No place like home?

The owner of the Pineapple Guesthouse is Steve, an affable, rotund Englishman, who runs the place with his Thai wife Lek and two small children. He came over the first night we were here and introduced himself and since has been incredibly helpful, offering flawless advice on everything from fish restaurants to tours to massage shops. Karon Beach is a laid back little place, and we leave today for the much more intense environs of Patong Beach.

Decisions loom ahead, the first of which is weather to do the Peace Corps Indonesia program, which now looks like it will depart in either April or June. My guess is that an April departure is simply impossible to pull off. While a June departure is a possibility, given the fact that the book will be coming out in fall, this is a fading possibilit at best. What does that leave then? I just don't see spending more than a month in China. And then I see the possibility of going to Nepal. But (and I may have mentioned this before) I don't see anything beyond this.

This trip really is like my last Asia trip--a lot of aimless wandering that will just leave me physically and financially and spiritually exhausted at the end. I can really feel my physical condition deteriorting, but it is nore or less a canary in the coal mine for the other parts of my being. Several times I have wanted to click my heels and declare, "there's no place like home." Except that I don't hve a home.