OK, OK, so Thailand is not strictly India. Well, it’s not India at all, but we went there recently and we had a wonderful time, so I think it merits a review. Especially as we might just have found our holiday secret sauce, and it’s not sweet chilli.
Most of you will know that Southeast Asia is close to our hearts; Dylan and I met in Myanmar and in the 7 years we lived in Yangon, travelled frequently to Bangkok to go shopping in H&M, to eat nice food, see a movie at an IMAX cinema, go bowling, and most importantly, to be anonymous. It wasn’t that we were up to anything in Yangon that was particularly hindered by bumping into people we knew in every bar, every restaurant and on occasion, when we nearly ran them over for jay walking, but it was still nice to wander the streets of Bangkok without feeling as though we were in the school playground. When we were younger, both gainfully employed and without toddler-induced mobility issues, Dylan and I had a somewhat pretentiously restless hobby of going for ‘Dinner in Another Country’, an antidote to the over-familiarity of Yangon’s fledgling restaurant scene. Dinner In Another Country saw us dine and weekend in Kuala Lumpur, Phnom Penh, Singapore, Taipei and Shanghai over the years. Had neither COVID nor the coup happened, I feel sure we would have picked up our culinary tour of Southeast and East Asia again once Jasper had mastered chopsticks (and sitting still for longer than 3 minutes). But alas, post-COVID and post-Coup, we find ourselves in South Asia and as hard as we tried to find an attractive staycation destination in India for our first proper family holiday, the draw of Southeast Asia was too great for us to pass up the chance to visit when the opportunity arose.
The opportunity was actually a hockey tournament, but what tipped us over the edge of a weekend in Bangkok and into a week in Ko Samui, was Tony. Or rather, Tony’s friend’s villa.
For the Love of Hockey
ZOAT (pronounced Zow-At) is dutch for Southeast Asian Tournament, and it implies hockey. ZOAT takes place annually in one of Bangkok, KL, Jakarta, Singapore or Hong Kong and is the raucous coming together of all the tall people in Southeast Asia around a hockey pitch. Now in its fifties, ZOAT is an institution. A friend of mine’s mother used to play in the tournament in Hong Kong back in the 80s and 90s. It is for Dutch people, but a few years ago, we had just enough dutch-ness in our Yangon Pythons Hockey Club to enter a ladies’ team in Singapore, and, comprising an acceptable balance of Dutch Pythons, foreign Pythons and ringers direct from the Netherlands, and with Dylan as our coach, we promptly went on to win the tournament. The following year, the Yangolden Girls came 2nd in Hong Kong. And then COVID happened, causing an unprecedented tournament hiatus. The Myanmar coup which then followed, sent the Yangolden Girls and all their fans (read: Dylan and a few other other-halves) scattering across the globe. In 2022, however, when the tournament resumed with a big boom in Bangkok, we scrambled. With our enthusiasm for a Myanmar reunion matched only by our carbon footprint, we reconvened as a mixed Yangon Pythons team, flying in from the Netherlands (our entry ticket), Tokyo, Mumbai, Yangon (yes, one of us still has one foot in Myanmar - keeping up the credentials!), South Africa and Cambodia.
Photos: Yangolden Girls debut at ZOAT 2018.
The tournament gave us our dates for travel. And a reason to live for most of 2022. I think most of you know that Dylan and I met on the hockey pitch in Yangon, and the Yangon Pythons were pivotal to our experience of Myanmar. The club was sociable, welcoming to players of all standards and ages (our youngest member being 8 years old), and surprisingly resilient to the heat considering we were mostly pale, European types. We haven’t found anything quite like the Yangon Pythons here in Mumbai, so we reminisce weekly about how good the two hours a week of hot-hockey was for our fitness, and about how much we miss having a long, drawn out lunch after each session. We laugh incredulously about how often we used to play matches against and with the Myanmar Navy team, a ragtag bunch of fearless hockey clowns who are now somewhat ‘differently’ deployed. But mostly we talk about how much we miss our friends from hockey, and how sad we are that Jasper, the first baby Python, won’t get to experience something that was so integral to his existence.
