As the end of my trip has moved from a distant horizon to an ever-closer reality, I've begun to mentally prepare myself for the end of the road, so to speak. I find that however long I travel, I usually feel ready to go home by the end, and this trip is certainly no exception. I've found it harder and harder to motivate myself for the daily "chores" of travel-- re-packing my ever-larger backpack, researching and arranging the logistics of how I'm going to get where I'm going, sitting in a taxi, bus, train, boat, etc. for many hours on end, arriving exhausted in a new place and trying to orient myself, finding a place to stay, eat, etc., trying to meet new people in my new "home" for the day (or more as the case may be), planning what I'm going to do the next day, and so on.

My trip out of Malaysia was one of the longest hauls yet. As I was riding the boat back down the river out of the rainforrest, flipping through my Lonely Planet, I still wasn't sure exactly where my destination was. Given the time and money I had left, and my desire to settle down in one place for a while, I made the strategic decision to relocate myself directly to the Islands of Thailand all at once, rather than skipping up from place to place as I'd been doing. The distance was vast, however, and getting there proved to be quite an adventure in itself.

It pained me to have to backtrack several hours south back to Kuala Lumpur, which I didn't expect to see again, but that was the only way to get a direct connection to Thailand. I arrived in the afternoon and found I had over 6 hours before an over-night bus left for the Thai-Malaysian border. I took the time seeing the parts of the city that I missed the first time, and made my way to the Kuala Lumpur tower to see a fantastic view of the KL skyline, including the nearby Petronas towers at sunset. I also found it impossible to resist shelling out the $15 to do a "reverse bungee jump", which was fun but nowhere nearly as exciting as the real one I'd done in Nepal.

After an overnight bus, complete with another half-asleep passport stamp at the border in the middle of the night, I arrived in Hay Yai in Southern Thailand. I was a bit apprehensive to be there because it is in the deep South of Thailand which has had increasing political violence recently, so I didn't stay long and hopped on the first connection I could up to Surat Thani, where I would catch a ferry Koh Tao island, about 200 km off Thailand's East coast in the Gulf of Thailand. After several hours more, we arrived in the early afternoon. A ferry was leaving shortly but I opted to wait another 9 hours for the night ferry, which was cheaper, sounded cool, and would save me from paying for a hotel room that night. Apart from being crammed like sardines, it was actually a really cool experience and I slept like a log, if not for long enough as the ride was only 7 hours. I was very excited to wake up in the morning to see the mixing blue, yellow, and orange of the sun rising over the Gulf of Thailand, the green palm-laden hills of Koh Tao approaching rapidly.

My primary goal for Koh Tao was to go SCUBA diving. I'm an avid diver, although I haven't had many opportunities to dive recently, and was looking forward to diving in Koh Tao, which has the reputation for having excellent diving at an affordable price. I rented a small motorcycle at the pier and went off to explore the island in search of a place to stay/dive. There was no shortage of diveshops on the island, and I found a nice dive resort on a beautiful beach which had a dive leaving in less than an hour so decided to start diving immediately. As the diveboat left the beach I wondered if I should have rushed so quickly (I didn't even have time to put my bags in my hotel room!) but it ended up being an excellent day with 2 wonderful dives. I felt very comfortable in the warm water, and the visibility was remarkably good for this time of year, when the late monsoon rains usually prevent good conditions. The coral was spectacular and full of color, especially at "Japanese Gardens" a divesite so named because that's what the coral formations look like. There was also a wonderful variety of fish species, often so thick as to be almost "cloudlike"-- the only time I ever saw fish like that before was diving in Egypt's Red Sea 7 years ago. I also saw a turtle on one of the dives, but unfortunately never got to see any of the enormous whale sharks that the area is known to have.

I ended up staying in Koh Tao for a full week, the longest I've stayed anywhere since I was at Lucas' house in Argentina, and I dove every day. It was wonderful to spoil myself a bit (more) and dive so much. My favorite dive, one of the best I've ever done, was Chumpon Pinnacle, an incredible site located several miles off the Island in 100 feet of water. The main attraction of the dive was the virtual certainty of seeing Black Tipped Reef Sharks. I ended up diving there 3 times and saw about 5 sharks on every dive. After descending to the ocean floor (quite deep by recreational diving standards), we spotted the first shark, and soon several more came into view. They were probably about 2 meters in length, more or less. They came quite close a few times, and clearly showed the black marks on their fins and tails that give them their name. I'd certainly be scared to see a shark while swimming at the surface, but seeing them while diving is a different story entirely, and something almost every diver looks forward to. They are very graceful and, since you are more part of the underwater environment in a way you never could be at the surface, it is not threatening. They just go about their business, and you feel lucky just to have the opportunity to see them close-up. Of course, this was only a small part of the dive--one of the other unforgetable parts was swimming through a narrow canyon and looking up to see the sun through the thick clouds of fish.

