Koh Samui, an island in Thailand, is where two months went by, through selective listening to elements of my choice; scooter-riding around the island, dancing in importunate pre-flash flood rains, volunteering in a Thai vocational college in Koh Samui, and getting a sweet hold of the ocean in friendships.
There was a void. A breakage in a continuation. A mellow drowning of Catherine’s half-travelled sentences, Tiley’s hands directing the hippy waves, Yoahn’s fear-words for diving underwater, and the momentous trestle that holds the table; all the sounds that chide the bittersweet chase around our physical world. Drowned, in a thick silence of a parallel universe. That’s how I felt. Thick; momentously different from the silence of the mountains. The mountains don’t eradicate the physical trace so boldly; it exists, rather co-exists with the sounds, and creates a blended void, without denying the birds, the sun and the leaves. It’s a silence full of sounds.
But the ocean is oblivion. The thickness gets thicker, to a comfort of that underground silence that needs to be provoked by an external nudge on the surface. You disturb the surface, but only a fraction invades the ears. That’s the day I learned to float.
The Element of Water in Koh Samui
Long before the sun could set, we jumped into the shallow water of a beach we didn’t know the name of. What’s in a name? It was our beach. We knew the swings that hung from two diagonal trees; the long ones that snap those long-standing picturesque travel pictures. One overtaking another; overthinking the obvious, swinging plunges that are likely to crash atop one another, if the swingers choose to swing at the same pace.
We knew the other patio swing on the water, makeshift in a wooden square-box outline.
We knew that the water was so shallow that you could kayak to the next uninhabited island even without any expertise.
We knew that swimming was not an option; so we floated. Our ears drenched in the callings of underwater, feet booing out of current, and open arms destined to embrace the ocean’s sibilance, sleeping in the bubbles of a new love-adventure in Koh Samui.
We also knew our knowledge could fool us with a sulking persona of that stillness canoeing to a tempting crash of individual wavelengths, crashing on the walls and bean bags at that beachside open-air cafe, onto seaweed that goes into Thai food preparations, burdening the fat tree-branch I climbed to recline on but the trunk was too abrasive on my skin. I knew things could change. I just hadn’t been around the ocean before to catch the sea monologue and dialogues.
‘I am a mountain girl’. True. I will always be, but the ocean was a new territory.
We were floating. My ears stumped into a sharp state of meditation. A direct dip. The sunset crossed miles to an evening, and we were still in the water. Just us; laughing, floating, gesturing, planning to live in a fruit-land and asking hypothetical questions of survival. Tiley’s laughed-out words could hardly touch my erratic hand movements I call ‘swimming’. Yoahn throws water at Catherine, Catherine creates a tornado. ‘I am swimming to France.’ The collective vibration of those friendships visualising radio frequencies that the upside sky had painted in little stars. Underwater ears had eyes now in water and darkness.
But the ocean is oblivion. The thickness gets thicker, to a comfort of that underground silence that needs to be provoked by an external nudge on the surface. You disturb the surface, but only a fraction invades the ears. That’s the day I learned to float.
If it wasn’t for an underwater moving green light that flashed out of nowhere, parading close to Tiley, we wouldn’t have come out of the ocean. We thought it might be a jellyfish. Who knows. The green halo was gorgeous, fluorescent, flattering… We left though, confused by its intentions. Pretty light-sniper. What was she holding under her sleeves? We had no time to let our water-dripping bodies settle into dryness. Dressed as we were, we rode our scooters to Koh Samui’s Lamai Night Market in partially-wet clothes.
Oftentimes I am so present in a moment that I also like to toss another perspective to it, by extricating myself from it. Be a participant and an observer; especially the times that circulate around other people. I am cherishing, laughing, thoughtlessly doling out a pure, unadulterated part of me… Then I want to find a seat four metres away and just observe others still gushing in their individual momentum. I was too. I am still. I am still there. I just look at it. A present that just turned into a past, but still being present. Maybe it’s a way of retaining what is passing on. Feeling the joy and reflecting on how fortunate I am to earn this moment of ease, together.
You are talking, talking… and then you are silent, and you let others occupy the space and own your self-effacing spectator self. You are listening, with the awareness of the potential of that existential corner, and what it means to you.
Is there any timely gap between the present and the past?