Taking the Yangon Pythons to ZOAT 2022 in Bangkok not only gave us an excuse to return to Southeast Asia, it also gave us months of WhatsApp based camaraderie and chatter with our old friends. It gave me an opportunity to test out some local Mumbai t-shirt production, getting custom snakeskin shirts made for the team. And it introduced Jasper to the concept of a sports tournament; something we very much hope he will see more of in his life. We had originally planned for Jasper’s nanny to join us in Bangkok to help wrangle him during tournament and later-night socialising hours. When I say ‘planned’, I mean I had spent days going back and forth from the VFS visa centre to get her a visa for Thailand, had booked airport transfers and hotel rooms and flight tickets. And when I say ‘originally’, I mean that in the end, all this time and effort and money was wasted because she missed her flight. Missed. Her. Flight. I can’t be sure if it was the shock of playing my first hockey match in three years, or the stress of suddenly having to add ‘parenting’ to the list of activities included in the tournament weekend, or the complete and utter desolation I felt at having lost so, so, so many hours to planning her travel, but whatever it was, I was taken out by a migraine on the first day of the tournament, meaning I missed half of the hockey due to illness and Dylan missed half of it due to parenting. Needless to say we didn’t attend the Saturday night party. It was not the way we had planned things, but on Day 2, knee-deep in monsoon mud, surrounded by old friends and sipping electrolytes straight from a coconut, we had an amazing time.
ZOAT is the best run tournament I have ever been to. It's less tournament and more festival, in reality. The Bangkok incarnations of it are rumoured to be the best of the best thanks to the long-time on-ground organisation team and the city's provision of affordable insanity. Every tournament follows the same format of a formal drinks on the Friday evening hosted by the Dutch Ambassador at his or her residence. In the case of Bangkok, a motorcade of over 100 tuk-tuks then ferries the partygoers on to a less reputable establishment to continue their night. On Saturday morning the hockey begins, refereed by Dutch professionals, caffeinated and catered by local suppliers and supported by a team of physios who are flown in to man the pain tent. The Saturday evening party is the wild one, and in truth, I have never fully attended one of these for fear of migraines on the field the following day. Sunday starts more slowly than Saturday, but at the same time of 9am sharp. The coffee lines are longer and the fried food runs out more quickly. By mid-Sunday afternoon the winner is crowned, champagne is popped and the DJ plays the ZOAT anthem one last time.
Professional photographers and videographers capture every aspect, which, this year, include Dylan's rather public dual confrontation of a competitor and a ref. He was supported by teammate Nick with a similarly waggy finger.
Photographed: So many waggy fingers.
We did have an extra pair of eyes and arms to assist with Jasper-management on the second day, in the form of Tony who, even after having spent a week with him in Ko Samui, still underestimated Jasper’s propensity to repeat an action or activity over, and over, and over, and over again. The hockey tournament took place in the Royal Bangkok Sports & Polo Club on fields adjacent to the polo pony training arena. Tony and Jasper split their non-hockey-watching time between tormenting the horses and clambering on cricket net frames, and back to the horses, and to the nets, horses, nets, horses, nets, until Tony finally took control and bundled Jasper back to us at our team table. At which point, Jasper would point back to the arena and say “see horsey?”. Tony’s pleading eyes and slumping shoulders gave him the look of Puss in Boots from Shrek, as he tried to communicate his disbelief at Jasper’s indefatigable energy reserves through the pumping DJ music. Under less muddy circumstances, Jasper would have been playing free-range, but given that the adults were squelching barefoot through the late monsoon sludge to avoid losing the soles or the entire body of their shoes, it didn’t seem wise to let Jasper loose. That and he flatly refused to get his feet dirty, performing a mid-air pike, his feet repelling from the mud as though magnetically opposite, every time I tried to place him on the ground. On patches of ground where the grass was still visible, Jasper was very happy to be entertained by the team, giving him the chance to show off his stick skills and giving Tony a chance to sit down, unencumbered.
We did not win the tournament. Nor did we come second. As a mixed team we had to play in the men’s tournament. With a team ratio of 70:30 women to men none of whom had touched a hockey stick in almost 3 years, few of whom had ever played on grass, and with only two of our number over 6 foot in height, we were very much the underdogs. But it didn’t matter. We weren’t really there for the hockey. We were there for the beanbags, the coffees, the stroopwaffels, the coconuts, the DJ music, the sunshine, the pizza truck and the time to catch up.