When I wasn't diving, I mostly lazed on the beach, but also spent some time exploring the island. One day I swam out to a nearby island, maybe 1/2 km swim. Feeling very confident in the waterproof case I had for my digital camera, I brought it along, and got some great underwater pictures while snorkelling. In an irony I could have done without, my camera survived the entire time in the water, only to break later that day when I dropped it in the sand while taking pictures at sunset. A cheapo disposable will have to do until I can get a shop to take it apart :(

On a brigher note, I found what would become my favorite restaurant in Thailand, which I usually ate at at least twice a day. I've discovered that the best places are usually the plain, cheap restaurants, rather than the fancy, expensive ones--they're not only much cheaper but far tastier. For less than $2, I was simply in heaven, eating a variety of curries, soup, and noodle dishes. And the nicest thing about the whole restaurant was the cheerful woman that owned it. No matter how many times I ate there, she would never neglect to formally thank me in the traditional Thai way, with a small bow with the hands together, saying "Khap kun krap, Thank You". Small gestures like that really impress me, and this image will stay with me long after I leave Thailand behind.

When I finally left Koh Tao after an expensive but wonderful week, I hopped on a ferry to Koh Phan Ngan, the next island about an hour or so by boat. I wanted to check out the "Full Moon Party", which is supposedly the largest beach party in the world. Not really my scene, but I figured I check it out since I was there at the right time. The party itself was pretty forgettable--alot of intoxicated people, both foreigners and Thais, dancing to Techno, Trance, and House music blasting from speakers placed at various points along the beach.

By far the more memorable thing about Koh Phan Ngan for me was where I stayed, which fortunately was far from the crowded beach where the Full Moon Party was. In contrast, I found an incredible bungalow, right on the water of a secluded beach with a postcard-perfect view. It was truly paradise. For about $5.50 a night I had a private bathroom and porch with a suspended hammock hanging across from one end to the other. An adjacent coconut tree provided shade from the sun, and during high tide, the water would come right up beneath the suspended hammock.

My plan was originally to leave after the party, but the perfection of my surroundings completely killed any motivation to leave, and I ended up staying another whole week. After months of non-stop travelling, I did the complete opposite, and sat on my hammock, reading and napping, for most of the day, getting up every few hours to use the bathroom or eat. I would out at the other islands visible past the bays, and loved the opportunity to notice the small details that I would have never noticed without staying as long as I did--the changing colors of the water during different times of day, the placement of the palm trees, the texture of the sand. In the afternoons, clouds would roll in and bring strong rains for half an hour or so, and I loved seeing and hearing the raindrops on the nearby water. Unfortunately I'm not very poetic when describing things like this, I wish my words could even give an idea of the beauty of this place, which is now just an image in my mind.

Finally, after a week, I decided it was time to move on and do something productive with my remaining days in Thailand. I took another ferry back to the mainland and another long overnight bus back up to Bangkok, where I caught yet another bus west, towards the Myanmar border to Kanchacaburi, home of the famous "Bridge on the River Kwai" and the Death Railway linking Thailand to Myanmar/Burma. Americans tend to learn more World War II history about Europe and don't really know much about the War in Asia. The death railway, which the Japanese forced both Allied POWs as well as Asian laborers to build, was one of the most horrific places of the war, with disease, accidents, and other causes killing many thousands of workers in the process. I enjoyed learning about this part of the War which I knew very little about. I took a tour of the area with an agency, to avoid the hassle of arranging things on my own. I had to laugh with how travel fatigued I was, when I found myself bored while visiting "just another" waterfall, hot springs, and cave, all of which I've seen at various points during my trip, and I took that as an indication that it's time for me to head home soon.

From there, I my last destination in Thailand was the ancient Siamese capital of Ayuthaya, home to countless ruins as well as functioning temples. I spent 2 days touring the ruins by motorcycle. I was impressed with the ruins themselves, but was even more impressed by their scope. There are maybe a dozen or so "main" sites, complete with tour buses filled with camera clad tourists. But beyond these sites are dozens, perhaps hundreds of smaller sites, many of which I found completely empty. I also enjoyed seeing the scenes of daily life at several functioning Buddhist "Wats", or temple. Monks going about their business, pilgrims kneeling in prayer in front of statues of the Buddha, lighting candles, etc. It's frustrating that, given my limited internet access, I need to generalize so much in this blog. Another particular image which will stick in my mind is of a group of young Thai children on a field trip to one of the ruins, sitting in front of an enormous stupa with their notebooks writing.

In Ayuthaya, I realized that there are two familiar things which I've seen more of in Thailand than anywhere in the world, one of which I expected, the other I didn't. The first is elephants, which I've seen all over the country. The second is 7-11s, which very well may outnumber elephants in the country (for those that don't know what 7-11s are, it's a convienience store which is all over the U.S., although nowhere near as much as in Thailand) I'm not sure of the significance of that, maybe something to do with the mix of old an new or something like that, I just thought it would help give an image of what the country is like beyond the postcards.

From Ayuthaya, I headed back to Bangkok this afternoon, and will fly out to London tomorrow morning, where I'll spend 4 days before flying home for Christmas. I'm looking forward to finally seeing Europe, if only briefly, but honestly I have neither the money nor, frankly, the energy to do anything to ambitious, so I doubt I'll get more than a fairly superficial look of the city, but that's better than nothing.