BootsnAll Travel Network



island fever

after much careful thought and consideration, and due to some heavy influence from a certain person or persons, i have opted to give Malaysia and Indonesia a miss this time around. the fact is, now that it is early may i would only have about 9 days to travel south on overnight boats, trains, buses, etc. in order to get to borneo, bali & sumatra, and i simply don’t have it in me to travel that hard right now. then there is the sky and sea: Sunset at Moondance, Koh Tao, Thailand May 2008

i will be here in my idyllic spot until may 12. then i will catch the boat and train back to bangkok from whence i shall fly onward to istanbul, turkey. i’m excited to go out and see the rest of the world but i’ve met so many amazing people here, and continue to meet more of them, and gained some great friends in a few of the locals that i am enjoying the immersion into the local culture immensely. there are no words to describe what i have been experiencing here but i will try to collect some poignant adjectives to put up here when i’m not actually living in the moment. for now, however, i’ve got my paper diary of daily activities and thoughts of fractured communications with my friends and neighbors here to keep me smiling in case i forget anything.
THE BIRTHDAY: i celebrated my birthday in style the other day. had a foot and back massage. my friends sara and stav have a little girl, vaya, who was turning 3 that day also, so we decided to combine celebration efforts and pa, my hostess here at moondance, baked a cake in honor of the occasion. sara hung balloons around the chill-out zone and our friend maille (spelling? sorry, i dunno) threw a big dance party at his bar next door. earlier, i had the cake and champagne with my friends chum, sonia, aow, vasili and pong. sara gave me a beautiful purple bead necklace, aow sold me a beautiful necklace also that she’d made a while back that i was admiring and she threw in a pair of earrings to match, and chum (apologies if this spelling is wrong!) gave me a pretty necklace made of an amber stone with a buddha carved in it and with a seashell clasp. this is supposed to bring me luck (thank goodness! i could use it). pa couldn’t make it to the fiesta cuz she was busy but the next day she gave me a curtain made of a thin fabric (orange with blue, white and turquoise threads) with seashells knotted along the bottom of it. this is the same type of curtain i have on the front door of my bungalow and when i open and shut the door or when the wind blows the shells clack against the bamboo door in a quite pleasant way. nature’s music.
my iTunes that were lost from the iPod are slowly but surely being replaced. i’ve borrowed some of my hosts’ CDs and bought one from my greek friend vasili of his band, asto na pai (traditional greek music CD made in pai, thailand, with musicians from all over the world), and bought a boatload of iTunes from the iTunes store. tis expensive, true, but one must not be without tunes or one loses one’s mind completely. my mind is slowly returning to normal.
on that note, i will leave things as they are for now.
stay tuned as there will be more scribblins to come soon.



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6 responses to “island fever”

  1. Lola says:

    you had a great birthday. wish i were there….love yo u

  2. Shirley says:

    Sounds lovely, glad you had a good birthday. Looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks – you can load up your Ipod with all our tunes!

    Shirls, Tony & Lily x

    PS You can fly to Edinburgh directly from Norwich. Have emailed your hotmail and MySpace too with details.

  3. Julie Green says:

    Yeah for Karen and her amazing travels! Shirley is indeed correct that you can fly directly to Edinburgh from Norwich (which rhymes with Porridge)! Counting the days to June 6, 7 & 8!!
    xoxox Julie

  4. and 9th…let’s not forget that most auspicious of days, june 9! all hail julie’s BIRTHDAY! am tickled pink i got to spend a few hours of that day with you in england.

  5. Are there any pictures available?

  6. You picked a great topic for this post and you wrote about it well. I have seen a few other web sites with comparable content but no 1 has completed a better job than you on writing about it.

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