Mission Mola Mola Pt. 1

On decision-making, downsides in solo traveling, and pursuing happiness, even if it’s a little ridiculous

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TRAVEL DIARIES:

Surin Beach. Phuket, Thailand.

While lying poolside on the eerily empty rooftop of the condo I am staying at here in Surin, Phuket, I am looking out over heaps of palm trees; palm trees that reach the white, half-moon-shaped stretch of beach in the distance. The very beach I had based my decision to visit Surin around, and the very beach I have stepped on once in my entire time here. Once with my brother.

It’s been a while since I’ve been near an ocean for this long. Growing up in Florida, I was constantly in some form of water. The ocean was practically in our backyard, and more literally, so was a pool.

My family left Florida in my late teens and I slowly let go of a seasonless life by the beach with everywhere we moved. From state to state, across the country, I ended up in the center of it, surrounded by mountains, not water. This is where I would experience my hardest life lessons. So far, anyway.

This is also where I embarked on my international journey from; Boulder, Colorado, completely lacking the ocean. Recreation center pools and reservoirs just aren’t the same. In search for insight into myself this summer while traveling abroad alone, I connected to who I was before the world began to harden me.

I connected to a long-forgotten, childlike part of me that loved being near the water. I was such a fish growing up, and rediscovering this simple joy so far away from its origin out here in Thailand, the nostalgia reminds me of who I used to feel like, and in turn, provided some insight into myself.

I began this journey looking for insight into myself coming from a place where I could barely remember who I was and what I even liked. Who I was before grief and depression seemed to hang in the air above my life felt impossible to remember.

I think I have struggled with depression since I was about 14 years old, but loss and devastating life changes can really weigh down an already suspectably depressed person. For me, when depression is depression-ing, I don’t like anything. Food, maybe, but that was about it. Honestly, not even. Life is pretty flavorless when you’re depressed.

So, when you discover something that you like, that makes you feel normal, connected, and actually happy, reminding you of who you were when you “felt like a person” it feels sort of like an “a-ha moment.”

I had my “a-ha moment” yesterday remembering my love of being in the water. It was all I could focus on. I wanted to latch on to it like a rescue raft for fear if I let go, my happiness would sink again.

Now staring into the grey cloudy sky above me, I am lying here flat on my back along the stone perimeter of the pool thinking about all of this, wondering how I can make this joy last forever. I’m too deep in a mix of thoughts to move despite the stinging in my right shoulder fighting for my attention. I have a fresh gash in my shoulder from swimming upside-down and straight into a piece of coral yesterday. The sting from this gash against the stone brings me back to earning said soon-to-be new scar, and it puts a smile on my face. A clue.

As quickly as the smile comes it immediately fades from the quick realization that follows. I will be nowhere near opportunities to have this type of enjoyment again for a while. Unfortunately, I am scheduled to begin my journey halfway across the world back to the mountains in a few days, and the sad truth is, I barely enjoyed my time in Phuket. Trying to convince myself to just appreciate the few moments I did enjoy felt like lying to myself, which was exhausting.

It was supposed to be a quiet surf town experience with easy access to the beach, peaceful days by the ocean, swimming, eating fresh fruit, laying in the sand… Instead, I found myself turned off by the insane amount of trash littering the beaches and rough surf. I laid a towel down once surrounded by litter before I got up to begin the endless process of collecting it, and I didn’t get into the water to swim but one or two times due to terrifyingly rough surf. I did surf one day and I had some fun, but it was pretty frightening. A couple of tourists cheering me on commented that they had never seen such consistently crazy waves going in all directions before.

Lastly, I carried a paranoid feeling of being watched, which had me triple-checking my doors at night.

My research led me to believe it was going to be the place for me to unwind and connect to myself. It just didn’t happen. Poor timing, planning, loneliness, and existentialism aided this inevitably poor outcome. Needless to say, I was humbled by this experience.

The cloud-covered sky darkens above me and sadness wells up in my throat. A tug of war in my mind begins pulling between the desire to be present, enjoying the precious time I have at this moment of my life while I’m here, and the frustration that comes with what I think I need to do to be responsible. Like going “home” back to the mountains.

