The Beach

Kinda like the book but better...

So after a week in Bangkok we were ready to get to the beach so Mitra could work on fitting in with the locals while I tried not to burn. We took a morning bus which connected us to a boat to the island. On the bus we met an American Pete who was on his way to Cambodia to visit his brother who owns some bungalows in Sihanoukville which is one of our destinations. Pete told us how his brother ended up there by chance on a vacation and has now not left in over 6 months and started running these bungalows. We exchanged email addresses so that we could get the information on his brothers place so that we could stay there when we headed that way in a few weeks. So after a 5 hour bus ride and an hour boat ride we made it to the island around 3pm and found a place to stay and booked a bungalow for a week.

This place was exactly what we needed, a nice bungalow about 15 feet from the beach with a porch with a hammock. The island is very quiet and what I suspect islands like Koh Samui and Koh Phanghan were like 10 - 15 years ago. One thing that we found out from talking to the locals is that they want to keep it quiet and small and don't want the big business taking over. The high season is very short and the life is simple and all the businesses are family run. For me it was the perfect place to get some sun, read some books, decompress and get away from it all for awhile. Every night there was live music at the bar with the local musicians who would invite any guests up to play or sing if they were so inclined. I think by the second day we had decided to extend our stay for another 5 days. We finally ended up staying for 18 nights before finally heading to Cambodia.
                                                                      

                                             

We met a lot of great people from all over while staying at this small resort as everyone just felt like family. I got myself on a motorbike for the first time which was surprisingly easy considering I had to remember to drive on the wrong side of the road. I was able to spend a lot of time lazing on the beach or in a hammock reading books, listening to music and overall just finding my place. While here I personally hit the mark of holy crap this is no longer a holiday but travel is my life!!! It was an interesting point to hit in the travels and really got me appreciating what I am doing and that I have this amazing opportunity.

It's RUSTY!!!

One thing I noticed on this island was everyday at 10am and 1pm a boat would arrive from another island and people would get off at 10am one day and leave at 1pm the next day for another island. The looks on their faces was not of enjoyment rather it was almost a pained look as they were trying to squeeze in so much in so little time. They were not able to find out what a place is really like as they would stay for 24 hours and then gotta go off to the next stop. I did recognize that as the way that I used to travel and am so happy to not be that way any longer.

When we finally got to the end of our 18 days on the beach a little thing happened that really endeared me to the island and the resort. We had to catch a boat at 8am and were up and at the pier around 7:30. As we are standing there waiting to get on the boat the owner of the resort comes strolling down the pier to send us off and say goodbye. He stayed until the boat was pulling and was waving the whole time as we left for Cambodia. We know that we are now a part of the family and can't wait to get back there for another visit.

I obviously did not mention the name of this island in the post and I did this on purpose. I'm hoping that it will be able to keep it's simple charm for as long as possible and I feel that if you go to Thailand and you are meant to be on this island and find this resort that you will and you will love it as I do.                  

Sabaay in Thailand!
Brian

When in Asia!!
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C’mon, C’mon – Learn to Eat Pad Thai

Song for this part of the  post(Week 1):

Afraid by Nelly Furtado                                                                 

So, dear reader, this is the post about the island that shall not be named.  I think I heard it said somewhere “if you find it, you’ll know it.”  Why so hush, hush about this destination – because we love it THAT much, we don’t want it to be spoiled by droves of tourists.  BUT – if any of what I say truly entices you and instills a deep longing in you to venture there AND if I deem you worthy, I’ll gladly consider revealing this place to you.

            

So we woke up early in Bangkok, caught the Sky Train to the bus station, then a four or five hour bus to where we would be catching our one hour speedboat to – as B has taken to calling it – the beach.  We arrive at the pier and step off and though there’s a bit of confusion due to lack of sleep, a long day of travel, and having arrived without having secured accommodations - only knowing WHERE we wanted to stay and not knowing IF we’d be able to stay there – and trying to catch a ride to afore mentioned accommodations.  Though at the moment it all seemed like a bit of a cluster-fuck, I quickly realized where we were – PARADISE!!!  The island – or what we could see of it – was beautiful, the sand and beach gorgeous!  The sand was white and looked soft and the water was calm and crystal blue and you could see right to the bottom – my dream beach!

           

We got to the resort we were hoping to stay at and luckily they had rooms available.  At the time we booked in, we had decided we’d stay a week.   I think by that night we’d decided to extend another week.  When all was said and done…we stayed almost 3.          

            

We got ourselves settled and showered and headed off for dinner down the beach.  I wasn’t feeling so hot due to traveling, exhaustion, all the anxiety I’d been feeling, or something to those effects so after dinner I went back to our bungalow, got in bed and continued to try and make a dent in “The Fountainhead.”  (B teases me relentlessly about being a slow reader and I have to constantly protest, pointing out to him that he gets hours more of reading time during the day because his Whitey McCracker ass is stuck in the shade most of the time!  I have totally ruined tan lines by reading while I’m laying out.  I consider myself somewhat of a serious tanner and I’m not having ANY effed up tan lines, uneven skin tones, or white patches underneath my chin because I had to read!!!  I’m a professional dammit!  There’s a reason my nickname growing up was Sexual Chocolate!  I belee da childen are da fewtcha…but I TOTALLY digress…) B went to the bar of our resort, which happened to be pretty much, the only nightlife in town and where most of the people on the beach would end up after they ate. 

