Thoughts and movements

The main reason I came back to Thailand after Cambodia, rather than continuing to Vietnam or elsewhere, was that I'd made a commitment to return for the Songkran festival. Songkran used to be the Thai New Year, a celebration of the coming rainy season and the fertile fields it entails. Thailand officially switched to a Jan 1st New Year quite a while ago, but Songkran is still one of the biggest festivals of the year. What was once probably a ritual of cleansing and purification has evolved over the years, in true Thai style, into a massive nationwide water fight. It's supposed to last 3 days, but was officially extended to 5 this year because of the political problems - which made no difference where I was anyway, since Pattaya always extends the celebrations to a full week of water-based madness.

Pattaya is basically in party mode 365 days a year, but manages to find even greater reserves of high spirits (and alcohol) for the week of Songkran. Whole families come in from the surrounding areas in the back of pick-up trucks with giant buckets of water and water cannons, roaming the streets and waging wet war with the tourists and bargirls who set up with similar equipment outside all the bars in town (and this is a town with a lot of bars!).

Couples weave through the traffic on motorbikes, the passenger armed with water pistols - and motorbike riders seem to be prized targets, despite the fact that hundreds die every year from being blinded or knocked over by a jet of water (or just being even more drunk than usual). Nobody is spared from a soaking though - you cannot walk down the road without getting drenched head to foot - don't carry anything you can't afford to get wet! Just to be ironic, the unseasonable rains that had been bothering SE Asia for about a month stopped just in time for Songkran, presumably figuring we had it covered.

I spent the first day as a passive participant in the celebrations, then bought myself a water cannon and gave back as good as I got. It's a great ice-breaker, simply walking around the streets exchanging volleys of water with random strangers, or having a bucket poured over your head as you walk past, stopping to refuel your pistol from some bar's buckets and then hanging out there for a while to join forces with the staff and customers - before turning on them and moving on! I made many new friends, and had hundreds of brief, happy interactions. It's probably the most fun I've had on my travels!

This year the celebrations were nearly spoiled by the political turmoil that reached a peak as the festival was starting - the "red shirt" brigade, supporters of ousted PM Thaksin Shinawatra (as opposed to the royalist "yellow shirt" lot who shut down the airport last year) were whipped into a frenzy and clashed with the military/police. I can't say I know the ins and outs of the political situation, but my instinct is that the allegations of corruption against Thaksin are probably well-founded - mainly because he's a self-made billionaire, and I don't trust anybody with that much money (can you get that rich without trampling on people?). His political popularity is mostly with the uneducated, rural poor he claims to be a champion of - which smacks of demagoguery (yay, always wanted an excuse to use that word!), and he seems to have had no qualms about inciting them to violence. I passed through a lot of red shirts on the day they started assembling in Bangkok, and they felt like a mob - already pregnant with the violence that they were to unleash some days later. I then followed them all down to Pattaya when they went to disrupt the ASEAN summit, but saw nothing of them there - they congregated at the out-of-town resort where the summit was being held, and though they succeeded in ruining the summit there was no sign of them or the police in the downtown areas - I was quite oblivious until I saw the news the next day. It was hardly a surprise though - it was utterly predictable that things would get out of hand. Holding anything except a stag party in Pattaya is probably a mistake anyway, and doubly so on the eve of the chaotic Songkran festival, even without the political problems - when the first rumblings of protest began they should have moved the summit to some small island and closed it off to the public, or something.

I didn't follow the red shirts back to Bangkok, where things got even worse - I was happily distracted by the festivities by then.

I finally got around to sorting and uploading some photos from Thailand.

I'm back in Thailand again, having run to the end of my 30 day visa for Cambodia... it's raining here too: time to admit that the rainy season has started early this year, methinks.

I find that I'm really missing Cambodia - as the time to leave approached I was looking forward to being back in Thailand, having access to some modernities and creature comforts again, but once I was actually across the border I started to find the comparative development and affluence strangely oppressive... extravagant and unnecessary. Even lil' ol' Pattaya seems like some kind of metropolis after Phnom Penh, and I feel a bit alienated and inconsequential.

