February 2005 110th Issue

People in Hua Hin

Maria retreats at The Spa

Russian tennis champion, Maria Sharapova, recently made her personal visit to Hilton Hua Hin Resort & Spa to treat herself with spa treatments at The Spa. She was welcomed by Mr. Dirk De Cuyper, General Manager.

Best Resort for Korean Honeymooners

Ministry of Culture & Tourism in Korea awarded Hilton Hua Hin Resort & Spa as the best resort with comfortable Suite Rooms preferred by Korean honeymooners. Mr. Seong - Hoon Lee, President of Kaya Tour Co., Ltd. (left) was the representative to present the award to Mr. Dirk De Cuyper (right), General Manager of the resort.

The beachfront Hilton Hua Hin Resort & Spa has 296 newly renovated rooms and suites with their own private balconies overlooking the ocean

with a spectacular view of beaches that literally stretch for miles. The Thai lifestyle is reflected in the contemporary and casual design of the rooms. The resort has secluded gardens and a large lagoon- shaped swimming pool area with water slide. The Spa offers a full range of professional treatments, including traditional Thai massage.

Hua Hin in the Record Books

Hua Hin's Anantara Hotel became the location where the world's largest group massage was held. This record will soon be published in the Guinness Book of Records.

105 senior managers and consultants from UK based The Virgin Cosmetics Co. reserved the massage an the resort's lawn.

200 local massagers hold the Public Health Ministry training certificate which ensures quality service to save the growing demand for massage in the area.

Hua Hin attracted 2 million visitors last year with 300,000 of them foreigners.

Classic Scooters

Over 40 classic and vintage scooters from Hua Hin, Pranburi, and Petchburi, held a procession driving from Golden Place and ending up at the Sofitel via all the main streets of the town, turning not only the heads of visiting tourists but many local people. The idea was to incourage people to save power. More info can be found in the Events section of the Hua Hin Message board: http://huahinafterdark.com/forum/

Valentines Day: A short (but long) history

The history of Valentine's Day -- and its patron saint -- is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. Some experts state that it originated from St. Valentine, a Roman who was martyred for refusing to give up Christianity. Other aspects of the story say that Saint Valentine served as a priest at the temple during the reign of Emperor Claudius. Claudius then had Valentine jailed for defying him. The Christian church appears to have taken the date of his death, 14 th February, and decided to celebrate Valentine's feast day in an effort to ‘christianize' celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival.

Gradually, February 14 became the date for exchanging love messages and St. Valentine became the patron saint of lovers. The date was marked by sending poems and simple gifts such as flowers. There was often a social gathering or a ball.

There seems to be no doubt that Valentine's Day started in the time of the Roman Empire , and the most widely accepted version follows. In ancient Rome , February 14th was a holiday to honor Juno. Juno was the Queen of the Roman Gods and Goddesses. The Romans also knew her as the Goddess of women and marriage. The following day, February 15th, began the Feast of Lupercalia.

The lives of young boys and girls were strictly separate. However, one of the customs of the young people was name drawing. On the eve of the festival of Lupercalia the names of Roman girls were written on slips of paper and placed into jars. Each young man would draw a girl's name from the jar and would then be partners for the duration of the festival with the girl whom he chose. Sometimes the pairing of the children lasted an entire year, and often, they would fall in love and would later marry.

Under the rule of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in many bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius the Cruel was having a difficult time getting soldiers to join his military leagues. He believed that the reason was that roman men did not want to leave their loves or families. As a result, Claudius cancelled all marriages and engagements in Rome . The good Saint Valentine was a priest at Rome in the days of Claudius II. Valentine and Saint Marius, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death. Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured. He suffered martyrdom on the 14th day of February, about the year 270.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first 'valentine' greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl -- who may have been his jailor's daughter -- who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed 'From your Valentine,' an expression that is still in use today.

