Tag: Thailand

Scuba Diving

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Thirteen years ago when I was but a twenty-one year old child, in a fit of decisive madness I did my PADI Open Water scuba diving course. This was during a six week trip through Thailand with a friend on the island of Koh Tao. It was good fun but despite getting the certificate the truth is we were probably too drunk when not doing the diving to have the mental capacity to remember anything. What I took from it though was that I was far happier below the surface of the water than I am on top of it. There is a vulnerability perhaps that disappears when you have a tank of air but more so you can see around you and the unknown becomes slightly less so.

There are still dangers, a rather aggressive and territorial triggerfish threateningly swam between my friends legs and when the instructor pointed this out, much to his consternation us idiots thought he was suggesting we go take a look at the lovely fishy. A few years later when I lived in Ibiza my boss was also a dive instructor and he took me out on a refresher dive. I enjoyed diving generally but having spent a majority of the last ten years as a barefoot traveller climbing in supermarket bins for food, diving has simply been cost prohibitive. Today though, for the first time in ten years I’m going diving.

…nine hours later…

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that was fun but I enjoyed it. Sometimes endured it but on the whole enjoyed it. I still struggle a little with equalising and getting my buoyancy right was a continual losing battle but it’s just something that needs a little practise. Ultimately with diving it’s one of those things that you can get better at but the secret is that if or when something happens you just need to avoid panicking. Admittedly making all these statements in four metres of water is one thing and thirty metres deep as you suddenly realise you’ve got a problem with your air and you stuck inside the wreck of some Spanish galleon would be an entirely different thing.

I don’t totally get off on diving but that’s partly because I’m still not very good at it and I do struggle to enjoy the sensation of salt water in my nose and mouth. Being Scottish I always like to believe sea water is to be appreciated from something I can stand on, and not the seabed. Saying that you do feel good after you’ve spent a bit of time in it and the longer around it, the more you want to get in. I imagine living beside the sea for a year and swimming everyday would have a dramatic affect on your outlook in that sense. Anyway, it appears I went and agreed to do my Advanced Open Water this coming week before I return to Scotland so I must have got something out of today.

An Ancient Foe

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

The humble mosquito. What a remarkable creature. I once made a deal with them on an infested coach journey in Thailand that if they left me alone I would them. It wasn’t until three years later when I was in Spain that I broke the terms they had stuck to. Ten years later and the war has become one of attrition, both sides too caught up in their base instinct for survival.

I find them fascinating creatures. They have brains and they can sense, smell and see. They are attracted to the carbon dioxide we emit as well as the heat of our bodies. I discovered a long time ago that having a cold shower stops them coming so much. Them coming being hunting of course. We are hunted. They may be small but they hunt us. I wonder if they hunt other animals. I assume so, they can’t just be after us even though we do have such easily accessible and soft skin. Yet they keep coming even after we have killed them and I imagine other animals would be far worse at swatting them. They may have brains but they must be small. Saying that they’re sneaky and they can get places you can’t imagine possible. Tonight like the last few nights, despite closing everything there always seems to be more. I wonder if they come in during the day and just wait.

When I lived in Athens I had a net around my bed. I couldn’t have survived without it and wondered how my flatmates who didn’t could sleep while also having their window open because of the heat. My wall was splattered with dead mosquitoes. It was my trophy wall I like to believe was a warning to others. It didn’t seem to work. That old familiar buzzing in the ear. Yet there’s never anything there when you turn around or turn on the light. Was I imagining it? Am I going mad? Yet we eventually see them and those ancient instincts rise to the surface as our eyes lock on the target and the battle begins. The traditional hand clap or if patient enough a wall slap.

When I lived in Lesvos the ceiling to my room was so high they worked out they could just hide up there and they would be safe. Eventually my old school changing room training kicked in and I realised I could whip the ceiling with my towel. When in Nepal I would pull my sheet up to my head and when I could hear them close would slap the side of my head to get them. While this was ridiculous for the obvious reasons it wasn’t until one day I forced one deep into my ear by the force of the air. The beating of it’s tiny wings like a marching band on my ear drum. The only solution being to pour water in and drown it. The next day in the lake it finally washed free.

