Tapping into our inner hippie... Ko Phan-Nang

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Day 12

Goodbye Anantara Lawana, Ko Samui. We will miss you. We packed up our bags and hit the road to our neighboring island, Ko Pha-Ngan. After much debate on where to stay we decided to switch things up and try something new. No more posh 5 star resort for us, we opted for a secluded beach hut at a yoga, meditation, and detox center called The Sanctuary. We had heard great things about this place and we were ready to "experience" what everyone was talking about. Here was the portion of our trip where we would meditate, do some yoga, possibly have a spiritual awakening. And this was the place to do all of those things. Sanctuary does not even take reservations because people are known to check in for 2 days and stay for 2 months. We were excited! We had a feeling that this place was gonna bring some magic into our lives (not that we were lacking any magical experiences or scenery).

Per the usual, we went from hotel to van to boat to van to smaller boat to jumping off the edge of the boat into water and trecking through the beach to our next hotel. We had arrived at The Sanctuary. As we approached the hotel from the beach we noticed we were among special people. Dreadlocks, rasta, yogis, free spirits, and children of love were enjoying the beach around us. Everyone looked so happy. Kemper turned to a middle aged hippie from Australia and asked, "excuse me, where is the lobby?" The yogi looked ammused and giggled "you must be from America, we don't have lobbies here." He was absolutely right. The Sanctuary is no place for something as formal as a lobby. Kemper looked at Lindsay and said, "I'm in love with this place". Lindsay nodded her head in amusement and said, "are you sure, we haven't even found the 'lobby' yet."

We approached the reception desk and were greeted by the most laid back and chill Thai guys we had ever met. Now, the Thai in general are a very laid back and peaceful people. These guys were on a totally different dimension of chill, which we were absolutely digging. Before going to our hut we decided to grab some lunch at their very earthy vegetarian restaurant. We pulled up a cushion and perused the 10 page veggie menu. Lindsay was now on board and feeling this very Namaste establishment. The laid back residents drifting in and around the restaurant gave us some spectacular people watching. To the left of our table, there was a serious life reflection conversation going on. Could have been a therapy session. Behind us, there were 2 guys talking to a lady friend about their life mission of changing the world. These guys were dead serious. They ended the conversation inviting this woman to their guitar sing along later that evening. That was when we knew it was time to order a margarita.

Lindsay was fascinated by a group to the right of our table... A middle aged woman with her kid talking about the tantric class from that morning and an older woman (possibly her mother) who kept touching herself as they sat on the ground eating lunch. Everyone seemed to know everyone. Nobody seemed to be on vacation, rather they all seemed like they lived at The Sanctuary. These people were on a permanent vacation from life, it was clear.

We stuck out like sore thumbs, sweating through our jean shorts with our overall look of normality (some might call reality). We noticed that everyone's attitudes were reflected in their clothing... Flowy, light Cotton pants or skirts, some people had bells on their ankles, homemade jewelry was a must, no shoes, and hygiene optional. We were thoroughly entertained.

We checked into our hut and debated over going to the 6pm meditation session. Neither of us really wanted to go. This was not our comfort zone, but we had a hard time admitting it. So we convinced one another we should take advantage of where we were and do it.

We followed a trail through the jungle and up what felt like Mount Everest to a little shack in the middle of nowhere. We knew we had arrived in the right place when we heard the soundtrack of chants resonating from the shack. We took off our shoes and were greeted by a lovely spiritual healer who instructed us to grab a mat, pillow, block, and begin forming a circle. We did as we were told and refrained from making eye contact with each other. One look and the two of us might have busted out laughing. We had to get our focus on so we could get our meditating on.

More people piled into the room ready to make a spiritual connection. Everyone had huge smiles on their faces and seemed like they were in a happy daze. Again, no eye contact between the two of us or we would lose it. The session begins with some deep breathing. We can get down with this. Who doesn't love deep breathing. And then our spiritual guide whipped out a guitar. Now we're talking. She guided us through our first chant, giving us the words to repeat after her. When she started singing, she reminded us a bit of Phoebe from "Friends" or Kemper on any given Friday night after a little bit of wine. She was off key at times, hit the wrong chords at other times, but it was all working and everyone was getting into it.

Our second chant was about the goddesses Khali and Dourga (okay neither of us are sure what the names really were or how to spell them, but this is what we think... Hope we aren't insulting anyone). She talked about the healing powers of the goddesses and how we should call upon the goddesses to heal and start fresh the way a storm washes away and feeds the earth. Okay, don't try to make sense of any of this. We can't even make sense of it now trying to remember that whole moment and experience. All we know is that she was talking about storms and goddesses and playing the guitar and we were all chanting with her and suddenly the biggest down pour of rain came. Crazy! The storm felt like it was going to blow the roof off the shack. The rain felt like it was in the room, but we werent getting wet. There were frogs inside of the room croaking in unison with the rain drops and guitar chords. Things were getting weird up in that shack and we were totally engulfed in it. This was our spiritual awakening. And now, we too were drinking the koolaide.

