When people think of Ko Phangan, they associate with revelry and partying. I’ve had a thoroughly different experience filled with beach, quiet, and spiritual moments. I have thoroughly explored and savored the northern beach life in Ko Phangan. So sad to go :(.
NORTHEAST KO PHANGAN
The northeast is a wild and undeveloped area, with a few waterfalls and not much more than a few low-key resorts. The scenery is absolutely gorgeous, nestled into a cove that makes it feel like an undiscovered fairytale land. This is a great area to visit if you don’t want to see many people but have all the natural beauty of being on a beach in Thailand. The swimming here is lovely, and the beaches are vast and walkable. Continue reading Beaches of Ko Phangan, I will miss you→
Sometimes I wonder if we are fated to meet certain people. Doesn’t it always seem that the people you meet during a certain phase of your life reflect the theme of that period?
Yesterday, I was swiping on Tinder out of curiosity and boredom, just to see who was around. One person and I had a mutual friend in common, a fairly successful musician and artist in NYC (successful enough to have exhibited at MoMa but not a household name). We started chatting.
His profile read:
“Traveling artist, healer and entrepreneur interested in meeting and sharing stories with inspiring high-vibe humans living their dreams.
I’m here in Thailand to connect to nature and make ambient meditation music with tropical plants. Open to hosting workshops and collaborating with other healers and entrepreneurs or just have fun.
After eating only Thai curries for 3 weeks, I’m happy to have some variety in hippie expat community of Srithanu on Ko Phangan, Thailand! Here’s some of what I’ve been eating (minus the loads of cashews in my bungalow). This post is for you, Lux, since you hate all the contemplation that’s been going on in my recent posts.
I’ve been waking up at 4:30am as usual. It’s dark, and my bungalow has the usual mix of rumpled clothing and electronics strewn about. I cough up a lung from the air conditioning, which has dried the entire inside of my body. It’s freezing. I thought 29 degrees celsius was supposed to be close to sweltering. Too lazy to look at the conversion to fahrenheit.
My current routine involves staring up at the ceiling until the dawn light starts to creep in and then running next door to Samma Karuna for 7:15am vipassana meditation. A guy robed in white sort of leads this class in a sort of pagoda-like structure right off the beach. By leads, I mean he sits there and hits two bells together three times at the end of the hour. A barely audible recording plays in the background where an oldish sounding Indian guy utters a few words every 20 minutes. It adds an air of authenticity about the whole situation, but otherwise, it feels somewhat unnecessary…except perhaps to bring you closer to the present. Continue reading Quiet time→
Jaybird flew away yesterday to Krabi-land. Today he landed in Singapore. It’s the first time I’ve been truly alone since Bali in July. The past three weeks have been a bubble with me and Jay getting to know each other in an intense and accelerated way. Travel bubble style. It reminds me of the experience of making friends at camp.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been slowly getting off the social train. There was the intense experience in Jeju, Korea with a community of 35 other digital nomads. A subset of us ended up in Seoul for a few weeks. And then to Ko Phangan – just Jay and myself settling in to thaw, relax, and detox during rainy season.
At some point, I realized I needed to take the next step and just be alone. And so began the truly spiritual component of my stay here in magical Ko Phangan. Continue reading First day alone-alone→
The other day, I was on Google Hangouts with one of my closest friends. He and I met in the elevator on the way to orientation at the hedge fund I worked at. In spite of the fact that we’re seemingly very different, we instantly became close friends. He’s an Indian genius programmer with a PhD who wrote his dissertation on blackbox systems (or something, whatever). I’m a scattered and uselessly overly educated Asian-American New Yorker…I don’t even know how else to describe myself.
I consider him a great philosopher, and many of our conversations over California Pizza Kitchen or dosas or comedy or hiking trips have meandered over the topic of self-development. Many of my greatest life tips have come from him. For example, to feel presence, just pay attention to your feet and how they’re pressing into the earth. Or, focus on one goal or habit at a time until it is ingrained. I know few people who read as voraciously as he does about philosophy, good living, and the spiritual aspects of life. I also kind of feel like he’s memorized the entire YouTube corpus…or maybe the internet at large.
In this particular conversation, I was staring out a some beach and he had just arrived in India. “The mind…it keeps yapping at you, no matter what,” he said. No matter how much we can gain control of our external world, the struggle to gain control of our internal world can be beyond elusive. Continue reading Our life is the creation of our mind→
Time, place, and people have been restructuring me.
After staying for 10 days in a 5-bedroom penthouse villa on a beautiful hill overlooking the turquoise ocean and nested hamlet of Thong Na Pan Noi beach, we moved one beach over on the northwest side of the island to Thong Na Pan Yai and stayed a week at another comfortable house right on the beach. It was an extension of the Longtail Beach Resort. That was pure relaxation. Continue reading Sunset side of the island→
Ko Phangan is known for its full moon parties. The island’s population swells and adds another 10,000 to 30,000 people for this event. Imagine tons of young 20-somethings partying and dancing on the beach wearing neon and body paint. The massive beach is lined with different DJs and music options.
