Today’s my birthday. With an uncharacteristic pang of nostalgia, I thought back to all the places I’ve been on my birthday since I left the UK seven years ago. Here they are.
2009 – Bangkok, Thailand
Bangkok has been my home for the last five years, but it’s the first time I’ve actually been here on my birthday since 2005. It’ll be a relatively quiet one – I’ll be celebrating with friends at Coyote on Convent, a Mexican restaurant that has a generous happy hour – cheap is good at the moment.
2008 – Plymouth, UK
My home town back in the south west of England. This is where I grew up and where my parents still live. I left Plymouth as soon as I could when I was younger, heading for university in Brighton. Back then, Plymouth was a very poor city with few prospects, because it was a dockyard town and England’s time as a shipbuilding nation was over. Nowadays, the city has revived and there is a burgeoning university population. Plymouth’s greatest assets, however, are the lush wilderness of Dartmoor on one side and the sea stretching directly over to France on the other. My parents took me out to a fantastic country pub for my birthday up on Dartmoor (which is, incidentally, where the Sherlock Holmes’ story The Hound Of The Baskervilles is set. On Dartmoor, that is, not in the pub).
2007 – Koror, Palau
I couldn’t quite believe my luck with this one – a last minute press trip led to me being on the Big Blue Explorer liveaboard boat in Palau, one of the world’s best scuba diving destinations. We only had three days out there but it was spectacular – sharks everywhere and incredible viz. I wrote a full report about my Palau dive trip on my other site Divehappy. Things were finished off by my Filipino friends singing not only “Happy Birthday” but their own unique version of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” while rolling out a cake they’d managed to procure from somewhere.
2006 – Golden Triangle, Thailand
The Golden Triangle is infamous as the drug smuggling zone between Thailand, Laos and Burma, but it’s also the home of the opulent Anantara Golden Triangle hotel, which is built on a hilltop in Thailand overlooking the lush rice paddies, rivers and mountains of Laos and Burma. This is one of the most memorable hotels I’ve ever stayed at, despite some of the eye-wateringly expensive service charges – I wrote a full review of the Anantara Golden Triangle. Definitely recommended if you want a quiet retreat with someone special.
2005 – Bangkok, Thailand
This was just after I’d first moved to Bangkok, and was flat broke. Living in a tiny apartment with my girlfriend, the big celebration that day was going to see Star Wars III: Revenge Of The Sith. Imagine my horror when the Star Wars logo appeared on screen… but in Thai. Luckily the film wasn’t overdubbed – although given how godawful some of the dialogue was, there were times I which it had been. Still greatly enjoyed it though.
2004 – Koh Tao, Thailand
In 2004 I was living on the Thai island of Koh Tao and at this point I had just completed my Scuba Diving Instructor’s course (known as the IDC). At the time I was working for Ban’s Dive Centre as a dive guide but, as it was my birthday, I got to choose the dive sites we visited that day. We had a couple of awesome dives at my favourite sites Chumphon Pinnacle and Hin Daeng. This was followed by a particularly epic drinking session in the evening where I demonstrated my fine moves on the beach club dance floor, perfecting what became known as the “Reverse Gunslinger” – I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what that actually entailed. Never again.
2003 – Battambang, Cambodia
In 2003 I was still on my first stint of backpacking having left the UK in December 2002. I’d met Louise and Sophie while travelling in Australia, and then subsequently met up with them again in South East Asia. Sadly this birthday wasn’t so great as poor Louise had gone down with some particularly virulent form of food poisoning so Sophie and I were pretty worried about her – Louise did manage to gamely make it out for a couple of soda waters that evening however. I don’t actually remember much else about Battambang besides that – the river journey from Siem Reap to Battambang is probably the most memorable part of the journey.
As for where I will be for my birthday in 2010, I have no idea at the moment. It’s nice to daydream though…
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