Koh Phangan, Thailand

OK, so I’ve been trying to figure out how best to communicate the emotion behind this magical place in Koh Phangan called Samma Karuna.  I’m halfway across the globe, living with a non-denominational spiritual community that encourages me to embrace, and celebrate, every part of myself and……….I’m deliriously happy.  Like, usual happy plus extra happy.

The kind of happiness where you feel like a big, ball of light wants to burst through your chest and explode into the world.  The kind of happiness that only comes if you’re living your truth.

but the swing is RIGHT THERE

Needless to say, week two at Samma Karuna went splendidly.  I adore this place: the vibe, the energy, the people, the classes, the general baseline of trust and acceptance that permeates every activity and every encounter.  You might go into a meditation or compassionate sharing class and not know anyone at the start, but over the course of the next 2-3 hours, you have all these intense moments of shared experience or prolonged moments of genuine connection……. and just like that, strangers aren’t strangers anymore.  They’re fast friends INVESTED in your emotional and spiritual well-being.

Anywho, yeah.  It’s been a dream.  I’m legit #blessed and #livingmybestlife.  For all those who know me, which is uhhhhhhh everyone reading this (hah), three out of my four lifelong fantasies have already come true:

1.  To live in a retirement community where everyone waves at each other from their respective golf carts, throws their heads back and laaaaaaaaaaughs at nothing in particular
   •  Change ‘golf carts’ to ‘scooters’, ‘retirement’ to ‘spiritual’, and imagine the opening credits of a cheesy 1970s sitcom COMING TO LIFE
2.  To make people happy just by being myself
   •  At least 7-10 people have independently come up to me to tell me that my rake dancing has brought so much joy to their lives.  Whiiiiiich makes my heart swell two times the size.  More on rake dancing later.
3.  To be a part of a motorcycle gang where every time we go to dinner, one of us cries out either the name of the restaurant, ‘TO TABOOOOOOOOON!!!!!’ or a general, all-encompassing, ‘WE RIIIIIIIIIIIIDE!!!!!’
4.  To be the fit, wacky grandmother who’s limber enough to teach her grandkids the perfect basketball crossover and mentally astute enough to incorporate her grandkids’ slang into everyday use

It took me two full days at Samma Karuna to break down and rent a scooter for the rest of the month.  What the heck was I waiting for?!  I LOVE scooters!  Answer: I was waiting for a tall, Danish drink ‘a water to invite me to hitchhike.  I drove (myself) on Mr. Cheese Danish’s scooter straight to the nearest motorbike shop to rent ‘the cheapest motorbike they had on the lot’.  (A girl’s gotta save somewhere………and it ain’t gonna be at dinner, amiright?)

Instead of the advertised $8 per-day rental price of the nice bikes up front, MY neon green beaut went for the bargain basement STEAL of only $3 a day.  Do any of the gauges work?  No.  Does the scooter look like it’s gonna tip over every time you put the kickstand down?  Sure.  But, who needs to know how fast you’re going or if you have any gas in the tank when it’s THREE DOLLARS A DAY?!  Three dollars a DAAAAAAY.

My bike even came with its own nickname: Mousety.  Not the first name I would have chosen, clearly, but when the floorboards are covered with images of Mickey Mouse’s deranged cousin that’s foaming too hard at the mouth to be considered copyright infringement……. you just roll with it (and pray you have enough gas to roll all the way home).

There’s something about scooters that make me blissfully happy; I can’t stop smiling when I’m riding them.  Alone.  With a friend.  With two friends.  Two friends and a suitcase.  Two friends, a suitcase, and the neighborhood dog.  Fun fact: did you know that a SCOOTER was the first ‘big ticket item’ that I bought myself after I got a ‘real job’ post-college?  And now, look at me go.  I’ve got Neeve riding behind me screaming, ‘Taaaaaylaaaaa, yo sig-noe’s au-wnnnnnn!’ and my brakes sounding like a 5^th grade soccer whistle at the end of a long practice.

Mousety was the real reason I retook my Illinois motorcycle driving test (twice) the day before I left……not that any of those silly American safety laws apply on these Blade Runner roads

Changing gears, I thought it would be a good idea to give you a glimpse into my day-to-day life.  I tried to take notes throughout one full day of life on the island, to paint an accurate picture of what I’ve got cookin’.  You ready?  Let’s go.

