Vagabond Temple Yoga - Meditation in Cambodia

We arrive at Vagabond Temple, our two-week yoga – meditation retreat location in Sihanoukville, Cambodia just before noon. We are fresh off the ferry from three days on beautiful Koh Rong Island where we had a little rest and a little (too much, lol) fun at a beachside pub.

Koh Rong is an island 16 miles south of Cambodia’s mainland in the Bay of Thailand. It has 27 miles of coastline made up of all beach varying in white to beige to even rose-colored sands.

We stayed in a tree-top bungalow looking over a beautiful white beach. We enjoyed the warm clear waters and dining on the beach.

One evening we enjoyed a bit too much was at the JJJ bar. We went in for a burger and ended up leaving at closing time after spending the evening conversing with a wide range of “English speaking” folks…Australian, English, Scottish, Irish and US. Ironically, none of us could understand each other all that well!

Ready for the yoga! There is a session at noon, but we take the time before our vegan lunch to check in and get situated in our room. Time to detox…vegan food and no alcohol! Just what the “doctor ordered”. I have done about 20 minutes of yoga in my life and my resume does include a little meditation at a former employer. I am actually looking forward to this.

I probably have never done all vegan food for more than a few days in a row. The stews, rice, sticky rice, vegetables, fruit and bread should help with the impact of months of “eating around the world”. Fresh sugar cane and ginger juice as well as Vagabond Balls help with the in-between meal hunger. “Vagabond Balls” are chocolatey, coconut treats that are pretty good…click here for the recipe!

We wander around the main house and grounds and meet some wonderful people. Some people have been here for months, essentially volunteering to help at the Temple in exchange for room, meals and yoga. Others spending time to fine tune their lives. Everyone here is “on a journey” it seems, looking for something, getting over something, looking to improve their lives. The experience offers many tools here through its yoga, meditation, reflections and community service.

Folks are here from all over the world including a few from the US. Other countries represented, Sweden, Denmark, England, France, Poland, Austria, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Turkey. Most folks are younger, as a matter of fact, all younger than us, I believe. It seems that many have extended their stay at the temple.

Our first yoga session, ninety minutes from 4:30 to 6 pm starts with the sound of a gong. The session is a little asana and or pranayama yoga, I am told, which is a type that holds poses for a period of time. Today, usually five minutes at a time. Not too bad so far, but two weeks to go.

Immediately after yoga we head just outside the front of the main house for “circle” where we introduce ourselves. Sort of like an “icebreaker” where we each name our favorite “vegan” food. It turns out these are done daily and are a good fun way to introduce new Yogis and get to know one another a little better.

Dinner is served! I go with sticky rice, Tracey vegetable curry of course. We move through the small line for dinner to the “buffet”. We have three dishes, a brown rice, some sort of veggie and stew of sorts. I recognize carrots, potatoes and beans. I go with sticky rice. All good! Our dinner digests for about 30 minutes and then off to meditation.

Meditation is from 7 pm to maybe 8:30. It is a guided mediation that really helps connect with what is important, people in our lives and ourselves.

Our First Morning

In this very relaxed state and the packed travel we have had over the last couple months, we sleep well the first night. We wake to the sound of the gong at 6:55 am, five minutes before the start of todays first yoga session! I jump in the cold shower for one minute to jolt me awake and we were on our way downstairs. Each morning starts with silence, no conversation. It is a good practice to ease into the day.

Because we arrive last-minute, the circle of yoga students has already formed. Thus, we cause most of the circle to expand, i.e. get up and move their yoga mats! Now we embark on nearly two hours of yoga, yoga asana is the technical term, I think. My old knees are holding up fairly well, better than expected. The session is a pretty good workout, some lunge type poses, core exercises including planks and ? cobra position.

We have a break before our noon session, so we head to the beach. The access to the beach is through one of the many casinos in the area. The walk to the casino is only a couple blocks passing by a few of the typical Cambodia city type abodes and businesses. A few guests at the Temple head to this spot pretty regularly to stop at the coffee shop in the hotel, to help deal with the caffeine withdrawal. There is no caffeine at the temple and this “Starbucks” type cafe serves the caffeine needs.

