Catching up

Time – or past time – to catch you folks up with a few more photos.

As you can tell, I’m not writing much about our stay in Thailand. Rest assured, I will put together a full report with more photos and post it in the Expedition section after we get home. Follow this page and you will know when it happens.

Our big outing the past few days was a kayak tour of Ao Thalane Bay on Monday. After paddling for a while, we stopped on a sandbar exposed by the low tide. Around the edges of the bar were hundreds of starfish, as seen in the top photo.

And this is Leah, looking cool in the front of the kayak, while we paddled from the starfish to a canyon into the karst island.

I snapped this photo while we were walking toward town.

You all remember the great Sumatra–Andaman earthquake and tsunami that occurred Dec. 26, 2004, resulting in one of the greatest natural disasters in history.

More than 230,000 people died, more than half of them in Indonesia. Thailand experienced more than 8,000 deaths. In the province of Krabi, where we are, there were 476 confirmed deaths but another 890 were missing.

So, it’s something we’re aware of. You’ll notice this sign designates 500 meters. That’s the emergency gathering place. It’s probably 50 yards from our friends’ house where we’re staying and at the same elevation.

Remember us climbing to the top of the Tiger Temple last week? We returned to the temple to explore the caves area. This photo shows Leah dwarfed by the entry into one of the caves. It rained on us much of the way, but we had a ball.

We met a couple of young men from London who passed us on the trail. In a few minutes, they returned and asked if they could take a photo with me. It seems I resemble the father of one of them. We took a goofy photo and they promised to send me a copy. We’ll see.

My favorite image, though the photo quality is poor, is of a monk who was laundering saffron-colored robes. Even monks have chores to do.

And we’ll finish with this shot for my Texas Aggie friends.

We were walking in front of a series of shops on the beach road and this cap caught my eye. I wonder how many people who live here even know what it stands for.

More later.