Roam Alone
Solo Travel. Shared Stories.
Roam Alone
Grief on the Road: Healing Through Solo Travel
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In Part Two of my conversation with Mark Fryer, we explore how solo travel can become a powerful tool for healing after loss.
Mark shares what it was like traveling alone to Puerto Vallarta shortly after the death of his mother—an emotionally raw journey that included an unexpected and dangerous run-in with a drug cartel. Years later, following a divorce, he embarked on a solo trip through Southeast Asia, where travel shifted from escape to intentional healing.
From volunteering at Thailand’s Elephant Nature Park to a two-day boat journey down the Mekong River and discovering the surprisingly cosmopolitan cities of Laos, Mark reflects on how slowing down and traveling alone helped him reconnect with himself. The episode closes with a powerful discussion of a 10-day Buddhist meditation retreat at Indriya in northern Thailand, and the stillness that comes from sitting with grief rather than running from it.
This episode of Roam Alone is a conversation about grief, resilience, solo travel, and the courage it takes to keep moving forward.
Time Stamps
00:00 Traveling to Puerto Vallarta after the loss of his mother
11:53 Post-divorce solo travel to Thailand & Elephant Nature Park
22:04 Two-day Mekong River boat trip and discovering Laos
34:40 A 10-day Buddhist retreat at Indriya
Roam Alone is hosted by Theresa Stephens.
Instagram: @theresaannstephens
Facebook: /theresastephens
Facebook: /RoamAlone
Theresa Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Theresa Stevens. And this is Rome alone. Solo travel,
shared stories. So in our last episode, I introduced you to my brother Mark Fryer We spoke a
lot about growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, and how my experience growing up was so
different from his, which is so interesting. And families, I think even though you grew up in the
same house, your siblings, you have the same parents. Experiences can be very different
between siblings and it very much was for Mark. So we discussed how his experiences
growing up and how he felt in the family, in the city and the neighborhood, influenced his love
of travel and his need for travel. And so that first episode, which is leaving home to find
yourself. Episode four of season one discussed Mark leaving for the first time solo leaving
Louisville in general. Solo on a bus to Denver. It went awry, as things often do, and how he
pivoted on a dime, and how it turned into this amazing cross-country journey with strangers
who became friends. And it's a wonderful story. If you have not had a chance to listen, please
do. We talked for so long, I didn't want to cut anything out, so I've made it into two episodes.
This next episode focuses on two distinct solo trips that took place during very pivotal times in
Mark's life. One followed the loss of our mother in twenty fifteen. The second followed the well,
the loss of Mark's life as he knew it. This was post-divorce. He went on a three month trip to
Southeast Asia. And it seems to me that travel, whether it's solo or with family, is definitely a
way that Mark deals with things going on in his life. It gives him time to contemplate, to come
to terms with what's going on in his life and to rejuvenate and start again. One other thing if
you have ever thought of taking a trip to Southeast Asia, Thailand or Laos after this episode,
you, like me will be booking your flight almost immediately. I hope you enjoy Rome alone.
Getting back to what this podcast is all about, there was a trip that you did take by yourself
while you were married, and this was fast forwarding many, many years. Shortly after mom
died.
Mark Correct? Yeah. Yes. That's true.
Theresa So tell me about that.
Mark Okay. There were some. Definitely quite a few trips between. Oh, yes. Uh, finishing
college and this one. But I had been. I was in the state I was in. My life situation was I'd been
married for quite a while, and it was twenty fifteen. Mom died in September of twenty fifteen.
Had a huge impact on me. As you know, I was her favorite. She was my favorite.
Theresa You know what? For the sake of this conversation, let's just go with that.
Mark I'm glad you understand. Acknowledge it.
Theresa I'm going to edit that part out later. Go ahead.
Mark So that it did it impacted me greatly.
Theresa Yeah.
Mark And at that time also I was playing the role of the stay at home parent.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark We were doing our third major renovation house renovation in fifteen years. Wow.
Actually ten years. So we had these people. It was at this point we were fifteen, eighteen
months into this house renovation. There were people in the house. At any given time, they
would just show up for eight straight months. Wow. Mom dies. It's during this period. I'm really
emotionally affected by that. There are people in the house constantly. It's driving me nuts. I'm
a person that needs some time alone to regenerate, and to have people showing up out of the
blue was driving me crazy. So my wife and I decided that I needed a break. She had her mom
come in to spend a week with Duncan while I was gone, and so I went to Puerto Vallarta.
Theresa Nice.
Mark Just for. It's a place that had been quite a bit. Yeah, we'd vacationed together as a family
quite a bit, but actually north North of there is where we would vacation. So this was. Yeah, this
was a solo trip, right? I needed some time to myself.