I am 27 years old, I have just survived three major losses in my life, and I am traveling by myself around the world.

Throughout my travels, I have been searching destinations and experiences for answers on what I should pursue next in life that will bring me more happiness and fulfillment when I do return “home.” I think a lot of people struggling with grief and loss, and the existentialism those in their 20s typically face, struggle to figure out how to simply be and be okay in the aftermath.

Now I am going on month 2 of full-time traveling, and while traveling for this reason has generally been exactly what I needed, this extended part of the journey did not offer me much in the way of healing or internal discovery.

It created the opposite effect, where I actually began to become quite depressed again. The downward spiral began as soon as I got to Southeast Asia and kept evolving. Depressive episodes for me tend to vary in their causes. I do pretty well generally, but when one thing after the other goes wrong coupled with a few other ingredients (loneliness, lack of exercise, feeling unsafe) I struggle to keep a level head. Things started to go wrong on this leg of the journey quite immediately when I got here. I remember when I first landed in Bangkok…

Bangkok

I landed in Bangkok with wide eyes. This. Is. So. COOL! This was one of the most foreign and new experiences I have ever had. I was in love with everything new and exciting on this journey, like a kid discovering life for the first time. I found my way towards the exit doors of Suvarnabhumi airport to order a grab. (Southeast Asia’s Uber.)

As soon as I stepped outside, I was hit with quite possibly the most humid air I have ever encountered in my mere 27 years. Did I mention I grew up in Florida? Bangkok so far felt twice as humid.

It also happens to be the rainy season. On my first day, I loved walking the streets in the pouring rain, admiring the dance of light from the bright street signs of foreign characters reflecting in the puddles of water, occasionally disturbed by scooters zipping by me. I love the rain, and like the ocean, I was spoiled by its simple soothing nature from the abundance of it growing up in Florida. Also, like the ocean, we don’t really have this in excess back in the Rocky Mountains.

These simple joys connected me to my child-like self and were so needed in a time of feeling homesick, seeking nostalgia, and wishing I could go home. When I first lost my mom, all I wanted to do was “go home,” but I had no idea where that even was. I kept saying to myself “I want to go home, I want to go home” as if there was some place out there similar to my mom’s embrace that felt like curling up on the couch with her watching Hulu and eating something yummy she had made. Walking around in the rain was incredible at first, and sort of made me feel at home, but was no longer fun when I got sick.

When you get here, you’re going to get sick. I can still hear my brother’s warning echoing in my mind. He was so matter-of-fact, but I didn’t really believe him. How could he know? Just because he got sick when he arrived in Bangkok doesn’t mean I will. Oh, how wrong I was…

I did find the pharmacies in Bangkok to be pretty interesting. I could not read the packaging, but I felt reassured by the kind man dressed in a white lab coat behind the counter explaining in perfect English that the foreign medicine would aid the terrible infection that had blossomed in me fully over one night.

Illness aside, I was still determined to make the best of it. I had set out to see all of the temples in Bangkok that I could. By mid-day, my cold symptoms would subside subtly enough opening a window of opportunity to explore where I would schedule a tuk-tuk to venture around Bangkok. This was great in theory, but the intense humidity and the smell on the streets would eventually defeat my enthusiasm. It was not for the faint of heart, or those fighting a fever.

I also love to walk. Walking has been so therapeutic for me in recent years. Apparently, it’s a simple form of bilateral stimulation, balancing both sides of the brain. This is largely why I loved spending time in European countries so much. Walking is part of life there. However, I found it very challenging to walk long distances here, without facing the risk of getting hit by a scooter, anyway.

Back home, I walk almost daily to maintain a “normal level of functioning” as a person doing their best to process the unexpected turns my life has taken. I’m not into treadmills, they generally feel like a drag. No amount of self-discipline will ever make me enjoy walking on a conveyor belt. (sorry.) I prefer to walk outside. On this trip to Thailand, I became more sedentary, and I began noticing the toll not walking took on my state of mind. I also think I gained a couple of pounds because of this and the curry.

