I don't operate by days, I operate on whims.

After a two nights in Koh Lanta, one night in Pak Bara, and three nights on Koh Tarutao, I am back in Krabi. The past week has been has been full of many discoveries. Not only of a tangible nature, but also discoveries of feelings and challenges.

After traveling with Laura and Billy for the past week, I have learned that while I enjoy company in the course of my journey, I am still somewhat of a solitary wayfarer. In The Dog Fighter by Mark Bojanowski, there is a quote that goes something like this: "a walking man needs no other companion than his thoughts"; (I am reciting this from memory, but since it is one of my favorite quotes, I hope I have not botched it too much).

Unfortunately, I believe a major issue with my recent group travel discoveries, is that some of the attitudes I have seen, have greatly upset me. Again it has been confirmed that too often, rather than allowing the journey to change them, people bring their poor attitudes along for the journey and seek to surround themselves with their comforts.

In Koh Chang, I met a twenty-one year old Kiwi named Ben who had recently been to India, and at the time was finishing up his journey in Thailand. Although our conversation was only for an evening, intuition tells me that he would have been a great companion for the road and as I feel obliged to say, other than Ben, I have not yet found a kindred spirit in my travels.

Reflective of my thought life, my journals have become filled with scribbles and half-formed essays, solitary observations, notes in the margins, and rough sketches and doodles. My mind is always running full tilt, and the blank pages that still exist within the binding of my open book will have a very short life.

On to a wonderful discovery of a tangible nature, I must now tell you in a whisper about Koh Tarutao.

Maybe it is not as much of a secret as it probably was five years ago (therefore somewhat undeserving of my whisper), but our stay on this island was absolutely wonderful. The sand was pristinely white, and the water of perfect temperature. Small fish of silver and black lace coasted through the water right along the beach, dancing between shallow and shallowest. The food is great and monkeys scamper about during the breakfast hours stealing plates and bottles of ketchup; (maybe this isn't so wonderful... but it is humorous at the very least).

Finally, in the darkest part of night, or the newborn hours of the morning, it seemed as if the stars sent their children to the water. The sea was filled with fireflies that tumbled over and under each other in the wake of lightly crashing waves. You could look to the north and see their faint light, and looking to the south, you could see them again.

In awe, I didn't know what to make of these beings. Each quiet aquatic pulse ran over my feet and legs as I stood in one place, and each tiny firefly of the water that careened off my shins lit up with a yellow glow. It was as if the smallest amount of resistance caused them hurt. Stirring the water with a hand must have caused even more alarm, as a host of the creatures were lighted in a dotted flourish that moved with the current of my arm.

They really appeared to have a magical existence, and in this moment I imagined that if I could hear them speaking, it would be a squeak of the highest pitch, and if they were in all the ocean to shout together in unison it would only sound as if a tiny pressure cooker had let out a puff of steam.

[From left to right: Me (duh), Caroline , Billy, Laura, and Mark.
My friends from Malta, Salt Lake City, and Italy.]