By Becky Wong
In Postcards from Koh Phangan (Part 1), we reflected a little on the last year while looking ahead to 2020! Here in Part 2 I wanted to share more on what our life was like living on a sunny island in Thailand. 🙂
I always find the first two weeks of arriving into any base to be very messy. It’s always a time of feeling unsettled.
Even if we’ve been there before. It usually takes that two weeks of time to form out routines again, feel out our favourite spots, find our rhythm in the area (sometimes all over again). It’s why we prefer to stay based anywhere for 2-3 months.
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We approached it being our time to leave the island again right as we’re feeling like we’ve settled back into “home”!
It was our second time back to Koh Phangan, though it really wasn’t that long ago that we left the first time. We had similar feeling as we left in September.
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We lived in a little bungalow by the sea for our second month as islanders, watching many sunsets as we finished work, often visited by the local surrounding wildlife, feasting at all the local vegan restaurants (Koh Phangan is a vegan foodies dream!)
Someone back home in the UK once asked me about life on Koh Phangan. They asked me, “What do you all do when you’re not working? Don’t you get bored without any shops and without anything to do on the island?”
So, what exactly did we do every day when we clocked off from work?
We went hiking.
We played board games.
We went for regular Friday Night Dinners.
We joined local yoga classes.
We spent large amounts of time in the sea.
We explored and ate our weight in the WIDE selection of vegan restaurants available! (If someone could send one of those massive plates of vegan sushi from Ashoka to me soon, that would be fantastic!)
We watched many sunsets.
We went to live music, fire shows, dharma talks, and other events on the island.
The things that can make a place feel home very quickly for you are always the people you meet and the routines you have!
Monday mornings and Wednesday mornings were for yoga at Loyfa Betterlife Resort followed by breakfast and working at the Orion Centre. Some Wednesdays we joined the local nomad community for ‘Coffees and Co-working‘ at a different spot every week. Friday night dinners happened once a week with the same group. A great way to meet new people and to discover new places.
Another local group went hiking every weekend who we were thrilled to find that they all loved to play boardgames too (brilliant!).
It still surprises me every time how fast you can build roots in a new place and have it feel home at the blink of an eye!
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We very much call the island “home”, among our now many, many, many “homes”! We were not ready to leave but we were immensely excited to see our families and Europe again. (We hoped for snow which we found in Bulgaria rather than in the UK. We’d started to forget what Winter looks like.)
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And we know for certain now as everyone has told us before, and now we always tell others: Everyone always comes back to Koh Phangan.
I know that we will! 😊
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