Voyage Of The Odd Essay

At the start of each month the monks at Suan Mokkh Darmahh International Enter run a 10 day meditation retreat for anyone wishing to learn more about the Theravada Buddhist practice of Ānāpānasati, Mindfulness with Breathing. While I’m travelling around Thailand this seemed to be the perfect way to start the New Year, so I headed South from my cosy now second home at Phuket Backpacker Hostel, and on the 31st of December arrived just before dark at Wat Suan Mokkh to register for the program.

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.

My decision to make the move from Koh Lanta to Phuket Town to spend Christmas at the Phuket Backpacker hostel couldn’t have gone better, while the mood here isn’t traditionally festive lacking the near opressive sounds of Christmas music flooding your senses in every shop and tv advert, but everyone has been in the mood to go out and party, every night I’ve been here I’ve had no trouble finding a group to eat and drink with, and now I feel like I’ve settled here, I know names and faces and there is a regular crowd of people hanging out together along with a daily flow of new faces as travellers come and go on their journies.

Christmas Eve was spent at Patong Beach a short Tuk Tuk ride away and perhaps the most random night out of the whole festive season, as a very touristy location you get a real glimpse into the seedier side of night life and we ate well, drank in various places of varying quality, and ended up at the Club Hollywood where we got Santa hats with flashing stars on them, very festive.

Christmas Day started slow most of the hostel was hung over but by midday a few of us managed to gear up to hunt down some brunch in Patong, relocate to a lake where they did cable sking, and then just down the road had our Thailand Christmas Dinner at a British run pub who did turkey, stuffing and all the trimmings and then back to Phuket Town for a couple of drinks at the current bar of choice, Roxy.

Boxing Day was just as random, heading to eat at a place on the edge of town with my dorm mates where we ate wild boar and frog, both of which we tasty. Then as we drank at Roxy we bumped into a few more people from the Hostel and ended up heading to one of Phuket Town’s biggest clubs, had a drink in the VIP area and watched the live band who apparently are pretty huge in Thailand, though no idea who they actually are.   We got out of there fairly quickly and went back to Roxy via a round about route and stop at another bar due to a wrong turn and finished the night with a couple of cheaper drinks.

So as Christmas goes this was all Same-Same but different, drinks and food all around and everyone in a good mood, but the sun and heat distracts from the fact it’s Christmas back home and that makes it easier not to dwell on what I’m missing.

All in all I made exactly the right choice hitting this hostel and the people I’ve meet here are Awesome, lots of people are leaving today, and I’ll be moving on myself soon but I’ll be back here when I pass through the region again as it makes a handy base, and I have great feel for the place now.

A couple of days ago as I took a walk down Klong Khong beach as I had every evening for the last week I decided that it seemed a bit quieter then the past few days, a few of the people I had been talking to regularly had moved on and it didn’t seem like anyone had come to take their place. So pretty much there and then I decided to book rooms in Phuket and a boat trip over from Koh Lanta that left 7:30 the next morning.

Getting to Phuket was a very enjoyable boat trip, appraching Koh Phi Phi on the first boat we transfered to the second boat still out on the sea, so I didn’t really step foot on the island, but got some good views of it from not to far away, and then on to Phuket, the whole trip was as always a step by step mission of swapping tickets and getting stickets (I ended up with three stickers in total this time) interestingly the boat company involved used different coloued stickers for different destinations so they should easily herd people around, pretty clever I thought.

I stayed one night in a hotel, which was okay but I was pretty keen to get to my ultimate destination, the Phuket Backpacker Hostel in the heart of Phuket town. The place got Awesome reviews on both websites I checked, and was in my price range of 300 bhat per night (With a slight increase over christmas to 400 bhat) but now I’m here it’s definatly the kind of hostel I was hoping for, the common room has plenty of people comming in and out all day, there is free wi-fi and computers with internet which saves a small fortune on it’s own, and there is a massive and diverse DVD collection which means people ar constantly throwing something on, and I can just pick up a couple of cheap beers and snacks from the 7/11 next door and have a cheap night in, banter with people.

