Reconnecting with family and friends in the UK

Sadly, in the last week of April 2017, after Trav and I had been living and working in Bucharest Romania for a month, we heard news from family in the UK that Trav’s dad had become gravely ill. It had been less than three months since the death of his mum.

Trav immediately returned to the UK to be with his dad during his last days.

Just a few days later, after his dad had passed away peacefully, Trav returned to Bucharest and together we packed our bags to leave Bucharest and travel back to the UK to be with family and to prepare for the funeral.

First, we flew into Scotland to meet with our son Iain who lives in Glasgow and our son Ben who lives in Edinburgh.

The silver lining in the dark cloud of our bereavement was that for the second time this year, and in a short space of just three months, we would get to spend more time with our sons, with my own mum, and our much-missed family in the UK.

Blue skies over Glasgow

Our son Iain and his lovely girlfriend Alice

During our few days in Scotland, I also took the opportunity to attend a Romantic Novelist’s Association lunch in Edinburgh. It had been several years since I’d met up with my friends in the RNA Scottish Chapter. When I saw on our group Facebook page that a lunch meeting was being arranged for the morning I arrived back, I jumped at the chance to go along. I took the train from Glasgow and it was wonderful to see blues skies over Edinburgh and all my Scottish writer friends again face to face.

Edinburgh Castle in the sunshine

Blue skies over Princes Street Edinburgh

With Rosemary Gemmell in Edinburgh

With Eileen Ramsay - chair of the Romantic Novelist's Association 

It was wonderful to catch up with my Scottish writer friends in Edinburgh

Also, while we were in Edinburgh, we got together with our son Ben and his lovely girlfriend Hayley and all her family.

Trav and I with Hayley and Ben at the bowling club

Hayley is a ladies champion bowls player and there was a match being played that day at the local bowling club. It was a fun day and a welcome chance to spend quality time with Ben and Hayley especially when in just a few day’s time – the day after his grandad’s funeral – they were looking forward to their three-week holiday in Orlando Florida.

Hayley in action

Hayley's mum Andrea and Graham

Fun at the bowling club with Ben and Hayley and her family

Trav and I travelled down to England by train and were once again so grateful to our best friend Dina, who had generously offered to share her home with us again while we were in the UK.

Hanging out with my best friend Dina

In the days before the funeral, we managed to have some fun times with Dina in our old home town of Widnes and we also got to spend a great day out in Liverpool - exploring all the tourist sites like the Albert Dock and the Caven Club.

The day of the funeral was an emotional one for all the Horton family. For Trav and his brothers, Rob and Stuart, to lose both parent’s in such a short time was heart-breaking. As it was for all eight grandchildren to lose their grandparents. Their legacy of course will live on in them all and also in their one great-grandchild, Aaron, who lives in South Korea and whom they sadly had never met.

A short time after the funeral, on a solemn grey and rainy day in May, Jimmy and Dot’s ashes were buried together in the same Runcorn cemetery where their parent’s had been laid to rest. A small and intimate service was held with just their three son’s and wives present. Trav, being the eldest of the brothers, said a few words over his parent’s grave while we all held hands and said our last goodbyes.

For mid-May, initially from Bucharest, I had booked flights to London in order to attend the Romantic Novelist’s Association Summer Party. This writer’s networking event is a great opportunity for writers to get together with publishers and agents and other writing professionals. As I had been out of the country off and on for almost four years, I also saw this event as a great opportunity, not only for me to meet up with my writer friends, but to put my finger back on the pulse of the writing industry and to see what had changed over the past few years.

I had hastily re-organised my travel arrangements and I was very excited to be accompanied to the event and staying with my lovely writer friend Linn B Halton, who lives outside London. Linn and I hadn’t seen each other face to face (if you don’t count Skype) since the Festival of Romance several years before so you can imagine how much we had to talk about!

Ready for the RNA Summer Party -with my lovely friend Linn B Halton

Linn and I travelled to London together by train, had a fabulous lunch in an Italian restaurant in Piccadilly, and then caught up with other Romantic Novelist’s for pre-party drinks. It was so great to see everyone again. Below are a few photos with my lovely writer chums!

