The land of sheep and chocolate

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Thai Time

Half-way to New Zealand and who can say how I am feeling about the whole enterprise at the moment? On the one hand I have a lovely new life to look forward to, but on the other I have made my mother cry. Nothing's easy I suppose.

I arrived at Bangkok in the heat of the afternoon in the rainy season. I booked an expensive hotel through Trailfinders and what a mistake that has proved to be. Instead of the friendly backpackers home from home of the Khao San Road, I am across town, through some of the worst traffic in the world, in what can only be described as one of the sleazier areas. A larger than average percentage of the tourists around the Sukhamvit Road are men travelling on their own and I am aware that I am one of them. Well, I am sick of the constant demands for sex from ladies on street corners and I have fled to more familiar surroundings.

The journey here in a Tuk Tuk during the Thai rush-hour was an adventure in itself. We swerved through the traffic and the drizzle, over the pavements, narrowly avoiding motorbikes and street stalls selling unidentifiable food; but then the rest of the traffic was doing the same. I breathed in the fumes of two-stroke exhausts and raw sewage, the smell of an Asian city. The only disappointment has been my bargaining skills (I paid 130 baht, probably twice the going rate).

Now I am off for dinner at a backpacker restaurant where they show illegal copies of the latest movies, filmed at the cinema and complete with the backs of peoples heads and people getting up to go to the toilet. And afterwards, if I want to go and buy some stripey trousers, then I will. That's how much at home I feel at the moment.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

The Land of Sheep and Chocolate

New Zealand is notoriously a land where sheep outnumber people by 8 to 1. Or something like that. That's the main fact people seem to know about the country I am about to make my home and there is no doubt that there are lots of sheep there. However, it would be tiresome to go on about it and in my opinion, if New Zealand deserves to be famous for making anything, it is chocolate. It's just ordinary Dairy Milk, but made with much creamier milk from happy cows and is far and away better than anything you can get in the UK; it is reason enough to move over in itself.

I am writing this the night before leaving. Emigrating has involved months of planning, weeks of packing and days of saying goodbyes and there are now just hours left for me in the UK before I leave the country for a new life in New Zealand, the land of numerous sheep and fantastic chocolate.

Getting to this point has been harder than expected and by far the hardest thing I have done, but not really for the reasons you might expect. The goodbyes are emotionally draining and the doubts ever present, but most of all its been months of hard physical work, slimming down our possessions into twelve cardboard boxes and what we can take onto the plane. I feel like I've been moving house for a year and I can't exagerate just how fed up I am with carrying things into the car and then out again at the other end. By contrast, actually going is a breeze and I can't seem to get worked up about it in the slightest.

I don't have any worries about having made the right decision. Jo and I have thought carefully about what we want from life and it seems to be very hard to get it in the UK, with its all working, all drinking and shopping lifestyle and overpriced housing.

And there's more. As far as I can tell from reading the Daily Mail, the streets of our cities are full of gangsters, crack-whores and knife wielding hooded teenagers loitering with intent. Clearly that's not the kind of place I want my little Lily growing up in.

So, New Zealand is the right decision. It's a lovely green half-empty land full of nice people doing nice things and being nice to each other. I just can't wait to get there!