Day 7 of my first vacation in 3.5 years

The trail or as I have considered much of it so far "the trial," continues in Thailand where I am on my first vacation in a long time. I don't generally go anywhere because I don't like to leave my dog alone or with anyone else but due to one of my oldest friends visiting from New Zealand combined with some visa manipulation of dates I decided to take this trip. I wish I could say that it has been awesome but that for the most part, has not been the case. I'm afraid that I am a bit too fussy to really enjoy myself the way that I used to be able to and while things have been ok, I have a difficult time enjoying myself when I am spending what I consider to be too much money and mostly just doing things that I could be doing if I were back home with my dog.

Today was better than most though and I did something that I have never done before in my life and visited a quiet spa in the middle of nowhere. It is a bit strange that I have never done this before since I have lived in areas of South East Asia that specialize in exactly this for the past near 20-years.

The spa is called "Secret Garden" and it immediately appealed to me. It was quiet, had some relaxing music playing at a low volume and there was plenty of nature surrounding it. My friend that I am visiting had been here before so he was familiar with the location and the process and that made things a lot easier. At first I actually told him that I didn't want to go but he insisted and it's a good thing he did because I really liked it.

The main feature here is the sauna and I didn't take a picture of the interior because my piece of crap phone probably would have shorted out with all the steam going on. There is an herbal steam going on in there and it can get a bit difficult to hang out in there because you really start to sweat. It is meant to be good for you and I have no idea if that is true or not, but it did feel nice especially because of the cold dip pool they have outside.

Everyone in our crew would hang out in the sauna for as long as they could stand it - which for me was just around 3 minutes at at time or so - and then walk out here to the cold dip pool which was actually quite shocking when you get in. I believe there is something to the purported health benefits of going from hot to cold to hot to cold because they use it in sports therapy. I did about 3 rounds of this before it was kind of agreed by everyone that it was time to get a beer.

The grounds were quite lovely and the thing I enjoyed about it the most was the fact that it was dead quiet. This is something I don't get a great deal of in my life and most of this is because of the fact that I chose to live in busier areas. It is my own fault because I don't like to be very far from shopping and restaurants and at least in Vietnam and Thailand, these two things just don't go together. Either you are going to have access to restaurants or you are going to have quiet, never both.

This pond had been stocked with carp and gigantic catfish and I turned into a giddy little kid when I found out they have fish food for you to buy and throw in there so you can see the giant fish climb all over one another trying to get some more food. I felt bad for the little fish and threw the food beyond the giant catfish so that everyone could get something to eat. Based on the amount of empty fish food bottles that they had on the sidelines, I would imagine that there are zero underfed fish in this pond.

They had a couple of singing birds in cages at the spa and while I don't like the entire idea behind keeping birds in cages, it was kind of nice to see these guys up close. While I was watching this bird in the cage sing, another untrapped bird crashed into the window and landed on this bench nearby.

So I guess the bird in the cage is still on top of his or her game, because the song he/she was singing worked. Hopefully this little guy will recover from his wounds of smashing into the glass window.

The Secret Garden was a pretty wonderful experience and I am glad that my buddy made me go and do it. I think I need to be a bit more relaxed about what I do on this trip and stop being such a pain in the ass about what I will and will not do. So I am just going to say "yes" to everything that is suggested to me from this point forward provided it doesn't involve something strange like illegal drugs.

I got an update from the people that are looking after Nadi saying that she has kind of assumed a leadership role in the house and in particular to the male half of the couple that is looking after her. She has become quite protective of him and will actually chase the other dogs off if they try to get affection from him first. This comes from the fact that he smokes and when he does he goes outside and Nadi joins him every single time.

There's my ferocious guard puppy, by his feet making sure no other critters can get near him while he is out there. I was really happy to hear that she is not only not getting picked on by the other dogs but has basically become the boss of the house. You could do worse than having Nadi as a boss because all she really wants to do is have a rest and be left alone. Give her this and she will do the same for you.

It looks like tomorrow might be awash with us just staying at home because one of our crew has come down with some sort of stomach bug and this is really odd because out of all of us, he has lived in this part of the world the longest. Hopefully he recovers fast so we can head down to the beach or something.