            

The next morning we got up and that’s pretty much what became the daily ritual for the next few weeks – getting up, eating breakfast, me into the sun to start seriously working on my tan and B in to the shade to seriously work on not getting burned.  Of course amidst all the tanning there was plenty of playing in the ocean and every late afternoon consisted of walking to the store to get beers for B and iced coffees for me and then back to either the porch of our bungalow or the fallen coconut tree log on the beach and sitting and watching the sunset.

            

OK – so paradise, tanning, fabulous, fabulous, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda!!!  My head was STILL clustered fucked – maybe even more so!  I was STILL feeling extremely fatigued, the kind I had felt for the entire previous year in New York which was beginning to get increasingly infuriating.  So here’s where the aforementioned tension caused my excessive sleeping began to build tension and frustration between us.  And the only effect that the growing tension and frustration had on me was to make my sleep even more restless and short – not to mention the sand flies who’d viciously attacked me within the first few days on the beach and left bites that itched like diaper rash in the desert, it was horrible!!!   I kept asking B to wake me up around 8:30 in the morning so I could begin to create some semblance of a routine (thinking that maybe if I just started to get up early and start moving that I’d be reinvigorated and more inclined to start taking care of myself more) and make it out to the beach before noon.  Every morning he’d try and every morning I’d roll over and go back to sleep until about 9:30 when B would come back in and give me the last warning for breakfast which stopped being served at 10.  We pretty much began to resent the hell out of each other for this little play we’d begun to perform day after day.

            

I can’t speak for B, but with all the extenuating and far from normal circumstances in our lives at the time (as idyllic as some of those circumstances may have been) my resentment was churning and coagulating and snowballing every day.  Something was in me, coursing through me like an infection, feeling alien and dark and disgusting.  I can’t explain it better than just being a horrifying, bitter mixture of fear and rage.  I could barely bring myself to talk to anyone and was busily erecting a craggy stoned wall between B and me. Not to be trite or cliché but at that time I felt like my life was going to choke me to death, that it would crush me like some booby-trapped room in an Indiana Jones movie (ya know - one of the good ones before they made that fourth piece of putrid fecal matter) and the walls were coming in on my from every direction.

            

That first week we met Tom and Gina – an American couple from California with a complicated story but still a lot of fun.  It was a good start at me coming out of my shell.  They were staying on the other side of the island where the beach was even more blue, clear and calm.  I could’ve spent every day over there but there was very little shade for my sensitive skinned Honkey Mc Wonderbread so he could only trek over to that side of the island every couple of days.  We spent some afternoons and nights with Tom and Gina which were a good time and I for one started to finally slip into the mode of “Yeah, that’s what this is about – reaching out to others and sharing the world of travel with complete strangest that you automatically develop this kinship with because you “get” each other.”  Also, I think it was because of seeing their relationship an just the tension that had been boiling up inside myself – and because of that, in Brian – that at the end of the week B and I had a little blow up and finally cleared the air a bit.  So it was important that we meant them…but I was still completely mental and existing pretty much solely from my head.

Song for this post (Week 2):

Empty by Ray LaMontange

            

I’d been spending a fair amount of time in the water every day trying to get some exercising in, thinking once again that starting small with some water aerobics would get my energy to finally kick in.  I’d also started to have more contact with my old AA sponsor from back when I was in San Fran cuz no matter how far apart we are, she’s always sure to let me know what an ungrateful jack-ass I’m being and sets me to work on my program.  Naturally – ugh – she suggested that I do a 4^th step, making a moral inventory of my life and see where I’ve wronged others.  (Just paraphrasing so don’t give me any shit about not knowing the 4^th step verbatim.)  So naturally, I procrastinated doing it for as long as B’s sanity and mine would allow and then I got to work. FUCK!!!  The more I worked on it, the more clearly I began to see what my malfunction was – and that’s never fun.

            

As I said, I was spending a lot of time in the water and though I’ve revealed that I find much about the sea disgusting and slimy, I LOVE THE OCEAN!!!  I think a lot of people may be able to relate to this but it’s just where I feel most connected and serene and that – besides the shower – is where I have my best talks with God and the universe and whatever is out there.  For some time now – maybe the last 3 or 4 years – most of my conversations with whatever powers may be have included a lot of screaming, a lot of anger, a lot of cursing, and usually end with me flipping the bird above my head and saying something to the effect of, “Fuck you, you FUCKING cunt monkey!!! PLEASE – help me.”