Theresa Absolutely. And I had talked with Kristen, you know, Kristen about her and her
husband. And they do this regularly where they tell each other, hey, you know what? You need
to get away and you need to get away alone, and it helped their marriage be stronger by
having those independent, you know, either trips or vacations or just getaways to rejuvenate
and then come back to the marriage. So there's a lot of benefits to it, for sure. So you went to
Puerto Vallarta. How was that?
Mark Well, the first three days were very good, uh, very relaxing in that I went to one of these
all inclusive, very, very nice spot. And it was sitting out by the pool having some nice tequila,
nice eating.
Theresa Well, yeah.
Mark There wasn't a lot of adventure in that. It was just relaxing and recreating. But the next
three days after that, next three or four days, I rented an Airbnb in downtown Puerto Vallarta.
So I was exploring around town. I wanted to just enjoy the nightlife, too. Yeah, and I was a very
dedicated husband. I would never go out on my wife or do anything like that.
Theresa Right.
Mark But I want to have fun. And I told her this whole story. Once I returned.
Theresa Not. Not during, but after you return. So what happened?
Speaker 3 So it was.
Mark Well, one particular night in general. I had a good time. I was, you know, going out and
just meeting people in the town square and just, uh, you know, just watching the life and
whatnot. And partying.
Speaker 3 Yes.
Mark Partying some for sure.
Theresa Sober, obviously.
Mark Completely sober, maybe not completely sober, but I went to, uh, I was going to some
nightclubs dancing, and, uh, this one particular night, the last night before I'm to leave, I'm out
dancing, and there is this group of women who are on a bachelorette weekend. One woman I
start dancing with, and we had a good time. It was fun, but she was obviously intoxicated. She
was obviously doing cocaine.
Theresa Gotcha. So she was feeling good.
Mark It was. It was pretty evident with just on her nose or whatnot.
Theresa So it was physically evident.
Mark And the whole party was.
Theresa They were all coked up. Just go ahead and say it.
Mark They were they were like four or five of them. And they were with like these three or four
large Mexican guys.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark And they were just they were all together just having a good time partying their heads off
and.
Theresa Their noses off. Okay.
Mark And just you know, I ran into one member of their party this woman. And we were
dancing and just enjoying ourselves. Nothing uh, nothing more than that. But we had danced
for, uh, you know, maybe an hour or so.
Theresa Wow.
Mark Yeah, quite a bit. And I was going to the bathroom, and one of the guys, one of the big
Mexican guys, was coming out of the bathroom and just, I mean, purposely shoulders me.
Theresa Oh, God.
Mark And just jars me, and it just. And he turns and he gives me a serious look. I was
whatever I was having fun. I had drinks and whatnot.
Theresa Whatnot and whatnot.
Mark And I come back out, we dance a little more.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark They, uh, they lead the whole party. Sort of leaves. This woman invites me to go to
another club.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark I just let them go. I say goodbye. And again the guy, two of the guys, they just, they walk
out the door and they just give me this look like.
Theresa You stay here.
Mark Exactly. Exactly. This place closes down. I hang out there some more. I'm talking to the
bartender. She tells me. She said, you know, those guys are with the cartel.
Theresa Oh. Ah. Okay.
Mark Yes.
Theresa Um. And how do you react?
Mark Um, I told you I had a few drinks.
Theresa Oh, Mark. Again? You did not listen, did you?
Mark I listened. But this bar was closing down.
Theresa Oh, you wanted to keep the party going.
Mark There was one bar in town still open at this point. It's like one thirty in the morning.
Theresa Okay.
Mark I'm leaving. I have a van picking me up at seven a m.
Theresa Okay.
Mark One thirty in the morning and I'm not done. So I do go to the only remaining open bar in
town that is this gay bar. And it's where the, uh, this woman said that she was going, and, you
know, so they were.
Theresa Happened to be going there as well.
Mark That's the one place she invited me to.
Theresa Because.
Mark She knew that it was the last place open.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark So I go over there.
Theresa You did not heed the warning.
Mark Did not heed the warning. I'm just going to go find her and hopefully dance some more. I
show up, I can't find her. A lot of guys there.
Theresa Strange enough, strange enough.
Mark There is a very interesting show going on, um, just with, um, uh, cross-dressing men
doing some, just some crazy dances. It's very interesting or what whatnot. I run into the
woman, we chatted up some more, dance a little bit more, and at some point they're ready to
go. She asked me to join her. I told her, I can't do that. I told her I was married and that was
pretty much the end of it. She says that she's saying goodbye and I start walking back into the
place. I get another jarred shoulder hits me again.
Theresa Oh, wow.
Mark And just. He doesn't say anything, but it's a it's a confrontation.
Theresa Absolutely.
Mark And I just walk away. I just.
Theresa Extremely smart.
