Brimming over

Stuffed to the brim with all things travel-

Joy and frustration and fascination, and with no room for more, we  left Thailand for one of our favorite places of all, home to family and friends, to regroup- and mainly, re-pack! Gladly, we came for the company, not the weather, (Switzerland shock froze us with a 30°C temperature drop….)

For all the ambivalent press Thailand has been getting, and for all we’ve learned about the culture behind the perennial “show a smile- any smile” front, (thanks Elio d.C. and Susan P.), there is, and always will be, room in our hearts for those Only in Thailand moments

Chiang Mai, for one, spoiled us with good vibes and great food, and even better, with generous friendships and many heart-warming moments. We felt so lucky to be living there! At the same time, some aspects of daily life were hard to take. Pollution is an issue, and traffic is an ever increasing mess. On our scooter, it often felt chaotic and unsafe, in spite of M’s expert driving….
Leaving it all behind was, as always, a grateful but wistful moment

The jungle of Kao Sok National Park

and “pastoral” Koh Sukorn Island in the Andaman Sea, were the perfect antidote to city life overload. Astonishingly undeveloped, everything (even motorcycles) seemed well under control on Koh Sukorn

And the drivers there were more given to cruising at a crawl while eating ice cream, than to weaving blindly in and out of heavy traffic onehandedly, while talking on the phone and wielding a comb! Island moves were so slow’n easy, that guess-who wanted to rent a scooter- just a few days after swearing off them FOREVER. I mean who wouldn’t want to check out Koh Sukorn

Replete with calm laissez faire and island-brand energy

we took sizzling Bangkok by storm

Only the reality of “ooops it’s still winter” in Switzerland, finally checked our elan. This won’t be for long we thought… We’ll be warming up in a matter of days we thought, down south we thought…… But that’s another story. Working title: Chasing Spring…