I'm sure I'll adapt once I've been here a few days, but right now it feels much less like 'home' than it did before I went to Cambodia. Part of it's probably the cognitive dislocation of breaking the social ties I'd formed in Cambodia and reconnecting with the ones I have here in Thailand - thinking about a different set of people and places, and switching mental habits... e.g. the places my brain offers up to go when I want to buy something. There was a definitely a part of me that wanted to turn round after crossing the border and get another 30 day visa, but I can't really justify spending more time there right now.

I'll try to write up something about the individual places where I spent time in Cambodia (but don't hold your breath), and to sort through all the photos I took (mostly at Angkor) to get some uploaded. Eventually.

Apologies for not writing anything for... err, 3 months! I haven't honestly done much worth writing about, and have been trying to keep away from the computer/internet. I was planning to go to India, but whenever I tried making travel plans - trying to find cheap accommodation that wasn't described as 'filthy' by the majority of reviewers etc. - it all seemed a bit too stressful, so I decided on the cheap/lazy option of my nearest neighbour.

I was planning to start my Cambodia trip in Siam Reap and the ruins of Angkor, then meander down the country to the beaches of Sihanoukville, but flights from Bangkok to Phnom Penh were half the price so I decided to spend a few days there getting acclimatised. Cambodia is very close to Thailand, and historically the borders have been very fluid, but it's definitely different – poorer, mainly. Phnom Penh is the capital of the country, but feels more like a small town in Thailand – cracked and unpaved roads, piles of garbage tended by rats in the streets, and dust everywhere. There are no skyscrapers, no big shopping malls... no public transport, precious little street lighting. Outside the massive Royal Palace there are few signs of affluence except the occasional SUV carrying around the rich folk – the gangsters and politicians (basically the same people?)... it's a world apart from Bangkok.

Cambodia has a reputation for being somewhat 'lawless' – if you do need the police in Phnom Penh, you're likely to get hit up for a bribe before you get any assistance, by all accounts. In Thailand it's probably true that you can bribe your way out of most trouble, but in Cambodia it seems you can probably do anything you like if you have money... which admittedly not many people do.

There's little evidence of any government activity at all, really, and it occurred to me that this is what the 'small government' that Republicans wax lyrical about really looks like. At first I thought this was a rebuttal of the idea, but then I realised it probably is what they - the party leaders at least - would like to see in the U.S.: no restrictions on the 'freedom' of the rich and powerful... and no assistance for the rest of the folk. Americans seem to believe they have some sort monopoly on 'freedom', but the U.S. is a relatively restrictive society, more so than most European countries even – as much by the pressure to follow conservative social norms as by the laws (though there are plenty of frivolous examples of the latter). There are obviously far fewer effective restrictions on liberty in Cambodia... you can get a sense of it from the traffic, which is extremely chaotic... I doubt many people have licenses, and whatever traffic laws there are seem to be rarely enforced. If people are driving on the right side of the road (and it is an “if”) it's clearly only because they find it convenient to do so at the time, not because of any fear that the police or their peers will do anything about it if they don't.

It's fairly obvious that nobody really gives a damn what you do here, and as a result there's a sort of easy-going, laid back atmosphere that I have to admit to finding somewhat appealing myself... not because I want to have sex with 12 year olds or blow up cows with a rocket launcher (both options that are allegedly on the cards for those willing to pay), but (I realised after some self-analysis) because I never feel like I'm about to be harassed about something (other than commerce), or like I'm being judged. In the U.S. or U.K. there's a constant background paranoia that I'm being held to some sort of social standards that nobody's ever actually got around to explaining to me, and that I might be found wanting at any time - social anxiety. These feelings are rarely triggered in Thailand or Cambodia; I've concluded that it's a status thing – as a tourist I'm pretty near the top of the social hierarchy in most environments, strange as that might seem, given how dependent the economies are on my (our) dollars - so primal fears about offending my social superiors and being ostracised remain dormant. I suspect this is what leads many ex-pats to settle over here – well, that and the girls ;-)

