Archive for May, 2002
End of Day #3 of the fast…at midday tomorrow it will be halfway over! Much easier to digest mentally than a 14-day fast I can tell you. Both Dad and I are doing fine.
Today I started to take a Thai massage course, private instruction, 2 hours/day for 7 days. The woman who teaches it is the trainer for all the massage staff at the Spa, so I figure she must be pretty good. I’m learning the traditional Thai massage which typically is a 2-hour massage, so there is a lot to cover in 14 hours of instruction! Today we covered feet and the first part of legs (part II is tomorrow). I don’t think I’ll ever possibly remember how to do all the moves, maneuvers, and techniques she’s teaching me, but at least after the course I will be able to fully appreciate when I get a massage. It’s hard work!
Practicing Thai massage on my teacher
May 29th, 2002
Day #2 of the fast, and all is well. Dad’s busy with meditation in the morning, then yoga, the morning colema, some time by the pool, an afternoon massage, another colema, and then an herbal steam. Me, well, I am thoroughly enjoying our nice’beachfront suite’ too much to drag myself out of bed in the morning, so I am basically doing everything minus the yoga and meditation. (Sorry Buddha). So far so good. Weather here is pretty good – much better than when I was here 2 weeks ago. We’ve got sun and clouds during the day and usually a thunderstorm in the evening. Not too many people around either as it’s low season now. There may even be more dogs on the beaches than people (luckily no more’incidents’ for us).
By the way…I’ve made it to the big time, a quote in CNN about the bikini ban in Malaysia (if you read that entry a few weeks back you’ll recall how I mentioned being interviewed by the AP). Well, I found the quote today thanks to Ter and Lisa from home who emailed me about it…so here’s the quote:
“I do think it’s insensitive to go topless,” says Jennifer Thomson, 30, of Philadelphia. “I guess they’re not enforcing the bikini ban.”
Real profound, eh? Well, that stuff’s always taken out of context. I’m sure I said SOMETHING more interesting about it but it got lost in the edit room. Yeah. So anyway if you would like to read the whole article here it is (you will have to select the text below, copy it, and then paste it into your browser window…sorry no direct link):
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TRAVEL/NEWS/05/20/malaysia.bikini.ap/index.html
One last thought for the day…
‘How can one person be more real than any other? Well, some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding – escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting on the Pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience – maybe those people, people won’t talk to rednecks, or if they’re rednecks won’t talk to intellectuals, people who’re afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bat a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of Liar’s Hell. Some folks hide, and some folks seek, and seeking, when it’s mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren’t afraid to look and won’t turn tail should they find it – and if they never do, they’ll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth’s sweet gas!’
-Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker
May 28th, 2002
All’s been going well here on Ko Samui with Dad…well, until yesterday that is. We’ve been here a few days now, staying at a really nice place right on the beach (Long Island Resort), and today we both started on a 7-day fast/cleanse program at the Spa, just a 5-minute walk from where we are staying. For those of you who may have read my journal back in November, you will remember (or perhaps want to forget, sorry if the colema stories were too graphic) that I did a 14-day fast then, also at the Spa. Well don’t worry, I won’t go into ALL the detail this time…if you want all the’poop’ you can scroll back and be prepared. This is Dad’s first fast so I am here to offer moral support and congraulate him for making the decision to do an amazing thing for his body, that is to rid himself of toxic build-up that each and every one of us has accumulated in ourselves. Ok sorry, I won’t go off on the fasting tangent now…let’s just say it’s something that I really, really believe in and if you want me to talk incessantly about something just bring up fasting sometime and I will start the sermon. So it’ll be a 7-day fast (no food) with 2 colemas every day, starting today.
Anyway, back to the drama. Last night Dad and I decided to walk along the beach into Lamai to check email. It was about 7 pm, not totally dark but getting into that post-sunset shadowy dusk. Anyway we were walking along and all of a sudden this dog laying on the beach jumped up and bit Dad in the leg! In the lighting I couldn’t see the wound but I could tell that Dad was in pain. We walked up to the nearest resort to have a look. It was pretty bad. I mean, not stitches bad, but it definitely broke the skin (in a big teeth mark pattern) and was bleedly quite steadily. One of the guys at the resort gave us some stuff to clean the wound and we had a chance to ask about the dog, who owns him, and if he’s had a rabies shot or not. Then we went straight to the clinic in town which was less than a 10-minute walk away.
I left Dad to wait there while I did email. He was hardly the worst of the lot …there was a Western guy, all bloddied up from a motorbike accident, sitting right next to Dad. Poor Dad! I felt terrible. In the end though everything was fine. The doctor was great; he gave Dad a Tetnus shot, a rabies shot (first in the series of 5), antibiotics, and some bentadine, all done in 30 minutes and for a grand total of less than $20 USD. That was more than enough excitement for one day. Hopefully that will be the only misshap during our stay on Samui. Time to refocus on the fast now and get into that whole meditative-cleansing-mind-and-body mode…
Sunset from Lamai Beach, Ko Samui
The view from inside our Beachfront Suite
Sorry, I know its gross, but heres the dog bite
May 27th, 2002
Even though I’ve been to Bangkok many times now as it’s pretty much the’home base’ for travelling in SE Asia, there is still always something new to see or experience here. Last night it was an elephant crossing 6 lanes of traffic in downtown Bangkok with a reflector sticker stuck to it’s tail. It was the reflector sticker actually that made it so damn funny.
So I’m back in Bangkok from Indonesia now…running around and doing all my post-one trip and pre-next trip errands – resupplying toiletries, swapping out old books for new ones, downloading all the pictures from the camera, and hopefully having time to catch a film at Siam Centre or the World Trade Center. Oh yeah, gotta do a software/Playstation 2 run at Pantip Plaza as well, filling in some orders for some folks at home. The later tonight I’m meeting Dad at the airport – yeah! Really excited to see him. His flight gets in pretty late, like 11:30pm, and I told him I’d just meet him at his hotel, but I think I am going to surprise him and meet him at the airport. It’ll be a short stay in Bangkok for him as tomorrow we’re on a 7am flight to Ko Samui, an island on the Gulf side of southern Thailand.
Hey Kathy, do you remember when we crossed the border at Mae Sot into Burma back in October? Mainly because I had never actually WALKED into a different country and I thought it would be cool to go to Burma for the day? Well, it’s a good thing we did it when we did because I was reading in the paper today that Burma closed all of it’s land borders with Thailand yesterday, leaving tourists and Thai merchants stranded on the Burmese side! Man am I so glad that we weren’t there for that. Seems it was a statement against recent artillery fighting between Thailand and Burma. No word yet on when or if they will be re-opened…
May 23rd, 2002
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