Leaving Khao Lak tonight

At 8:30 am this morning someone knocked on my door: it was the lovely lady from the travel agency – she had found a seat for me on a bus to Bangkok this afternoon and hand-delivered the ticket to me! She is so nice! She is actually the same who I booked the ticket with back in November. Can you believe that – she came to my room to bring me the ticket. I couldn’t believe it! – So everything is fine and I’m leaving Khao Lak at 5 pm today; I’ll arrive in Bangkok tomorrow morning and then fly from Bangkok to Auckland in the evening arriving in New Zealand on Sunday early afternoon

After checking out, I had late lunch/early dinner at Stempfer’s Cafe ( I love their bread!), and then said good-bye to everyone at Khao Lak Scuba Adventures who was there: Fabian, Abraham, Vic, Leo, etc. I’m definitely coming back to go on another liveaboard with them – maybe next year

Planning time – will be in NYC 3/30-4/7

Changing the date of my flight to New Zealand proves to be more difficult than expected as it turns out to be the end of the summer holidays in NZ. Right now I’m on the waitlist for Feb. 7 and 9. The flights earlier in the week were rather hopelessly overbooked. So for now I’ll be staying in Khao Lak for a few more days, probably until Tuesday, and then return to Bangkok from where I’ll fly to New Zealand eventually.

The news is that I booked the South American part of my round-the-world-trip yesterday with Verena. Verena is a friend of mine and also former roommate when I lived on E 97th Street with her and Reingard a few years ago. She then moved back to Austria, then back to NYC last April and as her visa/job ends on 3/31 we’ll be traveling in South America together   So here’s THE PLAN:

In February I’ll travel in New Zealand (probably the South Island first, then the North Island), in March in Fiji, where I hope to get to do more scuba diving…

I’ll be in NEW YORK CITY the week of Mon, 3/30 – Tue, 4/7   I’m really looking forward to this week in the city  – hope to see and catch up with many of you   Let me know if you’re around and have time to meet!

Verena and I will then travel in SOUTH AMERICA from 4/7 to 6/24. I’ll fly from NYC to Buenos Aires on Tue, April 7 (Verena will do the same a week earlier on 3/31) and then we’ll travel through Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia. We’ll fly back to NYC from Bogota on Wed, June 24. I’m very much looking forward to doing this part of my trip with a friend   If you have traveled in any of the above mentioned countries and have suggestions/recommendations I’m more than happy to hear from you!

After South America I’ll spend more time in NYC (I plan on attending graduation of the East Harlem High School where I taught the last 5 years), hopefully visit Jenny and her family in Florida, spend more time in NYC and then eventually head back to Austria at the end of July, which will mark the end of my trip-around-the-world.

After my round-the-world-trip ends (  ) I’ll be a little sad, but also happy as then the plan continues like this: in August move to Vienna, find an apartment, start working again, catch up with all my friends (  :)  ) and settle down; then maybe come across a nice man, maybe have children, etc. - basically do what most of you have been doing for the last few years   I know this all sounds a little far fetched at the moment and some (maybe a lot) of you think I’ll never really settle down – who knows?! Maybe I stay single, work and travel happily ever after   I honestly don’t really know where else my life will take me. But wherever it takes me I hope it’s some place good…  Well, I’ll see how it all goes – I’ll start with the apartment and the job first – in  August   But actually right now all these things are still far, far away and I simply enjoy the freedom and wonderful places and experiences this year :)

It’s been a dream of mine for a long time to travel for a whole year and see the world and the people who live in it; it took longer to realize this trip than I thought - I don’t know about you, but in my life things rarely seem to happen right away; it always takes a little while for my dreams and ideas to work out, but luckily in the end they do :)  (And the few things that haven’t worked out weren’t meant to be, I guess.)  So I appreciate and truly cherish this year of  traveling

So, this is enough. I’ll have a shower and then head out for dinner…

Take care!

Relaxing at the beach in Khao Lak

I’m back from the third liveaboard in the Similan Islands and Richelieu Rock this season – it was great, although I got a sinus infection the day we got on the boat and couldn’t do a lot of dives At first I wasn’t too happy, but then, hey, what you’re gonna do – be miserable the whole trip? Well, I decided if I can’t dive that much, it’s more of a boat trip with good food, great company, and phantastic sunsets And I did get to do a few dives after all: one at Koh Bon, one at Richelieu Rock (still my favorite dive site!), and one at the Boon Sung Wreck – my first wreck dive – loved it!!! The boat this time was pretty full: 24 divers - the usual Western European mix, one Australian, and one American who lives in Brussels. Really nice people No complaints! The crew was great, too – love them all: Vic (New Zealand), Leo (the Netherlands), Abraham (Mexico), Tik (Thailand), and Vickie (Thailand) as well as the captain, P Nok (cook), P Pa (cook’s assistant), and the other people working on the boat. I got to dive with Tik, my favorite divemaster, again and loved it! Tik rocks!