Cambodia does have a reputation for being “dangerous”, and I did feel a little unsafe for the first few days, but everyone seems so friendly and smiley that I quickly stopped worrying that they were about to snatch my bag or hold me up at gunpoint. There seem to be less people out to scam tourists than there are in Bangkok, too. Obviously there is crime, and tourists are not immune, but I feel safer wandering the streets here than I do back in England or San Francisco – even after midnight, when the streets are eerily deserted and largely unlit, I don't feel unduly concerned. Whilst there's probably a somewhat greater chance of having my bag snatched or my pockets picked here, there's infinitely less chance of being kicked to death for no particular reason by a gang of yobs. That balances out in Cambodia's favour, I'd say.

I would like to head to Vietnam after Cambodia, but I've committed to being back in Thailand for Songkran in April - which certainly doesn't give me enough time to loop up through Vietnam & back through Laos (which would otherwise be nice). It looks like I'll easily use up my 30 day visa on arrival in Cambodia, so I'll probably just go back to Thailand when it's up. Songkran heralds the start of the "rainy season" in much of S.E. Asia, so not sure what I'll do then - maybe head back home for a bit of a rest!

Since my earlier plans were thwarted by airport closures and terrorists I ended up cancelling (nearly) all my tickets and reservations, and after popping over to HK to refresh my visa I returned to Taiwan to regroup and make new plans. My new plans are less fully formed, but broadly similar to the old ones (to start off with) - I rescheduled my flight to Thailand for Dec 15th, and rebooked most of the places I was supposed to be in before. This means I will be in Krabi around Christmas, probably heading over to Ko Phi Phi for Christmas day itself, then over to Ko Phangan for New Year. I'm going to stay in Thailand longer than I was originally planning to - hopefully do some yoga in Phangan, then head up North to Chiang Mai and Pai again.

Then depending on how things look, I might still head to India early next year - probably hopping over to Chennai (Madras) and then looping down the east coast and back up the west. Otherwise I'll most likely do the Laos-Vietnam-Cambodia-Thailand loop I didn't get around to doing last year.

Last time I was in Taiwan I had intended to visit a Chinese doctor to find out what their view was of my RSI troubles, given that Western medicine had proved patently clueless. Mickey put out some feelers for doctors, but none of them ever came back with information - she doesn't use Chinese medicine herself, and I guess her friends don't either. I was very wary of seeing some random doctor, and eventually the idea died.

This time I was determined to try again, so Mickey checked online for recommendations, and found a doctor in the centre of Taipei who was very highly rated, so we made an appointment at his office. Unfortunately, once we got there we discovered he'd died (several years ago) and one of his students was running the practice instead now - pesky internet!

On the phone we'd been told the doctor spoke English, but this turned out to be true in only the most general of senses - he clearly wasn't comfortable with it, and talked through Mickey for the most part. Since her English is best described as 'functional', and certainly doesn't include detailed medical vocabulary, this made for a fairly frustrating experience.

The doctor took a brief history from Mickey (no idea what she said) and asked me where it hurt - I tried to explain that at some point or other there was barely a part of my body that hadn't been in pain, but the back of my hands and forearms, and my neck & shoulders were the most consistently painful - I demonstrated that I could easily irritate the fingers controlled by the median nerve by moving my arm out to the side, as an example. He did a very brief physical exam, and announced that the problem was that the nerves to my arms were impinged at my neck (around the C5-C6-C7 vertebrae?) due to poor posture when using a computer - which was far less esoteric than I'd expected.

He made a fairly convincing argument for his diagnosis by standing behind me, wrapping his arm under my chin and lifting my head quite forcibly up from my body, then asking me to repeat the movement that had irritated the median nerve earlier. I did so, and found I could move my hand quite freely, with no noticable tension or aggravation of the nerve.

