After taking a 13 hour train ride and then a boat I ended up it Kho Samui, which i decided about 10 minutes before the train stopped! I had a nice little bungelow on the beach and relaxed for a few days in preperation for the 10 day retreat. On my train ride I met 3 thai women that took good care of me and sat with another Thai women on the bus who pointed to pictures n my book and gave me words...too bad my short term memory is shot from all those wild college years!
After a good 8 hours of traveling I got to the meditation retreat. For about 2 hours I did not cross paths with any wetsterners and at that point i know that i have finally scratched beneath the surface of thai...out of touristie areas and into the yummyness of it all! The "van" dropped my off on the highway and i found my way in. Met another retreater right away and then a resident. When I was taken to the dorm for the first night I thought...wow...could this be my edge? It was like walking into a pententary and then into my own jail cell. After I breathed through that momenbt and decided to go cool off in the shower the bats all flew out to greet me....I'm scared of Bats! Hence the beginning of the meditation retreat...facing fears.
The grounds are absolutely amazing and the jungle filled with monkeys, frogs, lizards, bugs bugs bugs, meditation huts and all sorts of building with nshrines and alters and statues and so on and so on. Today I registered and turned in my ipod, journal, books, chocolate (treat at the end!), camera and such. 10 days of absolute silence....I'm not going to talk for 10 days...crazy!!!!!! Check out the website http://www.suanmokkh.org/ and look under retreat.
Well I've always wanted to do this...
Now I will trekk back into the jungle and relax in the hot spring before the retreat begins and the talking stops!
I still havent figured out the photos by the way. The chord and camera and computer are not talking:(