With Linn having lunch in London

Pre-party cocktails with lovely writer friends

With Mandy Baggot

With Talli Roland who also writes as Leah Mercer

With lovely Liz Harris

Soon, Trav and I felt ready to move on again. As we don’t have a home of our own in the UK anymore and, as we still have wanderlust to travel, we were keen to take up our nomadic adventures again and there is nothing like losing people to remind us of the fragility of life and how quickly time passes.

Our flight from London to KL via Singapore

Trav and I want to travel the world together while we can, while we still have our health, and before we get too old to do so. Of course, we love and miss our family and friends, but we appreciate they have busy lives too and being close geographically to them is no guarantee we would see them often as we'd like anyway. So I'm so grateful to the times in which we live; when we can keep in touch with our loved ones whenever we like on the internet and, thanks to affordable air travel, no place and no one in the world is much more than 12 hours away from us.

A farewell meal with my family before leaving for SE Asia

So we left the UK to fly back to Asia. We took a flight back to Kuala Lumpur and, while in a taxi to our hotel in KL, we had some wonderful news from Orlando Florida, where our son Ben was on holiday with his girlfriend Hayley. He had proposed and Hayley had became his fiancée.

The newly engaged Ben and Hayley in Orlando Florida

We were thrilled and so excited to see their proposal on video and to see how happy they are together. Our driver must have wondered what was going on when he heard me squealing and tearful on the back seat of his taxi!

After a good night’s sleep in KL, the next morning, we headed straight for the Perhentian Islands off the east coast of peninsula Malaysia. We flew with Air Asia from KLIA2 to Kuta Bharu - a 45 min flight and then took a bus and a boat over the Perhentian Besar (the larger of these islands). It’s a place that has been on our radar for a couple of years now but we have never been in Malaysia during these island’s short season - between May and September – after which all boats stop going there and all accommodations close down.

What is special about the Perhentian Islands you may ask?

Well, for one they are incredibly beautiful - the beaches are white sand beaches and said to be some of the best in the world - and the diving and snorkelling too is said to be amazing. But there is one other very special reason that we headed out to the Perhentians at this time and that is to do with my current Work In Progress. I needed to go to these islands for research purposes.

In my next book, I have a heroine who is establishing a turtle conservation sanctuary on an island– and so for a week I was going to be staying at a turtle conservation center to learn all about sea turtles and turtle hatcheries and baby turtles while Trav went diving.

If I was really lucky, I hoped that on Perhentian Island I would get to see baby turtles hatching and then help to release them to the sea. If I was really really lucky I would get to see a nesting turtle returning to the beach that she had been born on at least thirty years before, to lay her eggs under the light on the moon, before making her way back into the sea.

Please do join me here on the blog next time to find out more about the beautiful Perhentian Islands and to find out exactly how very lucky I was!

Love, Janice xx

A big change of plan….

Right now, I’m in Bucharest, Romania - yet in my last travel related post here on the blog we were back in Thailand - and I’d indicated that we planned to stay in Thailand for the foreseeable future. Well, it seems that I spoke too soon!

We returned to Koh Tao Thailand in the early part of February 2017 after dashing back to the UK on hearing that Trav’s mum was gravely ill (you can read about our bittersweet month back in the UK by clicking HERE) but then soon accepted an invitation to help a friend in the initial setup of a new diving venture in Eastern Europe during the spring and summer of 2017. It seemed like a great opportunity and an exciting venture.

But before we could leave for Bucharest, we still had some time to settle down and to relax and to honour the diving commitments we still had on Koh Tao.

Plus, we were looking forward to our lovely friends Jenn and Gregg coming over from the UK for a two-week diving holiday mid-March. Also, at the end of March - which would have been our visa-run had we stayed in Thailand - we also had a trip to South Korea planned to visit our son James, his wife Sujeong, our two year old grandson Aaron and our Korean side of the family.

So, during the first week of February, exhausted from the highs and lows of the past month back in the UK and from all the travelling, we were more than happy to arrive back to Koh Tao and get back into a routine. We’d kept our rented villa on Ban's Diving resort on Koh Tao while we were away, and we soon settled back into the easy vibe of island life, enjoying the heat and the sunshine.

