Mark Newham finds himself being led up the garden of Eden path in his search for a winter paradise on Earth.
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PUT a randomly selected group of people in a room, ask them which of the four seasons is their favourite and unless they're all skiers, bobsleighers or Christmas festivity addicts, it's unlikely there'll be many votes for winter. In fact, so vehement is some people's dislike for the chilliest, gloomiest time of year many have already enacted plans to escape it. Thousands and thousands of them. Me included.
The day I made the decision to follow the swallow and join the massed ranks of snow-dodgers flying south for the winter was the day the boiler failed. Shivering in my layers on one of the coldest days of that particular winter I knew the time had come. No more just thinking about fleeing from all this. It was time to do it. Somewhere out there, there had to be a warm sunny sanctuary I could take refuge in for the duration without breaking the bank. But where?
Being no innocent abroad I already had a list of possibilities. It just needed slimming down. Shouldn't take too long, I thought. Two years? Three?
Try twenty. And even then the search still wasn't over. Not because I hadn't found my perfect refuge from winter. I had. Any number of times. But because long term familiarisation with every garden of Eden tested invariably led to the discovery of a voracious undergrowth of weed threatening to overwhelm my find and nowhere highlighted this better than a little piece of 'paradise' stumbled on in Thailand.
Paradise found!
On first sight of the ramshackle grouping of stilted bamboo chalets ranged round a friendly little bar/restaurant perched high on a wooded hillside overlooking the glistening, virtually deserted white sand beach of an idyllic Thai island cove, it seemed my search for nirvana was finally over. It was the image of what was in my mind's eye as the perfect place to escape winter and after a shirt-drenching trek through the island's tangled rain forest to reach it I sank to my knees in blessed, thankful relief. Until this discovery I'd begun thinking such perfection only existed in my head.
But here it was. Somewhere that promised to tick every box on the affordable winter retreat criteria list of someone of a certain age with an aversion to over-touristed hotspots and as I took in the picture postcard view from a rickety wicker chair on the restaurant's even ricketier sea breeze-cooled terrace, cold beer at my elbow, I knew I'd arrived. The jackpot had at last been hit.
I hadn't planned to come to Raya Island or even Thailand. Surely it was too well-known. Too well-frequented by the calibre of 'traveller' whose idea of a grand adventure was moving their sun lounger out of line with all the others. But someone met along the way recommended Raya and I hadn't resisted.
That's the way things were done amongst the multitudes making up the global snow-dodging community – swap tips on where might be worth giving a try and never being shy of following up on the best suggestions... places that without exception had so far escaped the attention of the most widely-read traveller 'bibles'. If it was peace, space and affordability you were after, inclusion in such guides invariably led to disappointment and disillusionment. You weren't the only one reading it.
And so it was that Raya and the gloriously laid-back Seaview Resort were chosen to be put to the test and I settled in with what I hoped wasn't a pair of rose-tinted specs to colour my judgement. While putting perfect winter refuge candidates through their paces it was vital to keep an open mind. To keep a mental alarm clock ticking, primed to go off the moment it started detecting cracks in that idyllic first impression façade.
… then mislaid...
Three weeks in and I'd almost forgotten the alarm existed. Not a murmur had been heard from it and it was beginning to look like those first impressions – for the first time on what was to become a twenty-year quest – had not, in this case, been leading me up the garden of Eden path.
So could all caution now be thrown to the wind? Was it time to wrestle my inner sceptic – the one born out of any number of previous premature declarations of perfection – into a box and turn the key? Surely this time… this time I wasn't fooling myself into a state of convenient imperfection colour blindness. All the tests had been run and Seaview had passed every one without breaking sweat.
Maybe not just yet, I eventually decided. Give it one more week just to be sure. To allow time for any sneaky evasive issue to be teased from its hiding place and subjected to serious criteria list scrutiny.
As the end of the fourth week loomed with nothing of major significance emerging it looked like Seaview was in the clear and, in huge relief, I settled down for dinner to toast finally finding what I hoped would become my regular winter home for many years to come.
Just one problem with that. Having tested to destruction every dish on the restaurant's limited menu during the course of my residency, nothing special or new to celebrate with caught my eye and with a sigh I was forced to plump for the old tried and tested stand-by, Thai green curry.
Had I had a kitchen of my own, I thought, something more inventive might have been tried. But since I didn't, there was no option. With no other eating place anywhere close it was Seaview's restaurant food selection or starve.
… then finally declared lost altogether...
As the thought struck, my food-laden fork froze in mid-air between plate and mouth. Out of nowhere the alarm had started ringing. Oh God. THAT was Seaview's Achilles heel. Not having a kitchen of one's own for a long term stay breached rule one on the perfect place criteria list. It made the dedicated winter escapee completely and utterly dependent on outside catering which, in Seaview's case, effectively made it a not especially affordable winter care home – the polar opposite of what I was seeking.
Once out of the box the realisation not only refused to go back in but began prodding me to wake up to certain other little flaws in what had, until now, seemed a paragon of winter escape perfection.
First it was the power supply to the chalets – or lack of it – and once accepted that that was going to be a major drawback any number of other niggles joined it, culminating in the biggest niggle of all, the quality of the waters in the bay.
With the tide in, they looked beautiful. Calm, pristine and untainted. But when they withdrew at Spring tide the real unvarnished truth was revealed in all its track-stopping horror. The usually water-covered sand I'd been treading for weeks was streaked brown with what could only be the product of the cove's mediaeval excuse for a waste water treatment plant and the reason why one saw so few fish in the bay suddenly dawned. They had more sense.
It was a finding that eventually had me following the fish's lead. Despite suffering no obvious health repercussions from swimming in the bay I quit Raya on the subsequent finding that more resorts were planned with no upgrading of the waste water treatment facilities. Once the new resorts arrived there was only one way things could go and I had no interest in being around to witness/suffer it when it did.
… forever.
Back in a still chilly UK, I sighed again. For the umpteenth time on my quest for the perfect refuge from winter, paradise had been found then, for various reasons, ultimately despairingly lost. Was there nowhere in the world that might fit the bill? It was beginning to look very much like it.
After testing dozens of likely locations on six continents for acceptability over the course of my two decade-long quest, thanks to the rise and rise of the budget airline making less and less of the world inaccessible to the regular tourist and all the environmental and social pressures they brought with them, nowhere now looked likely to tick every box and I wasn't alone in thinking it. Others met along the refuge-seeking trail reported similar concerns and the consensus was that this was an issue the regular guidebooks really ought to be devoting a lot more space to. It'd save us all a lot of time and trouble.
With none looking likely to rise to the challenge a further consensus was reached. There was no alternative but to produce our own 'bible' on seeking out the perfect refuge from winter.
The result, pieced together during the Covid pandemic when travel of any sort was impossible, is Snow-Dodging for Umpteenagers – not so much a how-to guide, more a how-not-to comedy of errors others might find instructive in planning their own refuge-seeking quests.
If it doesn't cut some of the corners on the trail towards finding your very own winter bolthole that can't be beat a further pledge has been made. Fellow umpteenager snow-dodgers reading it can have their money back.
Paperback and e-book versions out now and available from all good book stores and online sites quoting ISBN 978-1-7396498-0-7.
For full details plus a sample chapter see http://www.moriartimedia.com/SDU_summary.htm.
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