One Giant Step…Is All It Takes

It’s no surprise that we have been loving Thailand. We’ve been here more than two months now and seem in no rush to leave. The travel is easy, the people are friendly, the food is amazing and the beer is cold and cheap! It is also the first country where our budget and travel style match. We have been like kids in a candy store – doing anything and everything we want to do and still not blowing the budget.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Chiang Mai, where we spent two weeks doing all manner of activities punctuated by days of lazing around, playing backgammon and drinking Thai whiskey.

Yes, we finally got some real mountain biking in. This is something we do a lot of at home and have been looking to do since we left. Although available in many places we have visited, it has always been too expensive. The best part of this ride was that it was all single track downhill…we shuttled to the top and dropped for 2 hours. A little bit technical, a little bit steep – it was a great ride.

We took two cooking classes while in Chiang Mai. This one was was at Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School. There are a bazillion cooking schools here – we chose this one because the owner is some kind of famous chef here and thought he gave the classes. Turns out he just walked through our class once…that was our brush with fame. The class was okay, the class size was a bit too big but the food was great.

One of the more controversial things to do here is to visit an elephant camp. There are many different types, from those that train elephants to paint and do tricks, to those that only allow natural interaction with them. We chose an in-between option that allowed us to be with them, feed them and then ride them bareback. They were amazing animals to be so close to…so huge and gentle at the same time.

The second cooking class we took was at the Thai Farm Cookery School. Set on a quiet organic farm out of the city, the school had smaller classes and a more varied menu to choose from. Here we even made our own Thai chili paste from scratch! The papaya salad I made was the best I’ve had in Thailand…probably because I didn’t use 10,000 chilies in it, just one. In a funny twist, the group we were with was made up of almost entirely couples doing long term travel – it was fun to trade stories and get some tips on places we’ll be going to soon.

Chiang Mai has plenty of markets. The famous night market failed to impress us – too many knock offs and not enough handicrafts. The Saturday and Sunday Walking Markets were pretty cool though. Traffic is shut down and blocks and blocks of the street are filled with vendors selling all manner of things and food. We spent hours walking around looking and eating and then eased our tired feet with foot massages.

Another fun activity was zip lining - it was a hoot to be flying through the jungle like a monkey. We loved it and hooted and hollered the whole way. This is a picture of us abseiling upside down after we said we wanted more of an adrenalin rush…it worked! That day definitely ended to early!

Our time in Thailand is finished now…today we cross the border into Laos - hopefully the good times and small prices will continue.

Oftentimes, while traveling, we have met people who are doing extraordinary things. Some are traveling by motorbike only, some travel and volunteer extensively, many have relocated permanently and others have been on the road for much longer than ourselves. But the Cave Lodge, and it’s story, struck me as truly being extraordinary.

We heard about the Cave Lodge while sitting on the patio of our guesthouse in Mae Hong Son. A German fellow traveling with his family said they had just come from there and that it was simply magical. Up in the hills, nestled on the border of Thailand and Myanmar, he told us of hikes through the woods and days spent exploring local caves. We immediately changed our plans and headed there the next day.

The Cave Lodge is rustic and beautiful, set on a ridge overlooking the river right next to a Shan village and Tham Lod, one of the largest known caves in Thailand, but  it is the story of the man who built it that makes the place magical. There are plenty of people who have visited Thailand and never left, many have come and set themselves up on a beach to stare endlessly at the sunsets, some even fall in love and marry but not many help shape the history of an area and become entrenched in the culture the way John Spies has done.

He was one of the pioneers of the northern Thailand trekking industry, but not before he had met and married his Thai wife and had spent many a year in remote villages living and breathing the ebb and flow of life on the Thai/Myanmar border during the time of rebel activity and opium trading. He is credited with discovering and naming dozens of caves in the area and has helped scientists and spelunkers alike explore them over the years.

He, and his friends, built the lodge by hand in the early eighties. It is a big, open concept building built of teak wood and bamboo with a kitchen at the back, a fire pit in the center and surrounded by bungalows.  We spent our days hiking and caving and relaxing, and our evenings around the fire pit chatting with other travelers.