In ancient Rome , February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus , the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus . To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome , were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. The boys then sliced the goat's hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goathide strips. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine's Day around 498 A.D. The Roman 'lottery' system for romantic pairing was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. Later, during the Middle Ages , it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds' mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of February -- Valentine's Day -- should be a day for romance.

The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt . The greeting, which was written in 1415, is part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London , England . Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois .

In Great Britain , Valentine's Day began to be popularly celebrated around the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth century, it was common for friends and lovers in all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes. By the end of the century, printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one's feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine's Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began to sell the first mass-produced valentines in America .

Approximately 85 percent of all valentines are reported as purchased by women. In addition to the United States , Valentine's Day is celebrated in Canada , Mexico , the United Kingdom , France , Australia and acknowledged in many more, including Thailand . Nowadays whether this is because of a desire to be romantic or a commercially prompted celebration does not take away from the history that lies behind the flowers and greetings cards.

Hundreds of years ago in England , many children dressed up as adults on Valentine's Day. They went singing from home to home. One verse they sang was:

Good morning to you, valentine;

Curl your locks as I do mine---

Two before and three behind.

Good morning to you, valentine.

In Wales wooden love spoons were carved and given as gifts on February 14th. Hearts, keys and keyholes were favorite decorations on the spoons. The decoration meant, "You unlock my heart!"

In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means that it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.

In some countries, a young woman may receive a gift of clothing from a young man. If she keeps the gift, it means she will marry him.

Some people used to believe that if a woman saw a robin flying overhead on Valentine's Day, it meant she would marry a sailor. If she saw a sparrow, she would marry a poor man and be very happy. If she saw a goldfinch, she would marry a millionaire.

A love seat is a wide chair. It was first made to seat one woman and her wide dress. Later, the love seat or courting seat had two sections, often in an S-shape. In this way, a couple could sit together -- but not too closely!

Think of five or six names of boys or girls you might marry, As you twist the stem of an apple, recite the names until the stem comes off. You will marry the person whose name you were saying when the stem fell off.

Pick a dandelion that has gone to seed. Take a deep breath and blow the seeds into the wind. Count the seeds that remain on the stem. That is the number of children you will have.

Finally discovered: Why women outlive men

One reason why women live longer than men could be that they have stronger hearts, a study suggests.

Researchers found men's hearts lose up to a quarter of their pumping power between the ages of 18 and 70.

Women's hearts, in contrast, stay strong well into old age. As a result, the heart of a healthy 70-year-old woman performs almost as well as it did when she was 20.

Professor David Goldspink, who led the research at Liverpool John Moores University , said: "This dramatic gender difference might just explain why women live longer than men."

Fastest-growing group

On average, British women's life spans are about five years longer than men's. Women over the age of 60 are now the fastest-growing group in today's society.

Prof Goldspink's team spent two years studying ageing in more than 250 healthy men and women between the ages of 18 and 80.

Selecting only healthy individuals allowed the scientists to look at the ageing process without their findings being distorted by the effects of disease.

Prof Goldspink said: "By simultaneously studying both men and women, we have been able to look for either similarities or differences between the two sexes as they get older. We now have a much clearer holistic picture of changes that take place in the human body throughout our life cycle."

He stressed it was not all bad news for men. They could improve the health of their hearts simply by taking more regular exercise.

In a related study, Prof Goldspink found the hearts of veteran male athletes aged 50 to 70 were as strong as those of inactive 20-year-old male university students.

"The 20-25% loss of power in the ageing male heart can be prevented or slowed down by engaging in regular aerobic exercise," he said.

"If men work at it, they can preserve the power and performance of their ageing hearts."

Public health campaign

Women also needed to take regular exercise to prevent their leg muscles becoming smaller and weaker as they got older, he said.

Prof Goldspink is calling for a major public campaign to inform people about how much and what kind of exercise they should undertake to keep themselves healthy as they get older.

