Days 45-49 Wednesday – Sunday December 23-27, 2009 Koh Pha Ngan

Highlights

-       - When on vacation, remember that it’s not all site seeing, and remember to unwind.

-       - If you’re going to partake in a fast, you need to follow a strict diet before starting the fast.  Therefore, don’t do a fast.

-       - There’s nothing wrong with getting a Thai massage every day when they’re that cheap.

The "Nothing good on late night Thai TV" version

It’s easy to know you’ve let go of all previous obligations when your primary objective to achieve before sun down is to truly understand the difference in color between the deep blue ocean water beyond the break and the light aqua-blue water closer to the subtly absorbing sand.  It’s not until these moments that you realize that months and months of stressful preparation have come to fruition not only for your cultural growth, but for your physical and spiritual health.  No longer do we ignore the beauty in front of us instead of losing our minds to what might be away from where we are.  No longer do our chests tighten uncontrollably simply because a miniscule worry passes across the back of our brains.  This is why we came to this land; to enjoy the stunning world around us, and to absorb the relaxed state of our new husband/wife.

That last paragraph might be overly abstract and/or nonsensical, but I can’t ignore the fact that that’s where my (Craig’s) head was at during one lazy afternoon on Malibu Beach.  That’s on Koh Pah Ngan in southern Thailand islands, not in Los Angeles.

After going so hard through Japan and China, we had no idea how incredibly tired we were from so much traveling and sight seeing, and how in need we were for downtime, that when we got to the first truly lazy beach destination, we sank into that sand and had little interest in doing anything else.

Christmas eve and Christmas day were full of the following…wake up, Skype with our family during their Christmas festivities, eat our inclusive breakfast at the beach restaurant, stay at said beach restaurant through dinner, taking a quick swim and drink a banana shake while at said restaurant, learning first-hand that crabs dart both vertically and laterally (whatever this link means), then heading back to our bungalow to watch a (very legal) DVD and passing out before the evening news starts; assuming there is an evening news, and that it starts around 10pm, which we can not confirm either way since there's no TV in our bamboo bungalow.

We did walk around Choloklum, ride a scooter (extremely carefully) to Koh Ma (an island that you can walk to because a connective sandbar is walkable during low tide), and visit friends at Haad Rin and Haad Yao for dinner and drinks, but mainly, we completely decompressed around Malibu Beach.

There’s something to be said about hurriedly site seeing when you’ve got a short amount of time to take-in a country/region, but when you’ve got 5 months, and you’ve just gotten done quitting your jobs, selling everything you own, moving out of a city, throwing a week-long wedding, and venturing off on a 5 month honeymoon through a completely unknown land, you also need to enjoy a considerable amount of down-time to enjoy your surroundings, enjoy the culture, and to enjoy the person you’ve just committed yourself to for the rest of your life.  Which we did, and did it well.

If you can’t tell, we slightly liked Koh Pha Ngan.