While there we heard stories of the early days when travelers would get off the bus in Sappong 10KM away and would hike into the lodge. Of huge parties, where the bamboo floor boards would snap from the strain and, at the end of the night, the floor being filled with tired partiers who would simply pull out their sleeping bags and crash. Traveling then would have been so much different than now…no mobile phones, no internet, no guidebooks…it really was the new frontier. It was easy to imagine that time as we sat in the lodge.

The Cave Lodge exuded its history. During this trip I have visited countless ruins and lost cities but nothing captured my imagination like being here. I wandered around it imagining what it must have been like to be here in those early days, to be one of the first travelers to an area, to commit to a lifestyle like that, and to still be living it all these years later. I think it was meeting the people of the stories that made the difference. It wasn’t just an old building with a story, but it was a story told by the building and the people in it. It really was magical.

I don’t know how it happens. I don’t know how it all gets all over everywhere so darn quickly and I have no idea how we ever get it all back in.

I’m talking about our backpacks. Inevitably we arrive at some cute (or not-so-cute) guesthouse, put  down our packs, open up the zipper and…BAM…seemingly immediately there is stuff scattered absolutely everywhere. Even when we’re only staying one night, and so are being careful not to disturb it all too much, stuff seems to creep it’s way out across the floor.

Some of it makes sense. There is bathroom stuff that should be in the bathroom, shoes should be near the door, stuff for sleeping should be near the bed etc, but it’s the ‘other’ stuff that makes the room messy. Papers and pamphlets that we have collected, empty water bottles, receipts for stuff and activities, coins, watches, books, and notebooks all spread themselves carelessly all over.

And the laundry…what to do about the laundry?!? If we are staying somewhere for a few days our room starts to resemble the bedroom of my youth…clothes everywhere, some piled on the floor, some draped over furniture, some neatly folded in various stacks. We have a mesh bag that we use for those items that are deemed dirty enough to wash…yes, deemed dirty enough…it did not take long for our general level of cleanliness to deteriorate, although not to any disgusting level…but  what to do with those items that still have a wearing or two left in them? We pile them, drape them and stack them according to an elaborate system so that we know what state every item is in. Well, we try to use a system but, typically, we apply the ‘sniff test’ to determine if something is wearable or not. I’m not kidding.

There are, however, some upsides to living out of a backpack.

• We always know where everything is. We employ a system of ‘everything in it’s place and a place for everything’…you have to really, it would be chaos otherwise…so we always know where those nail clippers are, or a plastic bag for putting that do-hickey in, or the bottle opener.

• We are used to wearing the same clothes day in and day out. It is actually freeing to have only 2 or 3 outfits to wear…I don’t fret over ‘what I’m going to wear’, if it’s clean and is appropriate for the activity then I can wear it. At first I treated my wardrobe as if I were at home, wearing something different everyday, but I soon gave that up and now wear an outfit for days at a time until it is dirty. No-one knows me or what I wore yesterday so who cares? And besides, it makes laundry management easier (see above).

• We carefully choose what we will carry and what we won’t. We certainly thought that we had honed our packing list perfectly, but it turns out that there are always little lies we tell ourselves. ‘Of course I’ll wear the cute shoes’, or ‘We’ll run at least once or twice a week’, or ‘This shirt will go with everything’. Those items showed their true colors fairly soon and we either left them behind somewhere or sent them home. New items are added only after vigorous screening…’Do you really need to have it?’, ‘Are you sure you’re going to wear it all the time?’. Lugging every little thing around day after day after day ensures that everything is carefully chosen.

• We can pack it all up in 15 minutes flat. We used to spend time the night before leaving a place packing up and getting ready for the morning. Now we carefully calculate what time we need to get out of bed to pack it all in a flurry of activity before leaving. We can seriously pack up both exploded backpacks in 15 minutes flat…and not break a sweat. And that is the value of everything in it’s place, wearing the same clothes day in and day out, and choosing what we will carry.

After spending so much time firmly on the tourist trail in southern Thailand and Bangkok, we decided to get off the beaten track a bit and so criss-crossed the country on our way up north.

Khao Yai National Park, just northeast of Bangkok, turned out to be a bust for elephants but was a great start to our cross country jaunt as there were already far fewer tourists around than we were getting used to. The market we visited was definitely a local market as surely no tourists would be interested in cooking up some lung for dinner…yummy!

