Creature Comforts

I was walking on the beach last night around midnight with Tom and we were looking up at all the stars. Now, I don't know much about astronomy but it really looked to us like we saw the big dipper... except that it was upside down and in a corner of the sky. If that's really the case and we're not astronomical idiots, it is my first glimpse into a completely foreign sky, a truly different perspective on the earth. It was quite something... The beach was almost entirely empty at that point except for a few lanterns lighting up a few bars and some roving wild dogs exploring the beach who kept running up between Tom and I, appearing in the dark. Thailand is a place lived much nearer to the creatures of the world than my sanitised apartment in Dublin. You are hardly ever without company of some sort, whether it be insect or amphibian. At first, it's a little disconcerting, being used to a creature-free life but after a while, it becomes kind of great. There are geckos large and small absolutely everywhere and in every colour and size. The biggest ones, hide in the rafters and croak like throaty frogs and happily, they all eat bugs. There are frogs and toads, albino and spotted, hiding behind the bathroom mirror and in the grass. There are birds making all sorts of sounds in the trees that seem to big and impressive for bird-song. There are (unfortunately) cockroaches the size of my palm skittering about at sunset and (yikes) crawling up the bathroom pipes in our first bungalow. There are cats and dogs everywhere (looking decrepit and half-dead in Bangkok but vibrant and playful on the islands.) Roosters and geese appear where you least expect them, on city streets and inside doorways of houses. There are butterflies that seem to glide and then fall and then glide again in a least graceful manner. And then there's the beach... Hermit crabs of all sizes in all types of Crab accomodation. Giant Squid, Puffer-fish, sand crabs and shellfish. It's Life with a capital L and it surrounds you and envelops you. Geckos eating ants and ants eating geckos, Crabs eating squid and birds eating crabs. At first it makes you a little squeamish, even as you try to pretend that it's perfectly grand but after a few days, it's wonderful because everywhere you go, you discover something new (or it discovers you.) I could definitely get used to this (cockroaches excepted of course!)

Well my time has run out once again. I apologize if these blog entries read like a diary. It's hard to organise my thoughts and coherently spit back out all of my experiences here while I'm racing the clock and the slow internet connections (and roosters and thai babies and sunstroke...haha.)

Back to the beach!