He said: "If the Government white paper 'Choosing Health' is to be effective, the public need to receive better information and advice that is based on strong scientific evidence.

"Once we can tell them precisely what health benefits they can gain in response to different levels of physical activity, they can then make a realistic and informed choice for themselves."

Each volunteer taking part in the research underwent five hours of tests focusing on body composition, blood pressure and heart performance.

The study also found large arteries became stiffer and less elastic with age, causing blood pressure to increase both at rest and during exercise.

Blood flow to the muscles and skin of limbs also progressively decreased, the researchers found.

This occurred earlier in men, but women soon caught up after the menopause.

Asian news and current affairs

Thailand to turn tragedy around

By David Fullbrook

Thailand 's economy is likely to shrug off the deadly Andaman Sea tsunami, despite tourism and fishing hit hard along the southwest coast. Indeed the tsunami's destruction offers a chance, which the government says it will seize, to rebuild a new tourism that preserves the environment's beauty and bounty for generations to come.

Though the tsunami was undeniably an immense human tragedy, the effects it will have on Thailand 's diverse economy are negligible. Even tourism, 12 million visitors in 2004 accounting for 6% of the economy, which vies with agriculture as Thailand 's biggest industry, may not suffer as much as some fear.

"It would be quite localized. I don't think it's going to scare tourists away. Even Bali came back after a couple of years, and that [the 2002 terrorist bombing that killed 202 people] wasn't a once-in-a-century natural event," said David Cohen, Action Economics' Asian economic forecasting director.

Many tourists, especially those familiar with the country or confident traveling overseas, are moving to the Gulf of Thailand 's Samui and Chang islands or heading for the northern mountains. Ironically the disaster could be just what Chang's promoters need.

Mountainous Chang remains relatively unspoiled and thickly forested. Thailand's second-largest island, lying in an archipelago next to Cambodia, has seen resorts proliferate since Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's government "discovered it", heralding it as a "second Phuket" and leaving environmentalists aghast.

Hotels on Samui and in Bangkok and Chiang Mai in the north are booked solid. Airline seats or train tickets are hard to come by on northern services. Of course, that is partly attributable to the New Year's break.

"Anecdotally, some travel agencies suggest the cancellations are much less than believed. People are switching out of plans to visit Phuket to [go to] other places. The potential impact on tourism could more modest," said Lian Chia-Liang, JP Morgan's Thailand economist.

Though many hoteliers and travel merchants are glum, predicting rack and ruin, they are, whether by ignorance or design, overstating the situation. This is no Bali bombing nor an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) with long-term consequences, but a freak one-off.

It should be no surprise if some play up their woes, hoping to draw government compensation or access to the US$750 million soft-loan package the Finance Ministry is putting together for Thai-owned businesses in the six Andaman coastal provinces - Phuket, Phang Nga, Krabi, Ranong, Trang and Satun.

During the late 1990s financial depression, it was not uncommon for profitable businesses or their wealthy owners to cease paying loans, claiming hard times. These strategic non-performing loans compounded local banks' bad-loan portfolios.

A bigger problem comes from competing destinations such as Bali and Vietnam stepping up promotions that target tourists who were booked for Thailand but have been scared off by television coverage of corpse-strewn beaches and warnings of disease.

And so the wheel turns. Ironically, it is Thailand 's safe image that has lured many visitors over the last few years, as terrorism, political upheaval and typhoon damage tarnished neighbors Indonesia and the Philippines .

Of course, the view from the beaches lining the Andaman Sea differs starkly. Pundits forecast a 10 billion baht ($256 million) hole in tourism receipts over the coming months. Tourism is a big earner for the local economies, pulling in almost 80 billion baht ($2 billion) in 2003, around 1.2% of gross domestic product. This is not about to evaporate, much will simply shift elsewhere in Thailand .

A significant slice of that money flows straight into the hands of Bangkok tycoons and their foreign partners, bypassing the local economy. Nevertheless, thousands of maids, receptionists, masseuses and guides, many of them migrants from poorer provinces, face tough times ahead with hundreds of hotels and resorts ruined.

