A Breath Of Fresh Air

By Joe Barker

We've spent the last couple of months down south, hiding from the pollution that has blanketed Bangkok. With my wife able to work from home and me lacking any form of gainful employment, it seemed foolish to be breathing unnecessarily in Bangkok. 

Given my wife's work often involves calculating the health penalties and premature deaths associated with urban pollution, I always feel uncomfortable walking along our soi while bus after bus pumps out black smoke, and that discomfort only grows when the air quality index gets stuck in the red. 

So we packed our bags and headed off on a tour of Thailand. As a country boy, I always love being out of the city, and life immediately feels better when I'm surrounded by greenery, but that doesn't mean there aren’t challenges in paradise. 

Naturally the countryside is full of nature, but the nature of Thailand is grander, scarier, and more persistent than the nature of England. I usually treasure my ignorance, considering it a doorway to joy and happiness that is closed to my more intellectual friends, but when it comes to unexpected snakes by the patio, a little more knowledge might have saved me from a terrifying, and embarrassing shock. Instead, when Alice tottered giggling off the patio and I realized the brown stick with the pretty red head was not, in fact, a stick, I panicked and screamed, “Cobra, run, run!” It's a little known fact that the only thing that stops a toddler running away from you is yelling at it to run away. For the first time ever Alice responded to my yells by coming back toward me and, more worryingly, an increasingly angry looking snake. I don't remember exactly how I got hold of Alice, but we found ourselves, unbitten, back on the terrace. Meanwhile, the snake slithered into a flower bed. 

By now the shouting had brought my wife onto the balcony so I took the opportunity to bellow “cobra” a few more times, just in case anybody in Phuket hadn't heard me. My panic subsided as my wife joined us and started spreading calm; she assured the worried looking faces that kept popping out of our hedge that we were all ok. She peeped into the bushes and informed everyone that it definitely wasn't a cobra, and was in fact about as uncobra-like as a snake could be. Nonetheless I spent the rest of our time in Phuket looking very suspiciously at all the sticks. 

This experience had educational benefits, as three weeks later I was able to show off my new snake expertise. Having arrived at our favorite children’s cafe in Krabi, we were about to settle down to some serious splashing and playing when Alice noticed a cat and immediately rushed off to shout boo at it. I’m not sure why the cat needed to be shouted at, but this is currently Alice’s default reaction to seeing animals. All cats are aloof but this one seemed particularly uninterested in Alice’s playful overtures. Worried that shouting might turn to kicking if Alice continued to be ignored, I wandered over to them and was surprised to recognize my old red-headed stick friend from Phuket, or at least a close relation. Dragging Alice back, and warning Martin not to get too close, I reacted like a seasoned snake-pro and didn't scream cobra even once. Instead, I calmly took a picture before reporting the interloper's presence to the cafe staff.

I then pretended to be an expert, and confidently, if not entirely accurately, assured anyone who would listen that it wasn’t a very dangerous snake. Much to my amazement the cafe owner and her staff spent fifteen minutes easing the snake into a plastic bottle so that it could be released into a nearby jungle. An act of mercy that was exciting to watch, but required getting a lot closer to a snake than I would ever be brave enough to get. 

In Krabi we seemed to have booked ourselves into Dr. Dolittle's tropical retreat. On our first morning, Martin, glancing up from building Lego castles, found a huge black scorpion trotting along the terrace behind him. Once he had attracted my attention, I, with a stifled scream and a leap, gathered my children and we watched from atop the patio furniture as it strolled across the terrace and into the long grass. This was far from the only creature that we shared our home with. Every time we used the bathroom tap, a frog hopped into the shower, chickens stalked the garden, cockerels woke us at dawn, squirrels frolicked on the rooftop, and a family of tokay lizards and several giant spiders clung to the walls to watch us sleep. To cap off our animal kingdom, as I’m writing this Marty and Alice have just found a litter of kittens under the sofa.

Of course, the natural highlight of our trip was exploring Thailand’s beautiful hills and beaches, but these adventures weren't always idyllic. True, we've built innumerable sandcastles, scrambled on rocks, climbed hills, delved into caves and explored the limits of the human capacity for ice cream, however, as much sand has been thrown or eaten as was used in the construction of our impenetrable fortresses, and there were hours of nagging and whining before I would finally snap and grouchily slouch off to buy ice creams. 

Undoubtedly, the least successful of our adventures was exploring caves, we set forth armed with headlights and torches only to discover that Marty doesn't like his caves to be dark nor underground. On three occasions he insisted that he wasn't scared of anything and wanted to go into the caves and three times we, much to my relief, turned back as soon as we could no longer see the sun. Unfortunately, Marty proved much more enthusiastic about scrambling on the sunlit rocks above the caves and as he scampered ever higher up the cliffs, I wished he was a little less brave or that I was a little more comfortable with heights. 

I can’t decide whether our family hikes into the jungle are something to brag about or to try to pretend never happened. It sounds impressive getting a four-year-old to climb Dragon’s Crest, an eight kilometer walk with over 500 meters of climbing, but then I have to confess that it was achieved entirely through the power of crisps and chocolate. Martin only stopped moaning about how much his legs hurt when he was eating and we spent more time snacking than we did walking.

As our trip comes to an end, I will be sorry to say goodbye to the natural wonders of Thailand, but it will be a relief to return to our relatively snake-free life in Bangkok and leave the scorpions and crowing cockerels of Krabi behind.

About the Author 

Joe and his wife Diane moved to Thailand in 2018. Since the arrival of their son Martin in 2021 and daughter Alice in 2024, Joe has been a stay-at-home father. The whole family enjoys BAMBI playgroups and Thai beach holidays. Find Joe on SubStack: BangkokDad bangkokdad.substack.com/