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i am feeling slightly manic right now. andy, my sister and i just hadgreat thai food in a restaurant. they also had video, and when theystarted to play peter gabriel, i just got the shivers and have beenfeeling high ever since.my sister and i met a woman today on the beach. 34 yrs old, she's been inthailand for a month and planning to make it her home. she's trying tohook up with a christian organization and do charitable work. she is notgoing to be paid, nor will her living expenses be. when i asked her howshe's planning to get over the money thing, she said that after shedecided to embark on this adventure, all kinds of things started comingthrough for her. like people she's known for a while, volunteering tocontribute money to what she's doing and other things like that. sheseemed very enthusiastic. talked a lot too, my sister and i were bothzoning out after a while, but she was nice. there was something about heri identified with, and this was not really a good thing. i think it wasthe fact that she seemed to feel compelled to leave home and all she knowsto roam the world in search of something that will give meaning to herlife... anyway, this will be my penultimate email to you. i don't want to thinkabout it though. how am i going to go back to wearing shoes?i am now thinking of doing a kayaking trip sometime. i think it's such anamazing way to visit things, and i love being in the sun and on the water. something has been happening on this trip that i haven't reallyexperienced before. that is, every once in a while, for a feew seconds, ijust forget everything about who i am. my sense of self completelydisappears. it is always a relief when this happens, because it leaves mefree to perceive things more as they are, i think, less tinted by myemotions, etc. also, it feels like a heaviness, made of fear and worry, islifted. i hope i don't lose this when i come back home. i think part ofthe reason why i got it is because i was in so many different places,different surroundings, that i just kind of lost track of where i was. andalong with that, i lost track of myself too. i hope it will happen to yousometimes, if it hasn't already. it's really good.thank you for the emails you sent since last time. they really made mehappy. as for the last few days, we did a few cool things, but overall the southof thailand is a bit of an anticlimax after malaysia. i am sure that if wecame here first, we would've thought it was amazing, but after theperhentian islands, this pales.we did a cool kayaking tour through mangrove forests and water canyions.that was my favorite. these rock pinnacles stick straight up out of thewater, and you can kayak in between them. it's really nice to just meanderthrough these impressive towers of rock, look at the vegetation thatcovers them and listen to the jungle. the mangrove forests are also reallynice, especially from a kayak, as you can reach places otherwiseunreachable.while in the mangroves, we met a family of long tail macaques. these aresmall monkeys, the size of a medium dog. they were very friendly and cameout from the trees to look at us. one of them, a baby, jumped on the kayakmy sister and i were sharing. he walked on my sister's paddle, sat on herlap and put his hand on hers. that was really amazing, we were all sohappy to witness it.we also saw several caves in the past few days. some were very impressive,with differrent chambers of all sizes and heights. we saw cave paintings5000 yrs old in one. another cave was more like a tunnel, we came in onone side and out on the other. it was really tight though, so you had tobe really careful in navigating your kayak. i think that the mangroveforests and karst formations (the caves and the rocks) were my favoritepart of the south of thailand.well, i am going to get a foot massage now. today my sister and i went ona small hike, but it was unbeleivably steep and all over sharp rocks andmud. i had no shoes so my feet had a bit of a hard time on the sharprocks...it was worth it though, from the top we had am amazing view over abay in the adaman sea. at another point, as we took a break, we both satstill and listened to all the insects and the birds buzzing and chirpingin the jungle. once in a while we could hear and see the apes swing fromtree to tree.i am going to miss asia so much.i'll write again,raluca |
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