How difficult can it be?
It is Christmas eve and I have elected to take the ferry across to Samui to meet my daughter at the airport; the least I can do as the first time I came to Phangan she flew to Bangkok to meet me.
I know her flight arrives at about 8.30, from KL I think. We’re not great at travel details. She has no phone but the airport is tiny, petite perfection, impossible to get lost in, impossible to miss anyone in.
We do.
Miss each other.
She arrives, unaware that I have come to meet her and, knowing the airport well, decides to wait for her taxi inside the arrivals area. An area open to taxis but forbidden to me being held behind a human barrier at the meeting point.
I cannot see the arrivals hall 50 yards away.
She cannot see the meeting point 50 yards away.
She waits an hour for her taxi and heads for the ferry to Thongsala. I wait for three more flights to land. I call my son on Phangan, she has not contacted anyone.
I head for the ferry to Haad Rin.
She arrives at Thongsala and waves the touting taxis away, convinced that at least I will be there to welcome her.
I am not.
I am on the Haad Rin ferry, worried sick and the sea is Moby Dick rough. I have failed her. I was supposed to surprise her at Samui.
She takes a taxi to Haad Yao and with some difficulty persuades the staff that she has a room booked.
“No, no room booked for you” – they are most insistant.
‘My mother booked for me, I am her daughter’.
“Ah” (light bulb moment) “Mama room for daughter”.
Hardly the family welcome she imagined. No sign of her sibling. She walks along the beach and asks the wrong massage ladies if they have seen me. They have never heard of me. They are not my massage ladies.
Finally I arrive home and open up face book. A new post on her page.
‘OK, I give up. Where is everybody?’
Later when we are all together, I suffer serious ineptitude abuse.
‘How could you possibly miss me? It’s impossible to miss anyone at Samui’.
Is it now?
A week later, she has to repeat the exercise to meet a friend also arriving in Samui.
Guess what?
They missed each other.