Departure

Newsflash: I finally got out of Chiang Mai, no really... Am back in Bangkok now. Flew in last night (I know flying's sort of cheating, but sod it, I'd already done the route once and didn't fancy a smelly 12-hour coach journey back with a bunch of blokes from Bromley), I'd forgotten how much the place smells! It's all I can do to hang onto my yellow curry breakfast (I grant you that may have been asking for trouble). Never mind, I'm out again tonight - getting a 6pm bus and ferry combo to the shimmering south. Ko Tao, supposed to be as beautiful as Samui without quite so many tourists. Hope so.
Said goodbye to Aor last night at the airport; heartstrings tugged, but we both always knew we didn't have long. Summer's lease and all that. My last night in Chiang Mai we went to see the Yee Peng floating lantern ceremony - about 30 minutes' drive out of town: a massive crowd, all with paper lanterns, lit and allowed to float away simultaneously. Within a minute, as the highest lanterns got caught by airstreams, you got a a sort of wheeling effect produced: felt as if we were at the centre of a miniature Milky Way, thousands of tiny dots of light circling us in the black above. Really stunning; Aor's photos came out better than mine, hopefully I'll be able to put them on Ringo. There's a slim chance she might get a position in Melbourne early next year but it's a long shot and we're not assuming anything, so in all likelihood that was that. What we had, brief as it was, was a gift and I'm grateful. But onward, ever onward...