Madeleine Larmour

In the summer, I learnt to dive. Which is something I never thought I would be able to do, mostly due to my chronic illnesses, but mostly because the water in the UK is freezing! Luckily, my dad invited me to join him on a trip to Thailand where both the weather and the water is much warmer when you compare it to a British summer. He was there to do his dive master course, and I thought I was there to try and get out of the rut of being chronically ill and chronically unemployed. However, he was insistent that I at least try the open water dive course to see if I liked it. As it turned out, I loved it. Then again, I was bound to love it as I've always enjoyed being in the water.

This summer I was very fortune to be able to spend six whole weeks (and then a bit extra) in Thailand, more specifically Koh Tao with my dad. For 11 months of the year, he lives in Saudi Arabia where he works whilst I still reside in the UK. Six weeks is also the longest piece of time we have spent together in over 10 years.

Thailand for me had always been a far-flung pipe dream because I had it in my head that there was no way I'd be able to fly out that far. I'm not the best flyer. The idea of flying doesn't bother me, neither does take off or landing, it's the 'what ifs' that set me off. As being a writer and creating fiction is what I do, I come up with the most ridiculous 'what ifs' you've ever heard. I've also had to learn to internalise them as I used to verbalise them when I was younger but it used to peeve everyone around me, especially when I sat next to someone who was terrified of flying. Yet this year I managed my first long haul flight, my first non-budget airline travel and my first solo long haul flight. I got sick during the trip and left Thailand several days after dad, but that's another blog post. I had to fly back by myself and I've only ever flown once by myself - a 45-minute flight to and from Belfast - so 17 hours flying without the time I spent waiting for connections in Bangkok and Dubai was a bit of a shock to the system.
Overall, I enjoyed my trip to Thailand. I was able to learn to dive which I didn't think I would be able to do with my chronic illnesses. Yet here I am as an open water diver - I started my advance but then got too ill to continue.