Travelers often reflect that the days seem longer when you're abroad. Some of this is probably psychological, but I've come to think it's also literally true. When you absorb so much mental stimuli combined with the phsycial exertion of merely existing in an unfamiliar land, you've got exercise and inspiration - two ingredients of powerful souful renovation which I'm starting to think count towards sleep time. The days seem longer because they are - at the best points of the year, including now, I've been sustainably sleeping only four-to-six hours a night, something I haven't done since freshman year of college. Worthy of some reflection into the definition of "sleep."

Ah, but that's too deep to start the day without a tank of enriched oxygen, wouldn't you say? With this segue do I swing to the subject of scuba, where, after a full week of training, including 6 hours and 39 minutes breathing from a tank while swimming in the sea, I have officially completed all of the requirements of becoming an "Advanced Open Water Diver." It's been a hard week's education and play. What a short strange trip it's been. Here's some of my favorite memories:

• The two times I swam through small caverns, with hundreds (thousands) of glass fish for company.
• On a clear day of viz, gazing out at the sheer size of a staghorn coral "forest" near Raya Yai
• Dropping the weight belt, having solid grasp of breathing and buoyancy, and maneuvering as if flying through sky.
• So many eels! I love eels!
• Sharks of the harmless variety: nurse and leopard
• Looking around myself, 24 meters down, for an example of how colors bleach away at depth, then finding my dad's ring on my finger, changed from heartfelt red to a serious violet.
• Trumpetfish, unicornfish, porcupine fish, and sweet lips, just to name a few new friends.
• Seeing the funniest man of the year on the boat - a russian man who's phsyiology consisted of a perfect sphere, liberally peppered with curly white hairs on front and back, altogether set upon two modest table legs. Atop this was a head that was always smiling and saying Russian things to me. He reminded me of the toad in Wind in the Willows.

Knowing that I could carry on forever about this, I will limit for concision's sake, but in summary I have left with another new fascination for the deep. Even though I recognize that it's expensive, I can genuinely recommend scuba to anyone and everyone. It's as amazing and singular an experience as it's marketed to be.

Here in Phuket, the beauties above surface compliment those of the sea. After a day of diving, enjoying a mellow nitrogen high, you can retreat your bike to any number of sunset vistas for a fitting farewell to the day. Here I'm at about 8 degrees from the equator, close as I've ever been. The sun doesn't blind, but assumes a deep red and rapidly descends (doesn't it care about decompression sickness?!) into the ocean. On your better days, you'll watch the atmosphere peel away the sun's layers one after the next, while fisherman cast away at the rocks below. Ha! I sound like I'm making commision on this website. Full stop.

And then we flow from the beauties of nature to the complexities of mankind...

What is it about Thai society that makes them so friendly? There is a certain happy sensibility to their outlook on life, no matter how hard life could be, lacking in the difficult-to-classify burdens that I remember. Here in Phuket, they all show a great happiness to patientily speak with foreigners in English, most of them with no pretenses or ulterior motivations. And, despite the preconceptions I might have had, my experience with their health care system and how efficiently it has helped my Welsh friend has been nothing short of astounding.

Help comes not only in hospitals. I'd return from a sunset view, take a new road back and in the darkness find an insurmountable hill, stall out the bike, and from seemingly nowhere local Thais come to aid, to help me stabilize the bike and to downshift. No time for names, just a "Good Luck" and a continuing on. Nameless, wonderful encounters, for which I will remember Thailand for.

It will also be the fascinating presence of porcelain holes to shit into, proudly manufactured by multinational corporation "American Standard." It might not be the porcelain goddess you're familiar with, but you certainly know where the profits go.

But back to the Thai's, of course, no human being is happy, friendly, and fair all the time. As a visitor, I cannot help but consider Thai society as an embodiment not unlike myself - compressed into a single person, it would be a mixture of virtues and faults. American (and Australian) societies have a constant ambience of face-saving. As a visitor, you're liberated from familiar obstacles such as power/money-centrism, safety-obsessions, and moralism.

