Listening to the Rain in Ko Pha Ngan

Listening to the Rain in Ko Pha Ngan

Journal Entry: December 12, 2025 – 6:00 AM

I am sitting on a veranda on a small island in Thailand, listening to thunder roll across the darkened hills while hard rain falls through the leaves. The air is warm and moving, almost breathing, and the world feels newly washed with every passing minute. It is early, only six in the morning, yet the island is alive, the rain striking the palms like a soft percussion section warming up for the day.The journey here has been long, the slow unwinding of one world into another. On Monday morning, after the close of Collage Expedition Los Angeles, Zach and I headed through the familiar corridors of LAX toward a very different horizon. First to Korea, where the airports are bright and structured, then onward to Bangkok, where we spent the night in a hotel that felt like a midpoint, neither departure nor arrival, simply an interlude between continents.

The next evening we flew south to Ko Samui, an island shaped by tide, wind, and tourism, though still holding its quiet pockets. We found a small beach hotel, the surf lapping close to the room, and slept deeply after the long stretch of travel. By the next afternoon we were crossing the water by ferry to Ko Pha Ngan, riding the swells as the coastline drifted in and out of view. I could feel the shift then, the sense of leaving behind the circuitry of airports and entering the lived rhythm of islands.Now it is Friday. The rain is steady. The trees lean into the weather as if in conversation with it. We are resting here, letting the travel settle into our bones. Tomorrow we will move again, farther across this island toward the place that is the true goal of our trip, though even now, in this quiet moment, I feel that arrival has already begun.

The rain continues. The morning light grows. The journey that began in Los Angeles has found its way to this veranda, to this pause, to this cloud-softened view of the Gulf of Thailand. Here, listening, I feel the threshold between paths, and the day ahead waits gently to be entered.