Island Vacation (Tough Life)

After leaving the south on Friday, I headed up to Bangkok on the overnight bus to celebrate Mother's Day (the Queen's birthday) with my colleague who'd organized a big gathering for his ethnic group, the Pao people, in Bangkok. It was a great day filled with singing and dancing. I stood out like a foreign sore thumb, but everyone was quite nice.

On Sunday, I met up with one of my oldest (longest known) friends, who lives in Korea. He'd been visiting friends in BKK, so we decided to hit the island of Koh Chang for a couple of days. We saw pretty much everything there was to see, swam in waterfalls, checked out stilt villages, randomly ran into one of my public health school friends, crashed our motorbike (that was all me, though I blame the slick roads and the stupid dog that couldn't decide which way to cross the street... though the nicest family took us into their home, let us wash up, and helped dress our wounds... all 12 of them (4 generations) were actively involved... it was so kind and again restored my faith in humanity... though it was their dog), watched Fox News, complained about Fox News, recounted numerous high school stories, chatted with other tourists and locals, and tried to dodge the rain. I was so thrilled to have a travel buddy and fellow English speaker that I didn't even read much I was so busy running my mouth. The weather wasn't super, but we certainly made the best of it and had a great time.









Fun with Bikes!
Matt pre-crash
How American!

Then back to Bangkok for a day before I returned to Chiang Mai for goodbyes and my night flight on the 20th!





Note the contrasts