Thursday December 23, 2021
Planning and a Last Visit to the Beach

I am planning my upcoming month-long yoga-inspired visit to Chiang Mai, Thailand. Being that this is coming on the what we hope are the waning days of the global COVID-19 pandemic, there are several additional rules to follow, tests to get, and a one-day quarantine in an approved hotel in Bangkok which includes a RT-PCR test. If the test is negative for COVID-19, I’ll be free to travel to Chiang Mai. I’ll be leaving from Los Angeles late night Christmas Eve to Bangkok via Hong Kong. I’ll only be in Bangkok for only one day, staying in the Novotel hotel at Suvarnabhumi airport (Bangkok’s main airport). While I have several favorite places I like to see in Bangkok (Wat Arun, Wat Pho, Wat Phra Kaew), I plan to skip visiting those sights this time, avoiding the very busy holiday time in a very large and busy city. After a day at the Novotel Suvarnabhumi hotel, I’ll be set for an hour-long flight to Chiang Mai. Once there, I’ll practice yoga daily at Wild Rose Yoga, eat good food, see friends, visit temples, update my blog when I have time, and work part-time.

Chiang Mai is in northern Thailand, in what might be considered the foothills to a mountainous area farther north. I’ll be away from the ocean, and will miss my frequent early-morning walks at the beach, listening to the meditative sound of the waves as day breaks. So recently on one of those walks, I brought my camera to share the views. The Pacific Ocean was very peaceful today – no waves to speak of and thus there were few surfers.

I did manage to see a few waves, but they were low and not very attractive to surfers.

I shall miss the beach. Being in Chiang Mai I will not see a beach for more than a month. Later I went out to dinner with my neighbors and we stopped at Swami’s Beach in Encinitas to view the very striking sunset.

And I stretched out my arm to get a picture of me in front of the sunset at Swami’s Beach. My arm is not long so the picture is mostly my face.

This visit to Chiang Mai will be very different. I am told by my friends that Chiang Mai is very quiet. This is the high season, meaning the high tourist season, and during the pandemic, there were essentially no tourists. Thailand has only opened to country to tourism with minimal quarantine requirements November 1, so it is expected that tourism will grow very slowly. So I’ll see a very different Chiang Mai than the energetic, busy city I have experienced in the past.

Next: Traveling to Thailand