No photo today, alas!

No photo, because we're spending most of the day going from airport to airport, and plus my camera isn't charged at the moment.

This morning I finished my stay in Phuket with a Thai massage. I'd had one in Wollongong a while back that had been most unpleasantly painful, but I figured I'd see what the country of origin had to offer. A nice woman came to our room to give me the massage. We conversed awkwardly but cordially as she worked. She was very thoughtful about lightening up when her vigor was more than I wanted, and very perceptive about pointing out places where I had chronic injury issues. She also was definitely choosing specific meridians to poke at, and, indeed, she informed me that she'd made a study of such things. ("Chi" is a word that carries over into both Thai and English.) At the end of the massage, I actually did feel invigorated and much better balanced. Worth every cent! I'm hoping it makes the l-o-n-g overnight flight to London more bearable than the flight from Sydney to Bangkok, which was a bit of an ordeal on my back.

Phuket's airport is a very unassuming one. Security, while definitely present and competent, is nowhere near as tense as that at larger airports. The food outlets are modest and reasonably priced. A relatively relaxed place to wait for the flight back to Bangkok (and thence to London).

I definitely want to come back to Thailand for a longer stay (maybe in a time of year when there's less rain*). There's not only the adventure of getting to know a new (and very foreign) place, but many things about Thailand itself are attractive and fascinating. I'll have to keep my eyes and ears open for innovative ways (read: grants, conference funding, someone else's money) of getting back here.

*We just managed to time our visit to Phuket for the start of the monsoon. While that meant it wasn't as horribly hot as it had been, according to our friends, it was revoltingly humid. Swimming at the beach was not an option, partly because ferocious rips develop once the monsoon starts, and partly because the water at every beach we saw was a very dubious brown from runoff. Whether this was merely topsoil from overdevelopment or a hideous mixture of topsoil with other things, we did not pause to debate. Just ew, that's all.