After settling back into our sweet little home on Corfu and spending a quiet Christmas & New Year’s on the Island, the idea of traveling and making winter just a little shorter started to grow within me. Corfu is absolutely beautiful, and not too cold in winter either, but it’s a rather different energy than in summer. In a way it feels like the whole island is half asleep -and that makes for great hibernation and rest, but not so much adventuring.
So with time the little idea grew into a tangible plan and we took off to Bangkok. From the moment of our landing, it became clear that we were headed for a contrasting program. The city was alive in every pore, and the warmth of the Thai sun got our sleepy eyes awake within a matter of hours too.
Throughout the first days, I thought of this cheesy postcard-quote quite a lot. Life is a book, and those who don’t travel only read one page. That rang true looking back at the last 3 years… Diving into Asian culture, and the utterly different realities people were living in here, I felt so incredibly grateful to be able to turn the page again and invite new stories into our lives.
Right at the beginning we travelled to a wonderful place called Krabi where we got to swim in Thai hot springs and visit the most beautiful warm waterfalls. You know me by now – I was in heaven! 😉 And I feel inspired to create a Retreat here soon… Then we explored a National Park with beautiful rainforests and wild rivers. Our visit was really a 24/7 adventure: hiking, kayaking, and defining our boundaries as a family unit.
In many ways Massimo and I felt like first-time travelers again, getting to know the line between nourishing & growth-inducing and draining & overstraining adventures in a whole new way. We had to feel into and re-define our inner guidance as parents and find out what it really means to move as a wholesome organism made of 3. A beautiful process bringing us closer together and inviting a new level of maturity and guardianship into our lives…
And then, we also got confronted with the limits of imagination and wishful thinking: The last weeks before we left Corfu, I imagined and planned our perfect holiday… Taking a cute little boat to a remote Island with no tourism, fully engulfing ourselves into the beauty of untouched Asian nature. Reality struck rather differently – as soon as we arrived on Kho Chang Noi we got challenged from all sides. Next to nasty bugs and painful back-spasms, Dario hit his head and ended up with a concussion and 2 sleepless nights. We had to let go of the perfect image in our mind, and allow life to take us to a different place.
Upon our few nightmare-ish days, we made our way to Ko Payam and were joyfully greeted by crystalline waters, wide beaches, and harmonious energy through and through. We took our time to settle and rest after weeks of adventuring, and fully recharged our internal batteries with peace and sunshine.
Now we are on our way back to Bangkok, from where we will fly back to Corfu in mid-March. It’s been such a gift to experience travel in this new way and witness our boy soaking up the exotic experiences that opened to us…
We look forward to land back in Greece, and prepare for a season full vitality and inspiration ❤️
Laila