A Month on the Beaches of Koh Payam

After a month an a half on a relatively remote island in southern Thailand I found myself with Tryg in Bangkok wondering exactly how one comes to a place like this. After all, I didn’t plan on being in Bangkok 5 months ago when we set off for asia free of trajectory and started wandering. I can honestly say I never planned to go to Bangkok ever in my life, it was to remain a Timbuktu, Transylvania, or Emerald City, mythic in its scale and remoteness. But when your intention has no direction all destinations are possible; In fact in such a situation where one makes no plans, each happening begins to feel intended, or at the very least miraculous. Here I am in Beijing, here I am in Shanghai, suddenly I find myself in a rural hospital, and now a Buddhist temple. I’ve gotten good at riding the currents of this trip becoming aware of the fact that I am part of the whole ocean and these waves were heading towards me long ago.  I find myself being able to accept what comes and flow with it on towards what ever ends it offers me.

Ian swings on the beach.  Another perfect sunset over Burmese islands and the Andaman Sea.

Koh Payam, the island off the coast of Ranong, Thailand, was absolutely incredible - at first. Me and tryg arrived there with Liisa, our Finnish friend from our first week in Beijing who had decided to join us for a little while in the tropics. We arrived on the island by ferry from the main land and took motor bike taxis to our hut made of weaved bamboo pieces right on the white sand of the beach. Though it was too hot in the middle of the day – 95 degrees usually - to do anything but go swimming, that was more than enough to keep us occupied for a while. Tryg built spear guns out of sticks, bicycle spokes, and rubber tires to be used while snorkeling around the truly razor sharp coral reefs just a 3 minute walk from our front door. Inland was covered in jungle, cashew orchards, and coconut trees. Wild dogs roamed around in packs that you could hear at night fighting raucous yelping turf wars. We explored the little shops and restaurants around us in the cooler evenings and woke up each morning to a chorus of a hundred different tropical bird calls each beautiful and unique. In all we paid about 5 dollars per person per night, and I could not believe how someone like me, with as little money as I have, could afford to come to a place that seemed like it should be reserved for millionaires and honeymooners. I was awash with contentment.

Texture of a jackfruit. 

This changed slowly. Within 2 weeks Liisa left to return to school in Beijing, and me and tryg moved into a cheaper place away from the beach with nicer cabins. Like the huts before we only had electricity after 6 pm, and no Internet of any kind. The heat was absolutely stifling during the day and I’d started getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes. In the beginning I stuck to a workout routine that I could maintain within the confines of the cabin, because the sun was so intense I couldn’t bring myself to go running. But mostly, we settled in for a long stay with books and pod casts.

Kink-tailed cat.

The beginning of my downfall was the mosquitoes. I have a stronger reaction to them than most people I know and it becomes almost impossible not to scratch them. I do my best but in those hazy moments between sleeping and wakefulness I find myself completely lacking in self control and scratch my legs to ruins. They became bloody and eventually, my right leg got infected. I did my best to take care of it but when I started feeling sick and found my lymph nodes were starting to swell I had to start taking my emergency antibiotics. Though the leg eventually healed and I redoubled my efforts to resist scratching, my moral would never return to it’s full force. Each day became exactly like the last, waking up without a goal or a reason. I was running low on money and wanted to have some to spend when Lupin came to meet us in Hong Kong, so I was eating mostly just musli cereal with only one real meal a day from the restaurants on the island. As I said it was too hot most of the time to walk much during the day, or go exploring, and even when I did force myself to go out there were only 3 roads on the island, all of which I’d already walked down many times. I read 4 books in the month we spent on the island. I listened to close to 50 podcast including Radio Lab, All Songs Considered, The Splendid Table, America’s Test Kitchen, and a few others. I found myself sitting in the chair on our porch staring mindlessly into the trees simply waiting for our time on the island to end. I became numb.

The biggest, meanest, gecko on Koh Phayam. 

In the middle there was suddenly hope for some way to pass the time. Tryg had found a hidden beach down a jungle path that was covered in sharp rock. The first day I went we brought the fly rods we’d been carrying with us since Portland that we'd yet to use and for the first time in 5 months tried fishing. That first day was beyond fun. Tryg caught a massive squid - over 3 pounds - on "The Pram Rod", which he won in a rock paper scissors contest before we left the US. I caught a much smaller squid accompaniment, all within an hour.. That night we had a massive feast. The owner of our cabin turned the one big squid into 5 different dishes, then made a few dishes of his own and we ate with the staff. When we tried to pay for the extra food they’d given us they refused “when you are here you are family” he insisted.

A friendly guy I met out in a jungle hut.

The next day we caught nothing though, and same with the day after that. For days we returned to the beach to hangout and fish, but in time the hike didn’t feel worth it to me and I would spent the last 2 weeks sitting on the porch or walking aimlessly around the island by myself.

One of the many flying lizards on the island.  They had quite a glide ratio, and amazing maneuverability. 

When finally we left and found ourselves in the massive city of Bangkok I felt suddenly like I could accomplish anything. Despite the boredom and incredible act of mental endurance involved with doing nothing at all for a month, it left me also feeling powerful. I was so happy to be in Bangkok. I knew that I was feeling something that you could only feel after traveling for 5 months, a simple awareness of the world and your place in it, and joy in knowing that. I loved that I was somewhere so unlikely, I loved that I was doing something so intense, I even loved the experience on the island, as miserable as it was, because that much quiet time to yourself it's self teaches you a thing or two.

Young pineapple.

Travel, I decided, even with all it’s inevitable suffering, and in fact because of it, is an incredible thing, it makes me feel stronger and more capable than anything else I’ve ever experienced. Our last night in Bangkok we laid our air mattresses out on benches in the airport to sleep. With my hat over my eyes to block out the fluorescent lights I soaked in steady confidence.  5 months ago I wasn't sure if there was a reason to go on this trip.  I wanted to focus on my education, on building my career, I was worried this was a waste of time, but in the airport as I noted all the anxieties and self doubts that had evaporated in these past 5 months I was so thankful I'd continued, because every challenge, every inner tumult, was worth the way I'd now begun to feel.