How surprisingly straightforward! Barely 10 minutes after meeting him I had a better-supported diagnosis than I'd got from a whole troupe of doctors and therapists in the US and UK. I'm not sure how specific the neck-stretch manoeuvre is to cervical nerve impingement though - it seems plausible it could open up the thoracic outlet too. It's much of a muchness since both can presumably result from the same root postural problems - quite likely both areas are problematic.

For treatment he gave me a new exercise to do, which seems to be both a nerve glide and a strengthening exercise for the arms. He also prescribed some medicine, which comes in the form of dried leaves and roots chopped up to order at the surgery. The volume is quite large - a day's worth comes in a bag about the size of a pound of sugar, which has to be cooked in a special medicine pot (which we had to go out and buy). It actually needs to be cooked twice a day, producing a large bowl of medicine to be drunk in the morning and evening - and each time it takes about 3 hours!

The medicine he prescribed for me had at least half a dozen ingredients, and the resulting soup tasted absolutely disgusting - very strong, and pungent... it was a real challenge to force it down, holding my nose - and to keep it down afterwards!

It was an unpleasant experience and quite an investment in time, and in money for that matter (about US$14 a day), and it wasn't at all clear what the benefit was supposed to be – if the nerves are physically being irritated by my bones because of my posture, what could any medicine do to help?

He gave us 5 days worth of medicine, after which we went for a follow-up appointment. I told him I did feel a bit better, but my symptoms varied week by week anyway and it was within normal variance, so it was really too soon to say whether the medicine or exercise was helping. He decided to change my medicine anyway, giving me a different concoction of twigs and roots to be cooked up twice a day. This one was actually rather more palatable – a strong liquorice taste, which I'm partial to, dominated the experience. It still wasn't exactly pleasant, but it was definitely more bearable... I didn't dread it.

I asked him to clarify what the medicine would do, and he talked at great length with Mickey, but the best translation I could get out of either of them was “it can fix your joints”, which was really not much help. I asked how long I'd have to take the medicine for, and he said that if I wasn't better after 3 months then we could conclude it wasn't going to help and I could stop taking it. A quick calculation showed I'd be out over US$1000 at that point, which is still less than I've spent on massage in the past year, so if I really thought it would help me get better it would be worth the investment.

The problem was, I really didn't think it would help – I suspected the exercise would account for any benefit I got, and that the real purpose of the medicine was to boost the doctor's income. In the UK and the US the person who prescribes you your medicine can't also sell it to you, because of the obvious conflict of interest there. In Taiwan and Hong Kong there seems to be no such rule - doctors (Western and Chinese) dispense the medicine directly, at a cost – which means that pretty much any trip to the doctor results in you leaving with half a dozen different pills, even if you just have a cold. I would say the UK and US have that one right (though the US still has a conflict in that doctors charge a fee for writing prescriptions, so they will prescribe useless antibiotics for a cold). Since the cost of the medicine was significantly higher than the consultation fees, I suspect nobody leaves the office without a prescription for something.

It didn't really matter whether I thought it was going to work though, since I wouldn't be staying in Taiwan for 3 months and could hardly cook it up every day on the road. I like the exercise though, and it has been incorporated into my arsenal.

So I had a plan, that since my Taiwan visa would expire before Mickey was ready to travel, I'd head to Thailand for 2 weeks then meet her in India (works out cheaper for air fares too, sorta). Then the day before I'm supposed to leave, demonstrators close down Bangkok airport, and my flights are cancelled. Whoops. Since I can't stay in Taiwan any longer I book a last minute flight to Hong Kong, where I'll spend a few days then had back to Taiwan for a fresh 30 day visa.

Hopefully Bangkok airport will reopen and I can spend a week in Thailand and still catch my flight to Delhi, but now there's carnage in Mumbai and the idea of travelling in India looks less attractive than it did before. Hmmm.

I'd decided to try and plan more thoroughly this time, so have spent the past few weeks reading up on destinations, and had tickets and hotels booked for much of the time up until New Year - if we cancel our plans altogether we'll lose a lot of money. But we probably won't get shot or blown up.