The real moment of truth comes when they land on you. Do you quickly go for the kill or do you play the long game. The mosquito lands on your arm, it’s still looking around unsure whether it is safe to proceed. Rubbing it’s back legs together in delight as it eyes up it’s meal. So you wait. It tentatively tests the surface, look close enough and you can see it jabbing around with it’s microscopic needle for the perfect spot. You watch and you wait. Even once it has found where it will eat and has made it’s incision you still wait. Let it get those first mouthfuls of your blood. Let it relax. But still wait. Only once it has had it’s second taste, only once it has become docile and drunk on you do you reclaim what is yours with ease.

Yet I respect them. They keep coming. They’re like the ultimate predator, or they would be if you viewed them all in their entirety as one sentient being. Because they seem that way sometimes. It seems sometimes like all those years ago I broke a deal with that one sentient being and am destined to spend eternity paying off the reparations for my treachery. Well so be it. Let the war go on. We have nothing left to us now anyway but our base instincts. Why not let them play out.

Chi Nei Tsang Me Baby

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I’m keen to give an update on how I feel after the cleanse I wrote about on Saturday. I’m wary of going on about how great these things are and how simply magical I feel because the mind is powerful and can convince us of many things, but mainly because I’ll sound like a wanker. Yesterday I didn’t feel a great difference in mood but today I have felt energised and like a weight has been lifted. It is one of those things that were someone else to read it, it wouldn’t really mean anything to them, and I can accept this because I would probably be the same. Like I said I’m wary of getting carried away but there is a distinct difference between today and this time last week or last month. I am sure you’re questioning how I can possibly give credit to a salt water cleanse for this but the gut is such a complex organ, our second brain some describe it. When it is not functioning at it’s peak then holistically speaking, we as one entity cannot either.

I back this up by an experience I had in Thailand years ago, actually just before that time I went to Burma and got the super farts. It was off the back of my travelling India and she had been a hard mistress. At one point I had spent three weeks really ill, everything passing through me and losing weight rapidly. I was down to sixty-five kilograms, or about ten stone depending where you’re reading this, and I’m six foot three or about one metre ninety. This was not a healthy look, I could see the ribs in my back. That three weeks took it’s toll on me mentally, for months afterwards I felt a heaviness to life. When I got to Bangkok, on the recommendation of a friend I tried an abdominal stomach massage called Chi New Tsang. When she had had it she said she just cried through the whole thing, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. The premise of Chi New Tsang is that by massaging your internal organs in a particular way you release all the blocked negative emotions which have been stored within them. This idea of the body storing pain is one you can find in many eastern therapies and healing practises. I’m naturally a sceptic but I also want everything that could be good to be real. I will try most things and hopefully with an open mind, some therapies I’ve not got the same response others have from them, but this stomach massage was incredible. I never cried or anything like that but I walked out of there and especially the next day felt like a new person. I had spent the previous weeks hiding away in a dark corner but for the last week I was there I got involved with things and was happy again. I took a beating and I stored it all in my gut. This was the release.

For some bizarre reason the Chi New Tsang massage is not that easy to find in Thailand, everyone just wants beaten up by attractive young girls as they crack your body back into position. I found one practitioner in Edinburgh but she was on maternity leave when I tried to contact her, a few in London and none in Athens so finding anyone is not going to be straight forward. The point is this massage works on a similar principle to the cleanse, you’re not just purging the physical detritus from your guts but in actuality the mental waste too.

The next mission is to keep myself from storing this suffering. I’ll start by hopefully listening to what my second brain tells me about what I’m putting in it. Unfortunately I have noticed butter has been making me itch which is a shame because I love it, I haven’t touched milk or cream, and I have lost all desire for coffee and alcohol. Why must those that we love most be the ones to hurt us so. Again, all I do is give my experience and as I said I have got little from things others have had strong responses to so there is no guarantee either the cleanse or the massage would do anything for you. These things are out there though, sometimes it may just be worth giving them a shot, the ol’ fuck it moment.