*NOTE- sorry this has taken so long, have been away on holiday, but i will finnish the book by tomorrow. Enjoy.

Do you remember when cell phones first came out? How they were the size of small children and how when you needed to talk on them, you had to pull out the long aerial that was capable of lodging itself in the eye socket of anyone who was standing within a meter of the user. Remember when sms’ing was cool and futuristic and predictive text was new and revolutionary. When you had to press big, difficult spongy buttons and could get a serious arm workout from doing so, as well as from holding the heavy phone up to your ear. How phones didn’t have cameras and GPS and Facebook, and you couldn’t Tweet that you had just posted a picture on Instagram and updated your blog on Tumbler, while simultaneously tracking how many steps you were taking on your pedometer APP, whilst catapulting birds into pigs and reading a book on Wattpad while whipping up a soufflé from a ‘How to video’ downloaded from Youtube in preparation for your date with a guy you met online and had been Whatsapping for months.

Today our phones are capable of just about anything, very soon they’ll be capable of reading our minds and dialing the number we want before we’ve even thought of it, or sending a Facebook friend requests to people we haven’t even met yet.

How the hell did we survive when phones only made, well, phone calls? It seems almost prehistoric now, doesn't it?

And here we all were, huddling together in the bustling streets, and clutching Red’s phone as if it were the Holy Grail. A few seconds ago it had beeped, vibrated and lit up. We eyed the device with a childlike excitement and anticipation, wondering if the message that had just appeared on the screen was the map to the party. And Ta-Da, it was the map. In fact, it was the map plus some GPS co-ordinates and in case you still weren’t sure where to go, some detailed directions.

Now this was more like it! Modern technology at it’s finest; because two seconds later, Red had typed in the address and an American lady with a soothing, yet strangely commanding voice was now telling us to travel North for precisely 55.4 Km’s. By now I was practically bubbling over with excitement, but next to me Red seemed to be exploding with it.

“I’ve always wanted to do this!” He jumped up clapping his hands almost losing his phone in the process. “This is going to be so awesies.” He was still clapping wildly and Bruno and I joined in, even though we had no idea to what we owed the enthusiastic clapping and jumping up and down to.

“We’re going to be going on an elephant ride through the jungle and then canoeing… yay!” He shrieked even louder.

“Yay!” I joined in too, because that really did sound exciting. I mentally chuckled as I though about what I would have said to those two things last year.

The Old Lilly: What?! Canoeing… but aren’t there crocodiles? What about bilharzia, water borne salmonella and necrotizing fasciitis and what if you fell overboard and was sucked under and eaten by an Anaconda?

AND

The Old Lilly: What?! Riding and Elephant… but aren’t they dangerous? Not to mention very, very big. What it you fell off and it trampled you to death with it’s large feet or impaled you on one of its oversized tusks?

Or maybe I wasn’t thinking about those things because I was so preoccupied and focused on the task ahead.

Damien.

Finding Damien.

Getting Damien.

And (hopefully) living happily ever after with Damien.

I suddenly thought about the fairytales that my mother used to read (slur) to me when I was small. Rapunzel waiting in her tower for the prince to climb her hair and save her, Sleeping Beauty waiting for true loves’ kiss to rouse her from her long slumber and Cinderella, waiting for her shoe bearing hero to find her and carry her off to happiness ever after.

And that’s what I wanted, my very own fairytale ending. Except that in this case the tables were totally turned and the roles had been royaly reversed. Instead of the brave prince traversing continents on his trusty stead to win the heart of the princess, I was doing that. How very feminist of me!

But in all those fairytales, with their many happy endings, there was never any mention of sex. After the prince saved the princess and took her off to his castle for the happily ever after part, there was never any mention of the steamy sex that happens somewhere between ‘happily’ and ‘ever after’ I would imagine.

And I was hoping there would be sex.

Preferably a lot of it.

