what i'm working on...

i'm writing a little article for a backpacker's magazine about lingering travelers. here's a draft of what i have so far. thoughts or comments??

Mmm Mmm, I want to Linger…Mmm Mmm, a Little Longer, a Little Longer Here with You

"One more week," I told my dive shop manager on Monday mornings to make sure I would be on the boat for the week. Along with the rest of my friends on the island, she thought I would never leave Phi Phi. We all knew that I just had to linger around for a while longer, diving everyday and playing on the beach every night.

In fact, I started lingering around Southeast Asia long before I ever became a divemaster. At the end of the summer of 2008, I went to Thailand to be a kindergarten teacher. Hooked on the mai pen rai lifestyle, I went to Bali to do a divemaster internship in the spring of 2009. Upon completing the course and wanting a change of waters, my heart brought me back to Thailand. This summer and fall, I found myself on Koh Phi Phi, diving, flyering, and never wanting to leave. I knew I would be diving everyday when I arrived on the island, but I had never even considered flyering for a bar until one night, parked in my usual spot at the Dojo with a vodka tonic in hand, my friend made a suggestion. Everyone on both sides of the bar agreed, and I started the next night. I have always been a person who plans ahead and likes to know her next step, but those Andaman breezes flung open the windows so I could throw caution out and let in a whole lot of love.

During my several months there, I met dozens of like-minded travelers, but it is the flyer people of Phi Phi who kept me lingering just a little longer. Like the people I met at summer camp as a girl, we became fast friends for a few days or weeks and then parted for the next adventure. These people, however, are the ones who made my traveling experience fabulous and will always make me want to linger…

HOLLY AND ALICIA They were the two regular flyer girls at the Dojo; they were there every night—smiling, chatting, and having a good time. Meeting Holly and Alicia convinced me to flyer, and they became two of my good friends on the island and the throwers of the world’s best going-away party. Holly is the definition of the lingering traveler: she came to Phi Phi, fell in love with it, and plans to stay for a full year. Alicia went back to Phi Phi for her sixth time on the island and recently left to go to nearby Phuket with her boyfriend. The Thai islands are always in their hearts, so regardless of how much they may or may not try to leave the them, these girls will always be held captive.


LAURA I met Laura on my first night as a flyer girl. We became fast friends and staked out the bar’s best corner with a shiny silver bucket in hand. As we made our way through the pink jungle juice, we started dancing outside, trading travel stories, and bringing people into the bar. That night, we may or may not have flyered Leonardo DiCaprio; we know he was on the island that night, and we certainly tried to talk to a heart-stopping beautiful man with dreadlocks that passed by with equally attractive friends. We had a perfect night flyering, so it must have been him. Leo or no Leo, Laura and I kept flyering together for nearly a week, when she left the island to continue her round-the-world journey.


MOLEY I met Moley on the same night I met Laura. I had seen him around the island for a few days; flyering on a busy corner did have its advantages for scoping out who was in town. He was the guy who was always dancing in front of the Irish bar down the street, bucket (or two) in hand. He was on the island for a week, flyering because he always found himself at the bar anyways, until he left with a group of new friends to go to the Full Moon Party on the other side of Thailand. While backpacking in September, I saw him behind a bar in Laos. He's in Australia now, but he gets my Southeast Asia wild-roving bar-guy award.


MIKE While sitting in the dive shop, I said hello to nearly everyone on the island, and I'm pretty sure I tried to convince him to go for a dive about 5,000 times. Even though he never went diving with me, he did eventually stop by to chat. I saw him out later on that night in town and on the beach. One night of buckets and the beach turned into many, and after a quick ten days, he left the island. He came back in August, about two months later. he planned to spend a couple of weeks there before moving on to continue traveling to Indonesia and Laos, but on his first night back, he came to the bar where I flyered. By midnight, he was flyering for Tiger Bar, across the street. This Tiger Boy outlasted me on the island and plans to be there until February.


EMILY AND LUCIE These two were an all-star team in front of the Dojo, and when I asked them about their time on Phi Phi, Emily was quick to gush: “We never expected to go traveling round Thailand’s islands and actually spend some of our time working! But when we came to a place that we loved so much we never wanted to leave, all we wanted was to feel like a part of the community there. Going out every night with all the people who’d just arrived made us feel like such tourists. So we set about finding ways to make the island our home.

“Flyering for the bar was perfect – an excuse to chat to everyone who walked past you on the street, we made great friends with all the tourists and the locals. Not to mention the free drinks all night, and a (tiny) bit of cash at the end of our shift, at which point we all staggered drunkenly down to the beach where the real partying started. Some nights the flyering wasn’t really very important, and we just danced inside the bar, or sat around drinking and looking pretty to make the place look cool, or led group drinking games. It was by far the best job I’ve ever had.

“Thailand was the last stop on my six-month round-the-world trip. I won’t lie – I was sincerely tempted to stay there and never go home. I’m sure it won’t be long until I run away again back to the carefree traveler’s lifestyle!”