Feelings of danger

Then, I finally got to Phuket, where I can’t say I felt completely safe for the first time in my “solo female traveler” diaries. My brother, who has been living in northern Thailand, had never been to Phuket before. It was a first for both of us, so we decided to experience a new place together and meet up here in Surin. We enjoyed our reuniting after such a long time of not seeing each other while also taking in this new travel destination. He stayed for a few days before returning north, where I would then be left alone for the remaining 10 days I had booked.

This unsettled feeling became very strong one night when I went up to this rooftop pool by myself. I had been carrying a weird feeling around all day and figured I would go up to the pool and clear my mind. I brushed it off by rationalizing with myself that this unsettled feeling was perhaps a result of not doing a better job of maintaining a general calm over my PTSD mind. The condo I am staying at here is absolutely beautiful. It’s modern and big. Big and… empty. It was like I was the only one in the building.

I never liked staying in rooms or places that were too empty. Empty rooms with sparse furniture made me feel like I was the focal point, which I hated. Like there wasn’t enough physical cushioning in my environment to balance out the energy or provide a sense of comfort. There are actually studies about this on larger-scale environments comparing the infrastructure design of America to other countries, how narrow walkable streets with cozy courtyards provide citizens a sense of safety and comfort as opposed to the giant open highways, supermarkets, and parking lots my home country of the United States is made of. My unit in this condo was at the end of a very long, empty, and echo-y hallway, where for over two weeks, I literally never saw one person. Not one.

I was also made heavily aware that human trafficking was a particularly prominent issue in Southeast Asia before my arrival. Although I felt confident in my street smarts, I began to feel that the danger my gut was sensed was related to this issue. Realizing where my unsettled feelings could be coming from began to freak me out. Generally, I am on edge most of the time as it is, so I started to get paranoid looking around the rooftop. It was so empty and quiet. Too quiet. I could go missing and no one would know. My brother called me at that moment, interrupting my paranoia. I was relieved.

“Whatcha doing?” He asked. “Oh, just fearing for my life,” I replied sarcastically. He laughed, “Why, what’s going on?” “Nothing..it’s just… I am up here at the pool, and I keep getting this feeling like I could go missing.” I said, hopeful for a reassuring reply. “Yeah….” he sighed. “I got a bad feeling for you when I left.”

My heart dropped.

“What do you mean!” I whispered back angrily. We both were laughing now. My asking for further explanation caused us to laugh because we both knew what he meant. We were simultaneously acknowledging the elephant in the room at that moment. It made us laugh because the elephant was there the entire time we were together, we just rode the “new travel destination high” and never acknowledged it. Now we were acknowledging it when realizing the answer to my question.

He continued, “Well just… I was thinking that you need to watch your patterns.” My heart quickened. As part of the on-slew of paranoid thoughts I was just chewing on before answering the phone, one of them was just that. I need to watch my patterns. The fact he was reiterating the thought verbatim was all I needed to hear. I shouldn’t ignore my gut.

“I WAS JUST THINKING I NEED TO WATCH MY PATTERNS!” I whisper-yelled back. He laughed and continued, “Well, when I left, I thought about you being there by yourself, and I just got a baaad feeling.” he said lightly. I nervously laughed from stress in response. “Yeah…” I replied, trying to think of what I should do instead. He continued more seriously, “I mean, remember when we went to play pool at the bar? The guys at the bar took one look at us and asked us what state we were from, not what country. They knew we were American.” I shuddered that he had the same internal recognition of the moment as I did. I had taken a mental note of it. I did find it really odd, mostly because of the way they asked, but especially because they hadn’t even heard us speak. It was a visual observation they had made. Only up until that moment, most everyone throughout my solo-travels had assumed I was from Germany or Eastern Europe before hearing my accent. I was actually sort of proud of this. It was only at this quiet surfer town bar in Phuket that I was accurately identified as an American on appearance, by a mixed group of men. Australians, Russians, and Thai. I thought perhaps my athletic slides gave it away. But couldn’t they have guessed I was from Australia, how did they pin America so quickly? I suppose this sort of analysis could be drawn from locals of a small town, but it didn’t hange the fact I felt off-put. I had walked by that bar every day around the same time from the same direction and had noticed the same group of people hanging out there during the day. I didn’t like that I could so easily be identified by people I didn’t feel all that sure of. Especially when I was alone and already on my toes.

