Writing in Solitude on Koh Chang, Thailand

I’ve always dreamed of locking myself away to write, running far away and sitting in a cabin or a beach chair and telling whatever stories needed to be told. Sounded romantic. In actuality, it was rough as all good challenges are. I put myself in the pressing situation and squeeze the juice out of me.

I feel sick most of the days on this island. It’s not the food or the sun. It’s the loneliness or regret, fear or anxiety, I have to sit inside of while I turn over old memories and dark feelings like stones on a cold beach. Its the impatience and desire to get back to fun things that pesters me. It’s the pull of two worlds, two lives that want me. I’m living in paradox, living with polarized parts.

It’s a wonderful opportunity to be alone and dove deep inside the painful places. These journeys clean house in my body and soul. They clear away cobwebs and repair the deeper problems that have been making me behave in strange ways. I hold myself in these weird feelings, alone in a good way, in a beautiful safe location. I watch the waves and the sun move. I watch my relationship with myself move. I write it down and smile at the baristas. I look forward to moving on and laughing with friends again when this work is complete.

Love & Rainbows,

Cha

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

Swimming in Words and Elemental Sensations

I sliced my foot open on a barnacle this morning. Don’t worry, not too bad. Hydrogen peroxide is in my toiletry bag. I’ve been playing with video cameras underwater, 360 cameras that make me appear to be at play on a tiny planet all to myself. It’s fantastic fun. The video play is the escape I need from all the writing I’m doing. Hours of writing every morning from 9am-1:30pm is a typical window. I fill it with coffee and fantasy, journaling, typing, digging deeper in my memory, leaning into the story to be even more honest. I think I could write from sunrise to sunset. It flows so effortlessly for me. For health and balance, I take the last sip of brown from the coffee cup, pack up my pen and jump on the scooter. Off to the gym!

I’m swimming in words; reading and writing them. I feel a distinction between present moment, fantasy, past, and flashback as I go throughout my time. Time is playing with me as I write with it in mind. Writing has mostly been real for me, presence. I didn’t see the appeal of creative writing, storytelling for many years. I only wanted to be here. Composing music and the painting were my playtime in my imagination, my escape into another realm. Now, I’m tasting how to tap into similar satisfaction, a creative flow in writing by inventing a world.

Diving and scooter driving are two activities I enjoy to break from the wordplay. It’s the sensation of smooth air or water rolling over my skin. In the ocean the water caresses every inch of my body just as the wind attempts to as I slide through the air on a scooter. The air and the water, when they completely envelop me feel almost identical. It’s a bold statement and I’ll make it…this smooth rush over my skin, a sensation of being held, massaged, surrounded by the elements is my favorite feeling in the universe. I can’t get enough of it.

If I burned alive and the heat didn’t hurt me, would the flames lick my body softly the way the water flows over me, the way the wind caresses me, the way the earth holds me down when I bury myself inside her? Do all the elements know how to give me the same pleasure?

love & rainbows,

Cha Wilde

Koh Chang Divers

I am a woman of language, the tongue, the voice, the sounds we make to be together, to understand whatever there is to be known.

I create from within.

This is what the German young man said about me after listening to my description of how I make my living. “Traveling and writing go well together,” he said. He said his work as a mechanical engineer comes to him from outside himself; all the machines he’s inherited from previous generations and all the problems he’s solving are from the others. My work is just me, looking inside myself and expressing what I find. “This is very cool,” he says nodding his head before we take one big step and plunge into the ocean. Today I complete my 12th, 13th, and 14th dives in the open ocean. The water is gorgeous, fish life abundant and coral reef is wowing me. I feel like I’m swimming through a giant garden. The corals look like enormous pink roses in full blossom.

Bang Bao pier is the floating market in this Gulf of Thailand. I catch the scuba boat with Koh Chang Divers and they zip us out to the marine park, protected sea around nearby islands. It costs 400 BAHT per head to dive in the park. Totally worth it on top of the 3,500 BAHT I pay for the dives. Money well spent when it takes you out into the heart of wild nature. She gives you back your life. Nine hours at sea and I’m delivered back to land in time for sunset.

For the healthiest food on Koh Chang, I drive to Indie Raw or Indie Beach. Fresh bohemian vibes, pretty veggies, and an overwhelming long list of smoothies. I stand there humming, searching the menu for green things. Why do I want espresso shots added to everything? Caffeine addiction is strong in me on this island. It’s probably because I’m writing. Writing and coffee are best friends in my system. I order green juice to help the cells in my body replenish and repair themselves. Miso soup for fermented pro-biotic goodness, gut health please!

I explore the Bang Bao pier market. It’s like Pike Place Market’s tropical scrawny little brother. Fishy stalls, sea creatures surviving their final moments in buckets. Sweet coconut pancakes served in paper takeaway trays. Silk elephant stuff animals, the same Bingtang graphic tank tops, more elephant patterns on hippie pants, shells sewn together in curtains and wind chimes, too many ankle bracelets to choose from. I chose one and regretted it the whole walk home. I was jingling like a Christmas elf, every step, bells dingling, on my feet, in a rhythm, driving me crazy!! Take it off. I’ll give it to my mom. She likes bells.

