Cat returns to paradise

I boarded a bus in Bangkok at 6pm. Eight hours later, at a rest stop I decided to go to a small island called Ko Lanta (that I had never heard of before) instead of first stopping in the island tourist hub, Phuket, as originally planned. I was pleased about this journey for two reasons:
A. I was was able to manage my thoughts to stay very happy and relaxed throughout the 18 hour bus/minibus/ferry journey, while many people around me were starting to suffer because of negative thoughts they were having about things like our bus breaking down after 10 hours in a not-so-reclining  bus seat.
B. I was able to listen to what I wanted (going directly to the more remote, quiet island) and simply do what I needed to without clinging to the original plan.

Along the way, I exchanged contact information with wonderful people: an israeli girl who just spent a year in India doing yoga, was a practicing Japanese Buddhism and was going to romantically rejoin a french backpacker she met several days ago; a hippie from the mountains North Carolina; a mixed martial artist who has been training in Chiang Mai but is originally from London and sells project management software; and an American couple who were both college athletes (baseball and javelin) and are spending a year after college teaching English in Beijing.

This is the sunset I was greeted by the first evening.

 

This is a "short cut" I took while walking around the island that 10 minutes later earned me some sliced up toes that I am treating with bacitracin and lots of salt water and sand.

...and here is my bamboo bungalow with my open air bathroom...

...open air bathrooms are the best!

 

Here is Sasha (London mixed martial artist) and me before we parted ways on different ferries. Tomorrow morning at 7:30 am I am going to walk 2km to the Thai boxing club on the island and try to get a private lesson. Who knows, maybe I will want to train there for a few days?