My Aunt Roberta once introduced me to a book on the idea that places in our lives become an extension of our psyches – part of who we are. We imbue a handful of places with meaning and they become the heart of our lives. We come back to certain places repeatedly and in many cases, we revisit meaningful places on our minds even when we can't get to them anymore. Childhood homes, grandparents' houses, parks, beaches, hotels, schools, even our places of business in some cases. The places we spend our leaves and service important memories and feelings.
Obviously, Ko Samet is one of those for me. I actually can't count the number of times I've been here. Sure, I can for the past 12 years – but before that it gets fuzzy. I was here A LOT when I lived in Thailand and managed to make it here a number of times when I revisited Thailand during my years floating through Southeast Asia. Ko Samet is a sort of dream landscape for me – a collage of memories and a watercolor of time.
I've covered it enough in prior blogs that it makes no sense to dive into the details of what it is, what it's like, how it works or anything too descriptive. If you want that, click on the links I just provided you. As I look back at these previous posts, I wouldn't change much. I'm pretty faithful to my narratives around Ko Samet. I even shared Samet in a moment of reflection – about the place and the family I feared would be hit by a divorce I desperately wanted to avoid. I prayed with gratitude.
Perhaps the only thing left to be asked is why Ko Samet today? My friend Alex would immediately tell you it's because it's an island and I retreat to islands – which is true. But as my sojourn on Patmos this past Spring proves, there are many islands I love in the world – many flavors from which to choose. Why Samet? (Ko means island - and if pronounced with a different intonation, neck – in case anyone wonders why I intermittently dispense with it).
Of all the islands of my life, Ko Samet is the one where I felt the most exploration. Because I spent a month across the water from it in the mainland town of Ban Phe while getting my TEFL certificate, it was natural to cross the "channel" on weekends. I had no idea what a different world the island would be. Almost a Disneyland to the real world of authentic, small-town Thai life in Ban Phe. Not that Samet was rich or glitzy – because the beauty of it was and mostly still is – that it's not. In late 2001 when I stepped foot on Ko Samet for the first time, the last two beaches down the length of it's "T" shape had almost nothing on them. The TEFL school chartered a fishing boat to take us there and we had to jump off the boat and swim through the warm tropical blue water to the powdery white sand shore – and I felt like I was living The Beach.
Then it turned out that we were at the end of the island where few people went. All one had to do was walk along the beaches or the central trail that rides the spine of the island and one could find a string of beach after beautiful beach – with increasing amenities and signs of life until you reached the one at the top – the biggest and most popular one – Hat Saikaew (creatively meaning White Sand Beach).
I immediately had the feeling I had stumbled into a world to explore – and that I wanted to understand and experience this place of beauty, relaxation and pleasure. A place of deck chairs for rent with vendors bringing you fresh fruit and som tam without having to get up. Massages on the beach from itinerant masseuses. Bungalow colonies instead of hotels lining the hillsides over the beaches. And at each bungalow establishment, a beachside restaurant with the exact same misspelled menu as every other restaurant. One could walk 100 feet in any direction and stumble into banana pancakes, flavorless club sandwiches, terrible spaghetti or the most delicious Thai food. I went with the Thai food and the occasional banana pancake.
The bungalows started at a mere 300 Baht a night ($6.80 at that time) if you were cool with fan cooling and pour-flush toilets – which is what my friends and I would usually get. Prices went as high as 2000 Baht ($45) for those decadent older Europeans and Americans who needed air-conditioned bungalows on the beach. And what fools they were because Ko Samet's power went off nightly at around 3 am. meaning everyone woke up in a sweat regardless of how much they paid.
Back then – as now – Ko Samet was often derided as not being as amazing as islands like popular Ko Samui, Ko Phangan or Ko Phi Phi in Southern Thailand. That made sense if you were looking for nightlife, sports or some dramatic landscape like limestone cliffs rising out of the sea. Samet is also much closer to Bangkok than the others – so it is an easy getaway for Bangkok expats and Thais alike – making it more of a Thai hangout and therefore, less fancy.
I have always seen Samet as the under appreciated jewel of the Thai island crown. Nowhere is the sand as white, powdery or squeaky. Or the nights as calm and pleasant. Samet's nightlife is more Singer-Songwriter than House or Club. Back then it was sitting on the beach in the warm night air under the clear skies with other people my age from around the world watching young Thai guys twirl fire on the beach while people had beers and Thai whisky, chatting and then seeing what might happen next… It was perfect for a guy who was also more Singer-Songwriter than House or Club. It still is.
It was on these beaches as I turned 24 that I asked myself new questions, discovered another way of life, connected with a backpacker culture I had never been exposed to before and challenged myself to chill in a place that couldn't have felt further from home. it was fantastic.
Over time, I experienced Ko Samet with new friends made in Thailand, old friends from home, my girlfriend, my wife, my kids, my niece. Somewhere in the world a video exists of my friend Jesiah and I performing Tina Turner's Proud Mary on the perfect beach on the bottom of the island – the one at which I first arrived. There are ghosts of moments shared between me and people I love - some of which I don't even see anymore – sprinkled all about this island. And for all the great days there were here, there are so many more nights I remember.
I used to stay in Tok's Little Huts on Ao Phai as my go-to and a number of other places in the Hat Saikaew to Ao Phai areas – the busier beaches at the top of the island. Last time, we were at a place toward the village area off Hai Saikaew. I needed something different this time – I couldn't stay there.
