Bubbling along...

Days have been sailing by as I spent time shaping my matress into my slightly enlarged contours. It seems that my days in the east are coming to an end, and only because of me this is happening in a rather unspectacular way. In a city filled with possibilities and options, I seem to have a dull fascination for the small surroundings of my bed. Of particular interest have been: the never ending whipping noise of the fan in the ceiling, swooshing and wooshing the humid and hot air with the same determined enthusiasm as the biggest occupant of my room (me) has for rolling over to the cooler side of the bed, the sizzling sound of bubbles popping into the air as I spilled my soda on my nighttable. Actually, I was quite entranced while observing this small puddle of bubbles, trapped in warming water and determined to escape their surroundings. Their sheer willpower had a magnetic atraction on me. But all in all my days are filled with sleep and reading Von Lustbader novels, trying not to read too fast as I only have so many books to read before having to resupply myself. And the second hand bookshop is far these days. It involves taking public buses and walking in simmering heat amidst uniformed office-workers. Quite the urban adventure, these days... Anyways, I gotta go, It's lights out in the Internet-shop and Von Lustbaders latest criminal mastermind is on the run somewhere in my obscured room.

Going on a visa-run in Myanmar one can't help but feel like a smuggler amongst smugglers, with 10 packages of cigarettes going for 1.75 euro's...

Moonwalking on bubbles...

Lately I found myself looking at the world in an entirely different way than I was used to. Cruising weightlessly past landscapes that most of the Sci-Fi movies can only dream of, powered by nothing more than the occasional waving of a fin, I discovered that we don't need the sky to reach the limit. And some fine limits to be found under the surface of the blue-greenish waters around Ko Tao. It is amazing that in these warm waters (29 degrees!) that seemed to be filled with divers there are still plenty more exotic fish to be seen than there are bubbles going up to the surface. And even those bubbles are part of the dreamlike atmosphere down there. But by far the most wonderful experience one can have is sinking down to a comfortable depth, accompanied by a flashlight and the moonlight to shine upon sleeping schools of fish and hovering stingrays looking for a nocturnal meal. The sky was clear and thus everything was submersed in a pale and monochromic fluid light. The beams of the torches assumed X-files attitudes as our team explored the reefs and activities on the bottom. A crab walked by in it's typical sideways march and as a beam of light waved over it the legs were radiantly reddish in the otherwise pale surroundings. The only sound was that of the corals clicking and bubbles going up, and of course the hissing sound of air going in your lungs trough high-pressured tubes and devices. Darth Vader was walking with us that night, and my lightsaber slashed it's way trough the water with an ease that is only found in handling Hattori Hanzo's famous blades. But I'm drifting of here...