Day in the Life: Koh Phangan

• 641 – wake up naturally, check the time on my phone. Oh, good – I have four minutes.  My morning work shift starts at 645, so I take two minutes to adjust my eyes to the light.
• 643 – sniff two bras, put on the cleanest one. Sniff two tank tops, put on the cleanest one.  Pop in my contacts, brush my teeth, and away we go.
• 645 – roll outta the dorm (that sits above the welcome center) down the stairs, around the corner, and write my name on a very official piece of paper. Start to assemble the materials to write the daily schedule on the chalkboard.
• 655 – fill up my REI water bottle at the free filtered water station and grab a handful of lightly-salted almonds.
• 7 – clean the chalkboard 3-8x with water and tissues to remove all smudges and smears before carefully listing the day’s class schedule in multi-colored chalk. Maybe add in an inspirational quote (that no one will understand) or a nice, decked-out ode to Picasso towards the bottom.
• 730 – hop on Natasha’s scooter and cruise to get a fruit shake (for her) and a latte (for me).
• 750 – return to campus and sit with a group of volunteers as they eat their muesli/fruit bowls in the café area. Talk about how Peggy’s been to Bali 4 times, how Natasha was only supposed to stay on the island for 3 days but is going on 8 weeks, how Merjin is excited about the 4-hour AUM Meditation class tomorrow night, and how everyone compares this experience with the dozens of other spiritual communities they’ve lived in over the years.
• 815 – walk over to Atisha Hall (open-air yoga studio by the beach). Sweep the hall with a soft broom.  Turn off the instrumental flute music that’s been blasting for the Dancing Meditation class.  Light six mosquito coils.  Burn my thumb six separate times because my status of nonsmoker has NOT served me well in the disposable lighter department.  Make sure Dag doesn’t need any help checking students into the 830 Hatha Vinyasa yoga class in Buddha Hall.
• 825 – grab my headphones and head to the beach. On the way, make a comment that Niki looks like a vision in turquoise and listen as she launches into a complete color map of the Greek islands in her slowwwww, meandering voice.  ‘Dis i-lond is greeeeeeeen.  But dat one is not so mach green’.
• 835 – get to the beach. Iman is already there, but she’s hula hooping more than raking.  We chat about potentially scootering to the aerial silks yoga class that night.
• 845 – start a-rakin’. Open with a little Bob Marley ‘Is This Love?’ but quickly realize that my toes are a-tappin’ and my legs are a-shakin’ and my body’s a-askin’ for some tasty tunes.  I switch to my ‘RAGNAR Night’ spotify playlist (aka the music I play when I run in the middle of the night) and that’s the moment I discover rake dancing.  Equal parts dancing and raking and freaking the f*ck out, rake dancing is my new favorite hobby.  I let the music take me where it wants to go, and (adhering to every motivational poster in HomeGoods) I dance like no one’s watching.  We’re talking ROCKING OUT.  JAMMING hard.  Hitting every note in every song with PANACHE.  I start to think about shadow dancing on Cape Cod with my college crew or 4am down-and-dirty drag queen dance parties with my Chicago crew and I smiiiiiiiiiiile and then it’s back to sweating through my tank top and moving my body like there’s a bee in my underwear and I’m violently trying to shake it out.
• 945 – finish raking. Realize I’ve been ‘working’ too hard, so I pour myself a glass of cinnamon tea, bring it back to the beach, and sip it slowly as my heart rate comes back to earth.
• 10 – hop in the shower because I’m f*cking drenched.
• 1015 – since I’m still technically ‘working’, help Noi in the kitchen making brunch for students that paid (a lot) to attend the Yoga Teacher Training certification course. Slice the pineapple.  Peel the dragon fruit in one satisfying rind.  Put the cabbage and curries and soups and carrot salads into nice bowls.  Try not to chop my entire hand off when dealing with the watermelon while Noi reminds me that ‘the red should be from watermelon, not red from blood’.
• 1045 – volunteer shift complete. Get myself a plate of whatever’s left.  (Probably some electric yellow cauliflower something or lentils or coconut rice or this no name white vegetable sliced thin with boiled tomatoes & spinach.)
• 1115 – jog my dirty laundry over to the nice, old lady three doors down at Jungle Hut; she’s a ball buster, but she does good work. (P.S. You can say I’m a bougie bitch all you want, but for an extra dollar a wash, I’m gonna hand over my dirty delicates to Grandmother Thai.)  She wasn’t at her post, so I had time to check myself out in the full-length, natural light mirror in the lobby of the attached restaurant and guys.  GUYS.  I had a one-centimeter black chin hair STANDING AT ATTENTION UNDER MY CHIN.  WHERE DID IT COME FROM?!  HOW LONG HAD IT BEEN THERE?!  WHY WAS IT BLACK?!  HOW LONG HAD IT BEEN THERE?!
• 1128 – pluck a Rapunzel-length chin hair and question everything. What is life?
• 1130 – put on the navy, one-piece spanx bathing suit that I stole from my Mom (thanks Mom) and scoot 2 minutes down the road to a beauuuuuutiful beach called Secret Beach. The first two people I see on the beach are Kiara (from Germany) and Aravind (from southern India).  I met Aravind at the jam session last Friday when that chick was hula-hooping fire, and Kiara & I spent 15 minutes of a Dance Therapy class dancing around each other with huge smiles on our faces and heavy eye contact…….and now it feels like we’re best friends.