We continued east to Phanom Rung Historical Park just north of the Cambodian border. This is the largest and and best restored Khmer monument in Thailand. Our Thai visas won’t allow us to cross into Cambodia and back so we are unable to visit Angkor Wat. These ruins, although nowhere near the scale of Angkor Wat, gave us some idea of the beauty and mystique of the Khmer era temples. And it was virtually empty of tourists, if fact, there was hardly anyone there at all and, when we visited the nearby Prasat Meuang Tam ruins, we were there with only one other group of people. It was nice and quiet.

From here we debated as to whether we should just return to Bangkok and take the train straight up to Chiang Mai or should we stay on the buses and take a more unconventional route. Deciding we had the time, we opted for the bus and headed to Kon Kaen, a small not-so-much-to-see city smack in the center of the northeast region. We didn’t like the feel of this place and found the housemade German beer at the fancy schmancy hotel (that we didn’t stay at) the best part of the city. We stayed only one night before heading on.

Our next stop was Sukhothai to visit more Khmer era ruins. This historical park is bigger than Phanum Rung with more ruins set among a much larger area. We rented bikes to get around and had as much fun on the bikes as we did seeing the ruins. Here, again, the ruins are stunning…I can only imagine how much more stunning Angkor Wat would be.

From Sukhothai we continued heading west until we hit the Myanmar border and the border town of Mae Sot. There’s not much in Mae Sot. We were pretty much the only travelers there…but we were not, by far, the only westerners there. Mae Sot is filled with western aide workers here to help the Myanmar and Karen refugees. So, it’s easy to find a cup of coffee here…and just as easy to feel a little guilty for not lending a hand.

The next leg had me a little worried. The only transportation between Mae Sot and Mae Sariang is by sorng-taa-ou….covered pickup trucks with bench seats in the back…and the winding road journey is 6 hours long!! It turned out to be not too bad though until about half way through…the driver pulled into a village and then stopped in front of a house…he asked if we would like to use the toilet and so in we went. We learned that the house was where he lived…how thoughtful of him we thought as we loaded ourselves in the back of the truck again. Soon a man came running out of the house and proceeded to get violently ill in the front yard…uh-oh, that looks like our driver! A man in the truck with us managed to get across to us that the truck would not be continuing. Now we wondered if he had driven us off the route in order to get home and further wondered where the heck we were and how were we going to continue…no problem, the driver lives on the route and, within half an hour, the next taxi-truck came by and picked us up.

Now, don’t be thinking I’m being terribly callous about the sick driver…I think it may have been a terrible hangover. No one at his house looked the slightest bit worried about  him and we’re pretty sure some friends stopped by to point and laugh.

We stopped in Mae Sariang really just as a chance to get off the sorng-taa-ou and stretch our legs. It is a nice little riverside town that offers lots of trekking opportunities without the press of travelers but we stayed just long enough to catch a bus the next morning as we had Mae Hong Son on our minds.

Mae Hong Son was exactly what we were looking for…a pretty little town set in the mountains…nice and quiet. We spent our days on a scooter exploring the hills and villages, and our evenings playing backgammon on the patio of our lovely guesthouse. It was on the patio that we heard about the Cave Lodge…a fellow guest told us about this somewhat remote place to visit about two hours away, on the way to Chiang Mai.

And so, one tuk-tuk, one bus and one motorcycle taxi later, here we sit on the deck at the  Cave Lodge, listening to the river below and the birds singing in the trees. It’s kind of like being at camp with everyone off doing ‘stuff’ during the day and then swapping stories and travel advice at night around the fire.

Soon enough we’ll continue on to Chiang Mai and complete our criss-cross journey. It may have taken us longer to get there than most, but we will have managed to see many different parts of the country.

No, I don’t think so either. They also don’t like torrential rain, which is probably why we didn’t see any during our visit to Khao Yai National Park in Thailand.

We arrived to our guesthouse near the park (Greenleaf Guesthouse, which I highly recommend…cheap rooms, great staff and kick-ass tours!) in the morning and immediately signed up for both the afternoon ‘bat tour’ and the following day-long jungle tour. I was excited to see the bats but I really, really wanted to see a wild elephant.

