Why I Fled a Tropical Island Paradise in the Middle of a Pandemic
Koh Phangan is a beautiful little island in the South of Thailand. With its soft, white sand, crystal clear sea, and vibrant party life, it looks like paradise. After two years of spectacular sunsets, majestic jungles, and full moon parties, I ended up high-tailing it out of there in the middle of a pandemic.
Traveling from Koh Phangan to Bangkok is difficult enough, but traveling with all my belongings, three pissed off cats, and a mysterious virus spreading across the world, created some extra challenges. It was a difficult journey and an even more difficult adjustment. Going from serene beach life to crowded, noisy city life was a culture shock, but I regret nothing.
I admit that I fell into the Instagram trap of making my life on Koh Phangan look like an advertisement for permanent vacationing. Being as picturesque as it is, Koh Phangan made it easy to make it seem as if my life was filled with perfection. How could I not show off the beauty of the island and share the fun I was having? There were beautiful moments on the island, that’s why I stayed there for two years, but there was another side of my experience on the island that didn’t seem to fit in between pictures of stunning sunsets and wild beach parties. My run-ins with some of the people on that magical island soured the beauty of the place. Islands in Thailand operate differently than the mainland. They can be extra dangerous for tourists.
A week after I moved back to Bangkok, I read an article about a tourist being raped in her bungalow by two Thai men on Koh Phangan. I felt sad for that woman’s horrific experience but not surprised. I was feeling more and more unsafe as a single female living there. Reading that article was a sign letting me know that I had made the right decision to leave.
I dealt with constant harassment by both Thai and foreign men on Koh Phangan that escalated to the point where a Thai man tried to run me over in his car because I always ignored him when he tried to hit on me.
The man who tried to run me over lived right across from me and had been harassing me since I moved in. He even kept harassing me even after trying to run me over and followed me to my apartment to intimidate me because I yelled at him for trying to run me over. I ended up calling the landlord of my apartment and begged her to tell him to leave me alone. That finally worked but I had to pass by that creep every time I left my apartment. He stopped yelling things at me but he didn’t stop staring at me every time he saw me passing by. What made that situation worse is that he looks very similar to my abusive, alcoholic father, so that all kinds of dark worms came wriggling out of my mind during that time. Fate can be such a bitch!
Those who grew up in nice neighborhoods might be asking why I didn’t call the police. I did not grow up in nice neighborhoods so I learned never to trust the police. The first and last time I tried to contact the police on Koh Phangan, I regretted it immediately. I had tried to report a woman being physically assaulted on the street and the officer laughed, took all my information, and just started hitting on me. Domestic violence isn’t taken seriously in Thailand so that’s why he laughed. I was just being an overly dramatic foreigner in his eyes. The officer also kept calling and messaging me until I told him I was moving back to America. He said he wanted to check up on me to make sure I was safe but he was also trying to ask me out. After that bad experience, I wasn’t about to go near the police again!
Another local man rubbed his disgusting, sweaty body against my butt while I was purchasing stuff at 7–11. He had been trying to talk to me every time he saw me, but I ignored him because he creeped me out. His touching me upset me because it was deliberate. Every time I’d move closer to the counter to get away from him, he kept moving closer to me to rub up against me. There were empty cashiers available and more than enough room for him to not be near me. I was in the middle of paying and busy trying to get away from him that I didn’t think to say anything to him until I had already left the store.
When you get harassed or assaulted you’re never prepared for it. Even when it happens a lot, it’s still a shock when it happens again. You can replay the incident over and over in your mind and say how you should have responded. You can plan out what you will do if it happens again, but when it’s happening you go into survival mode. You do what you can to get away from your assailant as soon as possible, and a lot of the time it means staying quiet when it’s happening. I wish I had screamed at him in the middle of 7–11 so he would know that what he was doing was wrong. Part of me is mad at myself for not fighting back but that would have escalated the situation and I would end up with another Thai man on the island trying to kill me.
It wasn’t only local men who kept harassing me, it was ex-pat men as well. Their harassment was less sinister but still aggressive. I lived in a part of the island called Srithanu, which is the New Age, yoga, hippie side of the island. You would think that men who pursue spiritual wellness would be more respectful and less toxic than men who don’t care about such things, but I found the opposite to be true. Just look at what has been happening at Agama Yoga.