Settling back into the easy vibe of island life on Koh Tao

Our home on Ban's Diving Resort Koh Tao

Ban’s Dive Resort on Koh Tao is a large sprawling beachfront island resort. It is an oasis of swaying palm trees with beautiful gardens and many types of accommodations for all budgets – dorms, rooms, villas and suites – and  it primarily and very successfully caters for scuba divers. I loved living on the resort and our villa was only a few minutes’ walk from one of their four swimming pools that I used every day to swim and then to sunbathe. I enjoyed the restaurants and the beach bar too – to meet with Trav and friends for lunch and later for sun-downer cocktails at the Darawan restaurant in the hills or for fun and food and live music at Fishbowl Beach Bar.

The entrance to Ban's Diving Resort

The bridge from reception into the resort garden and accommodation

The spirit house outside our accommodation

Asparagus and cheese salad lunch at Fishbowl Beach Restaurant

Ban's meet and greet transport to bring you to the resort from the pier

The pool I like to use each morning for my swim and sunbathe

One of the other pools at Ban's - used for dive training

Trav and I enjoying sun-downers at the Darawan Restaurant

Trav enjoying a beer at Fishbowl Beach Bar at Ban's Resort

Swaying palm trees and a blue blue sky...

In early march, we were notified by PADI that Trav had earned PADI Elite Status for his work in 2016. As an instructor, in 2016, he had trained and certified over 100 new divers. I am so very proud of him and all he has achieved with his diving.

Also in early March, we were invited out with friends to celebrate their birthdays. During this time it was also my birthday. Trav took me out for a delicious meal at a gorgeous restaurant up in the hills. We arrived at sunset to amazing views. The sunsets on Koh Tao are always breathtakingly beautiful. Afterwards, we were able to wine and dine under the moon and the stars. It was a wonderful birthday.

A delicious birthday dinner in a restaurant up in the hills with an amazing view

Mid March we helped with the resort's official annual beach games. That was a lot of fun. Life was good. The monsoon season was over. High season was just around the corner. The weather was hot and sunny and I appreciated it even more for having been away in the cold wintery UK.

Then our friends Jenn and Gregg arrived and we were so excited to see them again. We’d managed to meet up with them in Liverpool back in January but we’d first met three years ago in the Bahamas. They were staying at the wonderful Sandals Resort Nassau and we were staying at an AirBnB accommodation near Cable Beach. (You can read about our fabulous month spent in the Bahamas by clicking HERE).

On Koh Tao, Jenn and Gregg were looking forward to doing their PADI Open Water dive training at Ban’s Resort and being taught by PADI Staff and Elite Instructor Trav. They both worked very hard during the classroom and pool training and then we all went out on the Ban’s dive boat, where at some fabulous dive sites, Jenn and Gregg completed their course and became qualified open water scuba divers!

During their ten days on the island we had a lot of fun. We ate amazing Thai food from both street vendors and fabulous restaurants. We lazed around the pool and had plenty of time to take trips to explore and enjoy the island.

To finish off their holiday in style and for us to further enjoy our lovely friend’s company, we all took an early boat off the island and a flight over to Malaysia to spend a couple of nights in the city of Kuala Lumpur, from where Jenn and Gregg would fly back to London and we would fly over to Seoul, South Korea.

We had a fun and fabulous time in KL. We all stayed at the Intercontinental but also explored other hotels in the city – like the Mandarin Oriental and Trader’s -  for the best views of the city and for the (expensive!) cocktails.

Trav and I now think of KL as our home from home, as we have stayed there so many times over the past couple of years. We use it as our hub to South East Asia in the same way we used Houston Texas as our gateway to the US and to Central America and the Caribbean. But Jenn and Gregg hadn’t ever explored this fabulous city before, so they did more than us this time around, by visiting the Petronas Towers and walking along the famous Skybridge and enjoying all the other attractions.

We said our fond farewells to our lovely friends in KL, knowing they had enjoyed their well-earned holiday and that they had achieved so much by qualifying as open water divers. We are sure that we will share many more fun times with Jenn and Gregg in the future – no doubt somewhere in the world at a dive resort!

A fun selfie from beneath the Petronas Towers KL

The view of the city from the cocktail bar at the Mandarin Oriental KL

Another fun lift selfie at the Mandarin Oriental KL

My next blog post will be all about our fabulous week in South Korea, where we stayed with our son James and our daughter-in-law Sujeong. We enjoyed lots of quality time with them and our grandson Aaron, and also with the rest of our lovely Korean family, whom we hadn’t seen for just over a year – and I took lots of photos!

Our grandson Aaron is now two years old. 

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Love, Janice xx