We headed out late in the afternoon, stopping along the way while the guides spotted snakes and birds for us to have a look at. We got to the cave early enough to go inside and see the little critters before they woke up. It was a little stinky – all that bat poop – and dark but the guide coaxed us all inside to have a look. He explained about all the guano (bat poop) on the floor and how the locals come to collect it to sell, which sounds kind of gross but  I guess it’s a living…and then he got all excited and started grasping at the walls frantically.

He finally settled down a bit and beckoned us all to come have a look. We were hesitant – I mean, who knows what is down there? – but we all inched forward. Our combined headlamps soon revealed that he was holding the biggest, creepiest, creepy-crawly I had ever seen. The thing looked prehistoric with a large body and lots of long, gangly legs. I must have stopped listening as he told us all about it because I can’t even remember the name of it! He soon let it go,  but then caught a spider for us to look at, and then a cave cricket, and then the tarantula…okay, he didn’t pick up the tarantula…thank goodness!

By now we were deep in the cave with only our headlamps lighting the way. We could hear the bats chirping above our heads and, every once in a while, I could see the flash of one flying through a light beam. Then he took us to a particular spot and had us all point our lights up at the same time…the ceiling was filled with bats, all hanging upside down and starting to wake up. Another spot was like a cavern within the cave and our lights showed bats flying around inside. I wasn’t scared by it all, but it was a little creepy and I can’t say I exactly liked it. I was happy when we left the cave and drove to another spot to get a good vantage for viewing the bats leaving the cave.

Looking through the spotting scope, I could see the bats all flying around at the mouth of the cave and then, all at once, it was time and the bats started to stream out. Slowly at first, but then gaining strength and number, until there was a river of bats flying out. They streamed out in one long, meandering line, stretching from the cave out over the field  we were standing in and into the hills beyond. The sound of their wings and chirping permeated the air as we all watch in awe. In total, more than 2 million bats disgorge from the cave every evening…it was amazing.

The following day was the ‘jungle tour’ but, really, I was just passing time until the afternoon when I knew there was a chance of seeing a wild elephants. We started by driving along the parks roadway, watching the monkeys that line the road waiting to be fed by passing cars. It was here that I realized that not everyone comes to the park to commune with nature. Apparently, the highway that runs through the park is a shortcut in the area and it’s many curves make it popular with motorcycles and scooters. The tourist trucks were all earnestly trying to see monkeys, gibbons, and hornbills while the locals really just wanted to get through thank-you-very-much.

Eventually we parked the truck and headed into the jungle on foot. It was much quieter in here and, in no time, the guide had spotted a family of gibbons high in the tree tops and had set up the spotting scope so we could all have a good look. It was pretty cool to see them swinging, Tarzan-style, from tree to tree (well I guess, technically, Tarzan swung ‘gibbon-style’, but…whatever).

We moved on until we heard the unmistakable (once you know it) sound of a hornbill flying overhead. This bird is huge with a large toucan-like beak and a tufted head. The guide trained the scope on a nest and we were able to see the male bringing food to the female inside…pretty cool.

Not long after that the rain started. It doesn’t just rain here, it pours…torrentially…and we were soaked within a matter of minutes. We continued to trudge through the jungle and eventually came to a grassy clearing that we had to traverse to find shelter. While walking through the grass I could see elephant tracks and kept my eyes and ears open just in case I might be extra lucky and see one while on foot. No such luck though and soon we were walking, slipping and sliding down a muddy embankment to the wildlife viewing shelter for lunch.

We waited at the shelter for some time for the rain to stop…my eyes searching out the surrounding grassland for that elusive elephant. It was not to stop though and, eventually, we headed out again to reach the truck.

Once at the truck a phone call came…elephants had been located at the other end of the park. We all hurriedly loaded into the truck and went speeding down the highway. I was so excited that I might get to see a wild elephant – once the truck started to slow I peered around every corner, and looked deep into the jungle just waiting for that first glimpse.

Soon, we saw elephant poo on the road and I shouted ‘elephant poo, we must be close!’…and, around the next corner we saw muddy elephant footprints on the road and I shouted ‘elephant footprints, those are elephant footprints!’. We slowly drove for several kilometers up and down the roadway, but spotted no other signs of the elephants.