Just around the corner Phuket’s food market provides and interesting place to mooch into and if feeling adventerous sample the various meat on a stick type products, some of which are clearly identifiable things like chicken wings for around 30 bhat, others are sausages and meatball type things which are cheaper and I find, best left unidentified as to what they actually are.

There are beaches just a bus or Tuk Tuk away too, last night myself and six Australian chaps I meet in the common room headed over to Patong beach for a couple of beers – It was a frankly incredibly seedy place, like Amsterdam with sand and fake rolexes for sale, but with out that European cleanliness that made the Dutch capital seem much safer. Even so, it was full of tourists of all kinds, from families with small children, to older white gentlemen with disturbingly young Thai girls on their arms. We left the place after a couple of beers and came back via the 7/11 where we picked up more beer and nibbles and watched the movie back at the Phuket Backpacker

So this is where I plan to spend Christmas, the flow of people, cheap food options all around and comfortable rooms (Not to mention hot showers!) makes this an ideal place for me to settle for the next week, on the 29th I’m schedualled to move on, so will see how things pan out and either head further south to Had Yai with the intention of starting the new year at a Meditation Retreat, else I’ll stick around here and party, and then move on to Khao Lak to do some volunteer work building kids play parks and other projects.

I finally made it to Koh lanta – Though getting here is a tale in it’s own right.

Our last few days on Koh Chang were in many ways the most interesting and struck a nice balance of getting out and experiencing new things, hanging out with friends old and new, and going out partying in epic style.

(more…)

As I look back at the later part of my trip to Thailand a fair amount of it blurs a little, we didn’t do anything particularly different except sun ourselves by day, mooch around and find some food, then head out to the big party of the night and dance till dawn. The day time activities of beaching and eating having been forgotten, but of them are hard to tie down to a particular date, where as the parties follow a progression that I can remember pretty clearly.

Of course, there are some things I’ll never forget, and around them I’ve pieced together the party nights like this:

18th March

I ached all day, but couldn’t place my finger on why, and just put it down to sleeping funny until suddenly much later in the day it dawned on me that the day before we’d done the Tree Top Adventure, it turns out working your body out really hard is a good way to wake up the next day feeling like you’ve worked your body out really hard.

There was a plan to go to some reggae and ska party but it turned out to be on another beach and a bit of a trek, so we stayed local instead. But I’m not completely sure where we ended up.

19th March

Another night I don’t really remember much about, pretty sure that this was a night of BBQ and dancing at Treehouse, with a funky acoustic set from the same guys we’d seen previously at Ting Tong providing the early music.

20th March

“Lemon bar grand opening with 20 bangkok show girls!” Or so the posters said, which was a little confusing given that we were at the end of the season and we’d already been to Lemon Bar earlier in the week. Still, seemed worth checking out from a “Tick off another box” point of view, so starting at Treehouse for some food and a few warm up drinks we spent so long chilling out, and bantering with people we’d meet previously that we pretty much missed the show, litterally arriving for the very last moments, but we still headed in and had a dance. The whole experience was pretty seedy though, I have no hang ups about dancing with ladyboys, but there was clearly more then dancing going on in another part of the bar, which I stayed well clear of.

The dance floor did have lasers coming out from the DJ booth though which was cool, and I danced like crazy while there, by the time we arrived we’d had a lot of vodka red bull, but I don’t think I got any more drinks while there as Lemon Bar is one of the more expensive places on Lonely Beach.

I headed back to the huts at a fairly early (For us) time, but left my bag in Lemon bar and had to go back and get it, and while heading back down the hill from Oasis I discovered I’d lost my wallet, so after picking up my bag (Which was still with our friends who were still raving on) I headed over to Treehouse to see if anyone found it there, which they hadn’t, so a bit stressed I headed back to the huts, and promptly found my wallet just outside the door of the hut we were hanging out in. But such is life.

