Cam t'Asia

After hanging out in Pokhara for a few days, I was anxious to start the Annapurna circuit trek. A few days before we started, I went to my hostel reception desk to ask about the buses to Besisahar, the starting location of the trek. I was told that they left every half hour. This was perfect, as I was expecting to have to leave very early in the morning and wait in Besisahar for a few hours before Jon, Heather, Matt, and Krista showed up. I went back the following night to book my ticket on a bus for the next morning, and found out that the local  buses were the ones that left every half hour, not the more comfortable tourist buses. I decided to ride the local bus, which I figured would be cheaper and a unique experience. I was right. I took a cab to the bus station in the morning. When we got there, the cab driver asked me if I wanted a bus or a microbus. I had no idea what the difference was, besides guessing that the microbus was smaller, so I told him I didn't care as long a...

Thamel is a small loop district in Kathmandu. I spent two weeks here, one of which was  unplanned . Most tourists hang out here because there are a lot of hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops for trekking gear and souvenirs. However, there were a lot of locals here as well. After breakfast at my hostel, I'd typically take my first walk into the area for the day. My hostel was about 5 minutes north of Thamel, which was nice because it made night time a bit quieter. I had to cross a busy street to get there, and to cross the street in Kathmandu, you literally just walk into traffic.  This took some getting used to - I was pretty tentative for the first few days and, more often than not, just watched for locals crossing nearby so I could tag along with them. One time, while I stood on the side of the road tentatively putting one foot on the road and then retracting it back to safety on the sidewalk, a badass old lady of about 75 years old approached, holding a large full ba...

I got off the plane at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan airport, the smallest (and, I'd bet, one of the weirdest) international airports in the world, and was immediately herded onto a bus that was already jam packed. We waited a few minutes, then drove 50 feet, and everyone got off and funneled into the nearest building. This building looked like a high school. It was apparently the main (and only) terminal. I walked down a few hallways and came to an open room with lots of stuff going on and no instructions. There were machines on my left, a counter in front of me (past the machines), and more counters further away on my right. I went to one of the free machines first, and quickly discovered it was free because it didn't work, and then noticed that half of the machines in the room didn't work. I lined up behind a lady who was filling out some information on a working machine. She got a slip of paper and headed to the near counter, and I took over the machine. I started filling ...

I alluded to some of the rules of the Suan Mokkh meditation retreat in my last post, but I didn't talk much about arguably the most important one: the silence. For a bit longer than 10 days, everyone at the retreat stayed mostly silent, which meant that in addition to not speaking to each other, we also didn't communicate through gesturing of any kind. We were allowed to smile at each other, but that's about it. The idea behind this was to encourage us to remain inside our heads as much as possible, and to take the time to digest and question the material presented to us in our minds rather than out loud to the volunteers and instructors. Our days started at 4am with the sound of a bell ringing for about 10 minutes. We reported to the main meditation hall for a reading from my favourite volunteer, a Thai woman with slightly spiky short grey hair; glasses; a clear, soothing voice; and a bright, radiant smile. Her name was Khun Tai. I'm not sure whether or not she chos...

I decided to spend 10 days at the beginning of March sleeping on a concrete bed with a wooden pillow, waking up at 4am, not eating after lunch, not speaking or gesturing to anyone (except smiles every now and then), not using any electronics, and, for 7-10 hours every day, trying to focus on my breath and nothing else. And I actually enjoyed it. This is life at Suan Mokkh. For the first 10 days of every month, people come from all around the world to experience life at Suan Mokkh , one of the most famous Buddhist monasteries and Dharma meditation retreats in Thailand, for a variety of reasons: to escape from their hectic everyday lives, to learn about Buddhism and meditation, or to shift their focus inward and spend some time in their own heads. On the last day of February, everyone gathered at the Dharma retreat center: a small, peaceful compound about 2km off a highway in a small town in southern Thailand. It consisted of meditation halls, a dining hall, dormitories, hot springs, ...