Koh Yao Nai - final words on doing unplanned journeys

There were a few firsts here - lagoon, captaining a boat, snorkeling, random island in an unknown country but what stood out is the fact that a journey is a lot more satisfying without a plan. When you plan there are expectations and when things don't go as per that there's pain. When you have no expectations as far as smaller things such as what activity or what location but do have broader clarity on what is meaningful for you, the journey is nicer. Regardless of where we would have gone, we would've enjoyed in a similar way. It isn't the destination per se but the whole idea of exploration and discovery. The joy of the unknown. Of unfamiliar cultures or cuisines or languages. Or about reaffirming that people are the same everywhere. That cities have similar challenges and strains. That the deeper you go inside a country the more real it gets. A clarity that it's impossible to see, experience everything. That who you are with at the moment is the most important person ever. That touristy stuff gets boring after a point. That no one really cares about your pictures or videos. That there's absolutely no correlation between money you spend and fun you have.

Because we were not on some self-created deadline, we were able to soak in everything one at a time without the pressure of getting onto the next because there was really no next. Because there was really no arbitrary goal to get to, we were able to listen closer to our own body rhythms and follow it whethe it was sleeping or eating. It was more natural. Because there was no checklist and because we knew that it would be impossible to experience everything there was, any activity that we did became more enjoyable. I couldn't find the correlation between working hard and setting goals. If I don't think about this like some relaxing vacation but more as something that I wanted to expose myself to and experience, then I think I 'worked' at my normal pace, sometimes more. I think we make plans to give some vague assurance to ourselves that we are in control. It helps us move through risk by thinking that we are minimizing risks. For e.g., the girl in the Nakhon Si thammarat plane minimized risk by making plans to go by ferry once she reached her destination. Technically, both our plans to go to a particular location didn't materialize (risk showed up) but reedirecting to Phuket brought tears to her eyes and joy to mine. Risk exists. Risk doesn't exist. Both are true and it's just a point of view.

Overall, it was refreshing. It reinforced this whole thing about letting go. The solution kept coming to us at the right time sometimes in the form that I foresaw, sometimes in a different form. We came across the right people at the right time who told us the right things to do. We took the most interesting street turns, chose the most interesting venues, destinations - all naturally and in a much better way than any book or website would've told us. Clearly the solution appears. Just as water, the journey flows - it doesn't stop, freeze because there's a crevice- it goes through it. Whether it was figuring out tickets to get back to Bangkok or deep inside the Andaman sea waters where I was seeing fish swim around my legs and arms or figuring out my way back from a jungle to nowhere, letting go is refreshing and relaxing and expands thinking. It increases faith in the natural order of things. It allows you to see everything more clearly for what they are and compels you to put priorities in the areas where they need to be.

Hey, that sounds like this other bigger journey I know...