Surprises in Simplicity

There is a time in your travels, if you travel long enough, that you do start to crave a little consistency, routine, and a little bit more of a “normal” life.  Outside of a two-month visit home to America last year, I have been traveling consistently for 18 months now.  I have slowed down quite a bit since I took off in January of 2023, but for the most part, I have still been seeing all the sights, doing all the tours, and for all intents and purposes, have been acting like a tourist versus a local or an expat.  It’s hard not to.  As a traveler, it is very easy to experience a lot of guilt if you are not seeing all the sights and doing all the things; for so many reasons, but the most obvious being that you may never be back in this place so you feel an intense amount of pressure to see it all while you are there.  It is rewarding, fun, educational, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but it can be exhausting too.  In addition, I have been trying to work on building my business and that is hard to do if you are focusing on where you are going next, the sights you need to see, and all the other things that you inevitably need to focus on that are not the things you actually should be doing.

So, that is what brought me to my decision to move to Koh Phangan, Thailand.  There were many reasons behind this decision, but I think the most important one is that this was going to be my third time here in a year and a half.  I love this island, and I know it well.  Now I know it really well, but being here twice before, I felt like I could come and just live and not feel the pressure to do all the “things.”  This will sound crazy, but I knew upon arriving in Koh Phangan the very first time that I wanted to live here.  Every time I leave, I still envision myself riding up on my motorbike to pick up my family and friends at the ferry and then happily bringing them back to my home to stay with me.  Someday I will live here for real, but for now, it seemed like a good opportunity to give my dream a trial run. 

(Just a few examples of some typical days on the island)

Three and a half weeks is nowhere near enough time to live somewhere, but truly, it was everything that I hoped it would be and more.  I had my own apartment (including a kitchen – which I barely used because I don’t cook at all anymore 😝), I had my own motorbike, and I had a yoga studio right next door that I joined immediately with an unlimited monthly pass.  I quickly fell into a routine of yoga in the morning, meditation on the beach, work at a cafe in the afternoon, sunset and dinner on the beach, sleep, and repeat.  This is officially my dream life.  I can’t even begin to explain how happy I was during these 24 days.  I didn’t do one tour, and in fact, I only got in the ocean once.  I didn’t need to.  Just being there and finding my groove in expat life was exactly what I needed and wanted.  My goals were to work on my blog, film some yoga and barre videos for my new website, work on my business, do yoga and meditate everyday, and just enjoy island life.  And that is exactly what I did.  I had no intention of meeting anyone, making any friends, or really socializing at all.  These were not my goals; however, as the Universe would have it, the best part of this trip ironically came in the friendships I made and the experiences that I had outside of my structured goals.

(More island life…)

The first week and half was pretty quiet and I was very content in my solo routine.  There was a tinge of loneliness, but nothing major.  It’s pretty easy to meet people here if you put in the tiniest bit of effort, so I went to a digital nomad dinner one night and met an awesome woman from France who offered to help with my business plan.  Then, I met an amazing yoga teacher from England at my local yoga studio who became my “bestie” on the island and who helped me to simultaneously improve my yoga practice while also enjoying a few parties on the island too.  I met another woman from the United States at yoga during that first week and we kept running into each other at various places around the island.  After a few occurrences of this, we finally sat down to dinner and discovered that we have so much in common and even share the same birthday!  And finally, I met another woman from Germany at an open mic night…we were sitting next to each other and became fast friends immediately.  Suddenly I had a posse of girlfriends!  It did feel like I lived here…I was reminded of my girlfriends back home, and going out to dinners and bars became a regular occurrence again.  It had been so long since I had something like that and it felt amazing!  And better yet, all of these women encouraged me on my journey to get out of my comfort zone and continue to grow.

