Camaraderie

A couple of weeks ago I returned from a 2-month trip to Thailand and Japan (one month each). It sure was a lot of fun! In Tokyo I had a chance to meet many friends, visit a few izakayas (Japanese pubs) (here's a photo of one) with them, enjoy the special kind of warm Japanese camaraderie, take a few photos, and eat some good food!

日本人の友達にはどうもありがとうございました。来年一緒に飲みながら、話しましょう！

I got a lot of photos in Thailand and I will start sorting through them soon and then plan to put a few on my website. Speaking of websites, I am in the process of a total redesign of my photo website and also I will be moving it to a different hosting company. Once that is completed in the coming days I will add some new photos from Thailand and Japan.



Sometimes when I travel I go with an adventure group and other times I do it on my own. For the recent Thailand trip I didn't go with a group, but I did want to do some trekking in the northern hilltribe region so in Chiang-Mai I signed up for a 3-day trek. I was really fortunate to get in with a wonderful group of people! Good and Woot were our two Thai guides; Carlijn and Bas were from The Netherlands; Sylvain and Christina were from France; Heino was from Germany and his wife Phun was from Thailand; and Tim, Olly, and Pete were three guys from England. Each night we stayed in a different hilltribe village and had a chance to meet some of the people. This is a photo of all of us. I just can't say enough good things about our group -- or as Good called us, "Our Gang." :-) He even gave us all gang color woven bracelets the first day to wear on our wrists -- and a special thanks to Christina for tying mine on for me as we were riding in the back of an open air sawngthaew (pronounced "song-tow") . :-) A really great bunch of folks and I hope someday to meet them again somewhere!

While out on the "road" I meet some of the best people! The camaraderie of my Japanese friends, the camaraderie of a group of like-minded people trekking in the mountains of northern Thailand, the camaraderie of people I have met at backpacker hostels in Europe, and so on is one of the things that makes this kind of travel so addicting!