Mark Yeah I just go and I look back and I see them all heading out the door. So I wait for
maybe ten minutes and it's at this point, it's three a m in the morning. I wait about ten minutes.
I walk outside, look both ways.
Theresa Yeah.
Mark And I start running as fast as I can.
Theresa Because now you're sobering up and realizing the gravity of the situation.
Mark Exactly. I had no idea it was completely dead on this street. I mean, it's literally three in
the morning, Thursday night or whatever, and it's just I sprint because I have no idea what's
where these people are, where these guys are, etcetera, etcetera.
Theresa I can't even imagine.
Mark I had a vague idea of where my Airbnb was. So I sprint back. By the time I get back to
my Airbnb, it's four o'clock in the morning. I have three hours to get packed and get to the
airport, so that was my port of yada solo trip.
Theresa Oh my goodness. Wow. You know, there's a lot of ways that could have gone wrong.
Lots of things. You were lucky for sure. Yes. Did it help with all the craziness and everything
included? Did it help process? At the end of the day, what had gone on with mom and and
everything that was going on back home with the house renovation to get you to a better place.
Mark Yes it did.
Theresa Yeah.
Mark As a matter of fact, it just it really cleared a lot of things up. And yeah, I got back and a
couple of weeks later, I come to Louisville for your wedding.
Theresa That's right. Yeah. You went out for another adventure. Can you tell us about that in
twenty three?
Mark Yes. So yes, you're right. It was some major life changes going on. I got divorced, I was
trying to figure out my next steps, trying to move beyond that. It was, uh, a very difficult divorce
and challenging for myself and my son in particular. So I needed some time away. I needed to
really just get away and rethink things. And so I went back to a place I'd been before where I
traveled with my family before, and that was Thailand.
Theresa Yes.
Mark I go there in December of twenty twenty three and the total trip lasted three months.
Theresa Nice.
Mark Yeah. Thanks again for Tom.
Theresa Oh, I literally I cried when you came to pick him up because he was integrated into
the family at that point. That was hard to let him go, but it.
Mark Was hard for him to leave. As you recall.
Theresa Yes. He he chased my car down when I was leaving for work. Do you remember
that?
Mark He was barking at me like he didn't. He literally thought I was a poltergeist, I believe.
Theresa Right? Yeah. He had to think twice and look at you twice to see. Is it really him?
Mark So just for your your pod topic of roaming alone, this was one of those times that I could
have gone with someone and enjoyed it just as much. But it was it was a good time for me to
be alone and do it by myself. So I go to Thailand, a place that I know and I'm really comfortable
with. I love the Buddhist countries in general. They tend to be easy places to travel in. Okay,
because for whatever reason, people are relaxed. Thailand in particular is everyone is doing at
least okay financially and professionally. You know their job. It's a very tourist based country. I
just I love it there. There is not a back alley in Bangkok that I would be afraid of walking at
midnight.
Theresa Oh, that's good to know. Especially people thinking about traveling to Thailand. That's
good to know.
Mark It is. It's great. People are very respectful. They're very helpful. And and even in a city of
fifteen million people there, it's just it's a very friendly place.
Theresa Any language barriers?
Mark They speak English. Pretty much everyone at this point. Everyone in the world, I guess.
Huh?
Theresa True.
Mark But they're they're very comfortable with the language and you need. It's very simple for
the folks that I ran into that did not speak English, it was still very easy to communicate. They
know what you want.
Theresa Yeah.
Mark You want a place to stay? You want some good food?
Theresa Mhm.
Mark Again I think it's the, the people more than anything. They're just, they're friendly.
Everyone is doing well there. For example just to contrast it with Vietnam which I love Vietnam
it's a wonderful place but there is. They call for you, like for massages or to come in and eat at
a restaurant or whatever they call out to you on the street. You're walking by. Massage.
Massage or, you know, whatever it is, food, whatever they're calling you in and there's just a
little bit of pressure. But in Thailand, there's none of that, okay. And the reason is, is that it
seems everyone if you have a decent restaurant, then you're going to have people coming.
You're going to have enough people there to keep your business running. And there seems to
be like this nice equilibrium between supply and demand.
Theresa Okay.
Mark And across the board, hotels, restaurants, entertainment, those types of things. It's it's,
uh, it's all balanced out very nicely.
Theresa Yeah.
Mark And that in addition to just being a Buddhist country where it's important that you're kind
to your neighbor.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark So it's very comfortable. So I was drawn there. And plus I love seeing different things in
the country.
Theresa Where did you go?