“Is that common for you, to be identified as an American out here?” I asked my brother out of curiosity, wondering if it was also rare for him. “Not really,” he said, kind of disturbed. “Not like that, that was just so point blank,” he said. It should be noted that at the time, things around the world were already pretty tumultuous with the war between Russia and Ukraine. “Yeah, I mean, didn’t you notice the second language on the menus? It wasn’t English,” he emphasized.

I did notice. I was confused about having to use Google Translate to translate Thai menu items into English from Russian. The second language in parts of this area is predominately Russian, and it just added to the foreignness of it all. “That was new for me,” he continued.

From that moment on, I spent the remainder of my time here being vigilant. Hyper-vigilant, actually. I stayed on the phone with as many people willing to talk to me in my time zone for the duration of my stay, and I seriously watched my door at night. A little paranoid, sure, but that’s sort of part of the aftermath package.

Now, lying at the edge of the pool on this rooftop once more, I am thankful to be scheduled to leave for this reason, it is just also coupled with regret from reflecting on how my time in Southeast Asia has panned out so far, wishing I had enjoyed the water more too. I was feeling defeated.

A clue

Yesterday, however, was truly great. I got out of this little corner of paranoid Phuket and got onto a boat to venture around the nearby Phi Phi Islands. These islands reminded me of the movie Avatar. I was amazed at how they jetted out of the water. Taking a boat from the mainland of Phuket to these islands in the pouring rain felt like a movie. It really inspired a feeling of another planet, never having seen rock formations in the ocean like that before.

Snorkeling the waters around them was the highlight of my trip here. I only wish I had done it sooner… it was so beautiful. How incredible it felt to be in the ocean… Every thought and worry dissipates when I’m submerged in water. My mind instantly goes blank. Writing this now, I remember other times I have turned to the water as a means for healing. ( Read: Water is healing ) Yesterday brought me so much of the joy I desperately needed from this trip, suspending the looming gloomy state of mind that was settling in from all of the paranoia, life uncertainty, and loneliness.

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The Andaman Sea Medicine

Flashback to yesterday:

Eagerly walking across the softest and whitest sand beach towards the water’s edge, I was so impressed by the velvety texture and powdery white color of the sand. I have never felt or seen sand like this before. It is so soft. Taking in this new sensation, I b-line for the shore. I get two steps in and am happily knee-deep in warm, gorgeously blue water with my mask and fins in hand. I haven’t been in water like this since I was a kid. My heart glowed.

Assessing where to swim, about 50 feet out, I see the reef. I swim for it. The water deepens beneath me quickly and I am kicking to keep myself on the surface above the reef. I put my mask on and poke my head under and into the turquoise blue. About 15 feet beneath me is an array of coral, and quite immediately, my eyes fixate on something that has just moved beneath me.

An octopus. My first octopus! I have never seen an octopus in the wild before. It’s as if it sees me and I watch the magic of this octopus changing color before my eyes. It is such a magic trick. It squirts over to another rock a few feet away and changes color. I am shocked. That is single-handedly one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen! I am also amazed at how effortlessly the sighting happened. I just poked my head into the water and immediately saw the octopus, witnessed its color change, and then its swift dart to another rock. Traveling alone didn’t stop me from lifting my head out of the water to exclaim, “Octopus!” “There is an octopus!” I turn to see who else can share this experience with me.  The nearest snorkelers are 40 feet away and I am not even sure if they speak English, but I am so excited. I can’t believe I am witnessing this alone. 

