This one’s coming a little late. I’ve been wiped after spending the last several days doing a ton of diving and haven’t had the time or energy to finish this up until now.
As I mentioned last week, my first week in Thailand didn’t go quite as planned. The intent was to spend a week in Chiang Mai and Pai before coming south to the islands, but due to a once-a-year lantern festival in Chiang Mai and my last-minute planning, there were no hostels or hotels available anywhere near my price range. With no place to stay, I had to adapt. This meant that most of my time in Bangkok was unfortunately spent running through alternatives and trying to figure out where I was going and what I was doing.
Eventually I landed on essentially jumping a week ahead in my itinerary by going to Southern Thailand straight away and allowing myself some extra buffer to spend wherever I’m enjoying most.
Overall, it was a relatively mellow week to give myself a bit of chill time before my big stretch of diving (will cover that in detail next week), so the activities section might not be as detailed as previous weeks.
LOCATIONS
- Bangkok, Thailand (Nov 13 – Nov 15)
- Khao Sok, Thailand (Nov 15 – Nov 18)
- Koh Samui, Thailand (Nov 18 – Nov 20)
ACTIVITIES
Phang Nga Sunrise
One of the recommendations I was given for my time down here was driving to the Phang Nga Bay to see sunrise. It was well worth the early morning, and not something I would have done without the recommendation. The views reminded me a bit of some of the formations I saw in Vietnam. The viewpoint I went to was a tad more touristy than I’d hoped for, but it was still incredible. One of the perks I’ve found with early morning activities is that there are only so many people that are willing to wake up at those hours of the day.
Staycation in Khao Sok
After hitting the Phang Nga sunrise, I drove North a few hours near Khao Sok National Park. There’s a lake nearby called Cheow Lan which has a variety of floating bungalow accommodations. I was initially considering doing this, but it ended up being a bit pricier than I was willing to pay for an overnight experience. So instead I hunkered down at a small spot outside of the park with six A-Frame cabins in the forest and did a whole lot of nothing for two days.
It’s the first time this trip that I’ve intentionally set aside more than a few hours to relax with no agenda, and it was much needed. The first month of the trip flew by and it was really nice to just press pause for a bit in a quiet area. No socializing, no touring, just rest.
I spent a bit of time writing, a lot of time in bed, a bit of time planning, a bit of time playing chess, and not a whole lot else. It was wonderful.
Pig Island
A 30-minute boat ride away from Koh Samui lies Koh Madsum, colloquially know as Pig Island. It’s a small little island where a few dozen pigs roaming around the main beach are the primary attraction. You can feed them, pet them and if you’re lucky, watch them swim.
It was quite the bizarre experience arriving to an island and seeing a bunch of pigs roaming around in the sand. The beach was quite nice too, and we did a bit of snorkeling and swimming nearby.
REFLECTIONS
When Your Plan Collapses
I guess it was inevitable that this would happen sooner or later at some scale. My initial reaction was panic. I had 24 hours until my bus to Chiang Mai with no place to stay. At the start, I was stuck with tunnel vision on making my plan work instead of even considering that there were other options. Eventually I realized that there was no way my plan was happening, and I was reminded that there was nothing saying I had to go North as I had planned. The only formal commitment I had to that plan was a bus ticket I paid 30 bucks for. All I had to do was not get on that bus, and all of a sudden, I could once again go anywhere else I wanted.
In general, it’s hard for me to get out of that tunnel vision and let go of expectations. But time and time again, I find peace after doing so. The pressure of fulfilling expectations dissipates when we let go of them. In this case, as I slowly shifted into exploring other options, I discovered that heading South earlier actually felt like a better option. The North would have been cool, but it would have been a lot of moving around and my what my body and mind needed was the opportunity to slow down and rest a bit more.
The encouragement in this one is to not hold too tightly to your expectations. When things don’t line up the way you expect them to, there might be a different opportunity present to step into. You might also learn something about yourself in the process of stepping back and re-evaluating.
People
Last week I mentioned that I was missing my people. I’m grateful that this week I got to spend time with people I really enjoy.
In Bangkok, I met Fin, an Aussie who’s doing four weeks of bike touring around Thailand. We got into bike chat instantly and it was a welcome change of pace from all the standard conversations I’ve been having. We’ve been chatting about potentially doing some riding together in Australia once I get down there. Timelines might mess with that a bit, but I’m hoping we can get something figured out.
My first week in Vietnam, I met Amy. She’s from England and is one of the most intense people I’ve ever met. We connected over hiking and neither of us being huge nightlife/alcohol people in a crowd that can often feel very nightlife centric. We got to do one hike together and then after two days went different directions. Due to my forced change of plans away from the North, we ended up overlapping again this week, along with one of her friends from back home and some others she’s met along the way. It was nice to be in a relaxed group for a few days where the majority of our evenings were just eating good food, hanging out, and playing cards. We’re meandering different routes in a similar direction and are trying to coordinate some more bouts of linking up which I’m excited for as they’re nice breaks from the primarily solo travel.
One of the topics we had a fun time discussing amongst our group was different slang across America, England and Canada. I’m learning that other places (notably England & Australia) seem to have a lot more slang than we do in the States, but maybe that’s also just me not being able to come up with things on the spot. So my request for you is that if you have any slang you use that you think is unique to the US (or wherever you’re from), let me know so we can build our collective slang vocabulary! Maybe it’ll even make an extras segment someday.
NEXT UP
I’m officially an SSI certified open water diver! I loved it so much that I did some advanced training including some specialty dives and increased my certification depth from 18 meters to 30. Scuba has been such a unique experience the last several days and definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far. I’ll share more about it all in the next update.
I’m currently spending a few days in Krabi and will meander around to a few more spots in the area before I move on to Malaysia.
As always, if you know anyone that you think would be interested in anything I’m writing about, I’d ask that you consider sharing this with them.
Thanks for being here. Talk to you next week.
– Trevor