Vacation in Thailand- May 2009

Wow, I’ve been so busy of late. Here’s an over view of our last few months. Last May Catherine and I flew to Thailand for three weeks. It was heavenly. Cather was asked last minute to translate for Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche in Malaysia just before our vacation, so she met me in Bangkok. My first night there (the day before Catherine arrived) I met up with some old friends from Nepal, James Hopkins (Virginia), Andy Kilchmann (Swizterland), and Jonas Doctor (Denmark). We went out for dinner together at street diner/café with a live local rock band pounding away inside, and afterwards we all went out for luxurious hour-long Thai foot massages. I stayed the night in a dinky little dive of a hotel near Kao San Road. The next day I met James and some friends of his for lunch at the Jim Thompson house/museum and then sped off to meet Catherine in town and take her to an expensive hotel in China Town which I managed to get at a 50-60% discount online at Last Minute Deals. After a night of luxury, we caught an overnight train to Surat Thani in the south, eating Dunkin’ Donuts and sandwiches. In Surat Thani we took a bus to the pier and boarded our ferry to Koh Phangan, me drinking good Thai beer all the way. We opted to stay on one of the more remote beaches on the island, and since it was off season, we had a mile of pristine white sandy beach mostly to ourselves.

I spent mornings kayaking in the bay and would meet Catherine for breakfast around 9am. We even found this great little beachfront restaurant called the Dolphin where I could order lox on French bread and Catherine could have fruit, yoghurt and muesli for breakfast. We often strolled around after breakfast, later hid from the midday sun, and in the afternoons would drink beer and read on the beach or in a hammock on the porch of our simple thatch-roofed bungalow. And thus we spend two weeks, sometimes tossing a Frisbee, sometimes sitting at the bar, sometimes swimming in the bay. One day we even rented a little Thai power boat and went snorkeling, explored hidden waterfalls and saw over ¼ of the island’s coast. My favorite part was definitely kayaking up and down the coast in the early mornings and exploring a little three –pineapple-tree island.

For the last week of our vacation, we ferried down to Koh Samui, where our friends, Greg and Anne Whiteside, gave us a one week stay at their extremely posh tropical summer home on the southern coast of the island. There we relaxed in air conditioned comfort, took in the awesome view, and occasionally rode in to town on a rented motorbike to pick up groceries and amazing Thai food at a local market in Lamai.

Finally at the end of our trip, Catherine and I Flew back to Bangkok. Catherine had to fly back to Malaysia immediately to translate for Chokling Rinpoche. I, however, had a few days left in BKK and spent them making friends with locals. Lat, a taxi driver, said he felt some kind of a connection with me and invited me to meet his family in the Bangkok suburbs and to stay with them. It sounded fun, so I accepted. They called all their friends over for two nights in a row and we had a seafood and pork BBQ. Boom, Lat’s wife, was an amazing cook and made countless spicy home-style Thai dishes for me to burn my mouth up on while Lat manned the open fire BBQ (as it should be). During the day Lat drove me all around Bangkok on his motorbike, showing me the Royal Palace which I have visited once before with my Dad (George), plus special shrine rooms that were only for the King and his ministers (Lat had a friend who worked for Royal Crown Property Management and who possessed a large ring of magical keys). I had such a fun time with them. My new friends even drove two cars to the airport to see me off. What a sweet bunch of people.

And then I re-entered the Kathmandu Grind.