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Published: October 28th 2008
Food for thought
How should we spend the rest of our time? What's really important (in Life!)?
We squeezed in our last activities: intro to Thai language, dancing, and origami, which I flunked, but excelled in Yogilates, Ab torture & stretch, and finished well on a wonderful sunset bicycle ride. We bought a last bunch of bananas for Yum Yum, but how do you say goodbye to an elephant?
When it came down to deciding where we wanted to go, we chose to try for "Krabi" and we would have to go through Phang Nga, which we love anyway. Our new guide and driver is Pooh's friend, Ming, and we felt as though we had won the "Vacation Lottery" on our very last day. Ming had a list of about a dozen places to take us, and I would not trade a minute of our time, even though we never did get to Krabi. We spent twelve hours Quiet time, a last stroll
How soon can we come back? sightseeing!
We only got halfway on our hike to Ton Gai Falls, as Ming had to pick leeches off my toes and one that had bored through Dane's sock. But there were lots of smaller falls along the path for us to stop and enjoy.
Ming surprised us by taking us to the most wonderfully elaborate temple located on top of a high hill. It was the entire manicured grounds and magnificent views, plus the atmosphere of a perfect day, that made this temple so spectacular and different from all of the rest. We insisted on exploring almost every inch of it, as we had the whole place to ourselves.
The highlight was going to meet the very kind and hospitable head monk. When we walked up, he was in his monk underwear and I noticed that he was holding a cellular device. On closer inspection, he was watching something on "YouTube"! Well, why shouldn't he, the reception is probably great. He put the handheld down and then picked up about 15 yards of fabric on the floor and proceeded to "cocoon" himself in the yellow ochre material, by pleating and rolling it until, with amazing dexterity
Beloved Pachyderm
A last ride. How do you explain to Yum Yum that we have to leave? and speed, Voila! He had morphed into his desired monk-like and peaceful state, assumed that wonderful expression of bliss and was ready for the photo! What a neat guy.
His holiness was also kind enough to allow us inside the private temple (after we made a small donation) and we were greatly amused to find that from the top of the ceiling to halfway down was covered in the most intricate and delicate risque' paintings that were totally hilarious. And I could have stayed there for hours and enjoyed it...so unexpected. If you don't know what risque' means, check out the one picture at the end and also notice that the men pictured are passing around and smoking some kind of substance while the women are all doing chores!
The rest of our day is continued on the next blog entry...
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