Days 292 to 327 Koh Samui (Thailand) / motorbike GS Dakar RTW overland adventure traveller

• Left – I didn’t
• 23rd January – 27th February
• Miles rode 85 (136km)

When I left the UK back in April 2014 I had an idea where I was going and a rough plan, what’s  transpired has been that I have enjoyed the situations that have cropped up and developed leading to new people, places and experiences I never imagined. I had no idea I would have spent the last 5 weeks becoming the ‘laziest person in the world!’

I met Maria on a previous visit to Koh Samui and when I returned I stayed with her and basically did nothing! Getting up around 10am (sometimes later) breakfast and lunch blending together and leaving to get the last rays of sun on the beach between 3 – 4pm. Arriving on the beach when many others are heading away is really nice and being the last to leave the beach as the sun goes down with no one around is perfect. Even lazier evenings eating at a local Restarant on the beach with the warm, blue sea washing gently up the beach only a few metres away from the table, sand between my toes… I’m sure you get the idea.

The first week or so I kept busy sorting out, repairing and updating all of my luggage, motorbike and IT for the first time since I left home, I then felt slightly uneasy about ‘being the laziest person in the world’ and eventually embraced the way of life and now realise the pleasure that can be derived from such laziness.

Whilst being lazy is good, I still like to be mentally busy (not that I needed it confirming), the thousands of thoughts / daydreams / planning & generally trying to tie all of my desires into a life plan is both enjoyable in the process and leaves me feeling satisfied, for filled and content that I’m doing my upmost to make the most of the remainder of my life – there’s life in this old dog yet and I’m not ready to sit back and let life’s events take me forward – like all control freaks ‘I’m in control of my destiny’ and it feels good.

So, another chapter starts today, I’m now on the boat to Surat Thani where I’ll stay tonight and then ride for the next two days back to Bangkok where on Tuesday evening Olly, my son arrives. It feels like Christmas Eve and to say I’m excited…

30 minutes later;

I’ve been staring outside at the back of the ferry seeing Koh Samui fade into the distance across the calm, blue sea. One of the wonderful things about solo travel is the amount of time one has to reflect upon life, I was thinking how wonderful my adventure has been and will continue to be with uncertainty and unknown experiences ahead (Destination Unkown). 

My dad used to say in the last few years of his life that he was the luckiest man in the world. Some of you know my dad died just prior to me leaving the UK and his funeral was 3 days before I left. I loved my dad and he was 87  (I think?) when he died having had dementia for some years. He drank a bottle of whisky and smoked a packet or two of Camel cigarettes every day. I heard the words ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world’ hundreds of times and told him he was. I thought the opposite as his final years were spent never leaving his house, drinking, smoking and watch shit TV. I wonder if he really believed he was the luckiest man in the world? I hope so.

Like my dad I think I just might be one of the luckiest people in the world but, as someone much wiser than me said “the funny thing is the harder I work the luckier I get”.

As I looked out across the sea and Koh Samui in the distance with the prospect of getting back on my bike and riding to Bangkok to meet my son who I haven’t seen for 11 months, I feel I have every right to join the group of ‘happiest people in the world’.