It made the most sense to stay at Ao Vongduean – the first populated beach I came to on that trail from the bottom of Samet to the top. Quieter, more removed, but distinctly charming, it was too dull for me then – even by Samet standards. Times have changed. Samet has grown, Vongduean is a little more developed and popular, and I'm older. (Ao means cove - so you may see that one drop off and return again too). Somewhere in this mix, Ao Vongduean came to feel right. Emily and I took the kids here for the day on the last day of our trip last year. We loved it and wondered why we hadn't spent more time here. It certainly feels more removed – like there's just the paradise and not all the other island stuff such as 7-11's, ATMs, water skiing, nightly fire twirling, bars, etc – not that those don't have their place because they do. Just maybe not as much this trip.
Maybe more importantly, Ao Vongduean is still more Samet as it was – bungalow establishments back into the hillsides and rows of restaurants with the same menu up and down. As I walk the path back to my teak, Thai style bungalow – definitely the upscale innovation to Tok's Little Huts, I also see the old bungalows of Vongduean Resort. The old air-conditioned, cement ones that haven't changed other than some fresh paint and probably a few interior upgrades. The feel of the slightly damp hillside and underbrush remains the same as does the smell of the air and the faint burning of leaves and trash in the early mornings. Sure, my bungalow has air conditioned that works all through the night, a flush toilet and a hot water shower to boot! But these are just concessions to my age, advancing technology and the fact that Ko Samet now gets power from the mainland. If I relax my eyes and let go of my focus, I can see past these details and both Samet and me as I was are right there, plain as day.
It's a funny thing that I'm looking for him because I am no longer him, nor do I need to go backward and become him again. Yet, there's a strand of something he had that I need and I've been looking everywhere for it – like losing keys or a wallet, I retrace my steps. It's his open-hearted bravery – his ability to look out at the world with wonder and with just a little trepidation that didn't hold him back, walk the world wide-eyed and open. It's knowing that an island you've never heard of in a far-away place you've never been, might be the treasure you've never sought and always wanted. It's allowing for something so foreign and unexpected to be the next place that becomes part of you, another dot on the map of your "known world" and that your "known world", like your psyche itself, is and should be ever-expanding.
Human beings are storytellers. To paraphrase Yuval Noah Harari – what sets humans apart from our chimpanzee and bonobo cousins is our ability to mass-cooperate. We can create social systems of more than 150 of us in a troop. In fact, we create systems that tie in every person on the globe – like our financial systems. And our systems are largely made of stories – ideas we create and buy into so that we are able to cooperate en masse. Money, for example, is just an idea. It's a representation of value and is worth as much as people perceive it to be worth. Hence fluctuations – or exchanges of currency. America's money is worth more than Malaysia's which represents America producing more goods and services of worth to more people in the world and the confidence people have that America will continue to do that short and long-term. Corporations are ideas – thousands of people at desks in buildings with computers working together on certain goals – creating a set of goods and/or services. The office space and the laptops aren't really worth so much. We value corporations for what they can do – and their major asset is a set of people working together. Corporations are just a stories that allow us to organize ourselves and cooperate.
How we define ourselves, our lives, the people around us – these too are all just stories. Narratives we weave to define ourselves and to form (ideally) mutually beneficial relationships with others. The phrase "we are stronger together" is axiomatic to humanity. But what happens when we're thrown off course and we're faced with a twist in our stories. Emily's narrative changed and we developed competing narratives. We are no longer a cooperative unit and I can't speak for her – but she has forced me into needing to write new chapters in ways I hadn't expected. I had imagined the story playing out in a certain way with a certain set of people – especially her – being part of it. I had imagined my kids' story being different than it will be.
The older I get, the more I realize how much time we spend creating narratives, trying to sell them to others, sorting through the narratives we're presented with and struggling when narratives either fall apart, need redefining or compete against the narratives of others. Narratives turn a pile of rocks into a collection of gems.
Lawyers are essentially competitive narrators. There are facts in narratives – and parties can even agree on facts (although that seems increasingly less common these days) – but the narratives lawyers build around the facts determine what the judge decides.
In reality, we are all lawyers and judges. We are detectives, prosecutors, defense counselors and jurists too. Mrs. Garrett might be very sad to learn that the Facts of Life make up a very small part of how we operate and what we decide.
So at a moment in life when I am struggling with how to summarize the narrative of my marriage and family – of my self and my future – of what exactly the map of my "known world" is after tectonic plates just shook it up and obscured it, I am revisiting some of the places where the map was first drawn – maybe places on the map that weren't affected by the quake.
Ko Samet has changed surprisingly little compared to the world on the other side of the "straight". Yes, some bungalow operations on Hat Saikaew now have hotel-blockish-sort-of-buildings where once those decadent air-con bungalows once stood. But they are tastefully set back from the beach in a non-imposing way so as not to radically change Ko Samet's narrative – a move other islands could learn from. True, there is real pizza made with real cheese now and swimming pools are now common at most lodging establishments including Vongduean Resort which was a model of the decadent foreigner-oriented air-con bungalow business-model in 2001-2002. However, these are just small echos of the crashing of the waves of time. No, for all intents and purposes, Samet remains Samet.
The question is can I reorganize my map and write my narrative as well as I did in my earlier Samet days? Can I reach through the noise of all the spun and competing narratives and story-fragments to do what I once did. Could the world be as open to me as it once was. Could I be as curious? Can I once again enjoy the ambiguity of a world so foreign to me that it is not yet imbued with preconceived meaning? Can I allow myself to feel as I did jumping off that boat, swimming to the beach – surprised at the unimagined narrative possibilities I was being offered?
Or, as Stevie Nicks might say, will the landslide bring me down?
One Response
The landslide won’t bring you down! Mom