Statistically of course it's still highly unlikely we'd be victims of terrorism, especially since we'd be nowhere near the high-end hotels they targeted in Mumbai, but we'd probably always be worried about it.

Note that I now appear to be able to predict violence and civil unrest by booking flights - there were riots in Taipei soon after I arrived (though fairly minor), then in Bangkok, then terrorists in India.

Hong Kong seems to be as chilled out as it ever gets, though.

I've been back in Taiwan just over a week now, and not done much of anything so far. I realised on the flight over that I hadn't really given any thought to what I'd do when I was here, other than get massaged. This was sort of the plan - the idea being that since there wouldn't be much to distract me I would be driven by boredom to start exercising regularly again. There's been some validation of that.

Jetlag knocked me about quite a bit for the first few days, flipping me between sleeping until mid afternoon and waking up at 6am alert and energetic. I've settled into something like a routine now, though it's the familiar 'sleep late, wake even later' cycle which gels with Mickey's working hours but does not tend to lend itself to getting anything done during the day. Or ever.

Mickey moved into a new apartment just after I left in March, so we're now in Danshui rather than Sanchong. She chose a place that's much larger than the last one, apparently so there'd be more room for me to exercise, and which is close to a train station so that I'd be able to get about when she's working. Unfortunately the only place that fit those criteria and was within her budget is in an old, rather run-down building that's right on a major road in an area with multiple construction projects going on, and therefore by far the loudest place I've ever lived. It's been nothing but trouble for her - practically everything has broken and needed fixing or replacing, which has cost her a lot. I guess that gives me some obligations. It's a shame that by the time the 12 month lease is up it's unlikely I'll have spent much time here.

I've been to Shilin for massage a couple of times so far - the first time was straight from the airport. Unfortunately my favourite masseur (No. 58) isn't working at the moment - apparently he's just on holiday, but nobody's quite sure when he'll be back. I did get a good massage from 2nd favourite No. 30, and a mediocre one from somebody we hadn't tried before (No. 21).

One thing that's surprised me is the weather - when I was here before, which was a few weeks in November and most of February and March, the weather was rarely pleasant and never especially warm. Since I was arriving just a few weeks ahead of last year's schedule I was expecting broadly similar weather; in fact it's been upwards of 30 degrees most days, and barely less at night - it's much more the sort of weather you'd expect from an island that's half tropical, really. Most days it's been bright and sunny, though the one day we decided to head out to a beach it turned overcast and dull. The humidity here is really high, so the heat is actually rather oppressive.

Since we don't know how long the warm weather will last, we're planning to head down to the South of the island (the actually tropical part) this weekend, though it's all a bit contingent on us actually waking up and getting out of the house early enough to make the trip worthwhile. Expect some photos if we do.

It's 6 months since I returned to the UK, and the evidence suggests that doing so has not been good for me, overall. When I got back in April I felt that my R.S.I. was almost recovered, and my health was generally in better shape than it had been in for years. I'd quit smoking, was noticably stronger, had dropped below 180 pounds (down from nearly 230 a year earlier) and my hands were sufficiently recovered that I could use a computer for several hours a day with only mild discomfort.

I certainly started off with the best of intentions when I returned, buying a bike to get around and exercising at home every day, trying to learn yoga and pilates from DVDs and to persuade my family of the virtues of fresh, organic food and whole grains. I tried joining a pilates class, visiting a chiropractor, paying a private physio clinic for treatment and getting the NHS involved. I avoided unpacking most of my things, such as my computer, to stay focussed and to keep temptation at bay.

Yet now, 6 months later, I find myself in worse shape than when I arrived. I'm back over 190 pounds, do very little exercise most days and am definitely weaker, and my hands are in almost constant pain again. I'm basically right back where I was 12 months ago in fact, before I left America.

So what happened?

Presumably my hands started getting worse again because I started using the computer more - there wasn't much else too do.

