Hello America!

Well, some amount of the depression, homesickness, and general malaise we'd thought we'd already passed through has come back again. Normally, there's supposed to be a cycle of emotions when becoming adjusted to a new country, not unlike to steps involved in the grieving process, but I thought we'd already finished. I think it's mostly related to the fact that we've both been sick for awhile. After 4 or 5 months over here, I think our immune system is taking a break. This, apparently, is also normal. I've had a cold for weeks, and we both feel,well, just really worn out.

In brighter news, we went to a beautiful park this weekend called Tai Rom Yen! About 30 miles south of Surat Thani is a range of (pretty big) mountains. Maybe about 3000-4000 feet??? Anyways, they're very rugged, and were actually a stronghold of a pretty sizable group of communist revolutionaries in the lates 70's and 80's. Pretty exciting history - they assassinated the governor of the Surat Thani district and also shot down the Princess' helicopter, killing her as well.

If you haven't already heard from this blog - another Princess (sister to the curent and extrememly popular King Bhumibol), died a few months ago and the country spent a full 15 days wearing nothing but black and white in mourning. Offically, though, it will be 100 days of mourning. So, government officials and the like wear only black and white. For us, it involved a lot of laundry. For the country (a world leader in clothing manufacture, mind you), this meant that the stores ran out of black and white clothes. Pretty wild. So, that's whats happens when a Princess dies.

Back on the subject, the park was beautiful. Think Current River + Jungle + Colorado + Beautiful waterfalls. Really incredible. You would think that any fresh water down this close to the equator would be swampy and sickly and full of parasites, but it's not at all the case. So many of the fresh streams are crisp and cool and perfect. Rock and sand bottoms, clear water. Anyways, it was a cool day and we had a great time. And everyone stared at us, as if we were the first white men to ever visit this particular park.

Here are some pictures:

These are of the trail we were on.




This is the tallest waterfall in the Surat Thani District.


This is Aleza in the creek.


And this is a rope bridge across the river that was extremely difficult to use. This picture is as far as we got on it.


What else...

We're going to Ko Samui for Valentine's Day: Aleza wants to go to the movie theater. I think it's the closest English language theater before Bangkok.

Still planning the driving to China and India thing - if ya'll know anybody with some advice or a place to stay in Laos/Vietnam/Cambodia/Southern China/Bhutan/India/Nepal, let us know.