together. We went our separate ways the next day as you can imagine and I hope I never see either of them again. I was more angry with myself than I was at them because I knew that something bad was going to happen. I could feel it, I knew I was being warned not to go. I went against my inner voice my intuition and I vowed never to do that again. Anyway that was last time that was three years ago and this time I would not be allowing those things to happen. I was not going to be drinking or hanging around with anyone that I knew was not good company for me to keep and who obviously didn't care about me at all. I was not going to ignore my own survival instincts. I was determined to see something beautiful in Thailand this time. I had been robbed ripped off and left heartbroken the last time I had been here and I didn't want that to ruin this time for me. So I came back to Thailand with an open mind wanting a fresh start not allowing the bad experiences three years ago taint this trip.
I was literally in the country 1 hour when I was robbed WTF!!!
Now I know you are going to think for Christ sake Jaq it is only a yoga mat, but as any yoga loving bunny knows your yoga mat is your life! No body should touch your yoga mat. I have had to restrain myself from breaking a birds jaw in a yoga class because on her daft way to the loo she stood on my yoga mat, just walked straight over it. You just don't bloody do that shit. Your yoga mat is your personal space, your sanctuary your bloody territory , STEP AWAY FROM THE BLOODY YOGA MAT BITCH!
Anyway some bugger stole it, it's gone, it's history it has disappeared into the black hole of Bangkok or into somebody's black hole, that would probably be more like it and so is my beautiful vibrant orange yoga mat holder I bought in Kerala at the Sivananda ashram...wounder!
I of course was not impressed, my first hour in Thailand and history was repeating it self but I had a firm word with myself and thought, except what is Jacqueline it could have been worse they could of taken your back pack too. So I just excepted it and thought I will buy another one. Well looking for a yoga mat in Bangkok is like trying to get blood out of a bloodless cactus. No bugger even knows what I am talking about. I even had the hotel receptionist translate YOGA MAT into Thai on a bit of paper and every where I have been and shown them the piece of paper they are still looking at me and then the paper and then me again with a face on them like they have just smoked a joint, nothing doing! I have walked the width and breadth of Bangkok looking for a new yoga mat to no avail. Isn't it crazy if I had fancied having an afternoon gang bang with a load of Thai ladies or lady boys or even really pushed the boat out and gone for both well that would have been 'no problem madame I'll send them right up' but to find a yoga mat is like pissing in the wind. So very reluctantly I hot footed over to the other side of Bangkok in a taxi to a huge shopping mall, MBK. I hate shopping and I detest shopping malls they remind me of America all those greedy people stuffing themselves and their kids with junk food. Filling their bags with endless worthless junk, all those vain and greedy people on mass, I hate it. And the whole place stunk of meat. It is probably because I have been in India for so long and most people are vegetarian and you don't really see much meat but here in Thailand it is everywhere. All I could smell was the sickly rich meaty smell of cooked animal flesh it was gross. People walking around with bits of dead fish on sticks and tearing into dead chicken flesh, ripping it off the bones with their teeth like cave men in mini skirts. (These Thai girls wear really short skirts and have the skinniest legs and huge platforms shoes with high heels they look like flamingo's in roller boots), It was all making me feel sick. Shelves piled high with bags and bags off fried cockroaches, peppered ants, dried fish just bloody obscene...give me an iceberg lettuce any day. I asked probably thirty people about a yoga mat, showed them the piece of paper were yoga mat was written in English and Thai went through the same ordeal every time of them nodding, frowning, shouting across shops to each other and then directing me in the opposite direction to the direction the last person had sent me in. I eventually got a soddin Yoga mat after 2 hours of being in the shopping hell mall I had the choice of an luminous green one that looked like alien snot or a bright yellow one, so I took the yellow one so I now look like I have a giant banana strapped to my body...how very appropriate in Bangkok, I think I will be every bodies best friend tonight!!!
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