Hotels and guest houses lie smashed along Phuket's Patong beach, on the hard-hit west coast. The same is true in overdeveloped Phi Phi Island , where the Tourism Authority of Thailand claims 4,000 rooms are a wreck. Worst of all is up-and-coming Khao Lak beach on Phang Nga's rugged and isolated coast, favored by the wealthy as an escape from Phuket's hoi polloi, with 6,000-10,000 rooms, some only just completed - now ravaged.

One source, driving along the coast from Phuket to Khao Lak, reports utter devastation. Still, with at least some if not many hotels in these sought-after locations encroaching on national parks, the opportunity presents itself to roll-back such ill-suited development. That could be a long-term plus.

Despite the pictures of devastated hotels, more escaped unscathed, only to suffer cancellations. That situation is likely to change quickly. "It's a very resilient economy. Even for the tourism business I would not be surprised if the rebound comes earlier than expected. The fears over tourism could be overdone," said Lian, JP Morgan's Thailand economist.

Green shoots are already sprouting. Not all tourists have fled, more are still arriving. Sunbathers, swimmers and hawkers are out once again on Phuket's relatively unscathed beaches.

Divers, foreigners anyway, are still coming, with operators sticking to their dive trip schedules. Thais are more wary, no doubt shaken by devastation to their homeland, plus a little superstitious about the death and bad karma they believe to be lingering in the area.

Of more serious concern is the pollution to the sea caused by the flooding of streets and buildings up to 300 meters inland. With sewage plants knocked out, fouled water is flowing from Patong's sewers into the sea.

Phuket's booming holiday home and villa market may pause for a quick breath as buyers take a harder look at new locations. They will see however that few - in fact only those with million-dollar plus price tags - are right on the beach. Otherwise, housing developments are usually a little inland or up on hillsides.

Some borrowers are in dire straits, while a few will plead disaster, hoping for easier terms, which could see some loans turn sour. Commercial banks have lent about 70 billion baht in affected provinces, though it is hard to gauge just how much of this is to businesses along the coast.

Government lenders have another 10 billion or so outstanding, including a significant amount against fishing vessels. Hundreds have sunk, many with crews aboard, and 3,500 have been damaged, the Agriculture Ministry has reported.

Still, given the unsustainable plundering of the seas, a respite enforced by the tsunami will give fish stocks a chance to replenish, if their breeding grounds, often found in coral reefs, survived. Preliminary inspection by government scientists suggests most reefs did survive. However, further surveys may reveal extensive damage. Marine biologists know much about the damage caused to fragile reefs by typhoons, tempests loosely equivalent to tsunamis, but little about the effects of rare tsunami sea surges. It will take decades to recover from heavy damage.

Some farmers will face ruin as salty sea water taints fields and fresh water. However, the impact on Thailand 's agricultural output will be minor, as the stricken coastal areas contribute little compared to the intensively farmed Chao Phraya plain or northeastern plateau and northern mountains.

Economic pain, however, is not entirely limited to the Andaman coast. Vehicle production may drop 12% in 2005 to around a million units, reckons the Federation of Thai Industries. Consumers in the affected provinces may have to spend money on rebuilding their homes or businesses, not on buying vehicles.

But given that these provinces represent only a small part in the economy and they do not account for 12% of vehicle demand, this forecast looks suspect. In any case, destroyed vehicles need replacing. In the southern provinces, stricken by the tsunami, sales of pick-up trucks are rising.

Such are disaster economics. Come the second quarter, the picture will look a lot rosier. Much of the $750 million government emergency operations and clean-up budget will have flown into the economy. Repair and rebuilding spending by the government, business and individuals will be climbing too.

"Reconstruction will start to kick in around [the second quarter], giving a lift. Natural disasters have a strong impact in the short term, but over the long term less so," said Lian of JP Morgan.