Mark The first place I went to land in Bangkok. Spend a couple of days there to get to rest up,
basically from the fourteen hour flight, get my bearings and I go to Chiang Mai, which is north
by maybe an hour and a half flight not too far. And Chiang Mai is a great town. I would guess a
half a million people, something like that. It's in the north of Thailand is jungle. It's. It's all
jungle. But Chiang Mai is a good sized town with so many good restaurants, so many great
places to stay. Just a huge selection. It's interesting to see the monasteries there. It's like the
equivalent of in the United States, in Louisville, where we had so many parishes, those
churches that are every a mile apart. And I mean, there are how many Saint Paul, Saint Jude,
you know. ET cetera.
Theresa Absolutely.
Mark It's like that there. There's a monastery on every block.
Theresa Oh, wow.
Mark And so it's. And some very interesting ones, too. So I spent probably a week there just,
uh, checking out different monasteries, doing a lot of hiking. There's some great hiking up
there.
Theresa Nice.
Mark Near the city. Stayed in a few places and just ate so much great food.
Theresa Oh, that sounds so fantastic.
Mark It is.
Theresa It's.
Mark And there tend to be a lot of vegetarian restaurants in in Thailand. Being a Buddhist
country. So I had a lot of great vegetarian food. The street food scene is just fantastic.
Theresa Yeah.
Mark And anything you want. Anything you want is there. It's just it's so much fun to be there.
It's really lively. It's sort of loud. You figure out what you want. Figure out how that works. And
then you spend your full two dollars.
Theresa To get.
Mark Enough food to last you.
Theresa Wow. It's a very economical country to visit.
Mark Very much so. Wow.
Theresa That's fantastic. Your dollar will stretch.
Mark Very. I was spending, on average, I'd say fifty dollars a day.
Theresa Okay. So that was including accommodation.
Mark Accommodation.
Theresa Wow.
Mark Actually, that for the entire trip. And I was in Thailand, Laos and the Philippines. I
averaged about fifty dollars a day, and that included travel.
Theresa That that is insane.
Mark It was insane. And I stayed for the most part in mid-level hotels or mid-level restaurants.
Went upscale. Some downscale, some. Yeah, just some places they don't. There is no
upscale. There's no mid scale.
Theresa You get one, you know, there's one place to go and that's it pretty much right.
Mark Wow. So I was in Chiang Mai for about a week or so and this was coming up on
Christmas. So I wanted to do something else other than just tourist around. Yeah, I love doing
that. There's nothing wrong with traveling like that. But I want to give something back to those
to the communities that I was traveling in. And there was a good opportunity north of Chiang
Mai at Elephant Nature Park.
Theresa Oh, really? Oh, Elephant Nature Park. Tell us about that.
Mark Elephant Nature Park is it's run by this diminutive woman of about four feet, eleven
inches tall and maybe ninety pounds.
Theresa She's a force of nature. I can just tell.
Mark Absolutely. She's seven feet tall. As far as her force of nature. I love that she's met every
single president, premier in all the largest countries in the world. She's well respected and she
has rescued more elephants than any other person on the planet.
Theresa Oh my goodness. And just FYI, just in before we even finish it, to let you know that I
will have a link to this in the show notes because I want to know more about it. And she
sounds just absolutely fascinating.
Mark She is. She's great. She she does a lot of meeting with people in positions to help her
and help her. Elephant Nature Park, but she also goes and rescues the elephants at the point
of where it's needed and to make those negotiations. So she's doing on the ground stuff, as
well as working on the funding for the Elephant Nature Park.
Theresa Wow. And so you you volunteer there?
Mark I did, I volunteered for a week over Christmas. Okay. And this was, I guess, twenty
twenty two December twenty twenty two. And I was motivated to do that there because Tom,
who was back here hanging out with Teresa, is from there.
Theresa That's right. Oh, my baby Tom.
Mark Back in two thousand and six.
Theresa Tom. We call him.
Mark Tom. Tom. Tom. Terrific. So back in twenty sixteen, while my family was traveling there, I
was traveling with my wife and son. There was an opportunity to do volunteering, but there are
only two spots available and they decide to do that. And I went down south in Thailand to find
a place for us for Christmas. So Tom was a puppy then, when Duncan got to meet him at four
weeks old. Wow. And Duncan was volunteering in puppy patrol and spent a week there doing
that, working really hard days for an eleven year old kid.
Theresa Oh, wow.
Mark And so we rewarded him by bringing Tom back.
Theresa I remember this, I remember seeing him, um, he's just an adorable dog. And what
kind of dog is he?
Mark He's a border collie cattle dog mix, which at the time, it was interesting because there are
not a lot. There are no animals to herd in Southeast Asia, in Thailand, everybody, you know, at
most you have maybe an acre to grow rice and vegetables and some other things. So there's
no I mean, there are literally there's no livestock there. Every people have the occasional cow
or goat, but for the most part, there's no livestock. But somehow or another, there are a lot of
dogs that look like Tom and Border Collies.
Theresa They're a collie without a herd. Did he hurt you and your family around? He did.