Also, my efforts to improve my health did not yield the benefits I anticipated, so I got disillusioned. Despite exercising a lot my weight started going up, probably because there was too much opportunity to snack at home when I was bored - then I'd have a big family meal in the evening despite already having consumed nearly enough calories to sustain me during the day. The more I exercised the more I seemed to end up hurting, too. Although I usually felt better right afterwards, different muscles would become sore later or the next day, with lots of little muscles going into spasm and staying that way for quite a long time (some seem never to have released). Pain seemed to be spreading, which is quite demoralising. I really missed the restorative effects of the massage I'd been getting in Taiwan. The custom Egoscue menu I had didn't really seem to be changing my posture and I soon stopped doing it faithfully. The pilates class was too hard for me after the initial set of "introductory" lessons, and the yoga dvds were also a challenge - though I did take bits of exercises from both and mixed them with the Egoscue stuff and things various physios had given me.

I felt like progress of a sort was being made for a long time, and persisted with the exercises and attempts to be more healthy. I couldn't really see any improvements to my posture, but at least my leg strength and stamina were improving from all the cycling, and it had to be helping my cardiovascular system. But then the weather started to deteriorate - some time in June the clouds rolled in, and we barely saw the sun again until September. The dullest and wettest summer on record, I think - certainly in my memory. Finding the motivation to get out on the bike got harder, and that meant I was basically stuck at home with little to do - books and dvds wear thin eventually, and as I got more bored I seemed to become more lethargic - it got harder to motivate myself to exercise at home even... or to do much of anything. I gradually started slipping back into the sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle that (arguably) got me into trouble in the first place.

I can't really excuse it - I'm sure if I'd tried I could have found something more healthy to fill my days, but I guess long held habits are hard to change.

Still it seemed like my R.S.I. was getting better, slowly - despite some ups and downs it seemed like there was an overall trend of gradual improvement... until in mid-September my hands started hurting quite badly again, quickly deteriorating until they were worse than they'd been since I left the U.S.... and for no particular reason that I could discern.

12 months ago I'd just been declared "Permanent & Stationary" but felt I'd been written off prematurely to get me off the insurance company's books, and was determined to get better treatment outside the U.S. and fully recover. I really never thought I'd be basically no better 12 months later (which is the actual legal meaning of "permanent and stationary") - but here I am. It's still possible that I will recover - there's lots of treatments I haven't tried - but I have to really consider that this might be as good as it gets, and I have to change my career. I still have no idea what I might want to do that doesn't involve heavy computer use though. I really miss California and would love to return, but unless I can return to programming it's hard to see how I'd get a visa (or a job for that matter). I'd definitely prefer not to have to return to the UK permanently - the weather just keeps getting worse (and the rest)!

It seems clear that things were, generally, working out better for me when I was away from the U.K, anyway. Hence, I made the decision to return to Asia and continue my travels - back to Taiwan first, then back to Thailand for a few weeks, then (just to prove I'm not simply living my life in reverse now) off to India. I don't know how long I'll stay for, but 3 months seems like a fairly good length of trip to see the country's highlights. Maybe I'll settle into an Ashram in Goa for a few months doing yoga though, or maybe I'll do some volunteer work... or find a real job and settle there. Or maybe I'll hate it and leave after 2 weeks - I really have no idea. My mind is open to whatever comes my way.

The last day of actual yoga was Friday 3rd, but we didn't have to leave the retreat until Saturday, so a group of us went to Ibiza town for a meal in the evening. It was only a week since I'd last been there, getting wet, but it felt like much longer, and (as the cliche goes) like I was seeing the place through different eyes. Despite going into the week with a fairly negative attitude, it turned out splendidly – the weather was good, the yoga was great, I met some really nice people and generally had a fine time. One of the best holidays I've had, in fact.