The sight of another tourist truck on the side of the road made us stop and their guide signaled that elephants were just up the hill in the jungle. And then I heard a trumpet!! I could hear the elephants up there! We waited ever so quietly, willing them to come out and let us see them…but then a band of motorcycles rounded the corner with their whining engines. My heart sank and I knew that I would not be seeing any elephants that day.

The guides were great, they really wanted us to see an elephant, and we drove up and down ‘elephant row’ for more than an hour until the sun set, but the torrential rains and the hordes of motorcycles were too much and we didn’t see another sign.

I know they are out there though…playing their little elephant games just beyond the reach of our eyes in the jungle…hopefully we will have another chance to see them another day.

And the world is your oyster…

Actually, in total, we have spent 8 nights in Bangkok and loved every minute.

Our first time here, more than a month ago now, we landed from India shell-shocked, bewildered, and numb. Although reportedly overcrowded, polluted, and noisy we found Bangkok to be clean, orderly and, above all else, a ton of fun!

We spent our first day getting our bearings and discovered the famous Koh San Road…the magnetic travelers street of the city where food stalls, clothing stands and streetside bars all compete for attention. As frenetic as it can be we lapped it up and ate and drank to our hearts content. In fact, Koh San has turned out to be our favorite place in the city. We like how everything is accessible…no wondering where that elusive bar or club is or where the best food might be…it’s all out in the open and choosing super easy. We prefer to eat our meals from the vendor carts (pad thai is my absolute favorite!) and have our evening drinks at one of the ‘insto-bars’ that set up out of nowhere every evening on the sidewalks. We pass the time by watching people (and there are plenty to watch) and striking up conversations with our fellow sidewalk drinkers.

We spent one morning visiting the floating market outside the city. It turned out to be super-touristy but gave a glimpse into what life on the canals must be like for more rural Thai people. It was fun to be in a long-tail boat, buying fruit and snacks from floating vendors and seeing the mayhem that too many boats on one small canal can cause.

Our first visit to Bangkok also gave us an opportunity to join up with some great friends from home. Lisa, Dwayne, Nicole and Luc (www.ProjectRunaway.com) are on their own world journey and our paths crossed again in this corner of the world. We spent a great couple of evenings together catching up, laughing and having a great time. We left them the following morning (with a great hangover, I might add!) to head south for some well deserved beach time.

We were excited to return to Bangkok a few days ago. We were transitioning from the south to the north of Thailand and decided to stop for a couple of days to get our Vietnam visa and see a few of the sights we hadn’t seen on our last stop.

We, again, managed to get out of the city a bit to explore signing up for an all day bicycle tour of the countryside. We cycled through the narrow alleyways and sidestreets of the old city, crossed the railways tracks and headed into the banana  plantations and villages of the countryside. We pedaled along the canal walkways, stopping at temples and monuments along the way and having lunch at a local hotspot that produced killer Tom Yam soup. We returned to the city after 6 hours of riding…my bum is still sore today!!

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Bangkok…but tonight we’ll visit our favorite pad thai vendor and stop by the ‘insto-bar’ for one last cocktail. For anyone planning to come to Thailand let me tell you that One Night In Bangkok is not enough!!

My heart is pounding, my breathing is heavy, and my palms are sweaty which is not a good thing as I am trying to hold on for dear life to the teeny tiny handholds that keep me on the rock face some 10 meters from the ground. I struggle and struggle to maintain my grip, my feet scrabbling to find a better outcrop but to no avail…I cannot keep hold. All my limbs give way at once and I am suddenly dangling high above the ground.

We had not practiced ‘falling’ and letting the rope, and the person on the ground belaying, catch us and so I was momentarily petrified. I let out a little yelp and then whimpered a bit until I realized that I really was safe, that the smaller-than-me woman belaying really could hold me up there. And so I grabbed onto the rock face again, replacing my hands and feet where they were, and tried again…and fell again…and tried again…and fell again…and so on…until I finally reached the top and we all gave a cheer.

Going down was the most fun. I just sat back on the harness and jumped against the wall as Helly lowered me to the ground. Then there were ‘high fives’ all round and it was my turn to belay.

It was almost more scary to be the belayer than the climber as now I was responsible for holding a person up there. Luckily Helly is smaller than me so I didn’t have to worry about the reverse weight difference - although I do understand the mechanics of the belay and realize that I could hold up someone heavier than myself it was just better that, for the first time, I was the heavier one.

