Today, tonight in fact, my family and I are off on an adventure. We are flying to Bangkok to be with my Dad, aka Long Suffering Granddad, for Christmas.
This is not the first time I have been there, in fact I spent some of my childhood there. My dad worked there, for a few years. I am very excited, both to be going somewhere amazing for Christmas, and sharing what we are calling a “trip of a lifetime” with my family, but also to be going back to somewhere I remember very fondly and well. Both LSH and I love South East Asia, and have spent time travelling there, before the children arrived, but this is my first time back to Thailand, since I was a child, and his and the children’s first time there at all. We have a grand adventure ahead of us….I am looking forward to showing my children where I went to school, where we lived, and we are also exploring the many amazing things and places there.
There’s one thing, however, that I notice, when I arrive in that part of the world. There’s a certain smell. It’s a weird thing, that as soon as I get off the plane and into the world of where I have landed, that smell hits me, and it is so familiar, yet so hard to describe. It’s only a smell I have found there in that part of South East Asian. It’s a mixture of all sorts of things. It’s not pleasant or unpleasant, it’s not a perfume but it is a smell I like and it feels almost like an atmosphere not just a smell. When I got off the plane in Singapore, the last time we visited, the first thing I did was breathe in and exclaim to LSH, who was working there, I was on holiday visiting him, “that smell, I know that smell!” and he had NO IDEA what I was talking about and I couldn’t really explain it. Perhaps if you travel to a certain place a lot, you know what I mean? Sentimental maybe, and I can’t actually tell you what the smell is, so it maybe does sound a bit crazy!
So, today, as I pack, and as we head to the airport, and get on our flight, I am wondering, if that smell is something I have in my head, or if when we get off the plane, on Friday night, I will be able to say to myself, “that’s the smell I remember…”
I will leave you with a picture of some orchids, which I know don’t smell, but they are pretty (and are my favourite flowers) and I will let you know if that smell is what I remember, when I write about our adventures on our return.