Agama Yoga is a successful yoga center in Srithanu. They also have yoga centers around the world. It’s a profitable business on the island with a lot of pull. The Agama compound looks like a small college with several buildings and areas for “healing.”
In 2019, the founder of Agama Yoga, Swami Vivekananda Saraswati, was accused of sexually assaulting several women throughout many years. The Me Too movement helped encourage a few of the women to speak up about their assault. And this in turn encouraged more women to come forward.
Before Agama made the news, I had already known to stay away from that place. I had a few run-ins with the men from Agama that made me loathe anyone associated with that center. Agama men made themselves easily recognized due to the man buns and crisp white t-shirts with the Agama logo. Agama members wore white from head to toe and liked to hang out in large groups like a cult. They are a cult, a very toxic one that exploits women.
My first run-in with an Agama member was when I was trying to enjoy some vegan Indian food at my favorite restaurant. The restaurant was empty except for us, he plopped right next to me as I was eating and proceeded to talk about how awesome and enlightened he was. He made it seem as if he knew for a fact that I would be into him and didn’t even ask. I wasn’t into him at all, but I humored him and left the restaurant feeling annoyed and drained of energy.
Once I left the restaurant, I realized that there was something off about that guy. He gave off bad energy despite all his talk of meditating, yoga, and enlightenment. The way he told it, he had reached Buddha status but he was just another energy vampire with a huge ego.
Unfortunately, I saw the “Agama energy vampire” practically every day since I lived near Agama at the time and we liked the same vegan restaurant. I ignored him when he tried to talk to me and he kept persisting. Finally, after several days of him trying to talk to me and my ignoring him, I flat out told him to leave me alone and thankfully he did. He was toxic but it was clear he only preyed on women who don’t stand up for themselves. He wasn’t going to bother someone who fought back.
My second run-in with an Agama male was more aggressive. I was talking to my friend while shopping at 7–11 after being sexually harassed by someone on a motorbike. I was ranting about how hippie New Age men were toxic and I was sick of it. My friend and I both noticed someone actively listening to our conversation, even blocking me from the coconut oil I was trying to get a hold of. He gave off a creepy vibe and of course he was in all-white and had a shirt with Agama stamped on the front.
I didn’t think anything of it and went about my day. The next morning, I was walking with some laundry towards a laundromat across from the Agama center. I noticed the creepy Agama dude from 7–11 walking towards Agama. I passed by him, minding my own business, and crossed the street to the laundromat. As I was doing my laundry, I noticed the creep backtracking and crossing the street towards me.
He was tall but very thin so I could kick his ass if I needed to. As someone who grew in the poor parts of Los Angeles, I was used to sizing people up and figuring out my chances of survival if we had to throw down. I felt more annoyed than threatened when he walked up to me and stared at me with a glaring face, not saying anything as I got change for my laundry. He was not there for a friendly chat.
“What do you want?” I asked with a very annoyed tone to my voice to show his presence was not welcome.
“I heard you talking yesterday and I was thinking about what you said, it really bothered me…”
I didn’t even let him finish. “I was sexually harassed and telling my friend about it. You want to come over here and harass me more? Get away from me!”
“How did he harass you?”
“It’s none of your business! I don’t owe you an explanation. Stop listening to other people’s conversations.”
“But you were talking right in front of me.”
“We were in a public space and I wasn’t talking to you. Fuck off!”
This back and forth went on for a little bit longer since he wanted to get a word in. I refused to let him finish a sentence. He wasn’t trying to talk to me from a place of calm, peace, and understanding, which is what yoga teaches, he wanted to tell me off and exert power over me and I refused to let him.
Finally, I was able to chase him back across the street to his cult while calling him a little bitch and threatening to kick his ass if he came near me again. I am nice and respectful by default, but if I feel threatened, I have no problems getting ghetto. I could tell he was not expecting me to react like that since the women in his cult had been brainwashed to be passive towards men. He left me alone after that.