Also read – Roadtrippin’ around Chaiyaphum with Four Thai Grandmas
Water Appearing in Another Form
The flash flood alerts in Thailand hardly affected Koh Samui. Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Northern Thailand as always took the hit head-down. In Koh Samui, drowning the coastal heat that is sweltering, excruciating, energy-sucking… (my heat tolerance has no parameters and no shortage of adjectives) came my rain. If you are weather-dependent like me, you know your privileges. I certainly know mine. Rain, fog, clouds, storms, coldness in moderation, pleasant… Yeah, yeah, I am from the mountains. It makes a difference.
The wooden plank floated on this rain-aberration; water as erratic as a madman’s paradise, backside out. The Thai students’ chomping barefeet balancing with the hand-weight of a piece of furniture that would splash sprinkles if it had the destiny to fall. The carry-on doesn’t halt; it elongates to ribbon-magic; stretches from the shirt interiors to the last disappearance of the ribbon. Now there are more stutters, more mud-stains shaped in a series of wet feet. The wooden plank can easily be a floating log now, on a tiny puddle. A student makes way for me; empty space for this immobile ride on wood.
They are moving things around, from the students’ dormitory to a truck waiting outside. To where, I don’t know. Why, I don’t know either. We were asked to help out and I didn’t ask questions. Being an instrument to an unquestioned moving activity eases that ‘helping hand’ part in me. I have enough avenues of my own giggling with questions and complexities. I balance that out with the hands-on tasks of hands and legs that make the present more regulated, more attuned to mindfulness, and more like a physical and mental workout.
I am not solid. I am liquid. Everything has melted in me; the hardened clenches that the monster sun had the power to fertilise in my soil.
Tegest climbed on River’s shoulders, both dancing in assumed Indian dance moves; the kind the Westerns pursue from Bollywood. ‘My mother loves Bollywood’. Yoahn is a French volunteer. I move my hands in potential Bhangra (the Punjabi dance), my waist raving in shriveling swings, choreographed with matched hand-movements with one finger standing out in closed grips. No, I don’t know the Bhangra moves, or Bollywood, but I have a general idea. The flow of knowing freedom in free spirits in rain and the charm of structural expressions of my body. The way yoga is; a way of touching myself. Embodiment in moving my body.
In those million-dollar realisations, I extricate myself physically, take baby-steps back to a horizontal distance, to invite another dimension to slowly fall back on this multi-dimensional moment. Something invades time and space. The awareness of existence, on top of existence. Love-awareness. How grateful am I to know life this way! Art, music, words, laughter, nature, individual sorrows and adrenaline – how fortunate am I! I am grateful for the rain. For dancing. For sorrow. For laughter. For connections; a thread dismissive of the word-world, bereft of all illusions, content in recognition…
A Thai tune poured in. I thought someone was playing the guitar. No, it was from someone’s phone. The 42nd sense-dimension. I sat by the phone, watching Tegest, River, Catherine and Yoahn still laughing, still dancing… The rain in them… I am still there, because the rain is also in me.
No matter which country or which region, my soul elements govern me. They find me in this interpersonal romance.
Also read – The Sounds And Taste of Thailand’s Ban Khwao
The Element of Wind in Koh Samui
I find the same versatility in riding. It’s more intense with motorbikes, then the wind has more core-strength. I still have to know the motorbike-feeling more deeply. But scooter or motorbike, wind and freedom submerge and make you naturally high; the nature-high that weed cannot weed in. The Royal ‘Highlands’. Is it a sense of power to press through the clutch, hold it in that upward or downward slant, to let the wind bow down from skin to clothes, upside down, ready to gobble up the rules of the world like a flamingo? Imagine a highway with no sunlight, an obscure idea of a romantic epiphany. Riding through an obliterated spiderweb that denounces its general complexity and takes a roundabout through the whole island of Koh Samui like a spider free of its webs. In 2-3 hours, you can make a whole circle around the island.
