Another day in the air travel system. Flew from Boston (after staying at an airport hotel overnight for a 6:30 flight). San Francisco. Wait an hour. Tokyo -- should have been 3 hours, lookin' like 5. Then seven more hours from Tokyo to Bangkok. I used to do this for a living. I must have been nuts. Wait, I'm doing it again and not getting paid for it!
The plan was simple: head to Mae Hong Son (north west part of Thailand) and do some gratis documentary work for the Jesuit Refugee Service. Then Kathy toasted her ankle making her travel impractical. Her airfare was refunded without a problem; they grumbled a bit but waived the $150 they wanted to charge me to change dates. But I'm in Thailand finally, and I'm ready to have a good time. Details are trickling in...
Some of my ideas:
Bangkok: blast a few brain cells, take some photos around town with my new kit, visit some museums that Kathy wouldn't care for. There are a couple of pointers to slide shows later on the page. Here's a page with some random missives -- will have to sort them out later..
Chiang Mai: I attended "Master Class" (Thai cooking) lessons, one-on-one at the master's house, Chef Sompon Nabnian. Exhorbitant by Thai standards, merely expensive by western. Fun if not everything I could hope for. After Northwest Culinary, my standards are pretty high.. Besides that, it's visit old haunts, try to reconnect with this town -- I've spent several months here, over time.
I had a "foster child" (PLAN International / aka Childreach) in northern Thailand, and had hoped to meet him during this visit. Timing didn't work out. Unfortunate, but we get back here every couple of years, so there'll be another chance.
Phuket: At Kathy's suggestion, I booked an 8 day dive tour around the Southern Mergui penninsula off Burma/Myanmar. It's on a small boat, the "Faah Yai" ("Big sky" ). I was to be sharing a room with an Austrian guy, but guess he cancelled so I ended up with a large cabin to myself. Nice. The diving was physically challenging (currents, surge, surface chop; cold-ish water) and underwater visability ("viz") wasn't great -- but had good folks on the trip with me, some may ultimately join our dive group.
As I write (19 February 2007), I'm back at Patong Beach on Phuket. The weather is cool for here (high 70s F) and it's been rainy on-and-off. Not very "beachy", but I'm not exactly a "Beach Boy", either. Tomorrow I fly back to Bangkok to overnight at the airport, for a very early flight back to the US.
In between, I'll be out on the streets scouting for photos, bar hopping once in a while (I recently turned 50; I definitely use a smaller brush to paint the town these days). A few Thai massages ("involuntary yoga"). Squid on a stick barbequed at street level. Yummm.
We're looking at how best to get decent photographs to those who are interested. To that end, I'm trying a couple of approaches. Feedback welcome!
A Day in Bangkok -- this is in "Flash" format -- takes quite a while to download but then it's like a movie (6 minutes)
Chiang Mai scenes -- this is in Adobe Acrobat ("PDF") format. It's even bigger (50Mb) than the previous one, but will give you full-screen photos.
Day and Night in Bangkok -- Second BKK visit of the trip; this Flash show is a lot shorter (about 2 1/2 minutes) and smaller on the screen (so it should upload faster). Feedback appreciated -- you'd be the first!