Worst journey ever???

Recently I returned from a 2-week jaunt to Thailand with my brother and friend where my sole mission was to drink, dance, sunbathe and prey on unsuspecting men. I’m not claiming to be a good human as I have definitely said before and I figure that I am more than justified acting in this way, as I am newly single. So anyway, for ages I was umming and ahing over whether or not to go on the trip – I had been before and couldn’t even nearly afford it but fortunately my brother offered to foot the bill so I decided to please my parents and do the truly irresponsible thing and I finally booked it!  As I had booked it much later than my travelling companions there was zero chance of me getting on the same plane as them and that’s how I found myself booked onto a flight from Perth – Phuket which took nearly the same time as it would take to return to the UK. Probably should have realised when I booked it that this journey was not going to be for the faint hearted.

My itinery looked something like this. Perth – Bali. One hour stop over in Bali (refreshingly fast – or so I thought) and then Bali – Jakarta (only a short flight – lovely) and then Jakarta – Phuket. The major issue that I had with the journey was that I had a stop over in Jakarta for 12 hours. Rubbish.  Being me, I didn’t even take this into consideration before I left. I was blinded by the idea of drinking amphetamine-laced drinks from buckets whilst watching inebriated travellers jump through fire and nursing my hangover in crystal clear waters whilst eating my body weight in Thai green curry every day (not to be advised). However the journey proved to be a challenge in itself.

When I arrived in Bali I only had 45 minutes until my connecting flight. The queue’s to get into the country were ridiculous and would have taken close to 45 minutes alone but I was also expected to purchase a visa, clear immigration, collect my bags, sprint to the domestic terminal and then check in, clear security and board my other flight. Now to any logical person – this seems unrealistic and needless to say I was slightly panicked and the humid, sticky climate didn’t really assist with my nervous sweating. When I tried to explain my predicament to an Indonesian chap who looked official he just looked at me, tutted and pointed towards the queue. Damn him and his laid back attitude. Anyway – it all worked out fine. Somehow he was right (although he didn’t need to be so flaming cocky about it!) and I made it in time. There was a moment when I worried when instead of rechecking my bags in some man just took them from me and promised that he would put them on the right plane. Now, I just gave them to him and then freaked out for the next couple of hours that I would

 1. Arrive and my luggage would be lost and there would be a fancily dressed Indonsesian gentleman in Bali laughing his tits off at my stupidity or 

2. Would have drugs planted on me and would be arrested in Jakarta and would rot in jail for the rest of my life. Fortunately, as I am sure that you have assumed from reading this – I was ok. Talk about paranoid.

I must stress that this paranoia had been brought on that day at work when a number of my customers informed me that as a woman travelling alone I should be worried as the official people would assume that I was smuggling drugs. I mean come on! What kind of thing is that to say to a person embarking on holiday! Mean sons of bitches! They also relished in informing me that the airline that I was flying with had recently had an incident where the pilot had missed the runway. Excellent.

 Well, the fun was yet to come. I arrived in Jakarta at midnight and it was only then that the magnitude of the fact that I had to spend 12 hours there hit me. There is literally nothing at Jakarta airport apart from wooden benches and mosquitos. Fortunately, I had met a friendly German girl who was doing the same journey as me and so we camped down for the night. It wasn’t the comfiest but I had earplugs, eye-mask and valium on my side so I was a happy camper.  What seemed like only moments later I was awoken by a scream from the German girl and opened my eyes to discover that one of the Indonesian toilet cleaners who was loitering around when I fell asleep had popped his trousers down and was exposing his tiny Indonesian penis to her. What a treat! Needless to say – we shouted at him to vacate the area and to put it the hell away and what amused me was that he seemed genuinely surprised that we weren’t over the moon to wake up with penis on show. Fortunately we were together or it may not have been as funny but it definitely made sleeping again a bit harder. Every now and then he would shuffle pass pretending to sweep making sex noises! Now, I don’t know about you but cleaning certainly doesn’t make me want to make those types of noises so I can only assume that he was dropping incredibly unsubtle hints! In the end – I marched over, took his photo and shouted “POLICE” at him and looked as angry as possible whilst waggling my finger at him. He didn’t bother us again!

I eventually managed to sleep again but was again woken up by the German girl screaming because a cockroach had crawled on her. I sat up and asked if she was ok – to which she looked at me and screamed again! Not entirely the reaction I like to get when people look at me. “What’s happened to your face?” she asked me. Also, not the dream question to be asked. I rushed to the bathroom to discover that I was covered in bites and one particularly hungry fucker had bitten my eyelid and therefore I resembled Quasimodo. Awesome. Just what I wanted. The little bugger had also gone to town on my fingers (obviously the only things poking out of my sleeping bag) and I had massive swollen man hands! Sexy.

Thankfully the rest of the journey was pretty uneventful apart from a particularly feisty granny sat next to me on the plane who repeatedly elbowed me, stood on my feet and burped. What could I do? She was old – I can’t exactly do it back. Although in my sleep deprived state I wanted to. I wanted to elbow her right in the face! When I arrived in Phuket my eye and hands had luckily returned to normal size but I wasn’t so thankful for this when I was taking an early evening stroll and saw my second unwanted penis of the day. A guy, naked on his balcony. Now in normal circumstances this might be fun but this dude was most definitely in his 70’s. Not fun. Who wants to see that!

Anyway – after this journey I definitely needed a holiday and some of those buckets. Whoever decided to sell whiskey red bull and coke in a bucket is officially my hero.