Cohen, the Asian forecasting director of Action Economics, said: "There will be reconstruction spending that will bring employment."

Government economists expect a 0.3% dent in 2005 growth due to the tsunami, not much more than a statistical error. JP Morgan cut its 2005 forecast by 0.4% to 4.6%, one of the more conservative growth estimates around.

A stronger, sustainable economy, especially tourism, may result if the fine words from ministers and bureaucrats translate into action. Such policy acrobatics often require big leaps in Thailand, not without benefit accruing to one favored or well-placed clique in this society where patronage is an insidious trump card squeezing public funds for pay-offs.

There is talk of tsunami zoning along the coasts, which may aid environmental officials in their battles to oust farming and hotel encroachers from fragile national parks and other public lands.

"Our work could be made easier. Why not turn the crisis into an opportunity," Suwit Khunkitti, Natural Resources and Environment minister, told the Thai press.

"We have never had appropriate coastal planning," added Maitree Duangsawasdi, director general of the Marine and Coastal Resources Department.

Of course, that much of the encroachment has been possible due to bureaucrats' overlapping jurisdictions, opaque laws and greased palms dims the prospects for common sense and goodwill to prevail.

Of cliches and heroism

Story: DAVID SIMMONS Pictures: MARTIN YOUNG

AO NANG, Thailand - It would simply be wrong to regurgitate the old cliche and say that my life passed before my eyes as the great tsunami of 2004 pulled me into its embrace. In fact, my first thought was the fate of my camera, the intended use of which was the reason I had gotten so close to the wave in the first place. My second thought was about the skin being peeled from my body as I bounced along what, seconds before, had been a gravel road and now was a tidal estuary. And then: "Where are my shoes?"

It was to be a day of cliches, and on this life-passing-before-the-eyes thing, it is worth noting that in such situations time does tend to compress itself, and small details embed themselves in the memory, even one such as mine that seems to function less reliably with each passing year.

Another cliche is that tragedy brings out both the best and worst in people. Again, there was some evidence for this belief. When I asked a somewhat inebriated Australian if he had heard any estimates about when the power would be turned back on, he snarled, "People have died here today. I think we can put up with no electricity for a while. Understand me?" Well, excuse me.

Turns out the Aussie had been standing on the shore, not far from where I lost my shoes and around the same time, watching an acquaintance struggle to get his boat inland. It grounded on a sandbar when the wave troughed, and when it surged back up, the man was gone forever. Confronted with the fragility of life, forced to contemplate his own mortality, perhaps the Australian had understandably been annoyed by a stranger's trivial question about electricity.

Or maybe he was just a jerk.

There were, too, the usual tales of "heroism". And as always one wonders what "heroism" is - some people instinctively come to strangers' aid in an emergency, others do not. If one does what comes naturally, without thinking, is he a "hero"? Or is the person who preserves his own life first so that he can go back to his family who needs him, rather than sacrificing himself for a foreign tourist who had no genuine need to be in such peril in the first place, the real hero?

For many of the locals in Ao Nang, a small tourist resort town in Krabi province just east of the island of Phuket , the challenge had nothing to do with hauling hapless tourists out of the raging seas, but simply with fulfilling their obligation to serve the customers in the hotels, restaurants and shops. Supplies quickly became difficult to get. Staff had fled, some in fear but most to see to loved ones in less sheltered places on the coast than Ao Nang. The proprietor of Mother's House restaurant told her customers, "I do not have much food, the only beer I have is Chang. But if you buy your own outside, you are welcome to bring it here and sit at my tables."

At another small outdoor Thai restaurant, my colleagues and I - fellow Asia Times Online employee Martin Young and a mutual friend currently with The Standard newspaper in Hong Kong - waited for our order. And waited. And waited. We watched the few remaining staff of the place struggle to serve their customers. We, and nearly all the other customers, understood they were doing their best.

