Back to Bangkok

One thing I love about Southeast Asia is that antibiotics (along with just about any other medicine you could want) are available over the counter. The Ciproflaxin gladiators won the battle with whatever vicious bacterial villians had colonized my gut, allowing me to enjoy a week on Koh Phi Phi, perhaps the most striking of the Thai islands.

Phi Phi is terribly overdeveloped, to the point that those who knew the island 15 years ago generally refuse to go back, preferring to keep their memories as spotless and pure as the white sand beaches once were. Still, some parts of the island, if not unspoiled, are at least peaceful. I stayed at Phi Phi Hill, a bungalow operation perched high on a hillside ten minutes by long-tail taxi boat from the crowded guesthouse ghetto on Ao Ton Sai, the main beach. My spacious bungalow was just 600 baht and had a great ocean view from the front porch. The Hill was so low key and slow paced that I actually found myself wishing that Dostoevsky could have made Crime and Punishment a little bit longer. Yikes.

On a more unfortunate note, my wallet went missing from my bunk on the night train to Bangkok from Surat Thani. The railway police couldn’t have been more professional, but I don’t expect to get anything back. Let us all reflect on the impermanence of material wealth.

This morning I cracked open a paper for the first time in weeks and - WHAM WHAM WHAM – two pieces of big news jumped out from the pages of the Bangkok Post. See below…