So now I’m back in Khao Lak and will spend a few days at the beach here – until I get my flight to New Zealand sorted. Changing my flight from Jan.29 to Feb.4 or 5 proves to be more difficult than expected - I’ll let you know the date as soon as I know it…

How I end up on a Thai ambulance… (I’M FINE, THOUGH!!!)

… next to a Swedish woman who’s dying. – Today’s blog entry is not fun and ends with someone dying. I’m perfectly fine and healthy, nothing happened to me, so you can skip this entry if you don’t want to read about a car accident in Khao Lak and a Swedish tourist dying. UND AUSNAHMSWEISE AUF DEUTSCH (um Missverstaendissen vorzubeugen): Es geht mir gut! Ich bin gesund und mir ist nichts passiert!

So what happened, well the day started fine: I left Ko Phi Phi at 9 am in the morning, the ferry arrived in Krabi at 10:30, the minibus left Krabi at 11:30 am and arrived in Khao Lak at 1:30 pm. I got a map of this tiny town (village), went straight to the “Khao Lak Scuba Adventure”, talked to Fabian about the scuba diving trip starting Tuesday night and then walked around looking for accomodation. That’s when I met PRISKA, a Swiss nurse who is here by herself for 2 weeks. We ended up spending the evening and the next two days together.

Accomodationwise I’m staying in a 6-bed dorm for 180 bt. I’m the only one in the dorm Quite nice after busy Ko Phi Phi.

In the evening, around 7 pm I meet up with Priska, we walk around a little bit and end up having dinner at “Weerapat’s Kitchen”, a restaurant along the main road. It’s nice, we’re enjoying the food as around 8 pm we hear a sound, but don’t pay attention to it. Suddenly people are moving and there is this guy who’s face is in a state of horror. He says about something flying through the air – maybe a dog. I think to myself – what if this happens to me, I’m traveling by myself, I would hope people would check on me. So Priska and I get up and walk towards the street, cross it and eventually see a perons lying in the grass next to the road, about 3 meters next to the road. People are looking and talking, it’s chaos. At first nobody goes near the person. I get closer, trying to talk to her – no response. I look at her and see no injuries at first, the legs and amrs seem ok. But then as I move closer I see blood coming out of her ear. Immediately, I realize that this is bad. Priska, who is a nurse and another female tourist get closer and start feeling her pulse and check whether she is breathing. Priska gives me her bag and keeps feeling her pulse. I look around: a few tourists, a lot of Thai. I start talking to them, asking whether the called a doctor. They barely speak English. I point to my ear and keep saying “doctor”, “doctor”, I try to show them that the woman seems to have severe head injuries and the ambulance needs to get here FAST. Someone says they called a doctor. Time passes. I end up going further down the street, have another Thai person call a doctor. Eventuall a PICK-UP TRUCK comes along with 4 Thai paramedics. The truck is dirty and the equipment, well, I’m not sure if you can call this equipment (for European and American standards). Priska keeps asking the Thai paramedics for gloves: they just stand there, don’t do anything and watch. I keep trying to communicate between them and Priska, but it’s not going too well. Eventually they get the stretcher out of the truck and want to just roll the woman over. Priska stops them and tells them that the should put something around her neck to stabilize her. It’s a little insane. I feel I know more than these paramedics. At the point the woman is not breathing anymore and Priska is giving her CPR trying to reanimate her. The paramedics put her in the car and get in in the front of the TRUCK. Can you believe this! This woman is dying and there is nobody in the back of the pick-up truck with her. Someone tells Priska to get in and she continues to give the woman CPR. One paramedic eventually joins her. They are starting to drive of. Priksa just looks at me and asks me to come with her. I jump in as they are already driving off. Priska asks for gloves again. I start looking, finally find them and help her put them on. They are driving like crazy and I’m holding onto the truck thinking – what just happened?! The last half hour happened so fast there was no time to think, just do. Priska and the paramedic continue to give CPR as we drive way insanely fast through the middle of the night. I look at the woman and am thinking: this woman is dying in front of me… After a while we stop in the middle of nowhere, we get out and ther is another ambulance, this one looks pretty professional. They are from the hostpital and we drove half way to meeet them. They put the woman in the other ambulance, then there is this man: he is from Sweden, her husband, probably in his 50s. He is still in shock. We tell the 2 nurses in the other ambulance that they have to take him, he is the woman’s husband. They drive off. The other ambulance (the pick-up-truck) drives off, too. Priska are somewhere in the middle of nowhere and it’s dark… We see a resort nearby and try to explain to them what happened. They don’t speak English well enough to understnad. We use the bathroom, ask them where we are and they call a taxi for us. The taxi brings us back to Khao Lak – back to our restaurant. we still have to pay for our dinner. We talk to another guy and he says they foudn the guy who caused the accident – drunk and driving too fast! We see the Thai police checking out the site where it happened. We decide do go some place else and have a drink. We talk about what happened…

What a night – our first evening in Khao Lak.