Writing and Coffee in the Jungle of Koh Chang, Thailand

I locked myself on an island and started writing a book. Write away all day! I let my writer part(s) take over my body completely. no care for fitness and balance, rest or friends. The time, ten days, alone on an island to write it all down. Get it out and get it out quickly please. Flush the system in our isolation so we may journey on into the world for fun adventures with our beloveds. Speak the damn truths that we’ve been hauling around so heavy for long enough. Write them down on the phone. Write in the book, in the Google Drive, on the scratch paper. In the phone memos. My fingers are cramped now, crooked from typing with my thumbs on the phone for hours. The pinky finger at the bottom, stretched under the balance the device. When we leave this island, we will be finished with this spirit. We’ll return to a healthier routine in which writing had its sacred morning space and isn’t allowed to bulldoze through the jungle at any hour thoughtless of our health and other interests. Write away!!

Why do I feel like I’m on a jungle cruise adventure at Disney land? The deck of the bungalows are broken, window glass on the floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if a monkey jumped out screaming. Vines are taking over. Jungle people are hammering on some project that looks already devastated. Are they repairing this? Was it COVID? How long have all these stores, resorts and homes been derelict? Why are so many building abandoned or empty, boarded up, even with people living amongst them. I can’t quite workout what’s going on.

Poverty is on the road side, by American standards. It doesn’t feel like poverty here. Just another cement block home, ragged sun faded tshirts drying on hangers from a wire hung between palm trees. It’s not cute rustic. It’s dirty and grim. Everything here is a bit grim, casually falling apart in a way that doesn’t concern anybody. Simple in a way I don’t wish to experience because it feels stuck rather than charming. This is me speaking though and it’s hard for me to forget what perfection looks like in Hollywood and Seattle. There are no cracks, no dirt, no plants taking over. The plants are kept in their place. The dirt is swept away before it accumulates. The cracks mean it’s time to completely demolish and rebuild a shopping mall.

In the Gulf of Thailand, everybody’s just living in the jungle next to old abandoned huts, smoking weed, playing reggae, blending up mango shakes, wacking machetes into coconuts, selling 300 BAHT one hour full body oil massages on the beach, eating pad Thai if you’re a tourist or spicy basil fried rice if you’re a local, and pulling scooters over to the side of the road to watch the ocean at sunset.

Even the finest of hotels has got the geckos crawling on the ceilings and the creak of nature in the walls. What is there to compare to here? This is not run down when we’re in the wilderness where even the trees are rotting and that’s normal. Nature made and man made objects are disintegrating in their own time and nobody seems bothered by it. Like every beach cafe in the world, we know we’re going to erode when we live beside the salt water. I am more at peace falling apart here surrounded, enveloped by earth as she crumbles beside me.

The jungle road curves through the trees. Up and down. High up I gaze over the ocean, soft blue ripples. Down low the roads are perfect, smooth, wide and rolling.

Come drive around this island one day. Follow my footsteps. Stay at Jungle View Bungalows (for private garden pool) and Cliff Cottages Resort (for epic ocean view and cute common area that feels like a beach hut living room). Eat at Tofu Kitchen (healthy vegetarian Thai food), Sea Chill Bar (for classic Thai food on the dock over the ocean at sunset), Indie Raw (for sushi and healthy smoothies plus air conditioning and a couch to lay back on), Indie Beach (for same food as Indie Raw but your feet are in the sand and you can live here too or go paddleboarding). Get foot massages at Paradise Massage, workout at BB Gym in Lonely Beach, go scuba diving with Koh Chang Divers, enjoy the best coffee on the island in the Fig Cafe garden (sweetest customer service ever - they serve you coffee with two hands and bow), watch the sunset into the ocean with a beverage at The Mount (treehouse vibes), and escape the entire world with a day on Long Beach (it’s an epic scooter ride to the end of the island, isolated, hot and magical).

If you’ve never been to Thailand what should I tell you? Random, scruffy, delicious, warm, you’ll be left alone to do what you please, obsession with colleges, 7 Elevens are your best friend, marajuana at the ready, jungle adventure ride, best mangoes ever.

Fig Cafe. This is how coffee is done. Drink preference remembered. Delivered to me with two hands.

“Flat white oak milk to go for you”

And a bow.

Khob Khun Ka

Khap

Swinging by the waves I cannot see, only hear, before bedtime. Give me a coconut and I’ll scrape that thing clean. Thai coconuts have thick moist meat inside and fresh sweet water. Indonesian coconuts, at least the ones I’ve been given, don’t quite compare…where’s all the fleshy white filling Bali coconuts, huh?

Love & Rainbows,

Cha Wilde