Yoga, Friends & Tom Yum Kung

A cheerful hello back home my dears,

we hope you all started the new year with not too many good resolutions and had a lot of fun during carnival :).

Here we are again with new pictures and a few words about our last 6 weeks. We are slowly becoming a bit 'photo lazy', so the number of pictures this time is not very large ;).

We had a few spontaneous changes in our travel plans again... Actually, we had planned to travel to Nepal and then on to India... as you know, we postponed that for various reasons and decided to go to Myanmar instead. So far, so good... Because the flights were cheaper and we didn't want to miss the opportunity to visit our dear family Pumhirun in Bangkok, we made a little stopover in Thailand - again! Here we also met our dear Alma again and visited the doctor couple who took care of our wounds on Koh Lanta 1.5 years ago. Bangkok is always worth a visit, especially because it has the best Tom Yum Kung in all of Thailand! :p Then we continued south...

Since there is a border crossing from Ranong directly to southern Myanmar and we wanted to spend a few days at the beach, we took a night bus from Bangkok to Ranong and from there went to the nearby islands of Koh Chang Noi and Koh Phayam... again a beautiful piece of Thai earth!

Koh Chang is still unusually unspoiled and quiet. There are some bungalow resorts spread out along the beaches, a small village center with a supermarket and a restaurant, and every Saturday there is a cute market with about 10 stalls selling food and drinks... So it's a great place to just hang out, read, and relax on the beach... exactly what we needed after Nepal. Here we met the charmingly crazy couple Franzi and Lucy (unfortunately there are no photos haha) and spent a few super relaxed days with them. (Side note: Koh Chang is full of German-speaking retirees, tourists, and expats - it's really crazy)).

After that, we went to the much busier island of Koh Phayam. If you need a little more entertainment and variety but don't want crowded beaches, Koh Phayam is perfect.

And then came the second change of plans... I had been planning to do my yoga teacher training during our trip for a while. I had been looking for suitable opportunities here and there, but nothing 100% suitable had come my way yet. When it became clear that our gang (Hannah, Fatih, Anna, Giuli, Sanchan, Sangko, Simon, and Dada) would really visit us in Sri Lanka in February/March (we only believed it when the flights were booked - #excitement! :)) and our dear Sarah is coming to Bali in March/April (#excitementagain! :)), we suddenly realized that there wouldn't be much time left for my training. So I delved deeper into the topic and after a few days of wild research and planning back and forth, I decided to do a training on Koh Phangan - THE yoga island in Thailand, and the course started on January 5, 2020 - so we postponed Myanmar for now, visited friends on the neighboring island of Koh Tao for New Year's Eve, and then spent 4 weeks on Koh Phangan. Things can happen so fast...

Happy New Year and then the training began! In addition to 4-5 hours of yoga practice per day, I had 2 hours of theory classes every day on yoga philosophy, Ayurveda, anatomy, and marketing, plus homework and a lot of study and reading material for the final theoretical exam - and all of course in English :) and because that's not enough to turn us into certified yoga teachers within 4 weeks, everyone had to teach three yoga classes in the last 1.5 weeks; 60 minutes of Hatha Yoga, 90 minutes of Hatha Flow, and 90 minutes of Vinyasa Flow. I was as excited as I was during my final exam in vocational training, haha.

But I absolutely enjoyed it! #yogaeverydamnday... After 3 weeks, you can already feel that your energy is running out and your body and mind are just tired... on the other hand, I have never felt better physically and mentally - it was really a wild journey! Get ready for a free yoga class when we're back, hehe ;).

Fortunately, Sergey was able to stay in my room for free and explored the entire island in that month... and Martin also visited us again for a week, so Sergey luckily had a travel buddy by his side. Time flew by and because we still had one more week, we made another detour to our favorite island, Koh Lanta.

There was a lot of joy of reunion... In addition to our beloved Lanta friends, we also saw Franzi, Lucy, and Martin again (they were the lucky ones who were given a yoga class ;)) and Domi plus family were also on Koh Lanta at the same time - so much love! It was wonderful to see the three of them again after such a long time! A wonderful end to our Thailand adventure - for now! ;)

Now we finally made it to Myanmar and will report in the next post about what there is to see and experience here - it's exciting :D

Feel hugged and squeezed tightly!

Peace & Love. Your Sergi and Mine.