I am now a year older. I hadn’t really thought about celebrating my birthday whilst I was away and it is true what they say that the older you get the less important the day is. Luckily my little gang were determined to make sure it was going to be a good day and I was spoilt rotten, that is until it went a bit sour, which I will explain later.
I wasn’t sure of the plans but I just knew the day had to be better than last years. When it had just horrifically ended with my fiancé, I had left our lovely three bed house we owned and moved into a small flat with someone I hardly knew, in a town I didn’t know. I spent the eve of my birthday unpacking my life from ikea boxes in a distraught daze at how I was in this situation. My family came round to cheer me up the next day with cards and cake, as well as to check I hadn’t topped myself, and to get me into the outside world we went to Pizza Hut for dinner. Yep, the start to my new life and to celebrate my day of birth was spent sobbing into a Hawaiian stuffed crust whilst my mum was trying to make me feel better as she thought the spotty 17 year old waiter was flirting with me, ‘See, every cloud Katy’.
So this year I knew it couldn’t get much worse than that.
Rachel, Laura and I went off to a nearby beach where the girls had planned cocktails and nibbles at a swanky beach front bar.
I didn’t break the door honest!
Preparing for super strong margaritas…
Then after dinner the ‘Chillies’ gang surprised me with a birthday cake, streamers, fireworks and Chinese lanterns on the beach. We got dolled up and hit the town. But as it was coming to the end of the season finding the party was harder than expected. You know those sorts of nights when you are really up for a good time but for some reason things seem to go wrong? For example, Laura wasn’t feeling too well, the ‘Chillies’ workers came out but all got quite drunk, there was some wasted german guy trying to start a fight on the beach with anyone who looked at him funny and all the bars we went to were dead.
Before I knew what was going to happen later
Feeling a little disheartened, and a little too sober, we headed back to our huts to sleep. I had got into my pjs and got comfy under my mozzie net covered bed when the workers came back banging on my door asking to stay up and party. I was too tired so told them I was going to sleep and they left.
What happened next was one of the scariest things to occur on this trip. I heard a scraping noise outside the door of my hut and when I looked out of my net I saw this arm coming thought the gap between the roof of my hut and the door. This skinny Indian arm was fumbling with the inside lock of my bedroom door to try and get in! I froze. Then I screamed ‘What the hell do you think you are doing?’ and the arm quickly pulled back and disappeared. My heart was beating so loudly, oh my god someone has just tried to get into my room. I jumped out of bed to go to look out of my window and then everything went pitch black, the lights and fan had gone off. This scared me even more!
I was terrified to leave my hut and couldn’t even contemplate sleeping in case they came back so I sat behind the door holding a water bottle as a weapon until it went light outside. After hearing all these stories of female solo travellers being raped in India I was a nervous wreck, I had also accepted a birthday drink from one of the workers and was terrified that they had tried to drug me and pre planned this attack. As soon as morning came I looked outside and realised that the scraping noise I had heard was a chair being pulled to block my door and allow them to stand on it to reach over to get to my inside lock.
Once everyone was up and I had told them of the dramatic birthday night we questioned all the workers, they were all very sheepish but no one admitted anything. I also discovered that none of the other huts had lost their power and that it is controlled by a switch on the outside of the hut, which one of the workers would have known. Luckily I had already arranged to leave in a days’ time anyway so I just moved into Laura’s hut for safety.
Now I have a new promise to myself…..my next birthday will be drama free!