‘Climbing’, she said. ‘On belay’ I replied, and up she started. I took the job very seriously and watched her every second, keeping the rope taut, and making sure she felt safe. This being in contrast to some other belayers around who, obviously more experienced than me, felt comfortable to chat and smoke and hang out while, at the same time making sure their climbers were just as safe as mine. I was exhausted by the time I finally lowered her to the ground and was probably sweating as much as she was, only mine was from stress not exertion.

We moved to a more difficult section of the wall for our second climb. I got a boost up the overhanging start and then I was on my own again. This one didn’t go as well as the first. My arms were tired from the first climb and belaying, and I just couldn’t see the handholds when I needed to, even with Tsu (our instructor) pointing them out from below. I got to one point and, despite repeatedly trying to get past, I just couldn’t keep on and so, reluctantly, they  lowered me to the ground. This time, instead of high fives all round, it was the ‘nice try’ handshake…not the same at all and I was disappointed.

My observation of climbing in the past was that there always seemed to be a lot of hanging around involved. I had seen groups of climbers all lounging around under a rock face, faces tilted up watching one or two climbers above and wondered why more of them didn’t get up there. Well, now I know it’s because they are exhausted! I hung around down below, my face tilted up watching for a good while until my arms stopped shaking and I could feel them again.

Jason went first on the third climb and I could see that he was taking to climbing quite nicely. The puzzle part of finding the way up appealed to him and he looked far more graceful at it than I felt when I was on the rock face. He seemed to climb quite quickly and soon was back on the ground, making it my turn again.

I climbed the first part without too much trouble, finding the hand and foot holds quite easily. There came a point at about the halfway mark that I realized that I was going to have to straddle a rocky outcrop to make it to the top. I was quite off center by then and knew that if I fell off the outcrop it would be a long swinging fall and so I decided that I was not going to fall off…I would hang on no matter what. I listened to Tsu’s directions and threw my left foot around the outcrop to some unseen foothold – it held. I then reached around with my left hand until I could feel a suitable handhold. I took a deep breath and, on the count of three, hauled my ass around that outcrop and hung on for dear life. I made it and did a small victory dance…in my head of course.

It wasn’t over yet though, and the hardest part was still to come. Right before the top was a piece that looked, to me, to have nowhere to hold onto. Following Tsu’s instructions again, I tried and tried to make it up the section but I kept falling off time after time. I was frustrated and tired but also very determined – I needed to have a  successful climb to finish the day. Tsu was also determined to see me finish it, and so we kept at it. I can’t really say that I climbed that portion of the wall…Tsu would have me pull myself as far as I could and, even if it was just an inch, he would hold me there so I could reach the next inch…until I was past that portion and could hold myself up again. It was enough though and I was able to climb the last piece myself to touch the ring at the top. Wooooo-hooooo!! High fives all round.

We were exhausted after our day of climbing, our muscles are still sore days later and my hands are raw from grabbing and clawing at the rock…bring on the Thai massage!!

The massage platform is on the beach with soft sand leading up to it and, when the tide is high, the waves lap underneath in a calm, rhythmic pattern. Dappled sunlight filters through the palm trees and the scent of tiger balm is carried on the breeze as the Thai girls call out to all who pass ‘mass-age, would you like a mass-age’ in their lilting voices.

It’s hard not to give in to the call. At home, a massage costs upwards of $60 for an hour whereas here it’s a measly $9! We have seen massages offered throughout all of our travels but kept telling ourselves that we would wait for the infamous Thai massage so, as soon as we got to the beach, we made a beeline for the platform.

It all starts out nice enough, with a soft mattress and a pretty draped sarong, but before too long I am writhing in pain as the once-kind-and-gentle masseuse digs her elbows into my back and I realize that this is no spa experience. In fact Thai massage is not supposed to be like getting a massage at the spa. It is based on energy channels, pressure points and stretching…and it can be painful.

She starts by pressing gently but firmly all down my back and legs and then slowly increases the pressure and the pointed-ness of the pressure until she finds a knot. Then I know I am in for it. Next, she works on the knot with her extremely strong fingers until it’s released or I beg her to stop.

She is small, but deceptively strong, and can bring me to my knees with one hand tied behind her back…luckily she is also very kind and constantly asks if I am okay and offers to make it ‘less strong’…I  take her up on the offer.

