We drive into Yangon around 10 pm on a Saturday night and the city is hopping. It feels like Kathmandu, Lagos, or most other majority world megalopolises we’ve been to: people weaving between recklessly driven cars belching out carbon, the smell of overpowered open sewers, laundry hanging from rundown buildings, garbage piles wherever someone decides to create one.

Street stalls with bright plastic tables and chairs a foot off the ground line the streets. Long poles of sugar cane wait to be pressed into refreshment. The cacophony of street dogs fighting for dominance bursts into the night. A bar full of beer drinkers watches soccer (our taxi driver gleefully recounts his family war between Manchester United fans and Arsenal devotees in the typical Burmese way of speaking English, dropping the end consonants: “they figh(t), we wi(n)!”).

On our first walkabout the next morning, the unique characteristics of Yangon start to emerge. Women wear homemade sunscreen/makeup on their cheeks and brows, a yellowish paste made of tree bark called thanaka. Everyone blocks the hot sun with umbrellas. Men wear sarongs (longyis), often over their trousers. Posters plaster the faces of calm monks on any available surface. Trees covered in swirling vines on every corner are transformed into shrines. Entire streets are devoted to selling buddhas and devotional accoutrements.

Amid all the hustle and bustle, stunning in their serene majesty, are the pagodas. They appear unexpectedly when rounding a corner of uneven pavement, in between a block of crumbling apartment buildings, over the sea of heads crossing a crowded intersection.

Sensual and elegant in their bell shaped curves (evoking inevitable comparisons to my husband’s favorite part of the female anatomy), they gleam of gold and precious gemstones large enough to be seen with the naked eye hundreds of feet below. From the gryphon-guarded entrances, it is clear that these monuments are the pride of the people.

Only once we go inside do we come to understand that they are actually the soul of the people; active, working places of worship, prayer, and contemplation.

We find ourselves first at Sule Pagoda. We leave our shoes (as we do nearly everywhere, even the mobile phone shop we stop in to buy SIMs. We both agree that we love this separation of the public and private spheres it represents). The first thing we notice is that we are nearly the only tourists there, and the place is humming with activity at 3 pm on a Sunday.

As we amble around the various sanctuaries and get our first real glimpse at the thousands of golden buddhas that will mark our sojourn in Myanmar, people are kneeling and bowing in prayer, having their private moments. While there are groups of people here and there, it’s totally different than a church or synagogue. It’s more like a city, where everyone goes about their spiritual business as they see fit.

Some people are prostrate, some kneel, some sit (feet always facing away from the Buddhas). Some chant in small groups. Some talk earnestly with monks. Some circumnavigate it (clockwise), lost in contemplation. Some sell not only religious paraphernalia but household items, toys, and food. A skinny, furless cat peers down from a plaster curlicue.

There are no descriptions of what we’re seeing in English, only in Burmese. It’s another sign that this place does not exist for tourists (though they happily charge tourists for entry while it’s free for locals). We are both happy and vaguely uncomfortable that this is so. We are seeing truly authentic spaces, but there is also something voyeuristic in it, like we shouldn’t be here.

Ambivalence is a running theme of our time in Myanmar. Cut off for so long because of decades of military dictatorship, it’s only been open to tourists for a few years. In some ways the country hasn’t quite got it down, especially when compared to its next door neighbor, the world’s favorite good time, Thailand. On the one hand, it doesn’t really accommodate tourists, and when it does, it feels forced and a bit crass. Hotels and anything tourist-related aren’t any cheaper than Thailand. Laundry is way more expensive (leading us to hand wash everything in our sink). On the other hand, classic opportunities like jacking up the price of a beer in a restaurant aren’t taken (yet), which is quite nice. And there are enough expats that some great restaurants have sprung up. If you find yourself in Yangon, do yourself a favor and go to the Rangoon Tea House, which Hipster-fies classic Burmese cuisine like tea leaf salad (and a ridiculously amazing chicken biryani for Lee).

Stomachs very happy, we head to our next stop down on the Waterfront. Botataung Pagoda’s stupa is a hollow gilded zigzag of awesomeness.

