This year's circumstances have slightly altered things for me, the most immediate change being that I intended to stay on the island for just a few weeks, and by the looks of it, I'm going to be sticking around for the foreseeable future...again.
After being split-down-the-middle with my options to return or to stick out the pandemic in the safety, security and comfort of Battambang... it's easy to say I made the right decision on my return. As soon as I climbed in the boat I had flashbacks of two years ago doing the same journey. The only differences were that the boat was much more full then, we weren't preparing for the pending apocalypse..and I had a beer back then.
I've been splitting my time between my family here and the abandoned (and appropriately titled) "Coconut Beach" sleeping in my hammock, in a beach shack. Aside from a couple of locals at the end of the beach, my friends here are the only people left on the beach, so we're part of a tiny percentage of the world that can still enjoy some social time. Playing volleyball, and sharing stories over coffee.
As well as plenty of seafood, there's not much chance of anyone going hungry here when there's so many wild pineapples, jackfruit, coconuts, cashews, and mangos... Just to name a few. I've even made my own (worlds first?) recipe for Pulled Cashew Apple.
I'm finding it difficult to believe how much I was questioning it. In what world would you rather learn the words for "traffic" "road" "I live here, I'm not travelling and I don't have corona" when I already know the words for "sand" "sea" "there's a chicken in the kitchen".
We've made a swear jar " Don't Moan(a) or Mention C*rona ". I'm personally trying not to think too much about it or read anything other than essential and direct news. But I am spending a lot of time thinking about my family and friends at the time. My grandparents, my cousins who are expecting the newest additions to the family (and their first babies!), friends and family who have lost their jobs. I'm in a very lucky position to say that I'm surrounded by exceptionally strong and people and we will all get through this.
That's not to say it's all rainbows and sunshine here; as the title of this post suggests. THAT anecdote is pretty self-explanatory. I should also point out that my body is like a human dot-to-dot with all these mosquito and sandfly bites, a 2-meter king cobra was found about a two-minute walk from my house this week...and I haven't had a single drop of alcohol in two weeks. Alas, for now, I'm trying to look on the bright side. Keeping away from the doom-and-gloom of the internet, the monotonous moans of social media and getting back to basics to appreciate the little things in life...like how everyone has finally stopped talking about Brexit.
