Counting down now for OZ!!!!

Hello my sweet Beloved Ones,

Wow, Thailand has been a beautiful recovery place from the third world of India. But honestly I miss India a ton. I love the dirt, the craziness of it all. I mostly miss Rishekesh, the people I met there, my great yoga teacher there, CHAI, the river and chanting on it and my chai place as well as my samosa place. It's a special place India. As nice as it is to have a clean toilet here, India is in my blood and will never leave. It's a passion inside of me. I look forward to my next trip there.

Yet I'm thrilled to be going to OZ, man oh man, a dream come true. It's coming true. Only 1.5 days left and I'll be on Australian soil. I'll be being picked up by my friends fiance, as he was wisked off to England for a family illness for 5 weeks, but I'll see him later. It gives me and his fiance a chance to get to know each other. So sweet to still be able to stay with her! What I'm actually surprisingly excited about is to get a job-doing hair or in a hostel, how fun to do some work and to play. It's a good way to get to know people as well.

But on the now point, I have met with so many authentic smiles here in Thailand this time. I think my attitude has calmed and changed as I am loving the people this time around and getting their hearts again. Pretty amazing how change your mind and everyone seems different.

I left Bangkok for Ko Phangan, well to say the least, I really missed Bangkok, I love that city. As much as I love the ocean, Ko Phangan is crazy now, even in wild and wet season. Everything turned moldy within 2 days and I think I was soggy inside and out. My bones were cold. So 4 days was one day too much, but thankfully I'm here in dryer and definately warmer Phuket where I am grateful to be. I am eating at the local eateries with all Thai people for less then a dollar for a meal, catching up on a million emails I've some how lost track of, trying to find a good dentist here to get a cleaning and just getting ready for my next leg of my journey.

Yesterday was a crazy day, my 7 hour travel day with a 2 hour break to go to the dentist didn't quite happen as planned. I got the boat at 7am and then bus to Surat Thani, was supposed to leave at 11:00am for Phuket or go to the Dentist and go on the 2pm bus. It was pouring so I chose to do the dentistry in Phuket. Well the very slow, 60 year old primping bus driver was 1 1/2 hours late picking us up, looking in the mirror making sure his hair was good or running his fingers through it, stopping one other place for no reason and then taking off-in which I had plenty of time to go to the dentist, oh well. Well on the way he picked up fish for his family, went shopping, dropped his stuff off at his family and then refused to drop us any where but some where in the middle of where we didn't know where we were and wouldn't tell us! I love traveling I do, it just cracks me up. My western mind was just a little baffled by all the things he did for himself along the way, making it a 12 hour jouney instead. I was wiped out!

But I'm happy to be here, in a great little place with a real mattress and a working fan that has high medium and low and a sink and a wooden couch! Very nice for $6.00 a night. Better enjoy this now, OZ won't be so cheap. A little scary going west now, yikes! No cows in the streets-which I miss terribly! No monkies to come bug me or eat from my hands. Yet lots of things that can kill ya-box jelly fish and sharks and spiders that look like they are steel. But mostly these are rare or only in seasons.
On top of being thrilled about being thrilled about OZ, Rob, from home, and I are planning our trip for NZ as well for Dec-January and I'm just so excited to be there in nature as well. We will go to a B&B first which the photos are incredible. If you know of any great places around Christchurch let me know as that's where we will be flying into.

I am loving being here having chocolate milk-yikes! My Thailand addiction. Mango Sticky rice and now I've gone off soymilk, it makes me spit up. Not that you needed to know that but it's the truth!

Oh, my in the skin dirty feet from India are gone. The beach cleaned them and my toe nails are actually white for the first time in 6 months. It's so nice to see the actual color of my feet, so nice. I love sand and beach water!

Ok I can go on and on, you know me. But I'm doing great, life is thrilling and always changing. So tomorrow at 10pm I'll be off to Sydney, for now I'm just enjoying this town of Phuket-it's "Poo ket", not "fuck it" by the way.

Oh I did go shopping for jeans but honestly I couldn't quite fit in them properly as Thai women as gorgeous as they are don't have legs so if I didn't mind sitting I looked great in them. But since I have muscle on my legs I just couldn't get them. So I'll have to wait. But it was a great shopping experience!

I have to say the book I was reading of Osho's was talking about misery and happiness and how people don't tend to like happy people, they don't support others happiness. I found this sad, yet I have experience it as well. It's pretty crazy, us humans. And then there is the flip side, I was talking to a friend about tears and anger, how as children we are told not to cry, not to be angry and then as adults we don't know how to express these emotions so we are repressed or just fake we are ok. How do you express your feelings? For me I have always hated crying but in the last year I'm embracing it more. Thankfully as I cry all the time-well at least weekly anyway, at least it gets expressed, happy, sad, angry tears, all human.

This morning I got angry as I couldn't find my list of things to do, here I do this to save time and now it's disappeared. Well I got upset and remarkably enough within moments I was calm, felt relieved and happy. What was odd was if anyone was around I would have felt embarrassed, anger is not an ok emotions was the message inside me again-how odd, so human. Why not? Many gurus say anger is a great emotion to heal, to make things happen, to know what you want or don't want. But some how we have been told it's wrong and so is happiness. Don't be to happy as you will make others uncomfortable. The message from others is:"Don't cry as you will make me uncomfortable as I don't know what to do to make it go away or heal it so just stop it so I'm comfortable." Humans are crazy, why can't we just accept our unhappiness when it arises and embrace our happiness when it comes up and all others emotions as well? Fear I think it is, fear of being out of control of ourselves and others and of how we'll be seen.

I think I scare people with all my emotions and truths of what I'm feeling, but that's ok. As the people that stay around are great people that accept me and we can handle each others emotions! At least I have found balance in it over the years with the tears and all! It's all good learnin', as I like to say! Ok Big Squeezes!

Keep your heart open, keep dancing and listen to your soul! I am thinkin' of ya!

I'd love to hear from you! Ok I'm off, love and hugs to you, Heather