We stopped in a few more spots around the islands where I would later be on the search for clownfish with one of the Thai guides. He GoPro’d me being silly, swimming upside-down and straight into a piece of coral. We both surfaced and laughed. We were having too much fun with the clownfish to care about the new gash in my shoulder. I was just grateful it wasn’t one of those giant black urchins.

The memory of how healing the joy of this was, how healing the water has always been, and how much I loved the magic and mysteries I experienced while snorkeling, take over my mind in place of the sadness I felt for it coming to an end in a few short days.

This longing for more time in the ocean inspires a new thought… or a question, rather. Why do I have to go home? As much as I feel like I need to parent myself to make the “right” choice in place of where my parents’ support and advice used to be, I am not so sure that forcing myself to go home and “be responsible” is what the life doctor is ordering for me right now. But really, I am not sure what is right.

So, I compared the joy I felt from the idea of continuing to reconnect to this part of myself to the despair I felt for returning back to the mountains and facing an environment that so easily connected me to tragedy.

Should I be seemingly irrational, irresponsible, and seek joy for no other reason than to feel it, or, should I be practical, responsible, and get back to “real life.” “Real life” looked like going back to somewhat aimlessly and desperately working towards a successful future, finding an apartment for rent, and getting back into some hamster wheel routine that had no sense of belonging in it apart from my morning coffee.

I suppose following through with the ladder is also simply for no other reason than to feel, but to feel productive. I thought of that meme on Instagram of Kourtney Kardashian talking about how when we all die money won’t matter, or something to that effect. I admittedly used this logic when I tried to think of what my parents would say now that they are gone. I imagined from where they are now, that they would tell me to live fully and pursue happiness instead of living within the confines of practicality; confines I have made up myself.

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Mission Mola Mola

Pretending I was going with the irresponsible, childlike joy option momentarily, for sh*s and giggles, I Googled the best snorkeling in Bali although I had already written Bali off after this month in Southeast Asia. The discouragement from this trip so far had me feeling tired of traveling. I was ready to stop living out of a backpack. I wanted to recuperate.

Originally, however, when I decided not to come home and continue traveling after my first month away, the decision was partially inspired by the desire to complete my “Eat Pray Love” journey all the way to Bali. I thought about that. What if instead of going home to get back to life, I did try to live that dream and complete the “mission?”

“Amed, Bali,” Google responds. “Best snorkeling and diving…” the headline continues. My eyes light up. “And diving?” I thought. Interesting. It had been a while since I dove. Amazed at what I was finding, I also couldn’t get over how this place Google recommended for ocean-lover activities looked so familiar. A few moments into researching this quiet little location on the island of Bali later, I remembered.

Amed was a destination my brother had picked out as a potential place to visit while he was here in Phuket with me. He thought it looked intriguing with the black sand beach. When he and I reunited here in Surin, we spent some time looking around Bali online together for affordable stays and quiet places. Amed was one of them, and it was his top pick. Now I was learning it had some of the best snorkeling and diving in all of Southeast Asia. The idea of this place reminded me of my Dad. He loved desolate beach towns, diving, and snorkeling. So much so, that we lived on a boat in the Caribbean for a year. Another reason the ocean largely connects me so much to myself is it connects me so strongly to him.

As I continued to read about this place, I learned that the channel off the coast of Amed is renowned for its visits from the infamous Mola Mola, aka the ocean sunfish, and that they are usually only spotted from July to November… which is exactly now…

My eyes widen further. How has one of my bucket list experiences appeared before me? Since I was a kid growing up snorkeling and freediving, I had this random dream of diving with an ocean sunfish. It was sort of silly. Reading about this phenomenon reminded me of my long-lost fantasy I had as a kid. Now, as if by magic, the opportunity to potentially live this dream has perhaps just appeared before me. “What if I could make that little girl’s dreams come true? That would be pretty healing, right?” I thought. I was so obsessed with this idea that I was once nicknamed “ocean pancake” as a contact name.

Random town my brother picked out for its quiet, affordable living along a black sand beach, that also happens to be a snorkeler/diver’s paradise, and is home to an infamous phenomenon, one of my silly childhood dreams, that is happening exactly now? 

I open expedia….

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