Surfing

I recently tried surfing for the first time since my surgery. I was pretty anxious because I didn't know how the bag would cope with all the pressing against the board and whether there would be toilets etc. Turns out surfing is a lot of fun, but I found that it's not exactly easy to do with a stoma. The warm up exercises were the first difficulty; many of the stretches were bending over so, like yoga, this often causes leaks for me. It seemed to be ok until we got in the water and it was less than half an hour in when I could feel the Brava seal that I use was coming lose and there would be a leak onto my skin. The actual bag held up though so there was no 'proper' leaking. During the lunch break I found that there were no toilets on the beach so I took a napkin and headed behind the dunes to find somewhere private-ish. It wasn't as bad as I feared.
Then in the afternoon session I could feel my bag getting full again so headed out of the water and took my wetsuit off and thankfully it was mainly air, so I burped on the beach and went back in. Had to change as soon as I got home.
All in all it wasn't easy but a lot of fun and definitely worth giving it a try. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to become a pro surfer though :(

It's me being a surfer!

Update

Since the naked bike ride I feel like a new man. Just a few months ago I felt so insecure and uncomfortable telling people about my bag but now I feel comfortable getting it out at the lido, the beach, skinny dipping, wandering around a shared room. I can talk about it without embarrassment and sometimes I initiate conversation about it. On a personal note, I've started to feel like I'm educating the female half of the world about ostomies one at a time ;)
If any of you out there are struggling with your body image and insecurity like I was, I recommend talking about it to safe people and then getting it out as much as possible,  a little at a time.
Regarding the travels, I've been hanging out in Europe, not really travelling around that much but hitting up a few places in between being in the UK. So far I ticked off Estonia, Latvia, Istanbul and Portugal, heading to Spain next then I've booked a flight to India in September. The plan is to 'find myself' there. Updates on that to come!
In the UK I've done a few cool things, went to the purple wings ball and met lots of fellow ostomates, including Stephie who asked me to write for her blog here.
I also did some hypnotherapy, meditation, yoga, an NLP workshop and and a social freedom day to help me be more confident. 

London Naked Bike Ride

A beautiful girl has told me recently that I 'should' be more confident, less insecure about my bag and care less about what people think. So a few days after that a friend mentioned that the London naked bike ride was happening soon, I thought this would be a good opportunity to get right out of my comfort zone and get my bag out in public and hopefully get more comfortable in my body.
To start with, this was a useful conversation to have with my friend because his ex, who I also know, has a bag and this is another ostomate that I now know in London (I am hoping to start more of a community here).
Secondly, of course I was anxious to first take my clothes off, I think most people were, but I particularly noticed that a guy pointed at me and I assumed he was pointing at the bag and saying to his friends 'look at that wierd thing' or something like that. But the twist is that the guy came over to talk to me later in the ride and told me that I am really good looking and he was pointing at me to tell his friends how hot I am! Talk about challenging my beliefs!
Next I told a journalist my story whilst we were riding and I explained that I was doing it to be more comfortable with my body. He seemed to be relatively interested in my story.
The rest of the ride was fun, but pretty uneventful, no one else mentioned the bag to me.
Overall I'm glad I did it but we'll see how much difference it makes to my confidence and self acceptance.

