Old Lady Yoda and Mysterious 23

Where to start. Well, I guess at the beginning. The beginning of any extended travel though starts with the notion of doing it. Of committing the thought process to a certainty ahead. That, I would imagine, does not work well as a blog and so we shall start with the beginning of the Journey itself.

On the morning of the 4th December, the day of departure, I did not actually wake in my own bed. I woke early on Naomi's couch set to head into town to pick up Dave's birthday present when the shops opened at 9am. I did so and headed straight home as quickly as I could muster as we had a train to catch at 11am and I still needed to pack my things that I had organised and laid out the night before.

Admittedly, my forward planning for the day of departure was perhaps not the best but the tasks at hand passed with fluidity so that there was no lingering, no anticipation of when we were going to set off. There was simply motion from the moment I woke to the moment my father arrived to take us to the train station. A fluidity that was set to cotinue from train to tube, and from tube, to airport.

Despite what could of been perceived as a frantic start, everything did fall into place and the entire journey was a very effortless process. The tube conjured up memories of my previous travels linking them also with the awesome tube journeys I had been on in New York.

The effortlessness continued with each flight and we were soon enough on a bus from Bangkok airport headed to Bangkok train station for our journey to South Thailand and the province of Trang. We had connected en route in Amman - a fairly small airport where I almost became lost in the bizarre symmetry of it's departure lounge.

It seemed as if we were forever surrounded by the Mysterius number 23. Each segment of the journey seemed to be linked with 23, whether it was my seat, tim's seat, or our baggage claim number. This became apparent on our long sleeper train journey to Trang also where one of our sleeper compartments was again number 23.

15 hours by Train and so after arriving in Thailand on the 5th Dcember, we then arrived at one of it's southern most provincial capitals at 8am on the 6th December.

We quickly set about locating a bus in order to quickly and inexpensively journey us to one of the beach towns where we could get a boat to one of the southern islands. This beach town, well if it could be named a town, was called Pak Meng. A long stretch of 5km beautiful beach with a pier for the boats. A choice of varying priced accomodation, though gladly after being shocked by the price of the first we were approaced by who I affectionately like to call 'Old Lady Yoda'. She offered us a room for 300 baht and we glady accepted.

It was at Old Lady Yoda's where we first settled from travel and from where the beginning of our travels in Thailand were set to start. As you can see from the video, it was superb room with all that we could want after such a long stint of travel.