Bottle Beach - Part Deux!

My little write-up on my stint at the silent meditation retreat was obviously a little daily dose of my random thoughts/experiences. In reality, the whole experience was incredible. I felt so at peace, so calm, the entire time I was there. I also have never felt more as if I am living in the present moment with a more focused or more concentrated mind. I think it is an experience that would be good for everyone to go through once, even if only for a day or two. There’s something beautiful in silence…

I spent the last week in Bottle Beach, Koh Phangan, Thailand. Seriously, this is my definition of paradise on earth – white sand, palm trees, mountains, greenish/blue water, amazing food, lovely people, simple bungalows on the beach with a hammock hanging on the front porch. I returned to the beach where Gerad and I had such a great time, and slept in a bungalow three huts down from where he and I stayed!

Here is a list of what I have done over the last few days:

- Read in hammock
- Slept in hammock
- Read on beach
- Slept on beach
- Ate
- Drank
- Wrote
- Slept in bed
- Ran
- Swam

I finished Northanger Abbey, The Zahir, and The Life of Pi (glad I wasn't stuck on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger!). I hung out a bit with a really chill Israeli couple and an Austrian guy. I survived two absolutely terrifying storms. The first had such fierce winds that the entire bungalow shook and I covered my head with my pillow, after quickly quieting my fears that I was on the side of Thailand that suffers from tsunamis...I, luckily, was not. The other storm had lightning striking so close that I could feel the ground shake, the room was brighter than during the day with the lights on and so incredibly loud. Nature is wild! From my hammock, I observed a man catch a bird with his bare hands. Also from my hammock, I saw a man walking a monkey on a leash. That about sums up my week.

I took a boat then a bus back to Bangkok yesterday. We arrived at 3 AM this morning. For the third straight time, I was crammed in the back of the bus against the window. Clearly, I am paying for sins in a previous life by this curse of public transportation I have experienced lately! I got ridiculously sunburned on the boat because I was too engrossed in my book to apply sun screen, so heat was radiating off of me and the bus was not cool. My feet couldn't touch the ground because the back of the bus is higher. I didn't drink anything because we all know where that leads, so needless to say, I was hot, swollen and crammed in the back. There were nice people, entertaining conversations...so that occupied an hour of the 9 I had to endure. I hope there are no buses in South America...ha ha!

I fly to Ecuador in less than 12 hours. For most of my readers, we will share a few hours together in the Eastern Standard Time Zone during my Atlanta layover en route to Quito. I looked at a calendar for the first time in a long time the other day…do you know that I landed in Beijing on September 14th last year?!! How crazy is that?! Over one year in Asia! And it just keeps getting better…