Photographed: Jasper's least photo-worthy photo face
Ocean Views and A Chaperone
Rewind to the week before the tournament, and Dylan, Jasper, Tony and I were not slumming it. Rewind further to when Dylan and I were wondering how best to attach a beach holiday to our hockey holiday and Tony’s offer was thus:
“My mate John has a villa in Ko Samui you can use.”
Well, OK then. That pretty much solves our “But which of Thailand’s many beautiful beaches?” problem.
“It’s part of the Intercontinental Resort, and it’s free of charge.”
Wait, what? A free villa? In a 5 star resort? On a Thai island?
“They can bring a cot for Jasper from the hotel, and you can choose to eat in the restaurants, or there’s a kitchen if you’d prefer to cook.”
OK this is getting silly. Surely there’s a catch…?
“John says I have to be there with you. I’m thinking of flying in on the 19th and I’ll meet you guys in the airport so we can fly to Ko Samui together.”
There it is. It comes with a chaperone. A note to readers, if you are interested in holidaying with us, providing a beautiful villa goes a long way in currying favour. Furthermore, if you are willing and able to cook us dinner every night, push a swing, open your bedroom door before it’s bashed down at 7am by the tiny fists attached to a little voice shouting “Daadaa daadaa daadaa*” and can do a decent leaping whale impression in the swimming pool, you will ascend directly to the top our list. Experience now tells us that we like going on holiday with an extra body, particularly one whose nap schedule and snack timetable complement Jasper’s. They gave us two hours of peace and quiet every afternoon, and between the two of them, Tony and Jasper consumed 768,303,402,841 prawn crackers: a new Thai record, I believe. They were equally passionate about choosing the golf buggy option over the ‘walking from cliff top to beach front by way of steps and rope bridges through the jungle’ option and were similarly keen to go prospecting around the vacant villas.
*Daadaa is Hindi for grandfather and is Jasper's chosen nomenclature.
The villa was perfect; far enough from the hotel lobby to feel like a private home but near enough to walk there for a coffee or a cocktail or a quick complaint about the phones not working; roomy enough for 4 of us to sequester ourselves in different hide-outs for our various naps, working sessions and video calls, but far cosier than hotel rooms. That said, in this particular hotel, perhaps we wouldn’t have had much to complain about in the rooms. It is beautiful, the service was faultless, the beach was clean and the playground was Jasper’s alone for as many hours as the days gave him. The hybrid of home and hotel allowed us to chop fruit for Jasper and store it in a functioning fridge. I will never understand why hotel rooms even include fridges when they do nothing to cool their contents. It gave us a living area to inhabit while Jasper slept instead of one of us having to sit quietly in the dark. It gave us one meal a day off the washing up but avoided us growing tired of the restaurant menu. It enabled us to do laundry which is a godsend for travellers who introduce their self-feeding toddler to a watermelon ice lolly and watch him use it like body paint. I think if I really push myself to find fault, it would be that we can’t afford to buy our own place there.
We quickly fell into a routine in our temporary home: eating breakfast in the villa before selecting one of the six pools to take a quick dip, burning off some of Jasper’s energy at the playground or the beach, before choosing a restaurant for lunch. In the evenings we would wander the estate imagining the life we can’t afford before squeezing in a sundowner and/ or a quick swing and returning to the villa for dinner. The hotel boasts something along the lines of the ‘Best sunset views in Ko Samui’ at its Sky Bar, and I can see where they get their confidence. As well as our cocktails, we drank in the serenity of the shimmering, satin sea while trying to explain to Jasper that the sea was around the islands, rather than the islands being on the sea. It was one of those views which is impossible to photograph but which makes you want to inhale it all so you get to keep it. There was a live band playing alongside the bar which kept Jasper mesmerised and motionless for a good thirty minutes and which reminded us to look out for live music in Mumbai. Just not the deafening variety.
And so it seems the formula for the perfect holiday is as follows:
hotel - hotel room + own kitchen + laundry + entertainment support for Jasper
If it hadn’t been for the lure of the hockey tournament awaiting us in Bangkok, we might all still be squatting in John’s villa. Or in the dilapidated one next door, which even in its current state of post-COVID abandonment, we can’t afford.
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