Arriving in Pai two hours before my yoga course started, feeling queasy from the mild food poisoning I had suffered with the day before, I felt massive relief I had made it, that journey was rough with the mountainous winding roads but it was worth it, this place just looked cool with its low rise town buildings and narrow roads in the town area and hilly greenery with winding roads leading to little villages every so often.
I had a few teething problems getting my transfer to the hotel…all related to my phone just no longer letting me make outgoing calls after I had asked the guy in 7-11 to add it for me because I had no idea how to myself. Good old fashioned pay phone to the rescue!
Bhud the teacher owner of the exhale yoga retreat met us soon after I arrived, the group were lovely, a mixture of ages, countries and experience coming together. We were introduced to the timetable for the retreat and the silence period for the first half of the day.
We did our first lesson and had an amazing organic vegetarian dinner to get to know each other after a long chat and getting to bond with the youngest of the group and an Australian lady who had given up working for a while to connect with photography.
Day one and I forget about the silence and bust into the dinner area with a jolly “good morning!” to be greeted with a “shhhhhh”. OK so less than 24 hours in and I’m in trouble for not observing the silence…I must do better tomorrow.
After throwing myself into the yoga, medication and nasal cleansing routine for the following days I was totally into the pattern and the healthy eating and generally feeling good…along comes my birthday. I did not plan to be here for my birthday but it turns out that the timings of the course meant I could not avoid it without missing out altogether.
My birthday was an awesome one surrounded by new friends who were lovely enough to make it special for me, I mentioned it to my neighbour Teresa and thought nothing much about it by two pm I had managed to call home and by the time I got to lunch we were off the morning silence and everyone said happy birthday and we had a lovely meal. The evening was made even more special by pumpkin cakes being made specially and the group singing Happy birthday in the yoga sala. Perfect home away from home style birthday; of felt really special, even more so in so strange way that I had only met these people a few days before and the effort they went to was touching beyond words. Yes, me… Speechless. For once.
We spent the rest of the retreat bonding over shooting stargazing, giggling at chanting class and the hot springs trip we did, not to mention the walk home in the pitch black with torches after every evening meal. Loved it.