Last night, I arrived in Bangkok after a long journey from Seattle.. I only had one day in Bangkok, so what should I spend my day doing? I asked the owner of The Shanti Lodge (my guesthouse in Bangkok), if he knew of any good walking tours and he replied. “You should go to Koh Kret”. The word Koh, in Thai means island.
I hadn’t really thought of that before I embarked on my expedition, but it didn’t matter. I hopped on the express water taxi near my guesthouse and asked the conductor where I should get off. Once I disembarked, he lead me to a man with a half way buttoned up orange shirt, red eyes and no front teeth.. The photographer, talked to the orange shirted man for a few minutes and finally looked at me and said 600 baht..
My boat man arrived in a totally pimped out canoe, freshly painted red with a badass motor and a 4 foot exhaust pipe. I hoped in and we were off and 20 minutes later we arrived on Koh Kret.
It is beautiful. I arrived at a complex of Buddhist temples which I walked through and then wandered around the small walkways of this tiny island. The walkways connect homes. There are no streets and I could see the residents were still trying to make their way back from the destruction of the floods two months ago. It was an interesting place, very calm and quite nice.
I decided to enter one of the Buddhist temples to meditate. I sat there for a bit and suddenly..
There she was..
An older woman sat right next to me and took my hand and ran her fingers along the lines. She studied them for a bit, looked at me with her aging eyes and gave me a big toothless smile and a thumbs up. We proceeded to have a very lively conversation.. Not understanding a word the other said. She took my prayer beads and showed me how to use them. Then she counted to beads to make sure they were the right number. She took my hand again and looked at my palm..
Another thumbs up.
What more can I say?
We silently left and I helped her down the stairs.
I got back on the boat and we sped back to Bangkok.
Samia Shalabi is a Seattle based artist & designer, yogi and traveler who has roots in the Middle-East, was raised in the middle-west and is drawn to India. She has a degree in geology, has traveled all over the world with a backpack, and believes in following her dreams. Samia does yoga most mornings, enjoys walks around Seattle, loves to laugh, and daydreams about where to travel next. She is working on a movie shoot in France.