• 12 – try to teach Aravind to swim (side stroke & back stroke). Hold him like a baby, as he lies on his back, and whisk him through the water.
• 1225 – film Aravind attempting to swim so he can send the video to his Mom who had previously FORBADE him to touch water since she had a nightmare 20 years ago.
• 1245 – forget I was wearing my $1 watch.  It died.  RIP.  Maybe the face’ll start working again soon.  Maybe not.  Only time will tell……. but I can’t tell time.  Sh*t, how’s this work?  Chicken and egg…
• 130 – scooter home. Eat a banana.  Still hungry.  Walk across the street to Art Café for banana bread.
• 230 – Buddhist Meditation class with the infamous Nishan. (Nishan is touted as having the ‘best energy of anyone on the island’ on an island filled with good energy.)  He taps into an ethereal being to understand what you’re feeling and helps you manifest those emotions in your physical body, in order to (through the meditation) become aware of them, accept them, and eventually, release them.  At one point, he asks us to hold whatever negative emotion we’re feeling in our arms like a crying baby.  To let that baby cry, to accept it as it is, and to eventually calm it and coddle it and whisper things in its ear.  I’ve never wanted to hold a baby so badly.  The session ran long, so I missed my favorite Yin Yoga class with Daniela (where we hold yoga poses for 5+ minutes while Daniela walks around and says things in her soothing, indistinguishably-foreign voice:  ‘Re-laaaaaa-wix the a-edges of yaur my-ind, move the a-SHA-doe’s of yaur boe-dee……)  On a side note, she had us in frog pose SO LONG last class (think of a frog, with legs splayed, facing the ground) that I cried into my face cushion.  Not to gross you out, but when it was finally time to release from the position, I had a freaking FOUR-INCH TRAIL OF SNOT between my face and the pillow.  Have I mentioned I’m brand new to yoga?  Holy sh*t.  (Excuse my French.)
• 430 – Nishan offers to take a small group to the beach area, to further explore what we were feeling in class. As Juan & Gabriela play twister with their bodies (and call it acro yoga), we take turns telling Nishan what we felt, as he channels each of our energy and gives us simple phrases to repeat until one resonates.  He gives me a phrase.  I repeat it 5 times.  Then, he gives me a second phrase.  I say that second phrase once, to myself, and start bawling in front of ten people.  Gosh, he’s good.  Then, he invites me to pay for a two-hour, private healing session with him this Sunday at 4.  I promptly sign up for a two-hour, private healing session this Sunday at 4.
• 515 – supposed to go to the aerial silks yoga class with Iman, but I’m feeling way too calm to struggle & grunt my way through a Cirque du Silk Soleil sideshow…….so Martina and I scoot to an early dinner at House People, where we split panang curry, loc lac and two coca lights. Martina is amazing; she’s like my super-giggly, 25-year-old Swedish sister and we just laugh all day long.  I basically stalk her life and offer to drive her places so she’ll hang out with me haaaaaaaa.  It’s funny cuz it’s true.
• 630 – we get back to campus right in time for the Spiritual Awakening evening class with Ishi (Samma Karuna’s founder), so we might as well take it. He talks about managing your emotional world, training (or mastering) the mind during meditation, but he keeps coming back to this week’s theme of thinking vs. feeling.  Of choosing how you want to see, and experience, life: as one who thinks or as one who feels, because the more you think, you less you feel.  And the more you feel, the less you think.  My favorite quote of his goes something like this: If you carry shit in your pocket, it will smell.  Wherever you go, whatever you do, whatever beauty lies before you, that shit in your pocket will still smell.
• 830 – a big group from the awakening class is going out to dinner, but Martina and I aren’t feeling it. Instead, the two of us go to Mama’s, across the street, to steal internet.  We buy two chocolate cakes in exchange for internet services aaaaaand, of course, the internet’s not working.  As we’re enjoying our rectangular cakes, a random German man from Stuttgart (some 60 odd years old) approaches our table and asks me if I want aloe vera for my burnt legs.  What?  When I said ‘sure, thank you so much’, I expect him to hand me the bottle of aloe vera.  He does not.  He squirts a PUDDLE OF ALOE VERA ONTO MY LEFT THIGH.  Like, a lot.  Like, half the surface area of my thigh.  COVERED with aloe vera.  (Because she’s a peach) Martina reaches over the table and sops some up for herself……. while I try to redistribute the other 16oz all over my body.  Thank you, random German patron, for your concern.  But no thank you, I don’t need to take home the whole bottle.  You keep it.
• 9 – Martina and I giggle all the way home, where we pick up Juan, walk the beach for 15 minutes until we get to the infamous Zen Beach for a nighttime plankton run. We get in the water, wave our arms all around, and it looks like we’re in a fairy tale.  Our hands light up in tiny, bioluminescent sparkles.  When we stomp our feet, it looks like we’re wearing those LED light-up shoes for kids.  Burst of green.  Then, white.  Then, green again.
• 10 – settle back into the dorm, wash my face, take my contacts out, and drift off to sleep…….. until Natalie (from France) gently places one hand on my shoulder blade and softly whispers, ‘See-x Thull-ty!’.

And so begins another day.