Sharp acute angles and every available surface (even pipes) smothered in gold give it a surreal, almost fun-house atmosphere, and we wander through in a kind of befuddled giddiness after getting past the bottleneck at Buddha’s tooth relic. The guy definitely got around, judging by how many temples house bits of his DNA.

Again, westerners are vastly outnumbered by the locals here to pray. Evidently the locals have also been known to take, as many of the buddhas are locked behind gates.

Mostly though, the Burmese are givers — constantly bringing offerings to the pagodas. Leis of delicate flower blooms, bottles of water, oranges, small statues, candles, cheroots (their anise, rose water, and tamarind-flavored cigarillos) and more are laid at the feet of the buddhas. Entire markets around the pagodas are dedicated to buying stuff to offer them.

A guide at one point said offhandedly, “you know we Burmese, we’re not rich, but we like to give.” It’s a thing.

The crowning glory of Yangon, and indeed one of the most amazing examples of human creation I have ever experienced, is the Shwedagon Pagoda, a global treasure of gold and gemstones (the 75-carat diamond variety) with endless pavilions, fountains, and thousands of buddhas of every shape and size, often surrounded by halos of LED lights.

Golden, white with red lips, solid jade. Standing, sitting, reclining on a side (if propped up on its elbow, he’s chilling; if arm is down, he’s dead, a guide told us). Dozens of different rooms branch off the circle surrounding the main stupa. Fountains and altars are everywhere you turn.

Thousands of barefoot people mill around, walking, standing, sitting, kneeling, praying, and just being in one of the most marvelous specimens of architecture the world has ever seen. I don’t know if the Burmese think in terms of comparisons to other cultures, but for me Shwedagon is up there with the Pyramids, Petra, the Alhambra, the finest Moroccan palaces, and hopefully Angkor Wat too (we’ll let you know in a few weeks!).

But the best part is that the energy is tranquil, quiet, serene, uncrowded, unrushed. It is truly sublime; the calm eye in the storm that is Yangon.

There’s so much to see, it’s hard to know where to go first. We drift around with our cameras, catching quiet moments of devotion and grand tableaux of beauty. As evening falls, people light candles around the stupa, its magnificent gold even more striking against the deepening azure of the sky. A crescent moon rises with the dark side completing the circle.

We sit at the foot of the stupa in sheer wonder for 90 minutes while recording the time lapse. It’s not enough, we decide as we film another from our hotel’s rooftop.

So on our last morning, we go to Shwedagon again, with no cameras (ok, with iPhones), to just be in the calm and take it in through our eyes instead of our lenses.

We stop at the altars of our respective Burmese zodiac signs (which go by day of the week on which one is born, with Wednesday divided into morning and afternoon — elephant with and without tusks). I am a Monday Tiger, no surprise there!

We wander through the photographic museum, with its close ups of the gems inlaid on the stupa and scenes of vast gatherings of monks filling the plazas over a century ago.

We find a pavilion housing a giant prayer bell salvaged from a ship the British damaged (complete with scenes of uniformed troops pushing it off the docks decorating the upper reaches of the interior).

We end up at the bodhi tree in a shaded corner. A few elderly worshippers are there, but we’re mostly alone. It seems a fitting end to our time in Yangon. A quiet, beautiful moment of calm contemplation in the midst of the chaotic city.

Yangon: Zen in Chaos was originally published in Pulling Focus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s 12:20 and the taxi still hasn’t arrived. Our boat for Koh Lanta leaves at 1:30, Google Maps says the pier is an hour away, and we’re getting nervous. We’ve booked everything precisely and one hiccup will ripple affect the next several days. We try calling, we get a string of other numbers to call. The connection is bad, the English is vague, we’re not quite used to Thai accents. We try to calm our nerves, telling each other it’s not that big a deal if we have to re-book everything, but the prospect of more admin is upping the tension.

Finally, the shuttle arrives. Two other couples in the van chatter away, while Thai harmonies massage our ears in new ways in the background. As we make our way through Patong, the crowded downtown beachfront of Phuket, the one lane of traffic snakes to a halt. There’s no way we’re making this ferry. But no one in the van seems bothered.