In the past year- very surprisingly- I’d found myself turning into quite the sexual being. A woman that liked to keep abreast of all the new sexual trends, I was forever buying the Cosmo to see what the latest sex position was, or what new way there was of ‘doing it’; on the beach, in public, with leather, with lace, blindfolded or with the lights on. It had been a whole year since that night with Damien, and believe me, I'd thought about it often.

About three months ago, I'd been in a CD store looking for some TV series anesthesia that I could escape to the couch with, when I saw an advert for the new Depeche Mode album and obviously thought about Damien instantly!

The thought set me off. Suddenly my hormones where raging like a teenage boys, because in the middle of the shop, surrounded by shoppers I suddenly started imagining- in extremely graphic detail I might add- sex, with Damien. I couldn’t help it. And the more I tried not to, the more the images flashed through my brain. I broke out into an embarrassed cold sweat, convinced that people around me must surely know what I was thinking about and fled the store as fast as I could, setting off the alarm at the door because I had forgotten that I was clutching onto an unpaid box of Dexter season 5. I felt physically flustered after that, and actually had to go to the bathroom and splash some water on my face.

Oh God, and now I was starting to think about it all over again. But thankfully, just as I was imagining Damien’s hand on my (beeeeeeeeep) I felt another hand on my shoulder, and was pulled back to reality. I looked around slightly flustered and noticed that a small hive of activity had broken out around me.

Surprisingly Bruno seemed to be quite the organizer, and in under two minutes he had hailed a taxi (a proper one, one with four wheels and real doors that opened and closed) loaded our luggage into the boot, given instructions to the driver, brought snacks and ice cold Beers and was ushering us into the back seat while talking loudly in French.

And then we were off.

It all happened so quickly, from being inside the strip club to being inside a taxi speeding through the streets, sipping a beer and eating wasabi flavored nuts out of a tin and chattering away to Red about the excitement that lay ahead of us. We were headed off the island of Phuket this time and onto the mainland of Thailand, to an area called Phang Nga. Unlike the big white tropical beaches and crystal clear waters I’d seen before, this place was known for it’s dense tropical jungle, wild raging rivers and impossibly high waterfalls. I was excited to see this other side of the country.

The drive out of Phuket wasn’t that long and we soon came to the great Sarasin Bridge at the Southern most tip of the island, an impressive 700 meter long bridge that joined the island to the mainland. A few more hours later and we arrived at our final destination, just as the morning sun was beginning to light up the sky. Even though it was morning, the humidity and heat was already scorching and we felt it the second we climbed out of the air-conditioned taxi.

“Oooh, this is amazing,” Red said while looking around. And it was all pretty amazing. We were totally surrounded by an enormous, lush green tropical jungle. Some of the leaves were almost my size and the jungle was so dense and thick, that in-between the massive green foliage, everything was pitch black. The vegetation was a mixture of tropical palms, and enormous trees that seemed to go up forever. It was so damp, that all the once brown trunks were painted bright green by a moist moss. Ever so often the green was punctuated by a splash of red, where a large alien looking flower peeped out from behind the thick green curtain. Huge vines hung from the branches above us and also wound themselves around and over the trees in an intricate web like structure that was everywhere.

“Your man is somewhere in there.” Red was suddenly behind me pointing into the dense bush. “Oh em gee, maybe he’ll come swinging down for you from a vine, hopefully with his shirt off like Tarzan or something,” he nudged me in the ribs. “No, I have a better idea. You should go swinging down from the tree without your top on!”

“Um…” I smiled at Red, “Hopefully there will be no swinging from vines!”

“Fine,” he sighed dramatically, seemingly genuinely disappointed that I wouldn’t consider some form of vine swinging, “But I hope you’ve planned something. Some kind of gesture? Or at least know what you are going to say to him?”

I thought about this for a moment and realize that I had absolutely no plan.

None.

Nada.

No well -thought out speech prepared, no proposal or plan as to how we were going to overcome the issues we’d had last year and no grand gesture I could make to him.

