Ramadan diary: day 18

So it seems timing mishaps are following me around. Last night I got back at 7. As I was sitting in the car, feeling the sunrays on my cheeks I felt motivated to go for a walk. The hotel has a golf course and beautiful greenery including a small pond I imagined sitting by and reading.

As it turns out, when I went into my room, I just could not be asked! So instead I planned to take a nap. A whole 2 hours – what a luxury! I decided what I was going to order that night, some Indian, and put an alarm on for 9 so I could order in time for Iftar.

I awoke naturally 10 mins before 9 – thought to myself, I have 10 more minutes, and closed my eyes once more. A thought process that always precipitates tragedy.

Next thing I hear is a phone call from my mum. In my sleepy state I thought it was 10 minutes past 9 so I rejected the call and quickly ordered my food – thinking it’ll still get here before Iftar. Called my mum back only to be told it’s 10 minutes past 10!

Checked my phone and it was true. I had set my alarm for 9am, not pm. Rookie mistake. I was late for Iftar and food was not arriving for another 45 minutes!

Thankfully I had water left over from last night. Broke my fast and went to pray. No harm done.

I had bought some snacks a few days ago  and was very much looking forward to some fruit. I don’t know if it’s the packaging or the fact I did not put it in the fridge (no fridge in this room) but it tasted very off. No fruit or walk for me.

So instead I snacked on some cheese twists – and ended up filling up on them. So moorish! Rookie mistake once again. By the time my food came I wasn’t even hungry and could not eat more than a few bites. So much food wasted!

I hope you all have an uneventful iftar – just a simple one with your loved ones or loved food.

I’m off home and will be spending the whole of next week there! Inshallah I can use the last few days to make up for the major fails I’ve had over the last few days.

Memories: lost in the sun

There are moments on this holiday that I want engraved in memory forever. But without the time to write them in a journal I wonder if I will remember exact joy, smells, heat in a few years or even weeks time.

And if so, I wonder if they will be romantised versions. Hotter? Funnier? Longer? And then whether that is such a bad thing after all.

One story comes to mind in particular. We had just finished spending the day in Splash Jungle Waterpark. My friend had researched a local beach being a short walk away from there. So we set off in the hunt for this beach. Bare in mind: our hotel is on a beach resort, we could have got a shuttle back to the hotel, I am wearing a full black scuba outfit that is still a little damp and very uncomfortable.

After a 10 minute walk we take a right. It looks like a road not walked often but then again most people probably go back to their hotel after the park so that would make sense. The further we walk the more and more sand coveres the road ’till we are walking on just sand. Sand that’s being heated by the rays of peak, midday sun. All of us are wearing sandles and as the sand comes into them the souls of our feet are burning. We couldn’t stop to think because the sand was too hot to stop on. The only viable option was to keep going. Because sand must mean water?

Another half an hour walking in direct heat on torturous sand. At this point we looked like we had just come out of the sea – all covered in sweat. I was sweating from places I didn’t know could sweat!

We end up at the boundary of the airport.  This doesn’t seem too hopeful but at least now weave a gate we can walk alongside. So we keep on.

At this point we are a little delirious. We play music and my friend starts marching commanding us to march behind her. And we do. Marching to “you don’t gotta go to work, work, work, work, work, work, work”. On we marched, too invested to turn around.

Until we came to a dead end. This is after an hour of walking which doesn’t seem like much now but in that environment and in that outfit it might as well been a whole day.

So back we turned. Still marching as it’s the only way we could keep going.

After the painful march back we found someone’s house. I collapsed onto the floor, not even caring about the ants and the dog glaring at me. The owner came out and we asked if he knew the nearest taxi place. But of course he did not understand English and we did know Thai. So on we went again back to the park.

Here we had missed the last shuttle by one minute and had to wait another half an hour before a taxi came by.

Somewhere along that journey I lost my sunglasses and I have no idea where. I also burnt my face and feet – but am thankful I did not have a heatstroke.

We can laugh about it now but I do wonder what would have happened if one of us had fainted or we got attacked or accused of trying to enter the restricted. And I wonder how I will remember this story in a few weeks, months and then years

Mixed Messages

guys will hear what they want to hear.

This is the advice my friend, male, gave me when I retold a story of how a guy I had just met at a conference practically proposed to me. As I recalled the conversation I had with this eager beaver, my friend explained the meaning behind every phrase. Me saying I had enjoyed meeting the awesome people translated as he was awesome, for example.

No. Just no.

Now this is an extreme case, but over the years, I have had the problem of giving mixed messages to guys. Somehow, me pulling up a chair so they could sit next to me rather than stand, helping with coursework, offering advice with their own love life turned to proclamation of my own love interest for them. These guys were seeing stuff that just wasn’t there. I called them mate and bro. I never let them call me babe or kissed them on the cheek. I let them know I was in a long-term relationship (when this was the case).