Massage, 4/20 and trekking

It was my first full body (thai) oil massage, which I mainly did because a friend was going, otherwise these places make me feel a bit uncomfortable (maybe because of the stoma, maybe I just have intimacy issues)
Anyways I was really annoyed that afterwards I found I had a leak, probably from when I was lying on my front. Apart from the boat diving incident this is the first time I've had a leak whilst wearing the SenSura Mio 2 piece bags. I think I might have run out of them now...
The other notable thing that happened is that it was 4/20 which I'm told is international weed smoking day, so I thought I'd have a bit. I'm not usually that into it but once in a while doesn't hurt. I feel uncomfortable with drugs that completely disable you, which kinda happened -I sparked out in a hammock for a while and hopefully if I'd needed to I could have made it to the toilet, I really really really didn't want to get up! As well as all kinda of crazy thoughts going on in my head and feeling really unsociable meant that I didn't particularly enjoy the session that much.
Finally the last thing I did before heading back to Bangkok to fly home was to go trekking for 2 days in the North Thai jungle (well it wasn't that jungley, it was a national park). This turned out to be a bit of a bad idea because I got diarrhea the night before. One thing I didn't want is to be in the jungle with no toilets, 35 degree heat and an upset stomach. I had to spend 2 days battling dehydration and feeling exhausted. I was super glad that I didn't actually have to 'use' the few toilets that there were available because I don't know how to use a squat toilet!
The diarrhoea continued after the trek while I'd already booked the overnight bus to Bangkok, again not the place you want to use the toilet! And I felt too exhausted when in Bangkok to actually do anything, so booked a super nice, chilled hostel to spend the day before flying home. On the advice of the pharmacist in Bangkok, I bought some oral antibiotics. Thankfully my stomach improved during the flight home so I'm hopeful that it was just traveller's tummy, not the start of a flair up.

Songkran

Songkran is the Thai new year festival where everyone throws water over each other in the street. In recent years it has turned into one big water fight and is loads of fun, especially in chiang mai in Northern Thailand where it lasts a few days longer than in the rest of the country. Water balloons are illegal here so my advice is to bring some with you!

Elephant wipes

I'm running low on 2 piece bags so have been trying to use up the one piece bags. But They are not working for me at all! I dont know if it's the heat but they just leak all the time. I'm getting very good at changing in unusual places. Today I had to change at an elephant sanctuary and I was so glad I had bought wet wipes because there was no water there! Always have wet wipes!

Phone got stolen!

I'm sorry I haven't updated for a long time! This is partly because my phone got stolen but mainly because I've been having too much of a good time :)
Every now and then I have been treating myself to a private room rather than staying in shared dorms and I was super lucky the other day when I stayed chatting in the common area even though I knew I had a leak. When I got back to my room to change I had almost blown through the whole thing! It's so much easier to do a change in a proper bathroom at the sink rather than having to change in shared showers and toilet cubicles.
That reminds me; I didn't bring enough dry wipes with me because I thought I could buy them out here but it doesn't seem like you can. So I bought two packets of baby wipes; one for cleaning up and the second I will let them dry out so I can use them for to dry the skin before applying a new bag.
I went on a half day climbing trip on railay beach, that was really good but I also got a leak that day too. It seems to happen when wearing the sensura one piece so I think I just need to always wear the two piece. That reminds me! I was wearing a two piece that was a few days old, I've started this trick of using [medical] tape to patch up the flange after a few days when it starts to unstick in order to get an extra day or two of wear (they are usually lasting about 2 days without this and 3-4 days with this approach). I was on a boat tour in Ao Nang and dived head-first into the water from the long tail boat. My bag almost ripped completely off! I was wearing the under/swimwear from white rose collection which is pretty tight, so I kinda managed to secure if on just using the waistband of those and my swimshorts, and luckily it wasn't long after that when we stopped for dinner and I changed in the toilet cubicle. I was so glad I had a change with me! I've started keeping individual wrapped changing kits so it's super easy to pop one into a day bag or grab one to change in the shared bathrooms that you get in hostels.

One other thing is that I went to a pool party on Koh Phi Phi, I felt pretty self conscious there in case anyone noticed my under-swimwear. I'm the end no one mentioned it so hopefully it wasn't obvious and I met some nice (drunk?) Canadians to hang with for the rest of the night.

On that note, only two people have noticed the under swimwear

 and asked me what it is; the first one came from a tactless Italian guy, who asked loudly in front of everyone on the boat trip and left me a bit flustered (I'm not exactly confident and experienced at explaining at the best of times) the second one was from a nice bloke called Bob.

Bob: what's that? A stoma?
Me: Yep
Bob: really?
Me: Yep. Crohn's disease.

That's it. Easiest explanation ever.

I'm rambled on for long enough so I'll leave you with one last thought; I'm loving the beday thing (bum gun!) you get in every Thai toilet. No need to use TP just rinse the opening and go.