But you're also introduced to uglier sides. A symbolically wide phrase in Thai is "mai ben rai" which essentially translates to nevermind or no worries. Unfortunately, this also applies to how the roads are managed. Driving really is incredibly dangerous. Driving home down a big hill, there was a power outage and all the street lights go out, so I'm amongst 10 other bikers and three or four trucks and SUV's going 60km/h down a poorly lit hillside. At the bottom, when power is restored, all of the stoplights default to blinking reds or yellows, and a beenest chaos ensues. Even when the power's on, the streetlights are often yellow - exactly the same hue as a yellow traffic light. As a result, you'll easily run red lights, which are often hiding in different positions at each intersection. Amongst all of this, you'll have to maneuver around bikers who're driving the opposite direction on the shoulder (which is where you usually have to drive when a car passes). An amazing ratio of bikers don't have brakelights, or have lost the red plastic that covers it so they appear to be heading towards you. Drains will drop several inches, bouncing the contents of your basket across the road. You must breathe the exhaust of all combinations of diesel goodness, in a region that's already declared "very unhealthy" air quality by the Bangkok Post. So, from now on, no more making fun of my purple helmet, eh?

The inevitable effect: when you drive in Thailand, you're completely focused - you have to be. There's no doubt, driving to the dock was several times more dangerous than diving several meters underwater. With so many ways to die, I wager there aren't many accidents here caused by falling asleep or being distracted by the CD player. But that doesn't mean you can't die at any instant.

But hey, if you do survive the roads, you need only once to be in Patong on a given evening to see another dark scourge of Thailand: prostitution. That is, portly old white men holding hands with teenage Thai girls, while they recklessly pulls their... um.. selection across a main street in a hurry for their room for the night. The commodification of sex is a dark commonality here, and it has stunted communication of any depth I have had with women here. At times, it feels as though this self-fulfilling stereotype - that every Thai woman has a price, and that every farang is looking to buy - is too predominant to overcome.

Example: I'm walking down the street to a friend's hostel and ask a restaurant waitress about some directions. She tries to get me to eat at the restaurant. I say no, that I have to find my friend first. She says, "Yes, upstairs." I know for a fact that she is most certainly not "upstairs" and would not be a girl who would go "upstairs."

Or, when I played "tah-koh" with some local Thais - an easier, and more fun, version of hacki-sack, only with a bamboo ball - several shemales pull up chairs and watch, casting submissive glances or screaming "oh-la-la" whenever a miscue sends the ball their direction.

Or, when I go to an Internet cafe I'm told that it's full. I say OK and go to leave but then the teenage girl working there tells me to follow her and we go upstairs a level. She unlocks and opens a room that looks conspicuously clean and hotel-like. Inside is a computer which she turns on and offers to me, smiles awkwardly and leaves downstairs. I wondered if I was the first person to be in the room without "company." It seems every business in Patong has a room "upstairs."

All said, prostitution is a deeply embedded and fully accomodated part of Thai culture. This is not necessarily due to tourists - 75% of adult Thai men have paid for "services" and on average they "see" one twice a month. (don't you love quotation marks?)

These interactions must have twisted something inside me. It's the only reason offer for, despite how I love drinking from cocnuts and exploring the countriside solo, this morning I woke up from a dream of being happily married and settled down with a woman who resembled Meg Ryan. Yikes, out of the blue! I daresay the unconscious didn't fully retreat, either - for I suddenly do have an inkling for slow life at "home." Any psychologists out there care to unpack the evidence? Keith, this is your cue.

Sadly, just as I feel strangely a part of Thailand's schizophrenia and its intoxicating highs and lows, I now must move on. My goal here was to learn scuba, an aid to my future exploration of Lake Monster Culture. I'm afraid Thai culture will have to wait - but hopefully not for long. Many a traveler has come here only to get stuck, and now I understand why.

Soon, Delhi.