Best Vacation Ever

The Comeback Bloggers are writing this week on the topic of our best vacation ever. Well, that's a cinch! My favorite (and most life-changing) vacation took place in March of 2012. Oddly enough, for someone like me who tends to run extraverted, I went on this one by myself.

At the time I was strong in body but battered and worn out in spirit. The somewhat dysfunctional dynamics of administration [as a woman] in the particular institutional culture where I worked had crushed me for some years, and I sorely needed restoration. I'd been asked to speak for a sister university's graduation in Thailand, the land of my birth and of my dual citizenship for my first 11 years. I was looking forward to returning to a country I love, and decided to work in a few days of retreat time. 

I diligently searched the internet for an island off the coast of Thailand that would be as close as possible to Phuket, the island of my earliest memories in the 1960's. Someplace with simple people, 2-lane roads, slow life and good beaches. And I found it.

March of 2012 found me taking a half-day van ride from Bangkok, then a 2-hour boat ride to Koh Kood, the closest Thai island to Cambodia. The boat dropped me off at the Shantaa resort's pier, and I settled into my "sweet," a finely built cabin with an enclosed outdoor shower and doors that folded back onto a glorious view through the coconut trees to the bay.

My days at Shantaa were filled with reading (Henri Nouwen and a couple of other good books), journaling, walking, praying, and sleeping. Internet was available up at the open-air restaurant, so I could keep in touch with my husband but wasn't overdoing my online time. I sat in the white canvas beanbags on the cabin's deck and listened to the wind in the coconut palm fronds and the monsoon rains that are so healing. I walked down the beach barefoot as far as I could go, listening to the soothing sound of waves that was never far away from home as I was growing up.

It was during my trip to Koh Kood that I knew in my heart, having heard an almost-voice, that it was time to go, to leave the senior position I'd held at the university for the past 10 years. It was also during my time there that I saw an older tourist die on a snorkel day trip--probably from a heart attack and subsequent drowning--and decided that I needed to re-key my life to the question, "If I died today, would I be satisfied that I was doing what I'm doing now?" The answer at that time was, "No." Today it would be "yes." These are life-changing moments.

I came home restored, refocused, and looking forward to what would happen next, even if it would not be easy. Thailand has always had a place in my heart. But a corner of that Thai territory is exclusively dedicated to Shantaa--pictures, sounds and commitments to return to from time to time, and reorient myself yet again.