Killing Time in Ranong

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It's Tuesday afternoon and I'm sitting at a little cafe at the Thai border town of Ranong.  As I sip my ice coffee, I hear the roar of motorbikes zooming down the street.  Mixing with that is the Bohemian sound of bongos being played at an adjacent table by a young Thai man with a pierced lip and long multicolored patched pants.  Next to him, at the same table, an aged hipster with a long grey ponytail is engrossed in a thick novel.  Young uniformed school girls in matching white blouses and blue skirts walk by while a young mother chases after her 2 yr old son, who is trying to make a getaway down the sidewalk on his red plastic push bike.  The scent of cooking chinese donuts from next door hangs in the air.  I take all this while also pondering spending Valentines day alone in the military dictatorship of Burma/Mynammar.  Someone recently asked me whether life sometimes seems surreal when traveling. Yes.