TRAVEL REGRET #2 - Ko Phangan Tattoo

Ah Thailand... How I love you so! I could write about you for days, for weeks! Noting here all the regrets I managed to chalk up while exploring your seedy cities and beautiful shorelines. In fact, I love Thailand so much that I have a permanent reminder of my love affair ingrained in my arm.

No, it's not the name of some Thai-lady boy I mistakenly sojourned with after one to many bottles of Chang, nor is it the name of my favourite Thai whiskey carved into my arm with a shard of glass after... well, you guessed it, one too many whiskeys.

Instead...

Wait a minute, just wait one minute. I'm sure that, seasoned travellers that you all are, you are more than familiar with what a Ko Phangan tattoo is; that indelible sign that you have not only braved the roads of that tiny Thai island, but also done so on a vehicle unstable enough (or simply drunkenly driven enough) to crash into some object or another and find yourself with a nasty, bleeding and ultimately permenant graze, cut, slice or wound.

Yes, that is my Ko Phangan tattoo: A big scar on my right arm left there after I managed to crash a motorbike into a brick wall. You may think that is not so interesting, that this in fact manages to happen to people all the time, especially in Thailand where all you have to do to rent a motorbike is wink and nod while handing over a paltry amount of baht (an amount even more paltry when you think of how much a new arm or a week in a coma might cost).

So, why is this regret then worthy of being on my list? A list, might I remind you, that aims to not only outline all my travel regrets, but offer as a guide to others to keep them from making the same mistakes as I.

To answer that perhaps I should give you a bit more background into this fateful crash.

Starting with the beginning, or at least the beginning as far as I remember it, I awoke one morning in my tiny steaming Haad Rin cabin with the kind of headache only a whole day drinking Chang and buckets can provide. Staggering to the concrete-floor-and-tap-in-the-wall room that passed for a bathroom, I found that my right arm was covered in blood. Upon casting my heavy, hungover mind back to the night before, I recalled, among other scattered memories such as a friend stealing a bottle of vodka from a bar, myself jumping through a flaming hoop, and a rather lacklutsre pool party, I also recollected having a motorbike at some point.

No small wonder when you consider the fact that it's pretty hard to crash a motorbike without one.

The only thing is I hadn't had a motorbike. None whatsoever.

Returning to my room and to my equally hungover travelling partner, I told them of my recollection at which point they replied:

"What, you don't remember?"

'Obviously not' I thought to myself with a puzzled look as my only verbal reply.

"You stole a motorbike," my friend replied. "And then drove it into a wall five metres away. After that we had to dump it in a jungle then you vanished."

Three words: What. The. Fudge.

Then, like a song from the 80s, it all came back to me...

This is a country, let's not forget, that imprisoned an Australian woman for stealing a bar mat and here I was guilty of not only stealing a motorbike, but also being intoxicated enough to crash it into a wall five metres away!

I can still remember it now - the bike was sitting there, the keys in the ignition, the alcohol in my blood and the devil in my veins.


Zoom Zoom Bang Crash!


Such was the origin of my Ko Phangan tattoo.

A regret? Well, not really. I'm actually quite proud of my scar, even though I do think about the poor man or woman who left their house one morning to find their motorbike had gone missing and no doubt thought it something a bit more sinister than simply being the victim of a drunken joyrider's poor driving skills.

Still, for me what makes it a regret is that is symbolises my whole time on Ko Phangan, a time when, instead of seeing what the island had to offer, I instead spent most of it drinking the day away and then awaking the next day too hungover to attempt the lone street leading out of the town nicknamed 'death road', a name bestowed upon it due to its steep hills, dangerous curves, lack of cliff-side safety barriers and trucks full of Thai construction workers overtaking you at any and all opportunities.

In hindsight I should have a spent a couple of days off the sauce and seeing a bit more a country that is so much more than confusing young men, ping pong balls and buckets full of who knows what.

But that is a regret that I am sure we all share, the regret of spending too much time partying and not enough time exploring the country, the city, the street that we find ourselves.

I like to think I will learn from this experience... but as you will all see from regrets to come, I didn't.

TRAVEL REGRET #1 - Planning

TRAVEL REGRET #1

We should probably start with the one travel regret that gets all of us, the one that haunts our dreams on long bus journeys across dusty or rain-soaked landscapes, the one that sneaks up on us as we realise our time is running short, the one that we fight ourselves over: Should I? Shouldn't I?

Eating something bad? Forgetting something important? Waking up to remember you stole a motorbike in Hat Rin and now have a Ko Phangan tattoo? Well no, but more on that later.

No, none of the above in fact. Instead my opening Travel Regret is a lack of planning. That's right, when you try to take it easy and end up missing all those places that those down the road tell you were their highlights.

Bastards.

I think I've probably missed as many great things as I've seen and all because I never really took the time to plan out my trip.

Now, there are those who will tell you, 'Hey, don't plan! Just go with it!'

Those same people tend to be the ones with no food in the hostel fridge, dreadlocks, and who appear to be 'going troppo', all a ruse for the fact that they don't know where to wash their clothes.

They claim they see more and experience more. Well, you try going to a Serbian village and engaging in compelling sign language with the locals in order to ascertain what and where you should visit, all in the pursuit of a purer form of travel.

I know, I know. It's not cool, you tell me. It's not hip to plan, man.

Well I am sorry. I don't have a beard, I don't eat obscure types of nuts because they had them at the farmers market, I don't eat quinoa (well, I do but not because it's cool). I'm no wanna be hipster. I'm an old fashioned planner, a scheduler. I love www.bahn.de because it tells me what time trains depart from stations in deepest Moldova, I love Excel because I lets me map out my journeys to make the most of my limited travel time and money.

And most of all I love Lonely Planets.

By now I imagine all those cool kids with beards full of nuts have long since stopped reading, so we should all be free to admit the worth, the joy and the pleasure that a good travel guide can offer us.

Me, nothing signifies the start of my trip more than heading to my local bookshop and getting the Lonely Planet of the country I'm going to. I read it on the plane/train/automobile (I travel on automobiles) when I'm on my way; I read it in the hostel as I eat cheap crap to save money and I read it at night to cut down on having to carry a book.

I look at the maps sneakily so no one can see I'm a tourist; I go to the bars it recommends and imagine the person who wrote the recommendation by looking at the clientele.

In short, I follow.

I am no leader, let the cool kids lead and pave the way while sleeping on toilet seats and eating leaves.

I'm no luxury traveller. I'm no cool kid. I'm no hipster.

I'm a Lonely Planet traveller.

And you know what, if it helps me avoid a few regrets at the end of my trip then there goes my status as I am who I am.

Travel Regrets - Our Mission Statement

So, we all love to travel, right? But let's face it, we don't always get to do everything we planned. Plus there is always that person one stop down the road telling you what you missed in the places left trailing in your dust!

There's always next time right? right?

Well not always, not for us. But for others there is, and that's what we are here for. Let's come together as a travelling community and share all our regrets, passing on to others the knowledge that our past endeavours have brought to us so that they may one day be able to be that person one stop down the road, looking back and knowing that nothing was left undone.