21st March – Full Moon

The big parties of the night were dotted along the beach, and for some reason Siam Hut’s appeared to have toned down their set up from the previous weeks Half Moon party, but we were all much more settled into the party lifestyle this time so were as at the Half Moon we all seemed to stick together, we all spread out and mingled a lot more this time, watching the fire shows, dancing in the sea, rolling around in the sand after consuming mushroom shakes and so on, but my big memory of this night was doing a lot of poi, and talking to quiet a number of people about poi as well.

22nd March – Dancing In The Rain

We didn’t really have much of a plan on this night, we just started out at Treehouse fairly early with the usual plan of eating, drinking and partying into the night. As it happens though, this was the most memorable night out.

Not long after we’d all settled for some food and the drinks started flowing the first few drops of rain were felt falling and the wind was noticeably picking up, bringing the waves rising up below Treehouse’s sea front edge, and people quickly hurried to clear the cushions and chairs under the covered areas leaving a lot more open space then normal.

Most of the other rain fall we’d had came in sudden bursts, and left as suddenly as it arrived, but this night there was a real sense of the storm approaching, out across the darkened sea you could clearly see bolts of lightening illuminating the sky and people (Including myself) were hanging of the railings to gaze out at the sea and feel the growing wind lift of the waves that continued to crash below, everyone was getting a little crazy and wild with the anticipation of the storm hitting.

As it happens, caught up in the mood of the night I danced away to the music that fitted perfectly with the way everyone was feeling, and when the rain hit jumping off the dance floor and on to the open decks was the natural thing to do, and I can honestly say I’ve never been happier to dance in the rain.

I was having a mooch around on YouTube, and found a very cool little video someone did of a look around Treehouse on Lonely Beach, Koh Chang. We spent a huge amount of time there and towards the end of our holiday it became the de facto place to start out a night as they served great good and BBQ in a stunning setting. I’ll never forget looking out at the sea front as a storm rode it, and dancing away in the rain there.

Edit: Embedding isn’t working, so here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_92PcQhzic

The first few days on Koh Chang where our most active, thanks to our friends Paul and Shell who were also on holiday for a couple of weeks, though arriving a few days before us.

15th March – Lonely Beach, Koh Chang
Just off Lonely Beach there is a set of three smaller islands not far from the coast, the closest of which has an easy to get to beach so six of us jumped in a couple of kayaks, and paddled out to them to what we had in mind as a deserted island. Of course, we weren’t the only people with this idea, there were a couple of other people milling around as well, but still, it was a good find, and a fun paddle out. Though a rather large wave right on the outset broke my phone (And thus, camera) turns out the water proof pouch didn’t have a water proof zip, and it leaked just enough to break. You live and learn though. Was well worth going out there though, considering I nearly bailed out as I don’t swim so I was slightly nervous about heading out over the ocean, but I didn’t fly half way around the world not to push my comfort levels.

At this point, I don’t really remember which places we partied at – my note book was rain damaged from the previous nights tropical storm, but I think it’s safe to say we went out and drank a lot! I also realize around this time that when you’re in a tropical climate, you really need to pay attention to waterproofing items that needed it. If memory serves, this was Kelly’s – a traveler the guys we had gone out to meet had been hanging out with – last night, so we went out for pizza, and did some drinking out and about.

16th March – Lonely Beach and Bang Bao, Koh Chang
The big event of the day was the elephant ride, we got picked up by taxi about 9am, and it was a short trip north to the elephant place, were we were placed in pairs up on small benches held a top three huge elephants. You have to climb up a set of steps to the boarding platform, and step on to them and shuffle into your seat in pairs, and then off you go, plodding and at times running along on top of this frankly, massive creature. It was all very surreal, but a fantastic time, and a great way to see some of the deeper jungle of the island. Our route took us on a ride of about 45 minutes out to a small pool, where we got off via some more platforms set up on trees, and then chilled out for a bit, the rest of the group when swimming in the pool, and were joined by a couple of the elephants as their riders cleaned them down. Again, not really a water fan so I just sat and watched and had a mooch around before we rode back. At this point, my elephant took a shorter router back then the other two, because it was been a moody bastard. It’s rider wasn’t best please with him, and he tried to do his own thing at several points.For dinner we went a bit further south to the next beach Bang Bao, to the Buddha View restaurant, watched an amazing sun set from the lighthouse watch point at the end of the peer, and enjoyed an amazing meal. While we were in Treehouse we randomly bumped into the woman who runs the tree top adventure, when we told her what we were planning the next day she exclaimed that it was her place! Small world out there.

