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| Overall, the neighborhood in which we’re living has newer single family homes. However, the area contains a number of modest living and working environments such as this we pass on the way to our villa. |
It’s hard not to watch the news on TV when we have English speaking news here in Phuket. From terrorism to plane crashes to political hoopla, the negative keeps coming and coming.
One might think it’s easy to isolate ourselves from world affairs while living outside of our home country. But, even without TVs in many countries, we can’t get away from it when we have several news apps on our laptops that keep popping up the latest “horror of the day, week or month.”
One might also think, “shut it off” and live our lives of travel embracing our new surroundings from location to location. However, we weren’t oblivious back “then” (while living in the US) and we aren’t oblivious “now.”
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| Over the past few years, we’ve lived in close proximity to chickens and crowing roosters. Now, as we prepare today’s post, we can hear roosters crowing, a sound we’ve come to ignore, even while sleeping. The breed of chickens in Thailand is different than we’ve seen in the past. |
In other words, one can “run but can’t hide” from the realities facing our world from one corner of the world to another. We won’t get into all the issues here and now. Most of our readers are savvy, not only reading our daily drivel, but also paying close attention to what’s happening in their homeland and throughout the world. They know. We all know.
Over these past years we’ve raved about Emirates Airlines safety record and yet yesterday they had a frightening crash luckily handled by competent pilots saving the lives of 300 passengers but sadly with the loss of life of one firefighter. Nothing ever stays the same. Do we think twice about traveling on Emirates in the future?
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| Driving down the dirt road from our villa toward the highway. |
Before we lock in any flights we check airline safety records at sites such as this and others. No matter how often we check and how safe a record may be for any given airline, it only takes one disaster to end the lives of hundreds of passengers. \There’s no guarantee.
It’s the same with terrorism. No place is exempt from an a devastating occurrence. Sure, many parts of the world aren’t safe at any time. But, those countries, cities, and small towns which may seem safe become just as vulnerable after a single incident.
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| Once on the main highway, the roads are good with relatively light traffic during most times of the day. |
One cannot predict where that may be although some locations are glaringly obvious at this time, those that we see on the news over and over again as more and more lives are lost.
Can we avoid visiting those vulnerable locations? We try. Then again, we hear of natural disasters over which no one can predict the devastation often destroying hundreds of lives, families and homes. We have no means of determining where those locations may be.
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| Many old Thai style buildings line the highway. |
Now, living on the island of Phuket, we’re remain aware of the 2004 tsunami, where hundreds of thousands of lives were lost in 14 countries as indicated below from this site:
“The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on 26 December with the epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The shock had a moment magnitude of 9.1–9.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The undersea megathrust earthquake was caused when the Indian Plate was subducted by the Burma Plate and triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing 230,000 people in 14 countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 metres (100 ft) high. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history. Indonesia was the hardest-hit country, followed by Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.”
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| Its been a full week since we grocery shopped. As soon as we upload today’s post, we’ll be heading back to this Costco-like store for the next week’s groceries. |
At the time on US and world news, we heard more about the loss of life in Phuket, Thailand which remained in our minds all these years, than we did about the other 13 countries. And yet, in four weeks from today, we head back to Indonesia to live directly on the ocean, a matter of meters from the sea to the veranda, a country that also fell prey to loss of thousands of lives. Do we worry?
We ask ourselves the question, “If we lived in a senior community in seemingly safe Arizona or Florida in the USA where many seniors move to escape cold weather, would we be any safer?”
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| Buddhism is the primary religion in Thailand. Many shrines such as this are found at local businesses such as this at a gas station. |
The answer is clear. No country, no state, no city and no small town or village in the world is safe. For us, the real question becomes, “Do we allow ourselves to be filled with fear and worry while living amid the most exciting and interesting times of our lives?”
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| Lots of exposed power lines along the highway in Phuket. We’ve been concerned we’d lose power here and have experienced a few surges but, so far so good. |
We can allow the “bad news” orientated media to rule the quality of our lives or, we can chose to find fulfillment and joy within the framework of the lives we’ve chosen for ourselves. We opt for the later.
As we look to the future and the countries we plan to visit, we consider many factors. Like Life itself, there’s no guarantee. We chose to live in the moment and for now, the moment is looking good.
May all of your moments look good as well.
Photo from one year ago today, August 4, 2015:
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| St. Mary’s by the Sea in Port Douglas was originally a Catholic church, is now multi-denominational performing services for a variety religions. For more details, please click here. |
