Each mediator agrees on sign up to follow the eight precepts set out, which all seemed easy enough:

• Keep complete silence throughout the 10 days.
• Refrain from destroying all forms of life.
• Refrain from taking things without permission.
• Any sexual activity, mentally, verbally, or bodily.
• Smoking or intoxicating oneself with any intoxicant.
• Having dinner (last meal is lunch).
• Beautifying or entertaining oneself.
• Sleeping or sitting on luxurious beds or seats.

Of all of these the not talking is obviously the one that gets most attention, but that wasn’t even a challenge for me, and only eating two vegetarian meals a day was fine, the breakfast was a bit bland perhaps but lunch was really tasty and probably the healthiest I’ve eaten for a while.

The rest didn’t even seem worth thinking about, the final point about not sleeping on “luxurious” beds I didn’t even remember as one of the points until actually there. So when I was in the retreat signing up I didn’t give a second thought about the wooden pillow that gets mentioned, until I got to my room to discover that the simple accommodation was pretty much a cell with a wooden table with a straw mat on it, and that a wooden pillow is nothing but a lump of wood with a small arch cut into it to shape into the neck.

This was a surprise to say the least, sure it is described perfectly but I expected simple accomodation, not something that was frankly, oppressive. I found it pretty much impossible to sleep on it, it didn’t much help that going to bed  at 9:30pm on the 31st with fireworks blowing up in the sky all around by midnight the sound was immense, the Thai’s really like their fireworks and so it was not exactly a sound nights sleep, when the bell sounded at 4:30am for the first meditation talk, it was hard to get up, but the first day went really well, starting with a morning talk, an hour of yoga, and then meditation instruction before breakfast and chores, then a talk about Buddhism, some walking meditation and sitting meditation before lunch and chores, more meditation in the afternoon, along with some chanting, a soya drink for tea (no food) and in the evening two more meditation sessions and a group walking meditation before lights out at 9:30pm.

This pattern filled each day, but each day the lack of sleep hit me more, and of all the things to do when sleepy meditation isn’t one of them, I found myself dozing a little to easily, and after the first few days I was really suffering and after an imensly informative and rewarding first few days the latter days were a struggle physically, rather then mentally, so on day seven I decided to skip out early rather then punish myself for the last couple of days, any benifit was lost to the unnatural sleeping conditions. I really didn’t feel the need to put myself through it any more.

All in all, I did get a lot from the retreat, but it’s no tourist attraction and if anyone was thinking about doing it themselves I’d really think about doing a shorter retreat first to get a feel for how it feels. And for me as it happens when I made it back to Phuket I ended up bumping into some old friends from my last stint at Phuket Backpacker and making a spur of the moment desision to head off the the Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan.