Seeking My El-Dorado
Good girls go to heaven and bad girls go everywhere!
So why did Ms. Goody Two shoes, yours truly, end up in Pattaya instead of heaven? Well, ISIS! the terror organisation with their particularly violent ideology had managed to change the course of MY life.
I had just been issued a Jordanian visa for a blissful vacation by the Jordanian Embassy but the year was 2016 and month February when a Jordanian pilot was beheaded by ISIS and the country was tottering on the brink of a war or so it seemed.
I had to replace Jordan with a country I could visit for leisure in less than 24 hours! My employer had sanctioned exactly six days of leave for a holiday starting the next day. And if I missed availing the leaves now, there was going to be no next time for a full year.
Without doing any travel homework, we were two girls who landed at an inappropriate Thailand city determined to find our Utopia. A guy friend of mine left a sniggering social media comment on my Pattaya check-in update.
"Pattaya is a Utopia for boys, not for you two," mocked his comment at my captioned photograph of Pattaya which read ‘Found my Utopia’.
Spurred by his jeer, I was determined to live it up in this Thai city which looked quite interesting. My friend and I threaded our way through the psychedelic streets dotted with pole dancers, lap dancers, lady boys and much more which our eyes were trying to get used to. Soon, my friend and I realised we were the only girls walking on a particular street unless you count the women with unsmiling eyes and smiling mouths who were calling out to the men. Oh-oh, we had walked deep into a world built around the lust of men.
Awkwardness gave way to curiosity when I spied a book on the lap of a woman as she sat waiting at her parlour entrance. I could tell a bookworm when I saw one. My friend muttered under her breath saying, "That woman was probably just playing the hot-nerd fantasy for customers that night or reading Fifty Shades of Grey!
I gave my friend a scathing look and approached this intriguing woman. My friend lost no time in striking a selfie pose next to her.
Looking at us, she smiled and said, "India?"
I asked, "How did you know?" She pointed to the intricate mehndi patterns etched on my hands, the dried henna leaves had tattooed my hands with a deep fury. A dead giveaway of my nationality. I asked, "Your favourite country? Which one?"
She was silent.
I tried again, "The one you would want to visit again & again?"
As though by asking this question, I was trying to hand her an escape flight to a better life.
She nodded her head and said, "Memories. I visit again and again. My favourite place."
My wanderlust soul realised what I was missing.
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