Maybe Koh Samui Picked Me

Chapter 12 from “I Hope You Know You Didn’t Do Anything Wrong”

Purple skies just before the sunsets

November 2021, Phuket. I was eating mindfully for the first time in my life. A book called Bright Line Eating gave me direction when I needed it most. I knew I needed to move somewhere, try something else. The condo complex was quiet enough, but Phuket is still very much a city. A metropolis. I wanted something different.

I Googled “Thailand’s best beaches.”

Koh Samui came up. I had never been. Never heard of it. Never even seen pictures.

Bangkok Airways: $21. COVID pricing.

I booked it.

The Door Opens

When you land at Samui Airport, there are no actual gates. Four sitting areas; two international, two domestic “gates,” if you will. Then you’re transported to the plane by shuttle. The airport looks like a resort. Open air, thatched roofs, palm trees everywhere.

Upon arrival, when that door popped open, I felt a difference in the air.

I stepped off the plane. Took a deep breath.

This is heaven. This is right on time.

Koh Samui stole my heart from that first breath.

I had the month of December into the first part of January 2022 that first trip. I went back in July 2022. Then again in late 2022. I stayed most of 2023 in Samui. Most of 2024. In total, two of my four years in Thailand were actually spent on that island.

The quiet. The solitude. The beach. Island vibes during COVID that I got to experience before the world came back. Before it got infected again.

The Weigh Machine

In Thailand, outside most convenience stores, you can put one baht into a weigh machine. Some people use it for luggage before flights. Others just weigh themselves.

New Year’s Eve 2021. I put in one baht.

As an American, I had to Google what 74 kilograms was.

165 pounds.

I had lost 30 pounds since August in Austin. Four months. I never set out to come to Thailand to lose weight. This wasn’t some organized fitness plan. This was broader. Saving myself.

Losing the weight, finding the initial fountain of youth, that was just one facet of the awakening. The shedding of the old self.

Present-Day Me: I wasn’t on a diet. I was on an escape route. The weight fell off because my nervous system finally felt safe enough to let go. America kept me in survival mode for 38 years. Thailand let me heal.

What Enlightenment Feels Like

What specifically happened in Samui that was enlightenment?

It feels like lightness.

I’m not sure there was a pressure release valve I could point to. It wasn’t an on-off switch. It wasn’t like one day I was heavy and the next day I was light.

It felt like I entered a new dimension of lightness.

The psychedelic trip in April 2020 came with layers and layers of letting go. Purging. Work. Effort. The “barn find” getting dusted off, washed, detailed, brought back to life.

Samui was different.

In Samui, it felt like I hadn’t had to do anything. I just opened a door, walked through it, and was in a new place. A new person.

Why Samui Over Phuket or Chiang Mai?

Phuket is a nice entry point for first-time foreigners. If you have any conscious or subconscious fear of a new place, Phuket works. It’s Westernized enough.

Chiang Mai is too whitewashed. Too geared toward China. They don’t like people with brown skin. It just is what it is.

Samui? I didn’t need anything from Samui. Samui didn’t need anything from me.

No assumptions, no expectations.

It just is. And it’s a nice place to exist.

A Typical Day

I woke up to the symphony of birds and wildlife just before sunrise.

There’s something spiritually cleansing about waking up to those sounds. The symphony of birds comes on like a song. Then the sunrise. A cotton candy burst of color before the sun actually pops through.

You wake up to that in a bungalow, and you already feel energized.

I’d walk down to the beach to watch the sunrise. Blue sky. White sand. Green palm trees. That burst of colors. Nature’s override of the senses. An override to the system.

I’d take it in with my favorite song on headphones. Or just sit and listen to the world come online.

Come back to the bungalow resort. Nice breakfast. Soft-boiled eggs. Protein. Pineapple and an assortment of tropical Thai fruits. Nice cup of coffee.

Then the day just started.

The island took you there. To a frequency. To a perspective that could be had in no other place.

This Was My Samui

I understand my Samui experience is different from other people’s. That’s why this book is being written. I am not other people. I am not part of the herd. I didn’t come to Thailand for the party or the sex tourism.

I came here for the enlightenment. I came here for the healing.

I was bitter and angry when Samui “returned” to what it was pre-COVID in 2024. But now, in this healed phase, in my solitude phase, I have an appreciation for it.

That time in the world was for me. The same way COVID happened for me. The same way Samui in December 2021 happened for me.

It was a place to see. To experience. And perhaps to teach me about my issues with attachment.

Present-Day Me: Seasons and reasons. That place became painful in 2023. That’s why I left. I tried to find it in Mexico to be closer to home, to my parents, to my friends. But no different than the seasons and reasons I talked about with clients — in my lived experience, seasons and reasons can be times and places. They can even be people.

The Download

That time happened for me to download enlightenment. To know what it physically felt like to embody that. But then it expired in its physical location and in its time in my life.

So I could challenge myself.

To see if I could take that frequency of enlightenment and stay with it. Be it.

That was challenged hard in 2023 and 2024. And it only came back online to be a personality characteristic of my current lived self going forward now in 2025. Post-10 months of solitude.

In the Bible, it’s called the Remembering. In Revelations, this is all just a reminder.

I believe my solitude was the reminder that I had touched enlightenment in Samui. And that frequency is always within me.

What Changed After That Moment

What changed after that moment in Samui?

Me.

Samui during lockdowns — the way I was able to have it and experience it. And how much I changed in that one month, in those first 153 days in Thailand. The greatest amount of change. Perspective change. Body change. Body feeling. Mindset change.

If that was a fork in the road, it’s one of the few times in my life I can say I actually picked the right path.

Present-Day Me: If I could put enlightenment into words, I would. But I think you really know it when you walk through that door and you’re just like, yep. I’m a new person now. There’s no specific blueprint. It’s more of an animated arrival than a destination you steamroll into.

Wisdom has to be learned through experiences. But that doesn’t mean your experience has to be harsh or bruising or punishing. You can be in places and observe conditions, cultures, climates. Extract the message. Move on.

A smart man learns from his own mistakes. A wise man learns from other people’s mistakes.

But maybe the wisest people are those who don’t need the lesson at all. They just sit in a bungalow on a beach in Koh Samui and let the world teach them how to be light again.

I had found something in Koh Samui I didn’t even know I was looking for.

Not answers.

Not peace.

Not even enlightenment.

Just myself.

Without the noise.

Without the performance.

Without America.

If this resonated:

I created a free framework to help you evaluate what needs to change in your life: **The 3 A’s**. No email required.

And if you want the full system I use — rest, nutrition, movement, ice bath and sauna protocols, exactly how I structure my weeks — I documented everything here: **The Three Pillars System**.

Enlightenment isn’t a destination. It’s a frequency you tune into.

~ Siddhartha in Solitude