Mark He absolutely did. But anyway, fast forward to twenty twenty two and I'm there. And I
spent a week there and it's a great experience. If you get a chance to do it, you do need to
book ahead because the volunteer spots go quickly.
Theresa That's and I love that. I love that it's hard to volunteer there, that it's that important
and that popular that you have to, you know, to to volunteer your time to do something free. It
takes an effort.
Mark It does.
Theresa That's really.
Mark Cool. And it's worth it. Definitely worth it.
Theresa What was the next one after Thailand?
Mark So. Well, after Chiang Mai, I went to a place called Pi. It's, uh, it's also in northern
Thailand. Great little town. Same thing. A little town to. It's probably, I don't know, a couple
thousand people. Not even that. Maybe a thousand people had a good time there. Went up to
Chiang Rai, which is on the border of Laos. And, uh, I wouldn't recommend Chiang. Chiang
Rai in particular. There's not a anything that stands out as nice.
Theresa Okay.
Mark But it is on the border of Laos. And, uh, that was my next destination.
Theresa Okay.
Mark So go up and I cross over to Laos and then take some little town across from Chiang
Rai, and I take a two day boat trip down the Mekong River.
Theresa Oh my gosh.
Mark I had done a southern portion of the Mekong River and in, um, Saigon, in Ho Chi Minh
City, down to, uh, Cambodia. So I wanted it was interesting to have the opportunity to do
something on the upper part of the Mekong.
Theresa Mhm. I mean, this is the heart of where the Vietnam War took place. Correct?
Mark Correct. Uh, unofficially. Unofficially, we were never in Laos.
Theresa That's true.
Mark We never smelled napalm in the.
Theresa Morning.
Mark In Laos.
Theresa Describe the place to me.
Mark Well, it was interesting coming down the river. It was two days of it and coming down the
river. There are just these villages that are up in the mountains. The mountains? There are
small mountains there. They look to be about two or three thousand feet at most above sea
level, but they frame the river all the way down from where I began, all the way down to a
place called Luang Prabang. And you have people who are picking up people on occasion
from these small little villages where there maybe two or three people getting on the boat, but
the whole village comes out to see them off.
Theresa Really?
Mark So there were forty, fifty people all just cheering them.
Speaker 4 Oh my gosh.
Mark Just cheering us on. Waving all these little kids. Just waving.
Theresa I love that.
Mark And you could just imagine their lives were on rare occasion one of them one of the
people in the village. A few of the people in the village get to go visit someone and one of the
bigger towns or whatnot. So it was it was fascinating.
Theresa Absolutely.
Mark I remember one thing stood out in particular. We spent one night in some small little town
of it's, you know, maybe three or four restaurants and a couple of hotels. And just the the
morning it was, I don't know, six o'clock in the morning or so, there was a monk walking around
with his bow. It's traditional. The Buddhist monks come, will go visit a town in the morning and
people will give them food. And, um, there was one doing that. And people will come and they
literally get on their knees and offer food to the monks.
Theresa Oh, wow.
Mark It's very interesting. It's their way of adding to the strength of the religious community.
Theresa Okay.
Mark And when they feel like themselves, they they're not in a position where they can be a
part of it. They can be a monk or a nun. So that was fascinating.
Theresa Yeah.
Mark So two days on the river, seeing these little patchwork villages here and there, actually
seeing some wild elephants.
Theresa Did you really?
Mark Yeah. There were still wild elephants in Laos and northern Thailand. That was special.
Theresa Absolutely. And you saw this from inside the the boat that you were on, right?
Mark Exactly.
Theresa My goodness.
Mark So we arrive at a town called Luang Prabang. So in my mind, I'm seeing two days of
thatch covered roofs. Right. So I'm thinking, okay, this is going to be another, you know, small
town with these thatch covered roofs. And I arrive in this sophisticated, this sophisticated
French speaking town.
Speaker 4 Wat.
Mark Luang Prabang, that is very reminiscent of New Orleans in that there is French being
spoken, there's English being spoken, Lao being spoken Thai. It is just it's completely
sophisticated. There are.
Theresa Cosmopolitan.
Mark Cosmopolitan, high end French restaurants.
Theresa Really.
Mark It's just a beautiful city. Just absolutely gorgeous. Everyone is just packed full. I arrive on
a Tuesday night and the center in the center of town is this great outdoor market that is just
bustling and food just everywhere. It just it was packed full. It was locals and tourists, everyone
just having a grand old time. It's right on the Mekong River with these gorgeous views of the
river. I felt like I wasn't dressed for it, you know, in my travel clothes on. And I literally could
have had a nice linen suit to go out.
Theresa And this place sounds absolutely phenomenal. Like you were saying, the thatched
huts and, you know, small villages, and then you literally turn a corner on the river and oh my
gosh, you're faced with this.
Mark Yes.
Speaker 4 Yeah.
Mark So it was a very pleasant surprise. And again, as in Thailand, the food was just
incredible. Every I mean, every meal was just fantastic.
Theresa Now what were the prices? Higher.
Mark Considering that the same.
Theresa Really?
Mark Yeah, it's the same.
Theresa It's just Theresa books her next trip. Yes.
Mark What was interesting about all of laws is, I mean, this particular town was a very French
inspired town. It's a French colony. Laos was a French colony. Okay, but Laos is the most
bombed country in the world. Yeah. It sustained the heaviest bombing during the Vietnam War.
Theresa Wow.
Mark Became the most bombed country in the world. And so what they did, their answer to
that, which I found very interesting, is they I think they embraced that.
Speaker 4 That.
Mark This happened to us. We're acknowledging it. And so what you see is shells that are
used to make flower pots, to make decorations throughout the towns, throughout the the
villages, they're purposely put on display to say, this is what happened to us and this is what
we're doing. We're turning this ugliness into something beautiful. And so you'll see these
beautiful flower pots that you realize are artillery shells.
Speaker 4 Artillery shells.
Theresa That's incredible. It's also a way of not forgetting what happened.
Speaker 4 Right.
Theresa Keeping it present in people's faces. Literally. This is what happened. But yeah, like
you were saying, making the most of it, making something beautiful out of it.
Speaker 4 Yes.
Mark And so that's, you know, seeing that sort of thing, you just you have to appreciate the
culture and the people.
Theresa Absolutely. So you're, what, maybe six weeks in at this point or so.
Speaker 4 Yes. Right. Right.
Theresa And how at this point has it helped or or not everything that you were going to leading
up to the reason you took this trip?
Mark Oh, it was great. It was excellent. I was meeting people along the way.
Speaker 4 Mhm.
Mark I as a matter of fact, on the, uh, Mekong River trip, I met this woman who was an
American and she had a small motorcycle with her. She had a, I don't know, it was a Honda
one hundred or twenty or something like that. I don't know what, but she had been in country in
Thailand and Laos for almost a year, and she had bought a motorcycle in Thailand and was
just driving it around. Good for her. And she was traveling solo.
Theresa Just out of curiosity, do you have any idea how old she was?
Mark She was, uh, I would say late forties. Okay, yeah. Around fifty, I would say.
Theresa I love that. Yeah. Good for her.
Mark So I was in Luang Prabang for a week and made my way to the next town. I stayed at
three different towns in Laos, and the next town is called Vang Vieng. And so whereas the, uh,
cosmopolitan Luang Prabang.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark In contrast to that, was this really fun town of Vang Vieng. Okay. And what they do is it's
like Moab. If you've ever been to Moab where they're, you're hiking or biking, You're you know,
you're on the river. There are all these outdoor adventures available. That's Vang Vieng. So I
arrive in town, I'm looking up. There are hot air balloons floating around. There are small little
planes flying around. There are kayakers on the river. There are mountain bikers all around.
There's just this activity. And it just you immediately feel this sporting aura about the place. So I
ended up staying there for about four or five days, and they had these swimming areas that,
uh, the hot springs, cold Springs, actually.
Theresa Okay.
Mark So you go to these.
Theresa Hot springs sounds so much better.
Mark It does, but there it was. You know, it was nineties.
Theresa That's well, that's.
Mark True eighties and nineties.
Theresa That's true. Yeah.
Mark And so there are these cold springs and there are ten different ones. Uh, they're literally
numbered one through ten. And depending on how close they are to town, and you just go and
you hang out at these cold springs. You get food, you get a coconut, you get a coconut. Drink
some coconut water and straw on the coconut. Oh my God, I love it. It's very interesting. There
are certain cultures that are also visiting there, Chinese that are there. And you know who the
Chinese are because they all wear life vests.
Theresa Seriously?
Mark Yes.
Theresa They're all wearing life vests.
Mark And it's. Yeah, it's like a maybe five feet deep.
Theresa But.
Mark Right. I mean, China's just right there on the border or whatnot. It was fun seeing them.
And, um, even with life vests, they were being adventurous.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark Mhm. Yeah. I had great conversations with quite a few of them.
Theresa And then you also on this trip spent quite a bit of time at a retreat. Yes. So I know like
you have been a practicing. Correct me if I'm wrong practicing Buddhist or um a student of
Buddhism for quite a while now. And so this retreat played into that. Correct?
Mark So yeah. So while I was in Vang Vieng, I really got the urge. I enjoyed my time
volunteering, but I wanted to. I definitely want to do a retreat. And at this point in twenty twenty
three, I was three years into studying Buddhism, trying to learn more about it and being right
there in the center of it all. I was looking for a place to go and sort of just grow, grow that a little
more. And, uh, so I found a place actually to finish up first with Laos, just so your listeners
know of one other place after Vang Vieng is Vientiane, which is the capital of Laos. And this
was a place I was just making my way back there so I could catch a flight to go to the retreat.