            

But one day, out in the beautiful, blue water on a warm, sunny day when the world and the scenery couldn’t have been more perfect, and I was out there doing my Jane Fonda’s and cursing at the sky, something came to me…

            

Dear reader, another all too common phrase you may find falling from a recovering alcoholic’s lips is, “I drank so I didn’t have to feel.”  This is not my experience, in fact it was quite the opposite – I drank TO feel.  Most of my life I kind of crept through like an automaton.  When I first got sober my addiction counselor at the time wanted me to carry around a little chart with emoticons on it and the corresponding emotion written underneath so I could start to assess what exactly what I was feeling.  Most of the time – to this day – I don’t know what I’m feeling.  Most of the time – to this day – I feel nothing.  I feel the truly low lows and the extremely high highs but anything in between is pretty much lost on me and I’m pretty much blasé about the day to day things.  This creates some very unsavory habits in myself that I constantly am struggling to rid myself of.       

    

Out there in the vast water and endless sky, between me and my God, something clicked and I began to fully understand where my irksome behavior had been born from.  If you’re in a serious, committed relationship you may be able to relate to this next part.  B and I – like any relationship – have our ups and downs, but back in the world we only really knew a fraction of each other because you only ever spend a fraction of your time together.  We were now spending 24-7 with each other and we still had 4 and a half months to go!!! Ugh!!!  (It’s my theory that this is why many couples who’ve been together forever split up out of the blue after one or both of them retire.) You know the moment when you realize your parents are human?  Well, I had that moment with B somewhere in the first few weeks of my trip and it had come to a head when finally I just looked at him and thought, “Really, this is my knight in fucking shining armor?  THIS is the rest of my life?”  The moment you realize, TRULY realize that you absolutely cannot imagine your life without one particular person is beautifully terrifying.

            

I love B to bits and pieces, but in my life I’ve had to really evaluate what my definition of love is.  These are the best two definitions that I’ve heard: 1. “Loving someone is allowing them to grow spiritually.” and 2. “Love is an action, not a feeling.”  For a hopeless romantic like myself, at first these quotes will sound like a punch in the gut.  But after you marinate on them for a while – at least for me – I look at them like, “Yeah, that IS how I want to be loved.”  So, do unto others and all that right?  The only thing is, I am never more high than when I have the feeling of FALLING in love.  I’m not quite sure what love should feel like and maybe that’s just as well since love is an action and all.  But I am 100% completely and totally addicted to the FEELING of falling in love.  I think if we were all honest, most people would say the same thing.  It’s the falling that people really want because it’s all promise and possibility and fun and easy and flattering and the whole world seems like it’s yours for the asking and it 

makes your life feel 1,000 times more full and more exciting than an average day and you walk around in this luminescent, gigantic bubble of hope and luck and feeling like you’ve been singled out by the Gods, have been chosen specifically for this perfect and unique gift and there is something in you that feels complete and like you but better.  You have been recognized, acknowledged, connected, touch, your soul finally belongs to something and every morning you look forward to waking up, you spring out of bed because another day of falling beckons you like breath stopping, heart fluttering, light, easy, elated, exuberant twitterpation.  BEING in love is mostly just work.  The reward of being in love is far greater than the falling, but it is work none-the-less.

            

That’s what my head and heart, my ego, and my general chemical make up had been craving these past few weeks – I wanted a falling in love fix, I was jonesing hard and it was starting to undo me.   I didn’t know how to be happy with the being and with that, I was feeling nothing but the constriction of lungs and walls being built up and closing in. 

Some occurrences of note this week:

Meeting Ken and Andrew – a Canadian uncle and Nephew traveling around.  VERY cool and just good-hearted guys who we will definitely keep in touch with!   

Also – meeting Aisha and Susan, two Irish girls who would drastically change our trip.  But you’ll have to keep reading to find out exactly how.

Song for this post (Week 3):

Run by Snow Patrol

Dear reader, I am a runner.  When I arrive somewhere new, I gaze upon hills and streets and steps and paths and beaches and think of myself running them and feeling myself in my body, feeling strong and being connected to my muscles and my skin and my sweat and I love the pain and breathlessness I feel for making me know how alive and how full of energy I am.  I haven’t been able to truly run in a very long time and it pains me to some extent.  But it occurred to me this week, maybe I have worn myself out from running for a while and now I’m meant to rest.  Maybe I’ve grown too exhausted from running hills and paths and stairs and beaches, from all the running from people and jobs and relationships and life and love and myself.  Maybe my body’s recent inability to perform the thing I rely upon to feel alive is to be accepted rather than reviled and resisted. I ran a handful of times while we were here – up a hill, down the beach – and I wanted to die!  Never have I felt such discouraging, shameful, ineptitude from running.  It occurred to me this week that maybe it’s time for quiet contemplation of all that I wish to run to, not from, that all the running I’ve done up until mow has been a lie. I can’t run right now, can’t run from the circumstances around me.  Maybe it’s time to sit still, maybe it’s time for something to change. Maybe the time will come for me to run again, not FROM fear of living, but TO love of life.  After all,  “Love is an action, NOT a feeling.”

xoxoM