Yoahn had to buy a laptop from the Northern part of the island. And we are in the Southern part. He doesn’t know how to ride a scooter. So I willingly drove him in his rented scooter to Koh Samui’s chaotic side, Chaweng. This profound sense of freedom being at the forefront of an open-running vehicle brings guts to my tummy. I think it’s leadership. This delusion/eerie mess of having everything under control, in that clutch, in navigation, but also giving that sensuality of control a knot of vulnerability. My first instinct always is to be erratic, break in abnormal breakages; go right, left, slide around the white lines in the middle of the road like a snake’s gait, crumble and gamble like an inmate with a death sentence. The highs go right through the arrowheads and soar to a blankness. Then I am more settled, more consistent.
On our way back, we stopped at two temples. Yoahn was holding his new laptop on his lap, and with a bit of mindful speeding came his ‘I love this life!’ Adrenaline does that to you, and adrenaline is not here to stay. It will wear off, the honeymoon. But then it may take away the superlative high, it also gives back the importance of a stable love. The high I feel from riding or hiking actually stays, gets stored in a different form, in daily dealings, mundane tasks, and personal relationships. That adrenaline exists to show how to retain a regulated rhythm.
But that high is irrevocable. Irreplaceable. A tangible feeling, so close… so close… so close to eternity. Approaching two, one, zero…
I wanted to go for one last ride around Koh Samui. I had been to certain parts of course, but I hadn’t done the whole island before. When I dropped Yoahn back to our hostel, it dawned on me that we had to return the scooter at 8 am the next morning and we had a full tank anyways! Then why not utilise it? Why not go for one last ride at 3 am or 4 am?
Also read – Visit These Places in Chiang Mai for Local Experiences
The Whole Circle Around
Riding in the darkness is lavishly different from the way the day performs. The neon lights struggle alone, in the parallel reflection of an inexplicable kingdom… Purple more flashed, blue with the jingles of blues, red puffed in a lighter smudge, manifesting in streetlights.
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in the landslide,
No escape from reality…
Tegest joins me from the back. She is an Ethiopian, volunteering with me at BBVC, a vocational boarding college in Koh Samui that provides free education to children coming from a background of domestic violence. She is 22, adopted at the age of 9 from an orphanage in Ethiopia by Italian parents. She would rather be identified as an African than an European. Tegest and I float on that darkness with Bohemian Rhapsody. In 15 minutes, we parked our scooter at Grandpa & Grandma Rocks (Hin Ta Hin Yai Rocks in Koh Samui). It was still pitch-black dark.
Grandpa is a penis. Grandma is a vagina. Once upon a time, this old couple died in a shipwreck and turned into rocks. Hard-rock penis and piously seductive vagina. Charming!
In those million-dollar realisations, I extricate myself physically, take baby-steps back to a horizontal distance, to invite another dimension to slowly fall back on this multi-dimensional moment. Something invades time and space. The awareness of existence, on top of existence. Love-awareness.
We could hardly trace them at first. They were outlines; a rocky idea of greyhound rocks. Our eyes could finally discern the couple’s tasteful anatomy. We didn’t forget to make distasteful jokes, standing half-blind on Grandma’s vagina. A dog barked us out of sight, scaring us quite a bit in that darkness! Dogs tend to be fairly aggressive in Koh Samui!
We stopped at Wat Plai Laem, on the northeastern corner, by the horizon blue sea. A passageway/curated bridge with gigantic Gods guarding and leading the walk to a lotus with Avalokiteśvara’s pink Chinese-Thai representation. Laughing Buddha appears colossal on the left, floating separately by the water-channel teeming with fishes and turtles. It was like stepping onto a mythological paradise, the way, anecdotally, Heaven is curated. The storybook-doorway to Heaven.. The sculptures printed with unbelievable realism, the vibrancy of colours, and a magical aura.
Next, the 40-feet-high gold-plated Buddha Statue in Koh Phan, a small island connected to Koh Samui by a road-bridge. We were running out of time. We had to return the scooter by 8 am, and also our volunteering hours started from 9 am. Google Maps showed that it would take 40 minutes to complete the circle. Or, we can choose to steer back on the same road in 30 minutes or less. What’s in 10 minutes! The scooter rental place wouldn’t care, I knew that. But that also meant we wouldn’t stop anywhere else.
It was time to ride. Through the wind and a swallowed humidity. To finish the Koh Samui circle.
Finally this year I learned how to ride a motorbike in Malaysia, a pending dream that lasted too long to be stored away further.
What elements give you that adrenaline-high? How have you experienced Koh Samui?
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