Red looked at me with wide blue eyes, “Please tell me you at least know what you’re going to say to him. I mean, you’ve come all this way, what you going to do…”

He suddenly put his hand on his hip and flicked his hair back, I assume in an attempt to imitate me, although I don’t think I’ve ever done that before, “Surprise Damien it’s me!” His imitation of me was horrible, and he made me sound a little like a drunken Cher.

I was thinking quickly now. “I don’t know what I’m going to say okay! I haven’t thought that far.”

Red shook his head worriedly, “Well, how do you plan on being together after this? Since he’s still traveling and you’re still working? Are you going to quit your job and life and go traveling with him?”

Oh crap, the very important logistical details I hadn’t yet thought about! All I knew was that I loved him, and that this year without him had been torturous. I think Red must have seen the worried look on my face because he was suddenly by my side taking my hand, “Don’t worry. I’m sure it will be fine. Love will conquer everything.” He said leading me towards the dense jungle.

I hoped so.

Being inside the jungle felt like being inside a giant hot, suffocating green house and I instantly broke into a sweat. We continued carefully down a small path, following some small read arrows as we went. Although I couldn’t see any animals, any giant hairy spiders or whale sized snakes, you got the distinctive feeling that the jungle was literally alive with all sorts of creatures; hidden under the moss, disguised on the leafy floor and lurking suspiciously behind the large leaves. I tried not to think about the TV show I’d watched last week about the King Cobra, which was indigenous to Thailand and could grow up to 2 meters long with a venom that could kill a man in minutes. Instead, I focused on what I was going to say to Damien. Was I prepared to leave my life behind and travel with him? This time, a year down the line, the answer was definitely YES!

We soon came to a large clearing in the bush were we found a small village comprised of a few small houses build out of bamboo. They were all very quaint and well -built, some of them balanced elegantly on stilts, whilst one or two were actually built into the trees like a child’s dream tree house, complete with rickety rope ladders. A few children ran around outside playing, whilst others seemed to busy themselves with the morning duties of washing clothes and cooking. A man then appeared and ushered us to the back end of the buildings, where about ten other people had already gathered. Many of them looked vaguely familiar but this didn’t seem to matter at all, because within a matter of moments everyone was hugging and greeting each other like long lost friends. You really couldn’t help but get caught up in the party spirit, I had felt that contagious feeling last year, and this year was no different.

We were all still talking and laughing when another man came around the corner pulling two elephants behind him. I’d never been this close to an elephant before and I was momentarily taken aback. Although the Thai elephant is much smaller than it's African counterpart, but that doesn’t detract form the fact that it is massive. It is imposing and intimidating and with its strange grey leather like- skin and long trunk, is somewhat alien in appearance. But despite all this, and despite my steadily growing misgivings about riding the beast through the jungle, they were in fact remarkable calm and surprisingly affectionate- especially after we’d fed them some lettuce.

Each elephant had a kind of box strapped onto it’s back which allowed for four people to climb in quite comfortably. So me and my BFF’s and a gorgeous, and I mean simply stunning, German woman named Friederike- who’s profession could only be model or actress or Miss Universe- climbed in. Although I’ve never been attracted to a woman, nor have I ever ‘kissed a girl and liked it’, you simply couldn’t help but stare at her. At one point she caught me gawking and I quickly averted my eyes and pretended to be staring at my big toe. Woman like this always made me feel self –conscious and at least 2 sizes bigger than I really am. But I had other things to think about right now, like holding onto the sides for dear life as the elephant stood up.

Riding an elephant is an amazing experience, you move through the world in a kind of slow rhythmic sway that only riding on the back of an animal gives you. None of us said a word, and the only sound we could hear was the cracking and snapping of the jungle under the elephant’s huge, deliberate feet. Our journey took us deeper and deeper still into the rainforest, crossing deep green rivers as we went and climbing up steep rocky slopes. We finally stopped at a large green pool of water after what seemed like a few hours and more than a few insect bites later.

