Bangkok, Thailand – Last day of our vacation
Tomoko and I are now in Bangkok and getting ready to wrap up our vacation. It has really been a great month!
After the 7-day fast Koh Samui, we took a boat to the nearby island of Koh Tao. This is a famous scuba diving island with a lot of good coral for both snorkeling and diving. About five years ago, Tomoko and I stayed on Koh Tao for about three weeks. Back then we spent our entire time on at ‘Tanote Bay.’ It’s really a quiet little place but the snorkeling there is really good. We routinely see interesting and colorful fish while snorkeling: titan triggerfish, angelfish, butterflyfish, rabbitfish, rays, wrasses, needlefish and … we also run into sharks too. The small (1 – 1.5m) blacktip sharks are pretty shy and very interesting to watch. It’s really great to wake up early, grab the mask, snorkel and fins, hop in the water and swim through the interesting tropical aquarium.
During our time there before, I also did a lot of diving, and managed to get my PADI Advanced Open Water diver certification. Unfortunately, this time we only stayed there for two nights and so I wasn’t able to do any scuba diving.
However, we had a couple of relaxing days there, with plenty of snorkeling (I saw four sharks!!), reading, and hammock-swinging. I picked up a copy of Wilbur Smith’s wonderful novel ‘The Blue Horizon’ and had a good time getting into that story.
Yesterday, we awoke early at Tanote Bay, took a pickup truck-taxi into the pier town, stepped onto the big catamaran around 10am, onto a bus around 1:30pm, and cruised into Thailand’s capital city around 9:30pm last night.
Our new awareness of food and nutrition is at the forefront of our thoughts these days, but we knew we had to go to our favorite ‘Sarah Restaurant’ (Khao San Road area) for some great Israeli-Middle Eastern food. Sarah did not disappoint, as we loaded up on the (mostly healthy) dishes of: tahini, hummus, pita bread, falafel, finely-cut salad and hassamin (eggplant). Boy that was tasty!
Today is Friday, the last day of March 2006 and we’re finishing up some shopping and odds and ends and then we’ll settle in for a big Thai dinner before heading to the airport for our midnight flight tonight. It’s hard to belive it but we’ll be back in Tokyo around 8am Saturday and probably in Matsumoto sometime in the afternoon.
I think the memories of our McLeod Ganj (Dharamsala) friendships, Reiki, and projects, Rishikesh, fasting on Koh Samui, coral and fish in Koh Tao and final wrap-up in Bangkok … all these images and moments will stay with us and we cherish them. And I hope that we’ve learned a few things that we will find useful, and that we can share with others in a positive way.
A great March 2006, a great trip.
