Happy New Year!

As I'm sure all of you know, the week I go to Thailand was the week of the horrific Tsunami. Luckily, we didn't go to Ko Phi Phi, which we were planning on going to when first booking this vacation. Ended up going to the beaches in Koh Samet, a remote island in the Gulf of Thailand, about 3 hours away from Bangkok.... hundreds of miles away from the Tsunami. Didn't realize how much destruction there was in the south until we got back to Bangkok on the 29th, checked the internet and saw all the news on TV. Over the next few days, we heard interesting stories from other travellers who either planned on going there, or went there and were forced to come back to the Bangkok area. We only stayed in Bangkok for a day and then headed west to the Kanchanaburi province to see the River Kwai and check out the national parks and rivers there. I had a wonderful vacation, but along with being lucky, there was a hidden sense of guilt that I had a good time when so much tragedy was happening in the same country. And even though I didn't want to come back to Korea and work, knowing that we came back safe and sound made returning a little bit easier.