Last night, the moon started to come up, big in the horizon, the biggest moon we’ve seen on earth since 1948. It coincided with a few other both solemn and spiritual events.
It was the last day of the 30-day mourning period for King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the beloved king and ruler of Thailand for 70 years. It was the end of an era. And of course, at some point, we all need to move forward with the day-to-day.
The other big occasion is the annual festival of Loy Krathang, a festival paying homage to the water goddess at the end of the main rice season and harvest season. People gather at water sources with elaborate offerings adorned with lit up candles and incense and allow these ornamented pieces to float away. There is a beautiful cutting energy around letting go of past misfortunes and letting all the anger and grudges you have held onto float away down these canals. It marks the start of a year of good luck.
Race is a hard thing to talk openly about in America. There is always the sense of treading carefully, making sure not to offend, and speaking while trying to see things from another side’s perspective that you couldn’t possibly understand.
I woke up this morning and opened Facebook. “Asian American Are Now Being Targeted for Harassment After Donald Trump’s Victory.” The rhetoric around Trump’s ascendance is becoming unproductive. Hellooooo, we’ve been targeted for a long time. Those same people did not become racists overnight. This is not the first time they’ve told someone to go back to their country. Now they’re just adding the tagline, “Trump is president now” to validate it. They were racists before. That is the problem. Trump is not to blame for their racism. This us-against-them polarizing rhetoric is not the way to make progress in our country. There are more structural issues at play that needs to be addressed, not through lobbying barbs and calling each other stupid and hateful. With the exception of some of the socio- and psychopaths among us (whatever the clinical distinction is among them), I do believe people have the best intentions but maybe lack the perspective. That perspective – articulating it in a way the other side can not only understand, but feel. Continue reading Race rhetoric and blame in America→
I don’t know when the burnout started. I can’t pinpoint a moment. Achievement orientation seemed encoded into my being from an early age. Was I programmed for burnout?
It may have started in high school with the nights I chased a NoDoz with Green Mountain coffee at 11pm so I could cram all night for a test the next day. It could have been the years of working 100+-hour weeks. In my life, I had always felt that whatever shortcomings I had – and I felt I had many – I could overcome through sheer dedication and work ethic. I felt that if I could put in an additional 40 hours of studying to get a 99 (A) on a test vs. a 92 (A-), I felt that it was worth it to squeeze out that remaining X%. That I should push for perfection. And it worked for a while. It better than just “worked.”
During one of my interviews at an NYC-based hedge fund, I was proud when I proclaimed that I was working these kind of hours. Rick from the recruiting department seemed horrified, disbelieving, and fascinated at the same time. Continue reading Word-constructing meditation on stress→
I’ve felt like a castaway for the past 11 days. From the wintry morning start in Seoul, I flew and transferred to monsooning Ko Samui before another transfer brought me to the spiritual-cum-party island of Ko Phangan in Thailand. The heart of rainy season. It seemed fitting. The world was telling me to slow down for a second, or a week…maybe forever?
I met Jay during my time at HP in Jeju in Korea. The first blurry yet distinct memory I have of him may have been at a 24-hour cafe. It was a Friday night, the first Friday of our program. I was motivated to work and had a 4-hour board meeting starting at midnight. As soon as I arrived, surprised to see so many people gathered together and working so late on a Friday evening, they dispersed, off to dinner. Jay was among the last to pack up. He was curious about the bulgogi pretzels. I felt some degree of social anxiety. When you’re two people, you sort of have to talk and engage, and I was more in the mood to fade into the background. I was still in London mode, hermetic and monastic in my approach to the world. Continue reading What is real life?→
I tend to think of insomnia as a form of fairly severe mental disturbance. I’ve been getting up earlier and earlier. Today was 2am.
These early morning hours were spent talking to people in London and the U.S., thinking, playing guitar, trying to upload photos (that failed to upload), interspersed with music.
One chapter ended with us leaving Suan Sawan Villa on Thong Nai Pan Noi and moving to Thong Nai Pan Yai beach.
I’m bleary and affected. Something is telling me I’m not following myself.
Another sunrise in my villa. I’m truly lucky to be staring out into an expanse that has probably looked more or less the same since basically forever. The lush green vegetation, the trees, the silence. A palm tree sways to the left of me. Hello! I can wave back because no one sees me.
And yet, it’s surreal to me that back home, 8,500 miles away, people are still streaming to the polls in one of the most historic elections of our lifetime. We’ve had a few of those.
It’s not an excuse, but I’m disappointed in myself for not being engaged enough in this election or in politics. There is always the question of whether an individual’s level of engagement can affect an outcome. Possibly no, when you’re talking about me right now. But if you apply that as a rule across a population, the resulting apathy is just sad. It’s great to see the level of engagement in this election, and I’m going to turn on the telly here in Thailand soon so I can follow along!
(Please be good news.)
My musings on life, travel, and (I suppose eventually) work. Just trying to balance left and right brain, the urge to do vs. be. Easy stuff.
