Just so you know…

I know this sounds totally ridiculous, considering I will only have been away for 4 months, but I feel like I need to give you all a bit of a warning. I’m afraid I might  have been a bit Bangladesh-ified over the last while. Maybe its because I thought I was going to be here for so long, or maybe because this place is so very very different from home, or anywhere I’ve been before.

Going to Thailand for 2 weeks was certainly a good introduction to the ‘reverse culture shock’ phenomena I will undoubtedly experience on arrival at Heathrow airport.

Imagine it:

Me standing immobilised at Bangkok airport, for at least 15 minutes, gazing in wonder at:

-all the flesh

-all the white people

-all the things

-the clean: floors/toilets/shops/people/air et etc etc and so on (as Minar Bhai would say)

Me discovering the existence of Boots The actually real life god damn Chemist:

-Tampons

-No. 7

-wet-wipes

-THINGS

Missing my boat to Ko Pang nang so checking into a 3* hotel for the night on Christmas Eve:

-A hot shower

-PILLOWS

-WHITE SHEETS!!!!!

-A MATRESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Had Rin, the land of hedonism. Buckets full of rum, fire throwers, bikini’s, me in a bikini, me looking at my actual body on display, Full moon parties, New Years Eve, midnight swims in the sea, bacon, bacon, everyday bacon.  Shocked eyes. People asking me if this is the first time I’d been away from home, what with my pale white skin and my inability to quite comprehend how there could be so much sun and so much booze and music and UV lights and just so many foreign people having so much fun and being just so misbehaved in one very small space.

Basically, if you seem me in those first few days and weeks after my return, please don’t be concerned by the odd yelp or groan when I see things like:

-Cheese

-The Bus

-Cheese

-Eastenders

-A Sofa

-A bath

-Lanes in the road

-Roads

-Cheese

Please don’t be concerned if I point vaguely in a slightly random manor and shout

-Bideshi! Bideshi!

It means I’ve seen a fellow foreigner.

Please don’t be concerned if my English seems a bit odd. If I say things like:

-I’m very much tired

-Take rest/take fresh, to mean I’m going to sleep/to shit/to pee

I’ll probably use the word’s:

-‘maximum’ and ‘too much’ often

As In:

-I Am too much excited to see you

-this is my maximum favourite pub.

Please don’t be concerned if I have to be carried out of the pub kicking and screaming at closing time.

Please don’t worry too much if I seem a bit stroppy that: the taxi-driver/the bus driver/the man at the corner shop didn’t pay me any attention. Please don’t worry too much if I stand on oxford street singing just to get someone to notice me. I may have developed a bit of a celebrity complex. Take my hand and lead me away and remind me that I am not famous.  DO NOT LET ME AUDITION FOR THE X-FACTOR.

Please don’t be surprised if I seem to have turned into a little bit of a victorian prude:

-if I stare at your low cut top and your actually not that short a skirt and shake my head

-If I go to buy a pint of milk with my orna on.

-If I try to surreptitiously smoke on the street without anyone seeing, even though no one is:

a. on the street

b. In the slightest bit concerned that I’m smoking.

Here’s what you can do to ease the transition:

-allow me to bath at a worryingly frequent rate, every hour if necessary

-allow me to spend a large amount of the day in a bed with white sheets and a duvet and a fluffy pillow

-never come to visit me without cheese

-and a bottle of wine

-and maybe a crack pipe.

And my friends, to conclude, I’ll leave you with the big one, the most serious warning of all:

DO NOT GIVE ME RICE TO EAT

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT GIVE ME RICE TO EAT.

Its quite possible, if I see rice, I might not be very nice.

Thanks for your patience, I look forward to bathing with you imminently