My muse seems to have abandoned me and I keep forgetting the little details that show I am in a completely different country. Yesterday morning, for example, I was drinking a cup of coffee and looking out of my second floor balcony at the narrow street that climbed up to the guesthouse when I saw a group of mendicant monks, neatly walking uphill on a file and carrying baskets nestled in the ample folds of their rust colored habits, who were stopping at each of the houses to collect the offers of food that the homeowners had for them on small folding tables. I was too far to see exactly what the offers were, but they looked like packets of rice and colorful fruit. I imagine the monks visit this street on fixed days and times because the homeowners all seemed to be prepared and waiting at their doors.
When I mentioned the undeveloped bays I visited in the afternoon I forgot to mention that there were no people but the shores were home to several bands of monkeys. They were medium size monkeys with long tails but, alas, like all other Asian and African monkeys they do not hang on the trees by their tails (this behavior is only seen in American monkeys), instead preferring to seat on the middle of the road or forage through the forest floor.
I am now on my way north, driving out of the southern peninsula into central Thailand, where I will spend the next five days. To break the monotony of the long drive I stopped at some hot springs, where a minimal development effort had been done in terms of a few shops, a massage parlor and, after a walk of 500 m, a concrete trough with tile sides that had been made so the visitors can sit and put their feet in the hot water (similar to a Japanese onsen foot bath). Fittingly, the only other people there were two couples of Japanese tourists.
The weather has been good, with pretty substantial squalls during the late afternoon and evening, which I have enjoyed inside the dryness of my car or my comfortable hotel rooms.
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