This is about remoras and it is about a conundrum, but it’s not about remoras having a conundrum and it’s also not about flying spaghetti monster‘s.
I have a conundrum but I want to talk about the remoras first. Just five days ago, most of the way through my morning swim on the beach, I felt something like a jellyfish bumping up against me but sticking longer than jellyfish do and no sting. Then I felt a little ticklish where they were. I looked down and saw what looked like a foot-long remora which tends to stick around whale sharks, sharks and other large fish to clean off the algae and bacteria on the skin or scales. Immediately I was reminded of the fish in the waterfall area last month, the ones cleaning your feet. These remoras, if that’s really what they were, I haven’t looked them up yet, just seemed to find different places on my body they needed to clean. This was before I took a shower so who knows what they found for breakfast. I never had this experience in many thousands of hours in the ocean. It was kind of fun and refreshing. Several days later they were around me again and have been there almost every day since. I also noticed there were fewer beach fishing nets strung out and so maybe these were the tiny fish these fishermen were trying to capture for some food reasons. I can’t imagine them being much except bones.
Now for the conundrum. Have you ever been in a situation where you were in a place for a long period of time and it started to grow on you so you felt like it was not a place you were going to leave? I’m not asking if it was a feeling of want or need. It’s the kind of feeling where you just don’t expect to be going anywhere because you feel as though you are one with the surroundings and the furniture, if there is furniture (not in the case of outdoorsers of course). Enjoy my new vocabulary.
What started the whole chain of events was what I think is a hernia and I hope it’s nothing worse. I don’t think going to a local country hospital is the right thing to do. So the best thing to do is to go to Bangkok and try one of the well-known hospitals up there to get checked out. Because I haven’t been back to Japan to do some bureaucratic stuff my health insurance will expire the end of July. And there’s a good chance I won’t be able to get back before the end of July so it just seems best to get things checked out now.
But I have been stuck in Paradise due to the COVID-19 crisis, never really expecting to be here more than a month but it’s been more than two months now. By saying that I’m not suggesting I feel it’s time to go because I feel like part of the furniture. I feel like part of the beach, part of the ocean and pretty settled. I don’t feel a real need to leave except I do feel it may be growing on me too much and I do have visa restrictions so it’s about time to skedaddle.
My old friend whom I started Bubbles with (my scuba diving training business in Phuket Thailand) lives in Bangkok in a large house with a pool. He works for the UN and so has a very stable work and living situation which keeps him there for a long period of time. So I will go up and stay with him and get a few health things checked out at some good hospitals while doing my best to avoid any viruses.
So the remoras I explained and the conundrum is solved, I just bought a flight ticket for Friday from Surat Thani to Bangkok. So life goes on, travels continue and new things Lie ahead.