The meditation session continued with the same intensity. We both sang without inhibitions, projecting the chants from our root chakra and really letting go. Neither of us are certain we were actually saying the correct words, but that seems about right for us. We both got emotional in that meditation shack. Tears occurred at least once for both of us.

Meditation ended and we headed down to the restaurant for a bottle of wine, some food, and reflection on the experience. The Sanctuary had us. We were sold at this point and drunk on the koolaide. One bottle turned into 2 accompanied by a cheese plate and a few power outages. We decided we would really jump into this experience and stay an extra night. We left our skepticism in the meditation shack.

After about 3 power outages and some deep reflection on life, we knew we had to brave the dark back to our hut. Within moments of entering OUR hut, kemper noticed there was a previous tenant still dwelling there. The worlds biggest spider crawled under the Buddha on our wall and was headed towards the bedroom. Not cool! This was no ordinary spider. It was a mutant spider with incredible speed and Was looking awfully hungry. Let me paint a better picture.... Kemper is deadly afraid of spiders. Snakes, rats, roaches, no problem. Spiders, however, are the one thing that will send kemper packing. Lindsay loves all creatures and is unwilling to kill a spider, no matter how scared kemper was. So kemper is screaming while Lindsay is trying to catch -not kill- the mutant spider. Trust me, even Lindsay was a bit scared of this spider on miracle grow.

Kemper begged and begged Lindsay to just kill the human hunter. There was no way kemper was gonna sleep until she saw it dead. Lindsay refused and finally trapped it in a flower vase. Great! Now what? Kemper was hoping to just leave it in there and let it run out of oxygen, but Lindsay loving all of god's creatures and possibly still high on meditation wanted to set it free. It was truly this spiders lucky day. Kemper was not feeling any of these decisions, but Lindsay had already picked up the trapped spider in a vase and headed toward kemper and the door.

At this point, the man hunting spider was trapped in the vase outside and we both woke up to reality. Where the hell were we? This is not paradise. This is gnarly. We are sharing a hut with the rest of the jungle. There's a guy sleeping in the Pilates classroom tent next door to us. Yes, in all of the commotion of getting the spider outside we hear a guy squirming In a blanket in the Pilates "classroom" next to our hut. Clearly we were disrupting the free loader. We had to face reality, we are too old for roughing it like this. We missed our 5 star resorts and all of our amenities. Maybe we had just been too spoiled prior that we couldn't appreciate the jungle living at The Sanctuary. Maybe there was just something a little off with this place.

Lindsay suggested we open another bottle of wine. We thought maybe we could get just drunk enough to sleep. As we drank and searched for another hotel in ko phan-nang, kemper lost it and started laughing uncontrollably. Reality started to kick in. We were really drinking the juice for a minute there. We were really feeling the namaste. But something was up here. You all know that we both love to tap into our inner hippie, so imagine what we were experiencing when our inner hippies were a little terrified of where we were. we couldn't stop laughing at our day/night at The Sanctuary.

Lindsay had not forgotten about her 8 legged friend, and now it was time to deal with the situation. We headed outside and kemper was still making a strong case for death for the spider. Lucky for the spider, our attractive male neighbor happened to step outside to check out the excitement on our deck. He came, he saw, he freed the spider, and went on his way.

We booked our next hotel and were feeling pretty good about our exit. We climbed into bed to find a baby cloth as our sheet. The free loader in the pilates tent was looking like he might have had a better set up than us at this point. Ahh, the Icing on the cake. At least we had a mosquito net? This was when Lindsay really started hating mosquito nets. She kept having thoughts / dreams of spiders and Mosquitos getting trapped in the net with us. While kemper kept waking up thinking the free loader next door was breaking in. Neither of us really slept. We both were freezing under our baby blanket sized poor excuse for a sheet. It was a sarong really. At one point, kemper woke up shaking and looked over to find Lindsay wrapped in her travel towel. That bitch! We turned down the AC and in no time we were back to sweating through our clothes. We couldn't catch a break.

Sometime during the night, there was a huge banging sound on our roof. Lindsay woke up in a panic asking kemper if she thought it was an animal or a person. Kemper confidently insisted it was a person and went right back to the delirious sleeps she was in. The banging on the roof persisted throughout the night... Animal? Person? Alien? The Goddesses? Maybe the Sanctuary was trying to flush us out of their commune?

We got the message loud and clear. We just wanted to leave.

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