Exerting dominance over women is the culture at Agama. The creepy self-proclaimed Swami leader pulls every trick in the cult leader handbook to intimidate women and brainwash them into sleeping with him and his male minions. He has told women that having sex with him is the only way to be healed. Many of those women went to Koh Phangan to heal from sexual trauma only to be traumatized again.
Since Agama makes a lot of money, they have more than enough to bribe local police. Even after the sex scandal broke out and made international news last year, Agama closed for a few months then opened back up again and is still open as you read this.
The toxic culture from the New Age males combined with the toxic culture from some of the local Thai men made it an uncomfortable place to be a woman. I had to deal with being harassed when all I wanted to do was go about my day. I never dealt with anything like that in Bangkok or any other parts of Thailand.
In Bangkok, if someone found me attractive, they’d usually just smile and say “hi.” They wouldn’t block my path to talk to me and then try to run me over with their car or rub up against me while I tried to buy groceries. They wouldn’t keep hollering at me over and over even though I always ignore them and make it clear I’m not interested. This didn’t happen every single day, but it happened often enough that I started wearing clothes that covered me up more even though I lived right next to the beach. I also went alternative routes to avoid areas where I knew there would be a higher chance of being harassed and leered at.
The final straw was discovering someone peeping at me through a vent in the bathroom ceiling of my apartment as I was showering. Not even my apartment was safe anymore. That was when I knew I had to get the hell off that island.
A couple of weeks before my planned move. the virus was not being taken as seriously as it is now. There weren’t any lockdowns in Thailand and people were still traveling freely. I had planned to stay in Bangkok for a month to catch up with friends and prepare my cats’ documents so that we could move to Da Nang, Vietnam.
My plans were interrupted during the week of my move. Vietnam closed their borders and the entire world was in a panic. I thought about staying on the island but knew I was much safer in Bangkok, especially during a pandemic.
I have lived in Bangkok for over a decade and never felt unsafe. Even when I was heavily drinking and partying several times a week, getting black-out drunk on bottles and buckets of booze, I always returned safely home in my bed. Nothing ever happened to me that made me feel unsafe even though I did a lot of unsafe things to tempt fate. Sobriety prevents me from doing dumb shit like that now, but even sober I still felt unsafe on that island.
Harassment and assault are difficult things to talk about because there’s always the worry of not being believed. There were so many times, especially growing up, where I was not believed. I was told I was making things up or that I was crazy.
There is also the worry of being perceived as someone who is overdramatic and thinks they’re always the victim. I’m not a victim. I don’t walk around thinking everyone is harassing me. As stated before, I never had this issue in Bangkok, so dealing with it in Koh Phangan was surprising and brought up a lot of demons from my past that I am still processing.
My story is not unique and that’s the unfortunate thing. Rape, assault, and harassment happen every minute of every day. Survivors have a hard time speaking out because they don’t want to be judged and shamed. Not being believed when something horrible happens is one of the most awful feelings in the world. To me, it’s just as bad as being abused in the first place. It feels like a continuation of that abuse. Someone is overpowering you, using you as an object, you ask for help, and you aren’t believed, you are told you are being crazy or that you’re lying. You end up being overpowered again by the people you were turning to for help. No one wants that shit. It’s easier not to say anything at all.
After my negative experiences in Koh Phangan, I am slowly learning to relax again. I was “spoiled” living in Bangkok for so long and forgetting what it was like to have to always be on guard. Since I have dealt with sexual trauma as a child, dealing with even smaller incidents of harassment as an adult, opens up a lot of painful emotions that I’m still working through. Once you experience harassment, assault, and abuse, it all blurs together and all will come back to haunt you once one of those things happens again, and again.
Even though Bangkok is crowded, smells like sewage, has never-ending noise pollution, and is severely lacking in green space, I can walk down the street and feel at ease. No one bothers me here, people mind their own business. The most I get is a smile and a “hello” from locals, which is friendly and welcome. No amount of white sand, perfect blue sea, and Instagram-worthy photo ops can take the place of being able to exist safely as a person with a vagina on this planet.
Hopefully, my speaking out about what I went through will help others who have gone through similar things. Know that you are not alone. You are not crazy. You are not weak. You do not deserve what happened to you. You are strong, you deserve happiness, and you matter. I believe you.
