Homeward bound

At 10:35 pm this friday, I board the plane to go back to the US for seven weeks. Am having mixed feelings about this at the moment - am looking forward to seeing everyone again and the new editions, such as Miss Elizabeth Storhaug, and to drink Wisconsin Beer and baseball and all of that, but I'm going to miss Thailand, and I'm not going to have much money - the Baht goes alot farther here than it does there. So I'm probably going to just spend a lot of time sitting around and being broke. And so it goes...
Today is an election day in Thailand. In the past two months or so, there have been massive protests calling for the resignation of Dr. Thaksin Shinawatra, who was Thailand's prime minister since 2001. He called snap elections for April 2 (Thailand has a parliamentary system much like the UK, so they can have elections at any time.) All the opposition parties boycotted the election, saying that Thaksin had an unfair advantage, so those opposed to him just voted "none of the above" (much like in 2004, those of us opposed to Bush voted for Kerry, but we could have just as well voted "none of the above".) Thaksin vowed that he would not accept the post of Prime Minister if his party got less than 50% of the vote. They did get a little more than that, but they had such a poor showing in Bangkok and all points south of it that, so after conferring with the king, Thaksin decided to not accept the post. So today is the other election that is not being boycotted. I posted a photo of one of the election signs, which are EVERYWHERE in the city.
The time spent on Ko Phangan was excellent - the bungalow we stayed at required us to ride in the back of a little pickup for an hour over little dirt roads going up and down over mountains and through rather thick jungle. So this place was remote - only had electricity for 8 hours per day or so, i think, and no cell phone signal. We spent most of the day floating in the water or sitting on our deck and reading. See the photos below.
Songran casualties were down this year. Only 393 deaths and just under 5000 injured in the water festival. Yikes!
Other than that, I hope I can see a lot of you when I return. Hail progress!