Surat Thani Province, Thialand_
There is a story that comes before this one. It is a brief one about my experience in Bangkok. It is not yet written but when it is, I’ll remove this introduction. The point is I was ready to move on.
I flew to Surat Thani to attend a 10 day silent meditation retreat, not the hardcore dhamma ones where they brainwash you into 10 hours of meditation a day, their way or the highway, and if you try to leave they become the Mafia. It was a more welcoming one.
I had a plan to go to Koh Phangan directly after, and on the one hour plane ride from Bangkok I developed a gut feeling that I should skip the retreat and go straight to the island.
At baggage claim, I was tapped on the shoulder by a guy about my age who wore his heart as clothing. He asked me if I was headed towards the city and if I wanted to split a cab. It didn’t require thought to say yes.
In the cab, we learned a lot about each other. Two important pieces of information were that he had done the exact same retreat and said it was not worth the time, and that he was heading straight to Koh Phangan that night. I didn’t know that this was possible. He said it was possible by a night ferry. For those of you who have never been on a night ferry, it is like it is in the movies. There were more than several times that we were woken up by our ferry swaying back and forth around 60° (1/3 of the way to capsizing) and we questioned if we would make it to the island.
We spent 25 days together on the island. To this day, he is one of my closest friends and a true gem of the earth. I have many stories to tell about Karl but not here.