Welcoming The End Of Days

Six feet under is not exactly a novel concept in Thailand, given the journey here into the afterlife often resembles an apparition of the annual "Burning Man" rave in the Nevada desert.
It's Monday and the madness of the weekend seems to have seeped under the crack at the bottom of my office door.
There is nowhere to hide and nowhere to run. Except perhaps Rawai and no one in their right mind would go looking for me there.
But what's more frightening is the entire notion of the high season looming around the corner. I have to stifle a silent scream and inhale my own personal angst over the painful trip ahead. Yes, a journey to Phuket International Airport suddenly takes on biblical proportions.
Those endless lines of Phuket traffic running from north to south and from east to west make the mere thought of the winter season disconcerting. And yet, am I going to bite the hand that feeds me? Paradise is after all for everyone and – despite my seeming indignation for the the holidaying hordes – to think of a winter wonderland void of tourists is a terrible thought. But couldn't they at least be a bit more invisible, or just stay in their rooms? Aircon and cable television are not bad inventions after all.
Yes, us Phuket expats – and I fully lump myself into this lot – are a dissatisfied bunch. When the market drops we strike out in anger and then when things surge, we whinge about the traffic and general chaos.
Is there any middle ground, or do the scales only tilt from feast to famine and back again? What is very clear is that come October we will hop on a giant water slide and start the hair-raising journey down – living on the edge. But there is light at the end of the tunnel – it's called May.
In the meantime, I have to muster all the karma I have and come to terms with the notion of patience. Will it be tested? Yes, absolutely.
Still, at the end of the day, preseason angst remains a traditional rite for us here in Phuket. Like it or not, we aren't the only ones looking for a little piece of paradise.