Getting out of my comfort zone

I can’t swim. I get nervous wading into water above my hips and I’ve never really cared because I think beach water is kind of gross anyway. It’s not chlorinated and you’re surrounded by wild animals that you can’t see (why doesn’t this bother anyone else?). So every time I’ve had the opportunity to snorkel it’s been a hard pass.

But Thailand has some of the best snorkeling in the world and Jack really wanted to do it so I found myself strapped with a life jacket and snorkel gear jumping (read: climbing very slowly down a ladder) into open ocean before I really had a chance to think better of it.

I was nervous and disoriented and trying not to panic and it went against all my natural instincts to respond to all this by dunking my head in the water. But the moment I did, my nerves vanished. I think all the sounds around me – waves, wind, other people – had been reinforcing my panic, and the sudden quiet under the surface made me feel alone, which was oddly comforting. It also helped that in the clear waters of Koh Phi Phi I could immediately see dozens of beautiful fish. Turns out it’s much less scary being surrounded by wild animals you can see.

We ended up doing 4 separate snorkeling expeditions, visiting 12+ different sites. I saw 3 giant sea turtles, 5 sharks, countless species of fish, bioluminescent plankton, and a shipwreck. I was addicted. By the end, we were renting our own gear and just jumping off coasts by ourselves to hunt for cool underwater sites we’d heard about on the Internet.

Would I have done this if I weren’t in Thailand? I think there’s something about traveling that naturally pushes you out of your comfort zone. Some combination of “when will I be in this place again?” and being forced to do all sorts of atypical things (using squat toilets, eating fried rice for breakfast) makes you reevaluate your boundaries.

In Chiang Rai, a more rural area in northern Thailand, we went on a jungle trek. This was no casual walk on a hiking trail, we were wading through waist-high brush as our guide cut a passage ahead of us with his machete. It was so not my kind of thing: I’m not outdoorsy (didn’t we build walls and air conditioning for a reason?) and embarrassingly out of shape. I couldn’t believe how much I loved it. Sure, Jack and the guides were always waiting at the top (or bottom) of the hill for me to catch up, but I was so glad I did it. Our guide taught us about the culinary and medicinal properties of the plants we saw along the way, picking several of them right off the stem for us to taste, and about life for the hill tribe people who subsist off this land. Plus, without the hike we couldn’t have reached my favorite part – visiting one of these hill tribe families and cooking a traditional lunch together in the amazing home they’d built by hand out of bamboo. I’d never been anywhere like that and I wouldn’t have thought I could make it.

It’s not just physical boundaries that traveling has pushed. A trip like this demands a lot more interactions with strangers than we’re used to. We haggle with cab drivers. We get dinner with our tour companions. We spent Christmas with people we struck up a conversation with on a ferry the week before. I find these kinds of things fun, but Jack is accustomed to being more of an observer. He doesn’t typically like to “get involved,” but in the spirit of getting the most out of the experience he’s really tried to embrace this new charge. Jack now initiates a lot of our social encounters and he even yelled at a hateful guy causing trouble in our hostel.

In some ways, going to new places has simply afforded us new opportunities. I don’t usually have access to jungle walks. But I think we’ve also adopted a mindset of stretching ourselves that has made me reconsider things that made me uncomfortable in the past. For example, I honestly think the most uncomfortable thing I’ve done on this trip so far is to join Instagram. I prefer the blog format where I can marinate on an experience for several days and then compose a five-paragraph-essay that can be carefully edited (Jack edits all my posts and I haven’t given him nearly enough credit for it) and shared with a select group of people. Putting myself out there in real time is a new kind of vulnerable and honestly it seemed like a lot of work to keep up with. But I know that makes me a Luddite so I finally bit the bullet. I still find it kind of stressful but it’s a cool new world and I’m beginning to see the value of it. Most of all, I’m glad that when fellow travelers ask for my Instagram (apparently the go-to app for this kind of connection), I no longer have to sheepishly respond: “uhhh, do you have Facebook?”

P.S. I built an interactive map of all the cities we’ve been to so far on this trip! You can check it out on the new page of this site, Where’s Mano Been?

We spent 2 months in Thailand and I only post about a small fraction of it. Check out the Photos tab to see pictures of the White Temple, our cooking class, beautiful hikes and beaches, and of course delicious food. Below are some of my favorites: