Travel Coaching, Custom, or Guided Tours Available

By popular demand I am now available for paid Travel Coaching, and Guided or customized Tours.

Examples are:

Travel Coaching: Dealing with family resistance or other obstacles+ Where to Go When + How much + What to Bring + other Getting started issues = $45 per hour.

2 weeks Amazing Thailand: Bangkok + Krabi + Koh Surin island = $2575 including airfare from LAX, lodging, local transportation, sight-seeing tours, kayaking, snorkeling, elephant riding.

2 weeks Magical Bali Well-being Adventure: Ubud + Detox + Nusa Lombongan Island = $2295 including airfare from LAX, lodging, local transportation, sight-seeing tours, rafting, snorkeling, temple dances, detox colon cleansing program.

Interested?

Leave Comment or email to:

jamesrascon@hotmail.com

We are all Travelers thru life.

Mu Koh Surin

Mu Koh Surin National Park, Thailand February 25, 2008. “Welcome to Paradise”, I say to a group of Thai friends I unexpectedly meet here on Mu Koh Surin. This island national park & marine sanctuary in the Andaman Sea is popular with Bangkok Thais as a weekend beach camping spot, and equally popular with Farrangs (foreign tourists) as a world-class coral reef snorkeling destination.

Fabulous white sand beach, pretty good visibility, big fish quality coral reefs, and virgin rainforest scenery will keep you out of the tent and actively enjoying this, my number 1 pick of outdoors island destinations in Thailand. Yes tent camping is the predominant and most affordable lodging here. You can camp at the Park Headquarters or at the more scenic Mai Ngam beach where I pitched my rental tent that I brought from Kuraburi on the mainland (60 Baht a day rental). The park also has nice large tents for rent at 300 Baht a day. These take-up prime beachfront spots in Zones 1-5 leaving the further 5 zones for private tents including large weekend group tours. There are some expensive bungalows at the Park Headquarters and they are building more.

Many couples enjoy the relaxed romantic beach setting.

Meals are served in the relaxing open-air Coop canteen restaurant. You buy coupons at the information counter and use these to purchase food in the canteen. Breakfast is 7:30 – 9:00am, Lunch 12nn – 2pm, and Dinner 6:30-8:00pm. Food is basic and affordable Thai food. I usually had fruit (30 Baht, not always available), and fried mixed vegetables on rice (40 Baht), or stir-fried chicken on rice (50 Baht). Water is always available free.

After a quick fruit and instant coffee (20 Baht) I buy my snorkel boat ticket (80 Baht) and hurry across the island to Ao Kra Thing bay and depart with the other tourists in our wooden long-tail boats for the morning snorkeling trip.

Exciting fish I saw included during my 3 weeks– A medium size Manta Ray, white and black tip reef sharks, Napoleon Wrasse, smaller sea turtles, Jacks, Mackerel, a sea snake, lion fish, giant Clams, Moray eels, even a nudibranch. Commonly seen fish of good size and variety include: Groupers, Snappers, Triggerfish, Butterfly fish, Anemone fish, Goatfish, Angelfish, etc.

Corals are mostly branching, encrusting hard corals, with noticeable dynamite fishing damage on some reefs but overall still very good quality for these modern times.

Other interesting aspects here include the Moken natives or sea gypsies. Their children are cute with traditional haircuts and simple beach play. Several sat with me while I was reading the 2nd hand magazines and pointed for me to describe the pictures to them. They enjoyed the attention but did not understand any of my English or broken Thai.


Local wildlife provides some camping excitement. A troop of Macu monkeys regularly patrols the campground watching for tasty items to steal. I brought a prized bag of mangos from the canteen back to my tent late one morning. I hung the bag on a tree in front of my tent and went to the nearby restroom. Three minutes later I came back to find a lone big male monkey eating my mangos. “Hey, those are my Mangos”, I stupidly shouted at him. Used to such statements, he just looked at me and peeled off another piece of the one he was eating, dropping the skin piece next to my tent. “Well at least share, give me back one”, I continued my monolog as I approached closer. He slowly backed away carrying my mangos. I ducked into my tent and retrieved my camera just as he was climbing into a tree.

There he sat, a mango in each hand and one foot, casually eating yellow mango, and tossing the finished seed down to the other primate below.

Walking back to my tent along the beach after dinner I spied this group of Thais photographing this fragrant white flower. They said it blooms for only 1 night. Sure enough the next day it was on the beach.

Gold at the End of the Rainbow, Mu Koh Surin National Park is indeed Paradise. And my number 1 pick for snorkeling spot in Thailand.
Trip notes: Island is only open from late November to early April. SW Monsoon prevents boat travel to the island the rest of the year.

My tour package will include getting your tent and pad and pillow as well as pier and boat transport.

What Matters To You?

Krabi, Thailand March 16, 2008. What Matters to You?

Not what is important to you or what you like or what you are supposed to be doing? The question that began a life changing inquiry for me is What Matters to You, as in what activity or thing or being that for you when you’re engaged with that gives you the experience of full-aliveness, satisfaction, power, fulfillment, being in the zone, this is it. Like that what matters.

Originally I came-up with Being CONTRIBUTION & ADVENTURE is what matters to me. And I have been on this trip for 8 months discovering distinctions and variations of Contribution and Adventure.

So recently when I camped and snorkeled and walked the beaches and jungle of Mu Koh Surin National Park islands off the west coast of Thailand (see separate story) I was surprised by an insight in what matters to me. SNORKELING Island Life is the “this is it”, the what-matters for me.

Snorkeling on pristine coral reef off a paradise island is what matters to me. What is surprising about this is that it has always been so obviously what matters to me yet I had not seen it before. What I noticed is the experience of ahhh, that I get when I snorkel this paradise coral reefs, and walked the scenic beach, and gazed at the jungle surrounded by water and sky. Ahhh, here I belong, this is my element, I am at my zenith of power and confidence and freedom.

Then I noticed that in the background of my whole teen and adult life is snorkeling. The Hidden Agenda has always been snorkeling. Specifically, “when will I be going snorkeling”, as in when will I have saved enough $ to go snorkeling, or when will I have enough time-off to go snorkeling, or when will I be free to go snorkeling…

Snorkeling as in free-diving, swimming with mask & snorkel and swim-fins in the ocean over/around/ down on a coral reef. Holding my breath and descending 30, 40, or even 60 feet along a coral wall to view all manner of ocean life close-up and personal. Covering 2 or 3 km of reef in 3 to 5 hours of snorkeling. It is massive exercise and I am beautifully present and alive the whole time.

I had known that I like to go snorkeling, and that I want to go snorkeling, and that I avoid settling down. But now I have clarity that it is the desire for What Matters to Me that has me avoid settling-down, being stuck in the rat-race. With this new clarity I can now plan accordingly and create a life that forwards and is consistent with What Matters to Me. With much less guilt or distraction.

So I can retire to Mu Koh Surin islands a few months a year and be happy engaged in What Matters to Me. Or at least so it seems to me now.

So What Matters to You? Know this such that you can retire and be engaged with that for the rest of your life (retired or not).

That 1st answer is ok. But I encourage you to continue thinking about it as you go thru your life. Like me, You might discover something surprising.