3 hours ago
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It was probably the fish stew. We got it from a street food vendor on Ko Phi Phi, Thailand’s most party-centric island, and I remember it being absolutely delicious. Fifteen hours later, my wife and I were lying on the bare boards of a long-tail boat, rocking gently in the waves, huddled together under a blanket and regretting every single choice we’d made that Christmas Day. As the song says, we can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.
Thailand is a fantastic place to go for Christmas: it’s hot, the people are lovely, and there are plenty of fairy lights but not too much Cliff Richard. Ko Phi Phi is more of an acquired taste – it’s the sort of place you buy heavily diluted vodka by the bucket – but we were very much making the best of it. The night we arrived, in 2014, we watched a bunch of farangs (foreigners) flail away at each other in oversized boxing gloves, some of them chugging beers between rounds. For the big day, we decided to push the boat out: the limestone rock formations around the islands are a popular spot for deep-water soloing, where you climb up a cliff face with no rope and then leap (or fall) into the clear blue sea below. We hired a guide, had a light supper and hyped ourselves up for an unforgettable festive morning.
The problems started at about 3am. My wife was the first to get ill: I can’t share the details, but think about the worst case of food poisoning you’ve had and let me assure you that it was at least as bad as that. I tried my best to be comforting, every rumble of my stomach sounding like the bugles of an approaching army.
The sword of Damocles dropped at about 6am, when my body decided to rid itself of everything I’d eaten for the past 12 hours by the fastest means it could muster. Unbelievably, we decided to go on our cliff-jumping boat tour anyway. We weren’t getting our deposit back, but also there are points during every bout of food poisoning where you feel inexplicably, almost miraculously better. Somehow, hopscotching between these moments was enough to get us down to the docks and on to a tiny wooden boat, but not before a nice old lady explained her toilet’s bucket-flush system, while I kept one hand over my mouth. It will be fine, we reassured each other. It will probably be fine.
Obviously, it was not fine. I managed a couple of cliff climbs: the after-plunge was exhilarating, even if the rocks were a bit sharp. I ate some pineapple chunks, then swiftly returned them to the sea. And then the boat broke down, right in the middle of Maya Bay, just where the water was getting choppy. A few minutes later, it started to rain.
The next couple of hours felt almost comically horrible, like one of those bits in The Simpsons where Homer falls out of a plane into a factory full of angry bees. Eventually, another boat came to the rescue, but rather than taking us aboard it dragged us through the waves, buffeting us up and down like a cork in a bathtub. We hit the shore just as happy hour kicked in, glowstick-waving Swedish ravers in Santa hats lining our route like an off-its-face guard of honour. There were speakers blasting trance on every corner, and pneumatic drill-wielding workmen outside our apartment. The whole episode exists in my mind like the cautionary second half of a film about substance abuse. Fish stew: just say no.
And yet … my wife and I have told this story about 40 times, and I don’t think there’s a pre-child Christmas either of us remembers with more fondness. We had salty fries and Fanta for Christmas dinner, retired to bed at 8pm and slept for 14 hours. On Boxing Day, I asked a friend in Bangkok to put us up for a couple of days and we got the first boat out of Phi Phi, leaving the ravers to face the workmen through the ringing blur of their own hangovers. Sometimes, a bit of peace and quiet is the greatest gift you can get.
