Starry skies and sunsets

And now the end is near, my South East Asia experience is over. I'm back in clean and tidy Sydney, applying for a job, desperately trying to reduce the number of photos I've brought back with me, watching my tan rapidly fading (why do we bother?) and missing my grubby, sunny, lazy life.

I particularly miss the community of outdoor life. In both Vietnam, Thailand and Sri Lanka, much of people's working, social and home life is combined in one place. People sit outside their businesses which are also their homes with groups of friends only stopping the chat to serve customers. There are no closed doors here. The streets are always full of people. Contrast that with the way we live where everyone disappears into their burglar alarmed homes, draws their curtains to stop people looking in, close their windows to shut out the noise, to watch their cars on their newly installed CCTV system. Maybe that's a little extreme but you get the picture.

So what didn't I tell you about Thailand? Perhaps, about the number of mosquito bites I got and the number of hours I spent whinging about my itches. What about how many penis shaped pieces of coral I found on the beach. Or the fact that I very nearly fell down a flight of concrete steps taking my travelling pal with me. About our grumpy waiting staff at the Phi Phi resort who didn't get our humour. Or that I finally saw some cool fishes while snorkelling off the beach.

Maybe about the best sunset I have ever seen in my entire life that no photo can do justice to. A yellowy orange glow one evening beckoned me out of our dark bungalow as if something was on fire. We wandered out in a daze down to the beach along with most other guests who were drawn there by the eerie feel this glow was generating. The sea was on fire. An orange lava bed against black, black mountains peppered by a strange purple mist hovering over the floating fire. It was astonishing. Everyone stood and watched in quiet fascination as if aliens were invading, nuclear war had been declared or the sky was falling in. A very moving moment.

Then night fall and a beautiful starry sky complete with shooting stars and satellites a la Tamsin Archer as we made our way home in a longtail boat. Gosh.

Comments

[sharon]

Wow, that's some serious colour!