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→
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→
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.
