A Great Holiday and a Bitter Blow
I landed back home in the UK early evening time yesterday (October 12th) after enjoying a welcome 13 day break in the Land of Smiles. The number 13 is unlucky for some and it proved exactly so for me. I spent the whole of my vacation with Wonderful Wi in Udon Thani Province enjoying the peace and quiet of country life, mixed with the vibrancy of city life during our stays in Udon Thani and on day trips to Nong Khai. Travelling home on day 13 disaster struck.
Whilst unpacking my travel bag at my Wiltshire home I realised that somewhere between Bangkok and Heathrow, London, I’d lost my precious camera and with it many of my holiday snaps. I had put the first half of my holiday photos onto a disc but the latter days which contained pictures of many future posts I had planned have now gone. To me that’s a hard blow to take, but mai phen rai krap.
I have emailed my flight carrier Etihad Airways in the hope that the camera may have been handed in but I’m not holding out too much hope. For the first time in many holidays I had a large number of photos taken of Wilai and myself together and those kind of memories are hard to replace. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Etihad can come up with the goods because losing things is not a habit I normally have.
The first eight days of our vacation was spent in rural Thailand at our village home with daily trips in our rented car to places of interest not too far away. My internet access for this first part of the holiday was limited and because of that, and time restrictions, I decided I’d use the near two week break to holiday from blogging. I hope my regular readers understand that sometimes a bit of free time away from the keyboard is a holiday in itself.
Tonight I’m back into work but from Saturday morning I have three days off, I will be back to regular posting from thereon. Thanks for your patience and I look forward to your continued support of Beyond The Mango Juice.
Hi Martyn, that is terrible about your camera. I do hope that it is found by Ethiad. I have only been following your blog for a few months but I did notice that you were missing from my reader the last week or so.
Paul I’m still waiting to hear back from Etihad but I’m not too hopeful. Etihad are also a bit slow in replying to mail but they do get there in the end.
Hi Martyn,
That’s a bit of bummer and I hope you can get the camera and the pix back!
On the other hand, it seemed that you had a good time , that’s also important!
Camille I had a great time in Isaan but the holiday was a bit short. I’m now over the disappointment about the photos. Thanks.
Martyn, sorry to hear about the camera…hopefully by some miracle it will turn up. I can definitely understand your frustration. 2 years ago when I was in Mukdahan I had 7 or 8 great post ideas with at least 150 photos to back them up and when I went to download them the memory stick was corrupted …it was my last day there and the events I took pics of were over.
Pictures aren’t needed though as your writing style lends itself well to stimulating the imagination so we’ll still be able to see through your words.
Talen you must have been gutted losing all those pictures and posts, I know I was but I’m okay now. I’m back in Thailand at Christmas so I can take most of the photos again, it’s just the ones like the rat on the hotel steps which you can never replace. Roll on Christmas.
What a blow! Losing the camera and those pics is a rotter right enough! So annoyed for you.
Graham thanks for sharing my annoyance. In Thailand they say mai phen rai (whatever will be) and I fairly quickly came round to that way of thinking. I’ll retake most of the post pics at Christmas.
Martyn, nice to see you back in blogworld. Losing photos/cameras, or having them stolen 🙁 is upsetting to say the least. Fingers crossed that it is returned to you soon.
No doubt you are already counting down the days to your trip back to LOS 🙂
Snap I decided to take a rest from the blog world during my break as it was so short. I’m off work tomorrow and I will be catching up on your own adventures in Chiang Mai. I’m not quite counting the days down as yet but in another month or so I’ll probably be doing just that.
Martyn , glad you had a great time in The LOS , just a taste of what you life is going to be like in a few years , and sorry about your camera , hopefully they will find , IF NOT , you will have lots more visits to the LOS and lots of photo taking times , at least you saved half , thats a big plus , and lots of stories to go with them . Malcolm
Malcolm I hope I can make it in a few years because this holiday made me realise how much I really want to be in Thailand and with WW. Work alone isn’t going to make it happen, I need a little bit of luck or my blog earnings to kick on a lot more. I believe I can pull off the latter. Thanks soldier.
Martyn, what a shocker. I know I’d be devastated as it’s happened to me before (loss of photos). Also, I don’t start writing a post until the graphics are done – so I NEED the pretty colours as they inspire me to write.
So does this mean we’ll get grey boxes with a descriptions below telling us what went missing?
Sleep well.
Catherine reading everyone’s comments it appears to have happened to a few of us. The annoying thing for me is that as a rule I don’t lose things, I’m normally quite switched on. Also I never drink much on the return flight so I can’t even pin it down to alcohol. I will survive, good old Sticky Wiki and her surplus of photos.
Martyn I can truly feel your pain as I had a similar experience losing my camera during a visit to Russia. All my hundreds of photos gone and very little chance I will be returning means everything now has to be stored in the soft memory globe between my ears.
We will still enjoy your wonderful words here and while these photos can’t be replaced you will always have the memories.
Steve – Hardly from Russia with love. You have my sympathies because I guess you’re unlikely to visit Russia again, luckily most of my photos can be retaken in some form or other on my Christmas trip. The hard thing to take is having to shelve planned posts for another few months. Thanks for the kind words.
Martyn just got back to read of your loss. I guess there is little I can add to what the others have said, just sorry it happened to you.
Images or not I am sure you have some good tales to tell.
Just hope it turns up for you, if not time to invest in a DSLR I think 🙂
Mike I hope you had a good time on your venture up amongst the Khon Jons of Thailand. Good tales…I really do like adding photos to my stories but hopefully the disc might bear one or two. Unfortunately the lost photos held most of my planned posts. I am thinking about a better camera but now is probably not the right time….one day.
Martyn, I just had a weekend of losses, so I do know that we just have to deal… They are too boring to mention here in detail – credit cards, money, more credit cards – annoying. And soooooo embarrassing when you have to explain… sigh…
Catherine that’s terrible news about your cards, I hope there’s no damage done. You seem to have reacted quickly enough.
I read somewhere that Thailand was the number one place in the world for credit card fraud, I don’t know if it’s true but I’d guess the country would be in the top ten.
Have a few weekend drinks and cheer yourself up.
Martyn, Thailand does have a bad reputation for credit card fraud. When I was in Hong Kong I only had a visa issued from a Thai bank and the HK banks refused it. They’d take visas from elsewhere, but not Thailand. That was an uncomfortably tight trip…
When I’m in Thailand, I pay by cash. Hotels. Restaurants. Even the larger malls. Cash. Too many friends and acquaintances have had their cards ripped off after charging in Thailand so I play it safe.
This weekend was the exception as I found myself without cash. Ouch. But I trusted where I was (they are good people) so I’m not worried.
Catherine I do try to pay with cash myself but on this trip I bought a laptop in Udon Thani’s Central Plaza on my credit card. All seems well at the moment as I’m sure if it was going to be skimmed it would have been maxed out by now. Cash is best but not always the most suitable choice, the thought of waiting in a bank for ages to cash travellers cheques persuaded me to risk my card.
As always late to the party. I’d wondered what happened to you, having checked your blog regularly for your Thailand reports. But, hey, sometimes you need to totally get away and you can only do that by cutting yourself off from regular activities. Just like work, you need to have a vacation from it all!
Too bad you didn’t lose your camera in Thailand — I’ve had all manner of things returned to me here. So you never know . . .
Hope to see you at Christmas. I’ll still be here 😉
Rick I got totally away from it all but unfortunately I could have done with a couple more weeks of it. I’ll be in Udon Thani and Loei come Christmas time.