Twice on this hot island I’ve been into the first aid kit. My first morning alone, I ran down the beach at sunrise. Twenty minutes in, almost home, my left foot sunk into the sand and a spiked white shell sunk into the big toe mound. I pulled out the spikes that had broken off the shell’s body. One spike took three days to be extracted. One week later, I went swimming, again at the sunrise moment. After chasing fish and pinching my nose a hundred times (to equalize my ears as I dive down to inspect coral in the bay), I climbed out onto the rocks and my right foot sliced along a barnacle. The blood was minimal. The cut was clean with very little pain. I’ve been hobbling around though as it’s uncomfortable to put my full right on it.

My last days on the island have been land ridden, writing up a storm, staring at the waves, scraping meat out of fresh coconuts.

Love & Rainbows,

Cha Wilde

I’m writing a book.

Three weeks ago, something inside me decided to say a giant YES and I texted Lindsay (my IFS healer, a doula and an expert in creative writing). I asked Lindsay to coach me, to help me write a book.

“A book is banging on my mind, pestering me. I see many paths forward and it’s a new world for me to create structure in writing. For 22 years I’ve written free flow in my journal, poems, songs and blog posts. I’m comfortable with the create and move on. I’m uncomfortable with the review, edit, craft and work on writing project for long long time. I would love to find some clarity on ways I can progress that honors and excited all my parts. They are currently afraid of overwhelm, being spread thin, starting a project and getting bored, perfectionism, getting sidetracked, not having enough fun, not doing it efficiently. I am open to working with a coach and it’s important to me that we use IFS in the creative process. You’re the perfect person to guide me through this.”

This book has been flooding me, pouring in with intense passion. I drive around Koh Chang on the lime green scooter, catching the words in the wind. I pull over to the dusty roadside and draw my phone out of the side pocket of my orange backpack. I frantically type the sentences as they arrive, shove the phone back in the bag and drive off again, zooming through the sun speckled jungle roads (which are in astoundingly great condition)!

Thousands of words are filling my handwritten journal, phone memos, word documents, and text messages. The universe is recently when you show up to collaborate with her. “Oh you wanna play?” She says with a hungry smile. “Alrighty then. Get ready.” And so begins another epic journey of creation, another all consuming project, another deep dive into the soul space, another attempt to explain and understand what may always remain a the mystery, another fun way to pass day by day giving me a little purpose to please my ego and distract me from existential dread, a playful way to express the many parts I live with and care for inside me, another contribution to this human culture, another offering making use of my gifts, another way to let go of whatever I’ve been clinging to for so long, another way to spend more time with my friends, another way to liberate myself from the past and being light into the world, another obsession, another playground, another attempt to be god, another opportunity to surrender to something greater than myself, and just another project.

My day has revolved around my morning journaling habit for decades, especially strong in the past five years. It’s my favorite part of everyday. Now, to their great delight, my writer parts are being allowed more hours in each day to play. Hours and hours. I’m alone on a tropical island. Thousands of people are hidden around me in bungalows, tattoo parlors, noisy bars with off vibes, beachy shacks, vegetarian restaurants, and taxi trucks. I’m ignoring them all. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to be along with my parts, their stories, these empty pages I’ve agreed to fill quickly, and a lot of coffee, melting chocolate, smoothies, fine grains of yellow sand, long joyrides on the scooter, and a sun so hot it will melt me if I leave the shade. I’ve carved out time for solitude, reflection and creation. Leave me be. I’m going deep.

As I write this story, I am also writing about the process of writing. I’m happy to share some of these updates with you on this blog.

If you’re excited to follow the development of this book project more intimately, join my studio members (my online community) where I’ll be sharing more detailed project updates, reflections on writing, behind the scenes of my creative writing project, and sneak peeks. With studio members I’ll be sharing snippets of my writing and video clips of me reading and offering commentary on this work.

Koh Chang, Thailand - Mellow Island Vibes

Dogs and vegetables share the counter at the roadside grocery store. I’m far far away from safety policies and hygiene laws. Love it. It’s refreshing over and over to feel humans living in a more relaxed state amongst one another. Barefoot in the gym, squatting on the toilets, no uniforms, no police officers in sight. Life on this little island in the Gulf of Thailand feels like it’s almost a festival. I’m running around in the sun listening to music, smiling weed, and doing nothing or anything I want. Seems like everyone else is doing the same.

We’re on Koh Chang, a quiet vibes island in Thailand. It took three hours by car and less than an hour by ferry to travel from Bangkok to our accommodation on this mountainous jungle island. National Parks, perfect roads, and fine white sand beaches welcome us… along with hundreds of cannabis shops. You can purchase weed at any counter; the coffee counter, the scooter rental, the bohemian clothing consignment shop, the tourist information booth, massage salon and the pharmacy even might sell weed. The whole town is high.