Theresa Okay.
Mark And, uh, I spent two nights there, and I thought I was just going to be an airport that I
was going to and just taking off and a good sized city, but really expecting nothing of it. And I
get there. Go out to have dinner the first night. It's like a Tuesday night and I go out and I
immediately there's a lot of English being spoken. And I realized that there are these expats.
Theresa Okay.
Mark A very significant expat community there. There's an open market. I go out, I'm looking
for some food, looking for dinner. There is an area again, it was similar to New Orleans. It felt
like New Orleans, just for some reason, just the French influence. But it was a ten block by ten
block square area.
Theresa Absolutely.
Mark Huge. It was packed full. The streets were, you were shoulder to shoulder often going
through this and just open open air restaurants, people, street food throughout, things being
sold on the street. You know, everything from cheap touristy trinkets to really nice like handhewn sound bows for Meditating sort of thing.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark And it was just, it was so dynamic and so it was exhilarating. And I was just again it was
just, I just was expecting so little of Laos because I didn't really had any, I didn't have any
preconceived notions and I just really wasn't expecting that much. And I was blown away by
the country. I thought it was great.
Theresa Fantastic.
Mark In fact, Vientiane is a place I would consider if I was to become an expat, because it's it's
right on the river right across from Thailand, and it's easy to move back and forth because you
have to refresh your visa every thirty days or so.
Theresa Gotcha.
Mark Gotcha. And I think that's a big reason that people go there. And they also go there for
medical work and dental work and that sort of thing. So I found my at that point, I had found
where my retreat was going to be, where I want to go. That was the next step.
Theresa And it's a long retreat, right? How long? How many days was this retreat.
Mark It's a ten day retreat.
Theresa Okay.
Mark It's the study. It's a vipassana. Buddhism. And the retreat is called. Andrea. Andrea. I n d
r I y. And it's on kofarnihon.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark It's one of the three islands in the Gulf of Thailand. There's Koh Samui and Koh Tao, and
Koh Phangan is. It's about the size of Maui. I would say. And it's very much like Maui as
opposed to Oahu. And Maui would be the Oahu where it's just a lot more people just it's larger
and it just it feels very comfortable, very neighborly. And they do a lot of retreats there.
Theresa Okay.
Mark Throughout the island, it's they have yoga retreats. They have Buddhist retreats and a
number of other non-traditional type retreats to go on. And it's a great island. I highly
recommend it. I love that, and Andrea itself is just was such a great experience. It was difficult
and.
Theresa What was difficult about it?
Mark It's a psychological challenge to go for ten days. Yeah. And it's actually for me, it was a
and a lot of people, it was a physical challenge in that we were meditating about nine hours a
day.
Theresa Wow.
Mark Yes.
Theresa I can't even imagine, I can't imagine. I mean, I have a hard time, you know, three
minutes. So how do you prepare for something like that?
Mark Well, I had been doing about a half an hour of meditation a day for a couple of years
leading up to that. So actually, I would say more like fifteen to twenty minutes a day at that
point. So I did have some level built up. And then there was about two and a half weeks
between the time I signed up for the retreat. And I got there, and I dove pretty deep into it and
was building up to an hour, hour and a half a day for those fourteen days or so leading up to
the retreat.
Theresa That's smart.
Mark Yeah, but it's still it's a psychological problem.
Theresa I mean.
Mark Problem it is a bit of a problem, but it's a psychological challenge and that you have to
you have to have some psychological strength to do that. And then physically, the sitting can
be a challenge in that it's hard on the hips if you're not used to sitting for.
Theresa That.
Mark Long a period of time.
Theresa I mean, sitting in an office chair. So I am used to that. But still. Do you are you able to
move positions or do you have to stay in this one position?
Mark Well, once you once you start in a position you want to stay there. The the way it worked
is there were you would do forty five minutes of sitting meditation followed by forty five minutes
of walking meditation. Okay, so the sitting meditation, there's an option to go to leave your
cushion to do sitting meditation on a traditional chair. So you think, oh wow, that's going to be
easy. I'll just go sit down for forty five minutes. Yeah. Your butt starts to hurt.
Theresa After.
Mark forty five minutes.
Theresa It's the reality of the retreat.
Mark So that's part of it. But it was really the psychological challenge was the bigger part of it.
It's a ten day retreat. By day four, you feel like you're almost halfway there. And at that point, it
just it opened up. And at that point, I think everyone just gives into it and says, here I am, this
is what I'm doing. I'm going to be here for another six days. This is I'm already feeling some
things. Things are changing. I'm you know, something's happening here that is interesting.