Our one hour noon session is a Darhma talk and meditation. This is an excellent session, basically, about understanding that we all live in boxes, often chosen for us. And, the importance of being able to step out of the box and look at situations from a more objective or broader perspective. It is tough to bust out of the paths we are on and in which we are entrenched in our lives. Tracey and I both were on the path for 30 plus years of pushing hard, to follow the path of education, hard work and work ethic early on, followed by acquisition of stuff, houses, cars and more stuff. And, of course, the profession and job where one spends most of their time often defines who you are.

Lunches are served at 1 pm. Another good vegan lunch is in order. We have a good bowl of another stew, rice and bread, of the baguette ? type. Not bad. It is a lazy afternoon until our 4:30 yoga, 90 minutes coming up. While not quite as taxing as the morning sessions, it is also a good workout and meditation. I can already feel my flexibility and balance improve!

The daily schedule is basically the same each day. We wake in silence, morning yoga, karma yoga (selfless service), and a dharma talk (spiritual philosophy and focus classes). All of this before lunch. After lunch we have a bit of free time until our afternoon yoga practice from 4:30 to 6 pm. Dinner is served, then mediation from 7 – 8 pm. There are a mix of teachers including the owners that all provide some good variety to the yoga and meditation.

Yoga Interrupted!

My retreat, at least the yoga, is interrupted for about 48 hours. A fever and digestive distress sideline me for a bit. It has been an occasional occurrence of people coming down with typhoid fever after visiting the island of Koh Rong, which, of course, we did. The infrastructure of the island, particularly the water is not able to handle the increased visitors it is seeing. We were immunized for this in Sydney, Australia, but the vaccines are not a guaranteed 100 percent prevention. Anyway, it takes a couple more days to get back to full strength.

Tracey is not feeling 100 percent either so this sends us to the local clinic for some tests to rule out typhoid fever and malaria. In less than 45 minutes both Tracey and I walk into the local clinic, see the doctor twice, have blood drawn and tested and receive meds…not much slack in this process! It ends up probably just being a viral infection, “with a touch of bacterial” infection the Doc tells us.

Sihanoukville and Community Service

The Temple does a lot with and for the community, working to be a good citizen. One Saturday we are there the Temple has a beach clean-up day. It happened to be the same day a beach cleanup was going on in our hometown of Sarasota, Florida! Anyway the Temple engages local school children to help teach a bit about the importance of having a clean beach, have everyone pitch in on cleaning up the beach, have a little fun and lunch for the kids!

Several of the attendees at the retreat put together a fun interactive skit for the children. In a fun and probably memorable way for them (certainly for us!). There are many important lessons shared about the pride, respect and maintaining the allure for their wonderful country.
We do take a couple of breaks from the temple. As I mentioned, there is no caffeine at the retreat, so we also venture out about every other day to he Casino/Hotel on the beach which has a Starbucks type coffee shop. After the coffee we head out to the beach for a swim or a couple hand stands (well, some people do the hand stands).

We also make an afternoon of it at another resort, the Independence Hotel which has a great fitness facility, pool and spa. We see some monkeys in the wild along the way to this hotel in forested area near the road. Of course, they hang around the road as people go by and feed them with bananas!

We take one other afternoon “off” and head to Sihanoukville town center for a vegetarian pizza at Olive Olive…not bad pizza.

We then tuk tuk it to Oches Beach for an afternoon in lounge chairs on the beach with drinks served. For dinner we are back near the pier at Serendipity Beach for vegan at Dao of Life. This is an excellent choice including the Spinach and Avocado Toast with Cashew Butter and toast, “cheesy” nachos with jalapeños, cilantro, black beans and red bell pepper and Indian cilantro humus.

Our experience at the Temple comes to an end after twelve days. We are equipped with more useful tools of meditation, reflection and exercise as we journey forward. Our bodies and minds are in better shape physically and emotionally…in a good place. Our practice will continue.

We met some wonderful people at Vagabond Temple. One of these people was Jen from Idaho via Michigan. I encourage you to read her blog on her Temple visit for another perspective. I am sure you will find it entertaining as well! Please click here to read it! It is a fun blog to follow. She also has an interesting story about how she almost died in Thailand…thankfully she has survived!

We leave Vagabond Temple in Sihanoukville at 8:30 am for our five-hour drive to Phnom Penh, where our Cambodian journey started 30 days ago. It is here we connect to our two-hour Jetstar flight south to Singapore.