Fruit stands are the spot for tomorrow’s breakfast, lunch and snack. Tiny bananas, dragonfruits, lychee, and the most important fresh fruit of all…. The Thai Mango. The mangoes in Thailand win most delicious fruit award. We eat them fresh on the beach with cashews. We order fresh mango shakes with evening Thai food. Our faces light up with baffled delight at the first and second and third sip. When mangoes are THIS delicious there is really no sense in ordering any other drink.

This pink journal comes with me everywhere. I sit for hours in the air conditioning and under shady canopies with coffee, chocolate and stories dribbling out. Every morning Captain Bubbles and I scooter up the very steep hill to The Mount. He’s waiting patiently with a giant camera lens for the moment when a hornbill will grace us with its presence. I’m scooping the flesh out of a fresh coconut and you guessed it, writing.

There’s a little fishing village, shops on stilts full of elephant sarongs, shells and sea trinkets. White marajuana smoke swirls up from the roof of the Rasta View Cafe and disappears in the blue sky where the white belly sea eagles fly.

Pull the scooter over to the roadside gasoline stand. The gasoline comes in old liquor bottles. 45 Thai Baht for a bottle. The powerful scooter I’m driving can take four bottles. I wave at the lady behind the restaurant counter and she walks slowly out to the street to empty the bottles into the scooter tank and we exchange paper and coins.

And we float in the shallow turquoise water, eat the a Pad Thai and green curry, hold our breaths as the hot orange sun sinks into the sea, point at the crabs that scuttle into their sand holes, and giggle.

Love & Rainbows,

Cha Wilde

Waking Up in Bangkok

Legs tucked under me, chocolate melting on my tongue, Kindle balancing on my thighs — I’m reading “The Penguin Book of Mermaids” as this car transports me from Bangkok, southeast to a ferry terminal. I’ll cross the water to Koh Chang and enjoy a couple weeks of aggressive snorkeling and wildlife appreciation. Traveling ultra-light on this trip with bikinis, a freediving mask, Kindle, journal and speaker. Reading, writing, listening to music, meditating and yoga on the beach. Oh, and I brought the GoPro to film beautiful moments that will later be edited into the vlogs, the mini documentary films my team edits and I share with studio members who support these journeys. I’m now filming season two of “Love and Rainbows”. I’m experimenting with a new filming style this time around - incorporating verticals video and collages, a film that feels more like a scrapbook. Documentary living is a lifestyle that’s crept in since childhood; always writing the feelings I’m experiencing and shooting the pretty interesting things I see. Why, I wonder, should I bother trying to capture such an impermanent universe. Even my art will fade. I feel myself, and the work I create, flowing in a greater flow, turning over in a cycle stronger than logic. I feel good when I document and create. It’s a lovely gesture though fleeting and disposable. Today, I play with a crazy vibrant colorful filter on the photos I snap on the iPhone 13 Pro. Waking up in a busy city is a shock to this body that’s been snoozing beside the sea for a couple months. Why so rushed, everyone? Younger parts of me feel memories rise in the body with sights of the city. I used to love living in cities when I moved as fast as them.

The ocean, though mysterious, had become a safe place for me. The beach is fun and underwater is spacious. The beach makes me dreamy. Underwater I am in the dream. It’s a living fantasy.

Surface time is a thing now in my awareness. surface intervals. How long have I been on land? How long since I was in the water? This is a pressing question. Slip into the water and wash off all dirt of mind, residue of problems. The water plays with me and lifts the mood. Everything is good in the water. I played in the hotel pool this morning, 7th floor outdoor, cars honking on the street below, lovely temperature. I held one breath, kicked off the wall and torpedoed through the water until my chin gently bumped the rough floor. No injury, just surprise. It’s been awhile since I swam in a pool. I’ve been diving in water with sand 20m below me, no risk of accidentally crashing my face into the bottom. Surprise! Oh yes, it’s a pool. I feel like an ocean fish swimming full speed into the glass wall of its new tank, confused.

All books open on my Kindle right now are about mermaids. Reading sentences about the ocean makes me feel close to her. The ocean is sending me messages through the words other people have written about her. Like a girlfriend telling me that she heard from someone on the playground that the boy I crush on might like me like me. A notice through the grapevine lifts my spirits and flutters my warm heart. Reading stories about the ocean from other human hearts makes my own heart feel connected to the ocean still, although I wake up in a concrete jungle.

My own words pour out today with the flat white oat milk coffee. IDK Cafe Silon earns my award for one of the most strangely decorated coffee houses I’ve ever stepped inside. The colors are vibrant, furniture asks me to figure out how to sit on it, cartoon character fill the walls, the air smells like marajuana. Welcome to Thailand.

Love & Rainbows,

Cha Wilde