See you on the other side
28 April 2010
It takes around 48 hours from being seriously stranded in another country from your own to turn a paradise into prison. Soon everything that excited and calmed you about an isolated resort begins to appear sinister and slightly surreal as you daily canvas every travel agent you have ever known to find a seat that won’t require mortgaging the house to get you back to London. We are in Thailand, a place we innocently set off for ten days ago with a return ticket that became void the minute the Icelandic volcano eruption reminded the world just how reliant we are on planes and how limited we are in where we can go on this planet without them (at least if we want to go or come back quickly). Those stranded in Europe were at least able eventually to use trains, buses, and boats to get them back to the UK.
Long-haul Brits, many of us abroad at this time of year for business not just leisure, were not so fortunate as the distances involved meant there were fewer options available and the airlines criminally hiked up fares for any seat that might magically appear before mid-May. The intervention of our illustrious government has been predictably pathetic, but worse has been the attitude of people I considered friends – many of whom would top themselves if they couldn’t get back home within 48 hrs – assuming it’s all a lovely party being stranded and attempting to soothe us with the classic but unhelpfully offered words of support: ‘”you could be in a worse place”.
One isn’t relaxing carefree by a pool, unconcerned as to when one can get back – livelihoods, family concerns etc are on our minds as we slowly go out of them trying to barter a ride back. Clearly postcards saying “wish you were here” would not be welcome to anyone right now, but I can certainly think of a number of people who deserve to receive that salutation so they would know it ain’t fun if they were! See you on the other side, as they say!
- Kate Lenahan is FQR’s travel editor
Tags: Thailand
