From Suan Mokkh to Koh Phangan

Travel Day 1104 – Wat Suan Mokkh to Koh Phangan, THAILAND

It was already the final morning session of our Vipassana meditation retreat and instead of following the regular schedule, we had a lot of things to get done and organize…

Leaving by Ferry for Koh Phangan

Of course we still had our last 4am rise with the usual morning reading and a short meditation in complete darkness. After that, the program was officially over and we could speak again. The fist thing that had to get done was to clear the big meditation all and then we had to check out of our concrete cell-like rooms which had become our little home away from home over the past 11 days. While I felt almost sad to clear everything, at least the concrete bed was something I probably wouldn’t miss too much in the future…

The business in the dining hall was then complete chaos, because everybody tried to talk to everyone else to exchange some of the experiences that we had had during our stay at Suan Mokkh. Some tea was served and there were some free books about Buddhadasa that could be picked up, but for me personally most striking were the actual conversations with the people. The strange thing was that we all had spent these 10 meditation days together, but we knew nothing about each other because we could never speak…

Leaving the Concrete Cell, Suan Mokkh

But it had already surfaced yesterday evening during our final open mike event, that some people had real problems and they seemingly came to Suan Mokkh hoping to find a perfect solution for everything. Obviously it didn’t quite work that way and so it was really interesting to see the “real” characters, or the egos come out and to watch all the people interact and behave. Of course, listening to what some of the people actually had to say was then the icing on the cake…

In order to continue our journey, we had arranged a personal pick-up for 10 people by a mini van which was supposed to drive us to Surat Thani. But apparently the driver shoved up, didn’t dare to enter the monastery and left again. By the time we learned about what happened, the driver refused to come a second time and so after waiting around for more than one hour, we simply left on foot towards the main road, hoping that we could hail at least a local bus…

The empty Beach on Koh Phangan

Luckily one of the Suan Mokkh shuttle cars, driving between the actual monastery and the Dhamma Hermitage, came to cross our path and we ended up convincing the driver to drop all of us in Surat Thani for 100 baht each, which seemed like a really good deal. But from there I couldn’t really find a great deal to go to Koh Tao and so I rather decided to join some fellow monastery mates and we bought a bus and ferry combination ticket to Koh Phangan instead…

The bus ride ended up taking one hour to Don Sak and the ferry ride another 2 ½ hours, which meant by the time we finally arrived on Koh Phangan and found a cheap place to stay, the day was almost over. But at least we each had our private little hut, there was an empty beach with clear water and we even managed to go for a swim before the evening rain was setting in. So it was all good and after enjoying our first dinner in almost two weeks, I couldn’t wait and pass out on my luxuriously soft mattress and the even luxuriously softer pillows… : )

Find all Koh Phangan 2013 Photos here.