17th March – Lonely Beach and Tree Top Adventure Par, Koh Chang
The last day of really doing any serious activity was the Tree Top Adventure Park, climbing up high wires, going down zip lines (One of which was 150 meters long) and generally working really, really hard to get around the pair of amazing courses which over looked one of the bays from a perfect vantage point and wind through the jungle. Of all the activities on the island, this is the one I would really recommend. I was pretty surprised at how I coped with it, I always figured I didn’t have a problem with highs, but never really tested out the theory so when I was pottering though the tree tops I was very happy to find it didn’t phase me at all.

This was Paul and Shell’s last day, so we went out for another good meal down at a place we knew only as the decking, a cozy restaurant that over looked the more rocky part of the beach, somewhere in between paradise and sunset. I was once again really impressed with the food and had one of the best first I had ever eaten. I’ll go out on a limb and guess we went out and partied, I think at sunset and then lemon bar, for a pretty crazy night of dancing.

At this point, we’d had a nice run of making sure we did something of note everyday, though with Paul and Shell been the main motivation to get out there from this point we slipped into a much more relaxed pace which formed a familiar pattern of beaches and parties for the most part, It was good to have a few active days though.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve ventured out of the UK for the first time, with my first passport obtained just a week or so before departing on the 12th and headed off to the Far East to join a group of friends who were traveling in and around Thailand.

I can’t really it call it traveling or backpacking as we only ended up going two places: Bangkok, and Ko Chang (Koh Chang) we did originally have plans to head further north into Kanchanaburi for the second week of our stay but by that time we had met so many people we were getting along with and a few different trips and parties were coming up that it made sense just to stick to where we were comfortable, particularly since everyone of my group had decided we were going to come back for several months at the end of the year and travel seriously, so there wasn’t any feeling of missing out on anything.

12th March – Manchester To Doha To Bangkok
We flew out with Qatar airways from Manchester which at the time was hit by sever gale force storms, so there was a question as to weather the flight might be delayed, or if we would even make it to the airport as they were closing motorways all over the place as high sided vehicles were blown over in a number of locations. Then with a quick change over in Doha we flew into Bangkok we arrived about 7am on the 13th (local time)

13th March – Khaosan Road, Bangkok
Thankfully it was fairly overcast and smoggy when we arrived so the heat wasn’t too intense, but all the same we were thankful to get onto the air conditioned bus that took us to Khaosan Road where after a bit of milling around we met up with our friend Kate who got us sorted out with rooms for the night at My House (On Soi Camasongkrum) so after settling in, having my first encounter with cold showers and a bit of a nap we set out into the day, had some food, mooched about and did a bit of shopping for the day before finally calling it a night late on ready to catch the early morning VIP bus to Ko Chang.

14th March – Khaosan Road, Bangkok to Lonely Beach, Ko Chang
This was our first real taste of travel in Thailand, which consists of starting at one location with a slip of paper of some sort, which as you go from vehicle to vehicle gets changed for other slips of paper as you travel along. The bus journey took perhaps six hours to get down to the pier near Trat, and then with a short wait we were transfered to the ferry, and then hopped onto a Taxi on Ko Chang which took us along to Lonely Beach, where a short (But hard) climb up the hill got us to the Oasis resort, one of the highest sets of guest huts in the area lead us to meet up with the rest of our friends, and the group of travelers they had hooked up with. After catching up and sorting out rooms and what was to become the usual pattern of lingering getting ready, eating, and then out to party we hit our first taste of the islands full flavor when we went to the Half Moon party at Siam Huts on Lonely Beach. Which was amazing night and really set the pace for our two weeks on the island.