I now know to be absolutely true.
We were both nineteen when we went on our first date. After a drink or two at the Newport Arms Hotel, I worked up the courage to let Sam seize the initiative and invite me to a party at Bilgola Beach. And that was it. Sam was my first, last and only serious girlfriend – I knew I’d found the love of my life.
Our wedding was simple. Close friends and family squeezed into our backyard around a fancy chuppah that we’d borrowed from a wedding I had photographed a few weeks earlier. Apart from how stunning Sam looked, I can’t forget the incredible flowers and also the giant chocolate mudcake baked by Sam’s dad who, with tears of joy, embraced me as a son. Before the festivities got out of control I surprised my bride by arranging a Maori dance company to perform traditional songs and a haka which, I have to admit, was a bit weird seeing as neither of us were from New Zealand, and yet it was also somehow perfect. Hearing Sam’s delighted laughter made me want to marry her all over again.
Sam began her nursing career on the neurosurgical ward of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown. Our first home was a pocket-sized 1900s terrace house in Sydney’s inner west, though we never lost our coastal roots and frequently made the cross-town pilgrimage to the beach. Besides our love of the ocean, we shared a passion for travel. Whenever we could get away to explore the world and experience new cultures we would shrug on backpacks and set off for parts unknown.
We didn’t have much money, but that didn’t matter as neither of us cared for luxury resorts or packaged holidays. Sam and I are outdoors people – we prefer dusty trails to city streets, mud huts to museums, and street food to fine dining. To us, a ballroom lit by glittering chandeliers seems dull compared to a night sky filled with unknown constellations.
By the time we celebrated our tenth anniversary we’d trekked around the Mediterranean and beyond. Sam’s dream to visit Africa was realised five times over, and included journeys through Morocco, Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Burkino Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Botswana and Ethiopia. We also explored the Middle East and set foot in places that are now completely off-limits to tourists. The further we went, the more deeply we fell in love. The more deeply we fell in love, the further we wanted to travel.
Many of my most precious and enduring memories were made with Sam during these rugged and joyful wanderings. I’ll never forget our pre-dawn climb up Mount Nemrut in Turkey; riding Arabian horses to the Step Pyramid of Djoser, the first pyramid ever built in Egypt; or standing together beside the ramparts of Fakhr-al-Din al-Maani Castle, perched high above the Bronze Age ruins of Palmyra in Syria.
It wasn’t all about lost cities and difficult terrain – during a week spent navigating the labyrinthine backstreets of Rome we ate handmade pasta till we thought we would burst. And then we ate some more. Exotic flavours and ethnic cuisine have always been things we loved and these played a very important part in our lives – after all, food brought us together in the first place.
Sam and I felt blessed to share these extraordinary experiences and only wished that our children and grandchildren might one day enjoy a similar opportunity. We never imagined we’d stop travelling, indeed we hoped to return to Africa as soon as possible, but life had bigger plans for us, plans conceived in a flimsy tent on the plains of Kenya. I was over the moon when Sam found out she was pregnant. Adorably stoic with her enormous belly, almost as big around as she was tall, Sam pottered about the house like a determined beetle.
Her first pregnancy was the hardest. Sam wanted a natural birth, but after twenty-two hours in labour things were not going well. It became clear our baby was suffering foetal distress and the obstetrics team scrambled to perform an emergency caesarean. In the rush to deliver our child safely the spinal epidural failed and Sam felt the surgeon’s scalpel slice into her tight flesh. This had to be agonising and yet somehow she bore it. Sam’s face turned deathly pale but she just gripped my hand tightly and would not cry out. I don’t believe anything on this earth could have eased her terrible pain but seeing the tiny, perfect face of our baby boy, Rueben.
After such a harrowing experience I would have understood if Sam had not wanted to endure childbirth ever again, but she loved being a mother and wanted a larger family. Amazingly, when it came time to deliver our second son, Noah, Sam was so calm and positive she chose to ride with me to the hospital on the back of our silver Vespa – an array of shocked and smiling faces greeted us as we puttered into the maternity car park. Two years later Sam and I welcomed little Oliver into the world, and our family was complete.
By now we had moved to Sydney’s Northern Beaches, back to where we both grew up. Sam stepped away from full-time nursing to raise our three boisterous sons and the advent of digital photography meant I could work from home and be a hands-on dad. It was heaven.
With three semi-wild boys to wrangle we couldn’t trot around the globe like we used to, but we didn’t slow down either. Sam and I surfed and swam at the beach as often as possible. Sam also went skateboarding, running and mountain bike riding, plus she played soccer and, as if that wasn’t enough, she regularly worked out at the local gym. It’s no surprise that the boys all took after their mum, each becoming avid multi-sport athletes before they could even lace up their running shoes – our garage was cluttered with BMX bikes, surfboards, skateboards, muddy football boots and rugby balls.
As birthday parties came and went, we became increasingly excited about the boys being old enough for us to share our love of adventure travel with them. We dreamt up all manner of international itineraries but we were so busy trying to keep our home in order, stay on top of work, and supervise our children’s education and activities that we began to wonder if we’d ever see the inside of an airplane again. But when Sam’s father died, we knew that we simply had to make the time. Losing such a beloved role model hit us hard and reminded us that, as parents, we needed to create as many happy memories with our children as we possibly could.
Egypt was our first choice. We wanted to show the boys that ancient history was living history. Sadly, conditions had deteriorated since we were last in the Middle East – it was no place for foreign travellers, let alone those accompanied by young children. We decided our first major family adventure should be closer to home, so we chose Thailand, a fascinating country about which we had heard many wonderful things.
We made our way to Phuket, which, to our surprise, is now the most popular beach destination in Southeast Asia. The locals were lovely and the beaches were beautiful, but the Thai culture we wanted our children to experience was all but invisible within what was effectively an international party town for teenage backpackers. Having had such high expectations Sam and I were dispirited but by no means defeated. We were very happy for other tourists to have their fun, but we hadn’t spent ten hours on a plane so that our impressionable boys could eat cheeseburgers and snicker at offensive novelty t-shirts.
After a refreshing dip in the Andaman Sea to compose ourselves, we considered our options over a meal of chicken satay and rice. Before the sun had set we’d planned our escape. We would head to Chiang Mai and beyond, some fifteen hundred kilometres to the north. There we would seek out Thailand’s indigenous hill tribes in the mountainous borderlands of Myanmar and Laos. On the way we planned to make stops along the coast, both to relax and to experience authentic rural Thai life.
The Bloom family bundled into a minivan the next morning and drove east–northeast on the Phetkasem Road, the longest highway in Thailand. Six hours later we had crossed the Malay Peninsula to the South China Sea and pulled into a small, coastal village on the Gulf of Thailand just in time for dinner. It was perfect.
At first light the following day we woke up eager to explore. Other than swaying coconut palms, the beach was empty. The water was calling us so we all dived in and spent the next three hours laughing and splashing about like happy fools – for Sam and I the sense of joy and relief was palpable. Thailand was turning out to be the dream family adventure
