A Note From Paradise! (part 7 of 7): My Honeymoon with...

Wow. After rereading the past six entries about my experience here on Koh Tao, I am really blown away. I am acutely aware what a blessing it is for me to be able to be here… that my time here is but just a dream for most people in this world...three weeks to relax and be surrounded by the beauty of a tropical island…for just dollars a day. I feel such a depth of gratitude that words to fully express my appreciation don’t even exist. I am on a romantic tropical island…yet I am here by myself.

This brings me to a point I want to mention. Part of the reason why this glorious time is even possible for me is because I am single…and don’t have any kids. I am thinking of all my married friends, whom are mom’s and dad’s, reading this as you turn green with envy. But I would like to make a point…we all make choices in our lives, which open doors while at the same time, close others. I have chosen to not get married (yet!!), and to not have kids (yet?). Thus, I have the money and the freedom to spend such glorious alone time here on this little island paradise. I also have very flexible standards of living that I am comfortable in…a tent in the jungle that I share with cockroaches and spiders, to luxurious 5-star resorts. So what is on the opposite side of this coin? Well, let me tell you. I haven’t mentioned all the ants that I have befriended in my bathroom, and I can’t tell you how many nights in the past 20 years that I have been sad about being single....let me tell you: Yes, I love 'grabbing life by the horns' and experiencing all of my many adventures...but having all of these amazing adventures without someone by my side to share them with (except for my beloved time with Rick!)....well, it just gets damn old.

At first, I wondered if being on this romantic island by myself… with its sensual sunsets, its aphrodisiac scents, its honeymoon suites… was going to be irritating for me. The couples walking hand in hand on the beach, chatting and laughing as they lay next to each other in the sand, sharing a glass of wine at sunset, lets not even mention what they do after dark…Usually, these are sights that can get me all riled up….and sad…and lonely…and pitiful. But I’m very glad to say that the only time it actually bugged me was, funny enough, when I saw all the ‘couples’ hanging out together while I was snorkeling (explained back in part 5)!

But hey, there are lots of cute men here too…so maybe one of them is single? Well lets see, on about day 7, one of them joined me for lunch. Late 20’s, blond, from Switzerland, traveling by himself …seemed like a really nice guy. So we decided to have dinner together that night. He liked chatting with me…but apparently also as much as with the two Austrian girls who were sitting at the table next to us. “Jody! Do you mind if they join us?!” So I say, “Well gee. That sounds wonderful.” But of course what I really meant was, “Are you an idiot?”

Then there was the perfectly sculpted, lusciously tanned skinned, dazzling green-eyed, wonder man. I noticed him one day as he was getting out of the water after snorkeling. I made a quick scan of the surroundings for any signs indicating I should abort my mission….a ring on his wedding finger, anyone on the beach he may be looking up at whom was wearing a bikini…Nope, all was in the clear. I wasted no time. I grabbed my snorkel and headed into the water. As I casually flipped my hair around, to tie it back in preparation for snorkeling of course, I smiled at him and simply asked, “How was it?” He looked at me kind of funny so perhaps he didn’t hear me. I tried to make myself more clear, “How was the snorkeling today?” “Oh, sorry. Me no speak Engleash.” …I have never cared so much about the French I studied back in high school in my entire life, until that moment. We exchanged smiles, made some awkward hand gestures about how big the fish are, and then I put my tail between my legs so to speak and swam out into the sea.

Then there was the cute massage guy. I must admit, the Thai men are generally not my type. But this guy is really cute and sweet. I started adopting a routine that every afternoon after my daily snorkel, I would get a massage from him, and then we would give each other language lessons for a while….I teaching him English and he teaching me Thai, of course. Well, each night, it seems like he was asking me if I wanted to join him for dinner. (Not speaking each other’s language certainly makes flirting challenging….smiling and smiling and smiling, without words with clear understanding, gets old after a while…) But, I had made some friends and always had dinner plans with them. (Toots and Angela from Germany, and the Swiss guy funny enough.) However, they were going to be leaving soon…and I knew I had plenty of time here, or so I thought….so I was just going to see if an opportunity to have dinner with him would come up once they left. This went on for I’d say at least about five or six days.

Well, the very night that Toots and Angela from Germany and the Swiss guy left, I headed over for my daily indulgence of being massaged for an hour from the cute local guy (did I mention it was in a beautiful hut…on the beach…for $9?!), and then the endless flirting session. Oh whoops, I mean, language lessons. But it looks like I was too late…

When I arrived, there was some other American girl sitting there with her Thai-English dictionary teaching him English. Apparently, she wasn’t aware that I was the English teacher, and thank you very much, but I was in no need of a substitute teacher today. I sat down and introduced myself and joined in. Apparently, she was only teaching him English but didn’t know a word of Thai. So I started to chat with my Thai friends…“Sabai dee mai? Khun bai nai wanee? Wanee dee mai?” Then I looked at my cute friend and impressed him even more, “Neung song sahm see hah hok jet pbad gow sip.” Since she didn’t speak a word of Thai, it didn’t concern me in the least bit that my complex sounding sentence was simply me counting to ten. I just wanted to make sure she knew who was boss…or so I thought….

As the no-longer-a-flirting-session-but-language-lesson-competition went on, I soon realized that no matter how much Thai I showed off with, I was clearly in second place…The story goes like this: Apparently this lady, Mindy is her name, was here three months ago…and she and the massage guy hit it off. (His name is Jaran by the way…or perhaps more like Jahrun, or Jaaruhn, or Chalun….You see, the Thai’s don’t use these same letters that I’m sitting here typing with. They have an entirely different alphabet…with entirely different sounds than are used in our language….So to write his name using these letters is simply my attempt at trying to match the sound that is produced when he says his name.) So Mindy and, lets say Jaran, hung out for days back in April and even ended up traveling around Thailand together for a week or so. Well, Mindy is a teacher in California and was on spring break, so she had to eventually head back home. But now she is on summer break and arrived back here on Koh Tao to do some more traveling with Jaran. Long story short, I quickly accepted my place in this triangle and have enjoyed the past week hanging out with Jaran AND Mindy, who both left today to do some more traveling around Thailand.

Do you see the lesson here? The lesson that I see is that, this month is not about me having a romantic, tropical island fling. This month, exactly as I intended it to be, is about me unwinding, letting go of residual stress of med school that has still been hanging around, resting my body, rejuvenating my mind…I’ve decided to call it: My Honeymoon with Myself. Throughout my trip here, I’ve been reading my fabulous Aunt Mary’s book, The Gift of Our Compulsions (which refers to not just the obvious ones but also a compulsion to over-think, over-work, over-struggle, over-stay-busy…). It’s all about learning to live peacefully within our own mind, regardless of what is going on on the outside. Today is my last full day here and I just finished the last page this morning at breakfast…such perfect timing. It has been my most perfect companion. Each day I have transformed old thoughts of struggle, into compassion and love for myself….So you see, the perfect title for my time here is: My Honeymoon with Myself.

And so now, for one last time before I leave tomorrow, I’m off to go nourish my body with some scrumptious delights at the beachside restaurant, be dazzled by the glorious sights of life in the sea, and then enjoy a nap in my ocean view hammock. Thank you for sharing my month long journey in paradise with me…Of course, more to come later on as my journey living and working in Thailand continues. Bye for now. ☺