J seems to be even more manipulated than I am. I open my eyes to see his masseuse standing on him pulling his arms and legs in various directions, or twisting him into various impossible positions and then ‘helping’ him to stretch. He communicates with her using grunts and groans as she giggles and seems to get some perverse pleasure in delivering the pain.

When it’s all over we both lie there, exhausted even though we haven’t done anything. She gives us some instructions for stretching later and we drag ourselves to our deckchairs to recover.

On the way to breakfast the next morning we pass by her platform. She calls out and asks if we are ‘kaput’…we respond that ‘oh yes, we are kaput’…and promptly make an appointment for the next morning…it’s addictive.

Normally we are the stay-at-home, make-a-nice-dinner, have-a-good-bottle-of-wine kind of New Years revelers. Pretty low key…nice and quiet…just the way we like it. But this year we were near one of the biggest New Years parties on the planet (OK, I just saw that Rio had 3 million partiers, so maybe I’m exaggerating)…how could we not go?

The Full Moon Party is legendary in Thailand and this year, with the full moon coinciding with New Years Eve, it promised to be bigger and better than ever with an estimated 40,000 people expected to come from all over Koh Pha-Ngan and the neighboring islands.

We opted to take the last hotel taxi heading to the beach in order to be there for midnight and to catch the height of the action so, at 10:30, we climbed into the back of the pickup truck with 10 other people to be ferried across the island.

The island is hilly, very hilly, and soon there was a line up of trucks and vans waiting by turns to make it up the steepest of the hills. This was hampered by the 100’s of scooters that honked and scooted their way around all the stalled vehicles only to, themselves, stall halfway up and have to push the rest of the way. The end of 2009 was ticking away and we all wondered if we would make it to the party in time for the big countdown.

Soon, people in neighboring taxis gave up, jumping out into the road and frantically running towards the beach intent on making it in time. As midnight drew closer I realized that I just might be ringing in the New Year with my 10 new ‘truck friends’. And then the line-up started moving, we made it to the drop off point and rushed to the beach with 4 minutes to spare.

The music was pumping, there were 1000’s and 1000’s of half-dressed, more than half-drunk, fluorescent-streaked bodies moving to the beat and the DJ was marking every passing minute closer to 2010. Soon enough we were all chanting the classic countdown and then, at the stroke of midnight, the fireworks started.

They fired skyward right from the edge of the crowd, bursting over our heads and illuminating the whole beach even more than the full moon already was. On and on they went, bigger and brighter…some coming closer and closer. Spent material starting raining down on us making it difficult to continue looking up. Some didn’t seem to go high enough and we watched to make sure that burning embers didn’t fall on us. A few didn’t make it up at all and exploded right on the ground…and then it seemed as though one landed on the fireworks platform…and that’s when we decided to run in the opposite direction in case the worst should happen and the whole kit-and-kaboodle blew up. That’s what comes with age…we ran away while others looked closer to see what would happen…it did explode right there on the platform, and sprayed those closest with burning embers, but the worst did not happen and the rest of the fireworks went off without a hitch.

Time to find a drink. The drink of choice at a Full Moon Party is ‘the bucket’…yup, a sand pail filled with your favorite drink…for Thai’s it’s cheap whiskey, Red Bull, and coke, but we opted for vodka and tonic. I could see how quickly one could plow through a few buckets as there was something fun about sipping our cocktail out of a child’s plaything…the bottom comes very quickly!

I have to say that the Full Moon Party was not as crazy as I had expected it to be. We wandered around for a couple of hours and, yes, I did see plenty of dancing, lots of people drunk and passed out and there was a fire limbo contest, but mostly I saw people like us….wandering around just trying to take it all in. I think I expected more ‘dancing’ (rather than the jumping up and down to the electronic beat), I surely expected to see some nudity (I saw not one single nude person) and I even thought there might be some public copulation going on (although we did see one close encounter). It was fun but, just like many a New Year celebrations, the hype outdid the actuality.

Before leaving we lit a lantern and, putting all of our 2010 wishes onto it, released it to float skyward towards the New Year full moon. Our 2010 looks bright as we complete our journey, reunite with our family and friends and look forward to what our next Giant Step might be.

Happy New Year!!