A soft, delicate mist hung over the water giving it an ethereal quality- it looked like something plucked directly from Lord Of The Rings’ mystical middle earth. Once we’d disembarked- which I’m not entirely sure is the correct word one should use when referring to the act of climbing off the back of a large mammal- we made our way to the shoreline, where a few canoes patiently waited for us.

The water was a deep, emerald color and surrounded by a brilliant pallet of deep greens and blacks created by the huge rocky overhangs decorated in vines and the twisted, mossy roots of trees that looked hundreds of years old. As we rowed across the water, a gentle tide seemed to push us forward making it much easier to navigate down the winding river and around the massive mangrove roots that rose out of it. In some parts the river became so narrow, framed on both sides by large rocky cliffs, that you had to use your oar to push yourself along. My arms were really starting to hurt when Red shouted out that we were almost there.

Although the last stretch was short, it felt like it took hours to get through, as we carefully weaved our way through a series of dark caves and tiny tunnels carved out of the enormous lime stone rocks. The final stretch, and possibly most daunting, was going through a long dark cave, the ceiling so low, you had to lie flat on your back so as not to scrap your head on the roof. As we got further into the cave’s rambling maze and closer to the Phang Nga Bay area, you could feel the deep bass reverberating and echoing around us; the party was not very far away now.

We finally popped out the other side and into a small green lagoon, surrounded by pebbly beaches and thick jungle. Directly across from us a high waterfall cascaded down into the pool whipping the water up into white foamy frenzy. My eyes followed the sheet of water up, but I couldn’t see the source as the top of the hill was shrouded in thick, misty white foam. On the other side of the lagoon I could see that familiar sights of Burning Moon. A large wooden platform that seemed to be floating on top of the water had been build and was being used as a dance floor. It was already full of gyrating bodies, swaying to the loud beats that were reverberating around us. There were the usual tents that had been erected on the shoreline, and beautiful floating candles had been release into the water.

The setting this year was totally different; from the crystal seas, bright sun and hot white sands, to the middle of a thick jungle, by an inky-dark green lake that had a kind of humid mist hanging over it. Although it was different, it was equally breathtaking. It looked like we were in the middle of a far- away land that only existed in the pages of fantasy novels. This was the most enchanting, mysterious place I'd ever been to and it gave the party a totally different atmosphere. The loud, exuberant fun of last year had been replaced by a slower, smoldering sexuality that could already be seen in the bodies moving together on the dance floor.

The closer I got to it all, the more my heart thumbed and my breath quickened and my pulse raced in anticipation for seeing Damien. I methodically scanned the surroundings, wondering where he would have decided to settle. There was a large lime stone cliff dotted by some rickety looking wooden stairs with a rope bridge joining it to another, even higher looking cliff…my bets were that Damien was there. At the highest possible place to view the eclipse from the best vantage point. I didn’t even wait to ask anyone, my instincts just told me that I was suppose to go that way. The second I pulled my canoe onto the shore I ran in the direction of the cliff.

“Good luck babes,” I heard a voice shout from behind me as I started making my way up the rickety, and in places, very rotten wooden steps. I had no idea that when I set off on the journey up the cliff, that it would take over an hour of steep, sweaty climbing to get to the top- God, if my instincts about this were wrong, then I would have a long, angry walk back down. By the time I reached the top, it was already early evening, the journey to get here had taken almost a full day. As I took the last step, somewhat exhausted and stiff legged, I immediate walked onto a road. A little way away I could see a large SUV parked in front of an enormous Balinese style home, perched at the top of the hill that looked over the entire bay area. The home was beautiful, a wooden deck with an infinity pool stretched out towards the edge of the cliff.

At this stage, I had two thoughts; the first was if there was a road and a car, why the hell had we all just not driven here? Although I guess the adventure is part of the Burning Moon experience. And thought number two; I had just walked into the front yard of someone ‘s private and exotic villa- Cleary I was in the wrong place and now I was going to have to walk back down in search of Damien. This was a complete disaster…remind me to never trust my gut again.