January, the month of contentmen

January was the month of contentment. Staying at the Forest Bungalows, the days started with a 7am yoga class with Simon, Tiger’s resident yogi, followed by, from the second day onwards with Randy’s body fit madness. The initial idea was, that I would go to the yoga classes and find a place where I would learn how to thai-massage – unfortunately/or not, the latter has not happened yet. Instead, on day 2, I decided to try out the body fit – and found myself on the south tip of Phuket, with a bunch of bulls, running up and down the stairs and the hill with a truck tire above my head… Needless to say, I was immediately hooked.

So, morning yoga, then bodyfit every day, followed by the best hours of the day by the pool at Mama’s, reading, sunbathing, drinking coconuts, eating amazing food, watching TV in the evenings or Firefly from Dave’s computer, going to bed at 9pm, sleep well, get up early in the morning and do it all over again – I had the time of my life.

Over the first weekend we went to check out the beaches on the south end and had a quest to find Haag n Dazs later, after our Saturday evening date with Dave went pearshaped: the restaurant we wanted to go to (recommended by LP and TripAdvisor) was closed down, and there was not a single movie in the cinema in English in Phuket town… We had such a chilled time though, there was nothing that could kick me out of balance… At least that’s what I thought. And then came the Wednesday, 12th of January, when in the evening I decided to (try to) ride the scooter the 50m to the drop-off spot – and I crashed it…. Wearing a mini skirt and tanktop, even though I was not going anywhere close to fast, I destroyed my right side: 5, palm-sized bruises became the decoration for the next few weeks. Dave cleaned me up so I didn’t have to go to the hospital (thank god – and him – that he had the guts and all the best ever prepared first-aid kit), but man I looked messy. The repair cost me 3300 THB, approx. 100 USD which could have been a lot worse, but this was just annoying next to the fact that, for the following week, I could not sleep apart from on my back, I was in pain; I couldn’t go to yoga or workout, there was no swimming, no sunbathing – I was just a miserable chicken, with the most ridiculous scooter-crashing story ever: ya, crashed it sober, in the carpark, in front of the bungalow…. AUCH!

The following day I had a reservation for a cooking class (expensive, 1700 THB for a day, but so good I went back 2 days later), and so I did suck it up and went. Bo, from Iceland was helping me with moving around; the day after the accident I was a proper mess. On the Friday the same week, Dave had to do a visa run to Myanmar, and with having the whole day to spend in bed, I started to plan the rest of my Asia-trip – and didn’t get far…



Doomed to be around the house for the most of it, I started to make friends with the people hanging around at Mama’s, most of them training at Tiger, girls and boys from all parts of the world. By the week after the accident, I managed to get my bruises heal up nicely enough so that I could go back to training, and by the end of the month I got myself into a better shape than ever before – I was pretty impressed with myself to be honest. We had another movie date with Dave which was special because we went to see a Thai movie with English subtitles, something to be remembered; it was hilarious! Well, this was the life both me and Dave are now planning to go back to for a while; a truly great time at an awesome spot and great people around. Here are the pics, check them out!