A Note from Chumpoen

It is 6:30pm on the first day of the New Year and I am sitting in an internet cafe in the Thai town of Champoen with exceptionally messy hair and incredibly dirty clothes. I have about three hours to kill before my bus leaves for Bangkok so I am camped out for a while in a little Games joint full of young Thai boys blasting away at things online and playing (from what I can tell) Fairy Golf.

It takes about 24hours to get from Mae Sot down to the island of Ko Tao, where I went for my Christmas vacation this year, and slightly longer to get back. If you think the travel time is too crazy (and when you are taking public busses, it almost is), then you have never seen the beaches of Thailand. Three hours on the beach is enough to justify the journey, that's all it takes for all your cares and worries to be washed away.

This was my very first organized vacation where I planned and booked everything weeks in advance. Christmas is a very busy time in the tourist industry and many of the resorts on our island were booked, so it was a good thing. I went diving with Big Bubble divers and stayed in their bungalows on a hill at the end of a bay on the south end of the island.
From my balcony, I had a view of the ocean and the sun setting over the horizon every night.

The little German flag at the top of the website page should have alerted me in some way, however I was entirely surprised to discover that almost everyone who worked at the resort and who were staying there were German. So much for my plan of meeting and hanging out with divers. I raided the book swap shelf, read trashy magazines and spent a lot of time watching the fish in the water below and thinking.

I also spent a lot of time studying, of all things. Ko Tao is one of the cheapest places in the world to go diving, so I took advantage and signed up for my next dive level: Rescue Diver. This involves getting certified as an Emergency First Responder and then training to apply those skills out on and under the water. It was fun and intense and a lot of laughs. Actually, I didn't get to do very much diving, but I managed to squeeze in a few here and there and spent almost every afternoon and one full day, out on the dive boat. There is nothing like waves and sunshine to make you forget all of your worries and cares, I tell you.

I passed my rescue diver test and practical exam with flying colors and spent the next day sleeping and sunning myself on the beach. My dive instructor doubles as a DJ and played a set at the beach side bar where I celebrated New Years. It was a great party, dancing barefoot on the sand until all hours of night,keeping company with the Germans and with a fabulous Canadian family I was extatic to meet.

It wasn't quite everything I wanted in a vacation, but it was good enough for me. It's still hard for me to believe that I have to leave it all behind and head back to the cold mountains, the winding stomach-turning car rides and the pile of work waiting for me on my desk.

But so far, I haven't been impaled by a decending traffic arm (New Years 2005) and I hope that all of you who are travelling at this time have safe journeys also.

If you are my friend and you are reading this, now is always a good time to drop me a quick email and let me know what you are up to and how life has been for you lately. I miss you guys.

Happy New Year everybody! May beaches and sunshine and adventure await us all in 2006.