New Years' Eve

We have booked ourselves onto the ‘Naked Chef’ night at Time for Lime for tonight, and are very excited. The concept is that all the men, possibly in some sate of undress – and an apron – cook dinner for all the girls, who sit about drinking cocktails while the lady who runs Time for Lime essentially gives them all a cooking class, produces, helped or hindered by her nubile helpers, an amazing array of amazing food. Then we all eat together, followed by clambering onto a waiting longtailed fishermen’s boat to sail lazily out under the stars, to view the midnight fireworks from the sea. Aided by what is simply termed ‘adult punch’.

It sounds good to me.

It’s actually a bit of a first for a number of reasons. Firstly, generally we avoid the over commercialised, over puke ridden New Years Eve events, preferring to invite friends over and get gently sozzled in private. Or, if we go out, it’s to friends or family to sit in their lounge. And get gently sozzled.

Secondly, I have not felt glamorous since long before travelling. When I was recovering from an operation I had a swollen abdomen, nasty looking new scars complete with stitches, and no energy with which to consider putting make up on or wearing anything which was not loose and free flowing, far away from the new wounds.

Following that, I was busily wrapping up work and packing up a house, which entailed looking dusty and sweaty for much of the time, and wearing a permanent frown of concentration as I tried to attend to all the various competing to do lists inside my head.

And since travelling, I have been always sweaty, always wearing something stained, torn or generally travel worn, and with permanent blisters and itchy mosquito bites. I have gradually bothered less and less with make up until now, I don’t really wear any at all. My hair, bleached by the sun drastically on the top of my head and remaining dark brown at the bottom, is odd looking and sun and salt dried. It gets washed and shoved into a bun on the top of my head most days, the better to facilitate the sweat which inevitably trickles down my neck at some stage during each and every day. Somewhat gratifyingly I don’t actually mind, and have discovered that I can manage to walk down the street in this condition without anyone vomiting at the sight of me, and in fact have learned that I seem to be at least averagely passable without the vast array of cosmetics and blood sweat and tears that has been known to accompany getting ready of a morning.

That said though, today when I pull out the abandoned make up, and slip into a white (white!) and thus vastly impractical Thai style dress I have bought once again from Jin, and proceed to pose delicately in it, sipping lemongrass mohitos, well I feel fabulous darling. The only concession to the fact that I am travelling is the absence of hair tongs and the presence of my daily worn, rather battered looking sandals which have seen as much dirt, dust, water and sweat as I have since I first set foot off that first plane journey. It feels really nice. I feel, well, clean. I don’t think I’ve even felt that for a while, except the first five minutes after showering in the morning. Travel just involves a lot of mess. Generally.

And thirdly it’s unusual because of the cocktails. I am perfectly used to drinking rare beers crafted out of the back of someone’s garage and flavoured with port or aniseed or even garlic, or to popping open a nice red wine and quaffing it rather too quickly – but cocktails, not generally my thing. Not because I don’t like them- it’s just I have to pay more for them and well, they’re a bit small.  I can drink one in about ten minutes and then I am once again without a drink. A pint of beer you can rely on. A glass of wine, similar.

But tonight, in my white sundress, fluttering my newly mascared eyelashes at the sunset, cocktails, my dears, are the only thing.

M slaves away at his cooking, though in fact it seems later, from his account of it, that they spent most of the time drinking and taking off their shirts. By the time I act the good wife and appear to take pictures and deliver him beer, he has had three shots of brandy and a couple more beers and is in animated conversation about the amount of flavour with which it is possible to imbue a vegetarian tom ka. All the men are dressed in nice white Time for Lime aprons, and their trousers. Sunny (pseudonym, but she rather was), our friend from Koh Lanta who works at the Animal Welfare Centre, and who has had a good number of brandys herself, is rather disappointed.

“They are the most chaste lot we’ve had,” she says, disconsolately, “last year they got down to their pants.”

The way M tells it, they were told to remove at least one item of clothing after their first shot of brandy, and that they could chose how much they were comfortable with disrobing, but that pants must, for reasons of ‘hygiene’, remain firmly on. I don’t think the latter rule was crafted by Sunny.

 I, adorned with unusual glamour and a white sun dress, sort of, well, drink my way through the cocktail menu (we have rather less money at the end than we predicted, but I do learn that an Ameretto Sour beats a Black Russian anyday). When the boys rejoin us for a triumphal feast, I am quite happy, though growing a little prematurely sleepy, and have made a lot of new girlfriends.

In fact the eating part, though the food is fantastic, represents a sort of lull, as everybody’s drinking catches us with them, and all of us overeat and grow fat and – perhaps a little over relaxed.

Eventually we are perked up again by a number of games, crafted by Sunny, involving everyone wearing a peg, with the aim being to collect other people’s and amass a large ‘peg army’, winning pegs by persuading the unwary person to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and – my personal favourite, whose paper aeroplane can fly the furthest. I have a fond, though hazy memory of a line of giggling guests, all posied with their aeroplanes, and then a burst of laughter as the planes are released, and the majority simply fall at our feet. It is the kind of beautiful silliness which really appeals to me, even when I am being glamorous.

We have only just finished this game by the time we are called to embark on our mini cruise, and we clamber into one or other of the line of waiting long tail boats. While the atmosphere on each boat differs depending on the combination of people on board, we are rather lucky in ours in that everyone on it seems to be inclined to simply sit quietly, appreciate the beauty of the stars, paper lanterns and fireworks in a more contemplative and peaceful mood than the hilarious partying that has preceded it. We are also a little ‘alcoholed out’ and so we don’t drink too much of the punch, which tastes a little like a very sweet jelly, and which contains potions and spirits that no one has ever actually heard of.

We float, gently on a black sea, watching the stars, which are bright, and the waves of paper lanterns, which people are releasing from the shore, representing things they wish to get rid of, and things which they hope for. Only one doesn’t quite make it, crashing and extinguishing itself in the sea. I hope that one was a thing to get rid of, and not a hope for the future.

When the fireworks, our only indication that it is midnight, begin, we are amazed by the sheer number of them. This is not one display from a set location, this is a number of displays ranging all along the coast. It is as if Koh Lanta is marking its perimeter in colours and lights. I snuggle up with M, watching and thinking how nice it is to have a New Years Eve celebration which embodies two such very different and complimentary atmospheres.

When we eventually wend our way home, having made for the shore, waded back onto the beach and been briefly delayed by the emergence of a sort of ‘after party’ led by one of my new friends, who seems to have got hold of a bottle of champagne, which we later discover was someone elses, and is generously dishing it out, it is in a peaceful and happy mood.

Drifting off to sleep beneath our mosquito net, I think, for the millionth time, how lucky, how very, very lucky we are.