The original plan was to bookend the yoga with some partying, but that got rained off at the front and at the end I... just didn't want to. I was feeling relaxed and content, and couldn't see how going out and getting a hangover could really add to the experience. So despite having all my remaining transport and accommodation booked already, I decided to go to the airport and look into getting a flight back to the UK instead. I was definitely in two minds – ready for home, but fine with continuing to the end as well. I found out that a standby flight would cost 180 or 220 Euros depending on the time, which was more than I would have liked to pay, but surely less than I would end up spending if I stayed. I decided that if there was space on the next flight back I'd take it, otherwise I'd carry on with the trip and fly back from Barcelona on Wednesday. I had to wait at the airport for about 2 hours, until check-in for the flight was closed, to see if anybody failed to turn up - there's usually at least one who doesn't, apparently, but it's not until the last minute that they give up and let the standbys go. As it turned out, everybody managed to turn up this time, so there was no room at the inn for me. I could have waited another 2 hours to see if there was room on the next flight, but decided fate had spoken, and got a taxi to my new hotel.

The hotel I had booked this time was on the outskirts of Ibiza town, an area known as Figueretes. The vibe is quite different considering how close it is to the old town (10 minutes walk) – it's much more package touristy, more like San Antonio. I did get a really good deal on the hotel though, so I couldn't complain, and it was nicely positioned to catch another beautiful sunset shortly after arrival.

I walked down to the marina and had dinner at El Pirata, but decided to stay off alcohol and was back at the hotel by 9.30pm for an early night. I wasn't remotely tempted to go to a club.

On Sunday I wanted to head to a beach, but the buses have switched to winter timetables now, which meant that a lot of the beaches I'd have liked to visit were pretty hard to get to. I ended up at the not especially appealing Playa d'en Bossa, just outside of Ibiza Town. Various circumstances seemed to be directing me towards the closing party for Space, Ibiza's best club, located there – I had a pass for nearly free entry, for instance. It started at noon, so there was plenty of time to do so before heading to my ferry. Even when I was practically at the door I really didn't want to though, so I ended up having a few drinks and reading in the sun at Bora Bora instead.

As the sun started going down I took a last dip in the sea and got a taxi back to the hotel to pack, planning to take my suitcase downtown to get some dinner and then catch the ferry. When I got my return ticket out I realised I'd remembered the time wrong though – I thought it left at 10pm, but the ticket said 7pm. I checked the current time... just past 7pm!

I figured the boat was unlikely to leave exactly on time so I might just make it if I got a taxi down to the harbour, but there was no sign of a ferry when I got there... or any sign that there had been one recently for that matter. The timetable stuck on the door of the (closed) office seemed to imply that Sunday ferries did indeed leave at 10pm, but that on Oct 5th there was “no hay salida”. Was it cancelled? Did I miss it? I don't know. I certainly wasn't getting to Barcelona that way though.

Since the hotel in Figueretes was so cheap I'd booked it for 2 nights anyway, so I had somewhere to stay if necessary. I went to Sunset cafe and got online to see what my options were. Flights to Barcelona the next day were shockingly expensive – 250 Euros and up. I saw that there was a flight back to the UK that night for about the same price, so I decided that fate had spoken again (a fickle mistress) and I might as well do that. I got a taxi to the airport and booked myself onto the 2.40am flight, which meant that instead of seeing the sun rise over Barcelona I saw it come up over Lancashire. It was actually quite pretty.

Despite my reservations I made the journey up to Ibiza Yoga, arriving early on Saturday afternoon. The weather was fairly warm and pleasant, and the landscape of the North very scenic, with lots of red rock and olive trees. The retreat is out in the middle of nowhere, a 45 minute walk from the nearest town, which is tiny anyway – as big a contrast from San Antonio as you could reasonably expect to find on an island as small as Ibiza. It's a 5 minute walk from Benirras beach, the favoured beach of the Ibizan hippies, apparently, and voted 4th prettiest beach in Europe (not sure who by). There's not a lot going on there, but it's nice enough.