But not the "ugly farang" (foreigner).

You've seen people like this. They treat like dirt serving staff, shop clerks, any "inferior". They are paying for service, and they want service now, tsunami or no tsunami.

The one we saw even looked the part. She was a dowager type, with dyed red hair and too-tight jeans that seemed to squeeze even her face into a grotesquerie. Every few minutes she would march toward the kitchen to growl her complaints about the slowness, about the courses coming in the wrong order, about the quality of the food once it finally arrived. We watched with a combination of contempt for her, of sympathy for the staff, and of amusement subtly shared via nods and smiles with our Thai hosts.

One was reminded that in Thailand, unlike so many other places in these enlightened times when profit is God, that the first word in the phrase "hospitality industry" is the more important of the two. Even in the worst of times. Even with "ugly farangs". But again, one suspects these are built-in qualities, made neither better nor worse by natural disasters.

We ourselves, although on vacation on this occasion, were part of another industry that played a crucial role in this huge event. At one point, we were dining in a large seafood restaurant when a stampede of frightened tourists emptied the place. Apparently it was sparked by a rumor that there had been an aftershock and another wave was headed toward the town; folks were fleeing for high ground or the safety of a nearby hotel. We ran too - but in the opposite direction, against the stampede, toward the alleged wave, driven by the same instinct, perhaps, that had sucked us into the news business in the first place, yet at the same time able to reason that the chances of another tsunami as big as or bigger than the one we had already survived was so remote as to be not worth discussing.

Probably the main cliche marking this tragedy of the century (so far) is "life goes on". Ao Nang was not hit nearly as badly as nearby Phuket, Phi Phi island or Phang Nga, or even other centers in Krabi province itself, but the wave made an awful mess. A small river near our hotel had been thrown into reverse by the wave and vacuumed three or four dozen boats into its mouth, and they smashed themselves to pieces against a bridge. "One of them was a three-deck passenger boat," a local expat told us. "There isn't a trace of it now."

The beach road was strewn with debris. The wave had washed over it, smashing into bars and restaurants on the other side of the road and hauling the wreckage back toward the sea. Maneuvering down the road in the aftermath was the closest my Honda Accord has been to off-roading.

And yet, a mere two days later, except for the pile of boats stacked up against the bridge, which were still being removed by cranes and carted away by army tank transporters, the town was nearly spotless. The beaches and streets had been cleaned up by local government workers and volunteers, fed and otherwise encouraged by local businesses; most of the buildings had been mopped up and repaired and resupplied. The staff had returned. My two companions even went scuba diving as soon as the waters had cleared sufficiently. New Year's Eve was like any other, just about.

But that story didn't make the news. Our friends and families, in Thailand and overseas, knew only what they saw on television: an endless stream of horrifying pictures of devastation. While we calmly lolled in swimming pools or sipped drinks on the cleaned-up beach, they were hammering out frantic e-mails or fighting with jammed phone lines. A worried e-pal in the Canadian province of Ontario , surprised to get a quick reply to her plea to know about my well-being, wrote back, "I had heard the Internet was down all over Thailand ." One cannot help wondering how long it will take the Thai government's public relations people to realize how many potential tourists assume that the whole country is in ruins, at least the beach resorts, when in fact only its relatively small Andaman coast was affected.

And so, life goes on. And yet, there are all those what ifs...

Had the eons-long forces that resulted in that tectonic shift off Sumatra taken a mere day longer, we would likely have been out on a boat exploring the beautiful and soon-to-be-deadly Krabi coast, not sitting in our hotel dining room eating brunch, when the first warning came. Or, we could easily not have been in Ao Nang at all but in Phuket or Phi Phi; both had been discussed during planning for the Christmas holiday.

Life goes on, for some of us. But not for others. And the line between us is imperceptibly, arbitrarily, unpredictably small.

David Simmons is an Asia Times Online staffer based in Hua Hin , Thailand .

(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.)

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