There are so many breath workshops, sound healing courses, feminine energy retreats, ecstatic dances, yoga teacher trainings, and more out here.  I wasn’t really looking for any of this, as I had just done a lot of it in India, but somehow it came calling for me anyway.  I didn’t partake as much as I did in India, but I dabbled in a sound healing/inner dance workshop that delves into your inner psyche and helps you bring down a few more of those walls, I took my first Mysore yoga classes every morning, I started doing ice baths and sauna rotations on a regular basis, I joined my first singing circle on the beach, and I went to my second Ecstatic Dance party ever.  Singing circles, breathwork/inner dance workshops, and ecstatic dance parties are definitely outside of my comfort zone.  I tried them all in India, and they were all hard for me.  But they do help.  And they do allow you to grow and open up to yourself.  These changes don’t happen overnight.  And one time at a breath workshop or ecstatic dance isn’t going to do it either.  You have to keep going and keep challenging yourself.  I wasn’t a fan at first, but I pushed myself, and to my surprise, I actually started to enjoy it all…

My favorite memory of my entire stay on Koh Phangan was the ecstatic dance that all of my girls and I went to up in the jungle in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.  For those of you who don’t know, ecstatic dance is an all out dance party where no alcohol, no drugs, no cameras, and no unwanted touching is allowed.  You are free to be yourself without the threat of someone pressuring you to dance with them.  I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome it is to be on a dance floor and not have some strange man approaching you, rubbing up against you, and trying to dance with you.  I was finally free to just dance!  What a revelation!  It is a safe place to feel the music and just let go.  Of course, this can be very unnerving for someone who is not used to dancing in front of people without a good buzz.  I tried to remember if there was any time that I let loose on a dance floor without the aid of alcohol or drugs in my past.    I don’t think that there are any.  It’s harder to let yourself go without those masks.  But I have learned how important it is!  To just be you and let your inner spirit fly!  There was a moment during the ecstatic dance when I looked around and all my girls were dancing wildly to the music, huge smiles on all our faces, and everyone around us was the same, and it was pure ecstasy.  Unadulterated, toxic-free joy.  I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to feel so free and to not care about anything; all whilst being 100% sober.  In those three hours we all just let go, sweat, danced and laughed, and most importantly let our guards down and let our bodies do the talking.  I know that this probably all sounds very hippie to most of you, and I would have said that too, prior to this journey.  And truth be told, I was still very resistant to it even when walking onto the dance floor that afternoon, but that is exactly why I went.  You don’t learn anything new unless you are willing to try something new.  And although it was a little “hippie-dippy” on the surface, if you looked deeper, that’s not what it was at all.  It was people being brave enough to let it all go.  To really enjoy life to the absolute fullest.  It brought tears to my eyes.  I felt so lucky to be a part of it.  This is not to say that there weren’t still moments where I would suddenly feel self-conscious or a little awkward, but then I would look around and realize, “No one cares what I am doing.  No one is looking, or watching…everyone is just loving life.”  And I would fall back into my own ecstatic dance.  I left feeling euphoric and a bit like I was walking on a cloud.  A natural high, I guess.  Who knew?  It was such a great day, and I will never forget it.  And sharing it with my wonderful new girlfriends was just icing on the cake.  I remember thinking to myself, “I have a group of girlfriends in Koh Phangan!  How amazing!  I am so happy!”  It all sounds so simple, but I didn’t realize how much I was missing having “my girls” to hang out with on a regular basis.  Again, it felt like I really lived there and I had found my troop.

(Post-ecstatic dance…Look how ridiculously happy I look 😝)

Alas, as all good things do, they eventually come to an end.  And a few short days later, it was time for me to say goodbye.  It hit me harder than I expected.  I wasn’t ready to leave my new group.  We even had a going away dinner for me.  I don’t think that has happened in any of my travels yet.  I’ve said it before and I will say it again, one of the hardest parts of traveling is saying goodbye.  It never gets easier.  And this time it was different.  I was saying goodbye to a glimpse at what a real life could be again.  A routine, my own transportation, my own place, my own friends and a little bit of stability……

But I thrive on change, and I still have a lot of growing to do, so I can’t stand still yet.  Maybe someday.  In the meantime, thank you, Koh Phangan, for the memories.  I now know, for sure, that I can absolutely live here; and I will again.  But until then, the adventure continues….