Theresa Give me an example.
Mark Well, the guy who runs the place, his last name is Markwell, I believe.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark And off the top of my head, I don't remember his first name. He's the best speaker I've
ever heard in person.
Theresa Yeah.
Mark He was fantastic. He's an eleven year monk um, who studied in Myanmar and Thailand.
He disrobed and got married. He's from Australia. He got married and then came back to
Thailand and opened this retreat in twenty twenty.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark And he got funding for it. It's out in the jungle. Beautiful setting, beautiful little cottages
there, two bedroom cottages that you share with one other person who's on the retreat.
Theresa Mhm.
Mark And he is just I mean he's fantastic. And so what he generally the situation was, is that
he would not every sitting meditation but every other, every third he would give a Buddha talk
while you're meditating.
Theresa Okay.
Mark So you're learning about Buddhism while you're meditating. And the combination was
just fantastic. So in general, after ten days, it my knowledge of Buddhism grew enormously,
and I kind of divide it into two things. One is the the study of Buddhism, which is a natural law
religion. I don't want to I don't want to get away from roaming alone. But it's a natural.
Theresa Absolutely. Well, this is all part of it. Absolutely.
Mark So yeah, it's a natural law religion in that it's based on psychological laws of human
nature. And that's what the Buddha found was that there are these natural psychological laws
that if you recognize them, you'll see how we operate. And then there's the second thing of
meditation. And the meditation is just being able to watch your thoughts and control your mind
a little better than before, rather than just having it race along like a lot of people do. And I had
a particular problem with. So the two things I can't.
Theresa Yes, I know I would benefit so much from it, but that would be that would be a huge
barrier for me to to break through the racing thoughts for sure.
Mark It's huge. It's huge. Yeah. You want to stop suffering, start meditating.
Theresa Oh that's a that's a good saying. It's another Marxism. There you go. I'm going to
write all of these down.
Mark That's a freebie. The other.
Theresa one.
Mark I'm charging.
Theresa You for. You've traveled a lot with family, with friends alone. And I could ask the same
question for any of the ones back when you were in your teens and early twenties. But for this
one in particular, with the life changing things that were going on, things we were facing and
dealing with, how would this three month trip have been different? Had you been with
somebody.
Mark I would not have met as many people. I think that I did along the way. And of course, I
was looking, you know, looking to talk with people looking to connect in some way, which was
very nice. I probably wouldn't have done the retreat, which was the most significant thing I did
on that trip. Yeah, that launched me. I mean, that really pushed me forward with my knowledge
of Buddhism and my meditation practice. I probably wouldn't have volunteered, just depending
on if the person I was with or the people I was with wanted to do that. So it was good. It was. It
was good in that, yeah, it allowed me to really work through some things without being forced
to make decisions with someone else about what to do, where to go, how to do it. So yeah, it
was nice. It was overall a very positive thing to have done alone.
Theresa Absolutely. And, you know, just from the few people that I've talked to so far, initially,
just talking to people about their solo travel is even though they're alone and they chose to go
alone, the urge to connect with people is even stronger. And had you been with somebody that
you knew, you stay within your own little circle more than if you're alone and you're traveling
alone. You're going to these new places. You're looking for people looking for people to meet,
looking for people to connect to. And I think that's that's really fascinating. And then the benefit
of, you know, doing what you want to do on your timetable and your schedule and exactly what
you want to do is hugely beneficial to people, especially when you're, you know, when you're
dealing with some things to be able to get exactly what you need at that point in time.
Mark And we're all dealing with things.
Theresa Yes we are, yes we are. And that can be solved easily by by traveling with your
friends and with your family. And there's huge benefits to that. But that solo travel, that is, is
another necessary, I think, part of life for a lot of people to go out on your own and to face
things alone. I just, I think the benefits are enormous.
Mark I think so too. I agree with you. I like I like both I mean, I love traveling with people, I love
traveling with friends, and I've enjoyed traveling alone. And I think it's all good.
Theresa It is all good. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Fantastic stories. And I do have to say
that and I've told you this before, that I just you're one of my most admired people. And
whenever I spend time around you, I want to be a better person, I eat better, I definitely eat
better. You know, I think about the world in a different way, based on the things you've talked to
me about and the way you see things. And I just I know that who you are now is all based on
all these experiences that you've had traveling the world. And it's made you you're the depth of
you is is very incredible. And it's been cool to witness over all these years.
Mark Well thank you. That's all very, very kind of you to say. And I have to say I feel the same
about you. You're inspiring and your international travel and mountain climbing and it's, uh.
Yeah, you've given that right back. So thank you.
Theresa Thank you so much. I'm so glad you came on today. So if you're listening now, please
hit that follow button and you'll be updated whenever there's a new show. This has been Rosie
Malone solo travel shared stories.
