Koh Phangan, almost six months ago.

I had wandered a ways up the beach away from the Full Moon Party and was sitting on the sand, taking a breather and listening to the ocean. I don’t know how long I had been there, I wasn’t wasted but let’s just say it’s a good thing I wasn’t operating any heavy machinery, when I heard a male voice in the darkness.

“Kate?”

I ignored it. Because my name isn’t Kate. It spoke again. “So this is where you escaped to.”

Squinting in the darkness, I could just make out this tall blonde guy, wobbling a bit – he definitely shouldn’t operate heavy machinery either – staring at me. I asked if I knew him. He replied that he had bought me four drinks that night and he thought we were going to hang out. I said he must be getting me confused with someone else, he insisted that I was Kate, from London. For some reason (that reason being “alcohol”) I got the giggles at this point, and started putting on a stupid Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins accent, in order to prove how much I am not from London. He started to get pissy, asked what my problem was.

“Other than the fact that you keep calling me Kate?”

At this, the guy started to laugh, and I did too. I invited him to sit down.

Cute, right?

But that wasn’t the Viking.

Approximately three seconds after I invited the drunk guy (who was Australian) to sit, the Viking showed up, basically flying out of the darkness, decked Drunk Aussie, yelling at him to leave me alone if I didn’t want to talk to him.

Cute, right? In a Knight in Shining Armor kind of way?

I told him that he was a violent asshole and to mind his own business, then I grabbed Drunk Aussie and stormed off with him.

Two weeks later, I was having lunch and people watching in Bangkok when I suddenly caught sight of this gorgeous guy coming out of a store across the street. Tall, broad shouldered but lean, hair bleached almost white in the sun, nose – and forehead and shoulders and, bizarrely, knees – sunburned; but gorgeous, in his unique adorkable kind of way. I sat there checking him out, wondering whether I would have the courage to go talk to him when he looked over and saw me. When he looked at me directly, I clicked that I recognized him, but one thing I learned traveling was that the world is a tiny place: I ran into people I knew from Australia in Fiji, and people I met in Cambodia in New Zealand, so I didn’t think too much of the fact that this guy’s face rang a bell.

He came over, and I was like yeees.

And he told me that he had seen Drunk Aussie do the Kate trick on like four other girls that night, and also be obnoxious and aggressive to a whole bunch of people, so he was just looking out for me when he saw him corner me alone in the darkness. I shot back that I could take care of myself thank you, but inside I was thinking ‘damn, why didn’t I notice you were cute before?’ And he was like ‘whatever’ and walked away.

For the record, I took the Drunk Aussie back to my hostel where he passed out on my bed drooling and I slept on the floor using my rucksack as a pillow.

A week after that, I was at the airport waiting for my flight home (well, to London then onwards home), when who rocked up waiting for the same flight? Idiot Knight in Shining Armor Guy. I rolled my eyes and concentrated on my book, ignoring him when I saw that he recognized me. But then, our flight was delayed… and delayed, and delayed. They gave us vouchers for food, and somehow I ended up in the line right behind him. I’d finished my book and was bored, so for no particular reason I suddenly heard myself asking if he made it a habit to go around saving women that didn’t need it, and he laughed and said yes, it was his hobby along with golf and watercolors.

We got to talking, and then we both missed our flight.

By a month.

Cute, right? 😉