We have moved on from India and met our friend Hazel in Bangkok. We shifted to Tratt and then a boat to Koh Kood: a tiny island in rainy season with dense, tropical forest and waterfalls. And boy did the water fall. Here is a post about a rain that came and the wonderfulness of Collette.

A majestic, granite sky brews out at sea.  We are awe-struck from the bay.  Dense. Towering. Moody. Cumulonimbus taking charge. Rolling, cotton cumulus becoming alloy with their giant masters. Mackerel altocumulus visible through the interstices of fragmented, smudged cirrus and cirrostratus. All the clouds here: swirling into one enveloping and living Turner masterpiece. Now.

As if dusted with snow, the far, sliding, slate sea and the horizon are losing themselves to the watery haze as the storm nears. Waves pick up and rush with more vigour to the now darkening bay.   The stirred sand has coloured the shallow water to smoky oyster where the frothy waves scramble with their last breaths to land. The breaking drum roll of approaching thunder, the ceaseless, rumbling waves and the growing barrage of wind through and around it all: the sounds indistinguishable from each other as one symphonic expression of nature at it’s boisterous best.

The lush, protective, deep-green shoulders of the bay wrestle with the wind and rain like some great timeless love-hate saga. Palm trees and dangling lanterns excite themselves on the shore in anticipation of the visiting king. All land animals and insects hide. Air lifts. He’s here.

We throw off our clothes and run towards the sea. Inexorable rain to the soul. Cleansing. Underfoot the sodden, eggshell sand of a billion years and a trillion dramas is un-phased by the magnificence unfolding. As we bless ourselves for the first time, headlong into the warmth of the sea we are struck with all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be. The most glorious of mysteries. Immensity. Eternity.

As we laugh and play and float like specs of dust on a cosmic shore, there are no words of comprehension.  So we stop.

Eventually, Collette pipes, “I bet that hut over there would save us a few hundred Baht.”

Whilst one can get carried away in an adventure, it truly pays to have a Collette and her TrailWallet App. She’s always on it.

Thank you very much for reading.

Pete x x x