If I'd kept up with the blog while I was back in the UK then there would be a nice narrative in which coming to a yoga retreat in Ibiza made sense as part of my RSI discovery journey. I didn't, so let's just go with “many people recommend it for RSI” and “I need to fix my posture”. I had tried learning from some DVDs in the UK, but found it difficult to get the motivation to fit it into my life as a regular thing. I thought immersion for a week would help to get it fixed in my brain, at least.

I wasn't sure what sort of crowd would be at a yoga retreat – a pretty normal bunch, it turns out. Median age is probably mid-30's, nearly all female, mostly British with a noticeable German presence. Everyone seems more or less nice, some exceptionally so.

I was worried about having to share a pagoda with somebody, but too cheap to pay the supplement for a single occupant... I gambled that if I took half of one, no male would want to take the other half (they don't mix sexes), and was proved correct. It's lucky, as sharing would have been a challenge – I definitely needed the space to spread out my stuff, since my suitcase won't fit in the storage locker provided. I suppose we'd have figured it out if there'd been 2 people in here, but it's much nicer to have it all to myself.

The second worry was that it would be cold or wet, but it's been fine. The weather forecast got progressively more optimistic over the weekend, and the weather followed suite – it hasn't rained since Friday night, though apparently even then this part of the island escaped with light showers. It's not as hot as it was in June, but it's warm enough as long as you're in the sun – it gets cool quickly when the sun bobs behind a cloud though, which is quite often. The night air is not too cold, and under the generous bedding it's actually quite toasty.

The yoga itself has been... challenging. Even though I'm taking the beginners class, nearly everyone else has previous yoga experience, and absolutely everyone is in better condition than me.

The first session was on Sunday, 4pm through 7pm. I tried my best to keep up with the postures, but the pace was faster than I'd have liked, and some parts were quite difficult. In particular, a lot of time was spent in “downward dog”, which put a lot of pressure on my wrists. At first this was ok, but by the middle of the class I was finding it a strain, and by the end it was painful. After the class my wrists were really sore, to the point where it interfered with my sleep.

I was very tempted to give up at that point, either reschedule my flights back or stay but skip the actual yoga. The first option proved prohibitively expensive, and I decided to at least give the yoga one more go before giving up entirely.

The second session was in the morning, which meant waking up earlier than I'm used to these days – having a natural alarm clock helped with that. This time I decided simply to avoid anything that put pressure on my wrists, so when we were supposed to do DD I just stayed on my hands and knees (cat pose). The instructor got the idea, and showed me another variant (dolphin) resting on my elbows instead, which was more tolerable. Anything else that seemed too much for me got modified to be easier, either by me or the teacher. It was altogether a much more pleasant experience, and by the end my wrists were ok – though I pulled a muscle in my side which was bad enough to interfere with sleep again.

I was tempted to skip the following day to give my body a chance to recover, but one of my fellow residents forbade it, telling me I had to “work through it”. I wasn't entirely convinced, as the concept of “working through your pain” is what turned a sore knee into a crippled knee for me last year. She was very persuasive though, so on day 3 I went along in the morning again. At first I was still very sore, and tried to go very lightly, adopting the simplest variations of the movements I could think of. After an hour I got more absorbed into it though, and the pain started to dissipate. By the end I was feeling better, less sore, than at the start.

The 4th day was definitely the hardest, but I made more of an effort to push myself. My core muscles were worn out by the end (we did quite a lot of pilates too), but in a good way. I've got a bit of a tendon-y pain in my right shoulder though, which I'll have to keep an eye on. On the beach in the afternoon I tried some stretches and discovered I'm noticeably more flexible already than I was at the start – my hamstrings seem to have loosened up, especially. Spasms in my right ham and buttock that had been increasingly painful when I walked for the past few months seem to have resolved, and are now painless. My body is feeling pretty good, in fact - I definitely thing yoga can help me, and is worth pursuing.

It hasn't helped with my hands (yet) though – they've been worse since that first session, in fact... typing this has been painful, even over a few days. I certainly never thought one week of yoga would “cure” me though, but I think regular practise would be a useful tool in the box.