And indeed, when we finally get to the pier, exchange our printout for orange stickers telling the crew our destination, and hop on the back of a long line of backpackers and Full Moon party-goers, we’re safe, even though it’s pushing 2:30. It’s the Thai equivalent of African time, and we’re no strangers to that.

We clamber across the various gangplanks and walkways awkwardly, muttering to each other that we have too much stuff, and spread ourselves out across a row of red rubbery seats below deck.

We’re bummed not to find any seats on deck because we were so late, but it turns out to be a blessing. The Andaman Sea starts to roll and soon enough, drenched people straggle in, sheepish since just minutes before they’d smugly spread out a bit more when we scanned the bow for empty space.

Through the portholes, islands pop up in the breaks between violent waves. I take the camera up to the bow to get a few shots, but can barely keep it steady before a wave washes over the rail, turning the pretty young things into soggy messes.

Suddenly we hear frantic calls for the Lanta passengers to get ready for a quick boat change in Koh Phi Phi. We pull up to the dock, across another set of mismatched gang planks (some rotting wood, some metal grates, all different widths) and board a much smaller boat, again the last ones on. This time, the people flash friendly smiles and make room. These passengers are heading to Koh Lanta, and they are here to chill.

Another hour passes, we disembark. After some driver confusion and more distant sounding phone calls with questionable comprehension on both sides, we pile into the back of an open pickup and race past island commerce.

Motorcycles with sidecar taxis, gasoline being sold by the coke bottle, scuba tour shops, ramshackle roadside restaurants. When the coast emerges from the dense jungle greenery around us, the sun is starting to set, and a postcard shot of beautiful colours peeks around the twists and turns of the road.

We’re here…

Technically, we’ve been traveling for months. We left Cape Town in October, spent a few weeks in England, a few days in the Italian Alps, then onto New York, Boca Raton, San Francisco, LA, Hong Kong, and then a few days coming down from it all in Phuket. We’ve gotten to spend quality time with family, reconnect with lifelong friends we rarely get to see, finish up work projects, and step down from the crazy busy-ness of running a startup and corporate consulting.

But it isn’t until now that we really started Traveling with a capital T, taking the rare opportunity of a new marriage and a break in work to spend a few months wandering around Southeast Asia. To truly step back from our lives, so filled with the distraction and noise of technology, social media, and news, and redirect our attention and energy to the here and now. As if to show us the disconnect between the tech world we spend so much time in and actual real life, we were gutted when our weather app predicted it would rain all day, every day we were in Phuket. It turned out to be sunny and hot. Thanks for not listening to Dark Sky, world!

We spent the first few days coming down to a slower pace, drinking fresh coconuts, eating Pad Thai and getting bent into pretzels by masseuses while the waves crashed in the background. Watching a fish eagle’s spiral hunt along the coastline, a toddler waddle-kicking a dried coconut as a soccer ball, a fisherman tying up his nets on a bright yellow longtail boat, the aqua and jade tides moving in and out.

Enjoying the jokes of the massage ladies as they walk on our hamstrings and elicit sounds usually reserved for, um, other arenas (“she ate too big breakfast!” they joke after an involuntary moan from me). We are rejuvenated by humanity, nature, beauty, laughter.

In its simplest definition, pulling focus is the act of changing the focal point of your lens from one distance to another. For our travels, we’re pulling focus from our phones, the news, media and technology, and honing in on the beauty and awesomeness of the world in front of us. Our attention is precious — it is the currency of the world we now live in. We want to spend our attention on people, places, and activities we deem worthy of our time. Here’s where we’ll share it with you. Enjoy!

Going Offline was originally published in Pulling Focus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After settling into our sweet little jungle bungalow, we cross the road to the beach. Starving, we stop at the first restaurant we see, and are joyfully greeted by the braai master (as we say in South Africa) setting hot pans of deliciousness on fire — he’d been our taxi driver not 20 minutes before.

The sunset has left a stunner of a sky in its wake, flame-colored clouds slowly giving way to inky blues. We sit down for some killer red curry and a cold beer, our toes playing in the soft sand under the table. Yellow lanterns wave above us. The vibe along the beach is understated and tranquil.

Which pretty much sums up Koh Lanta.

Everything is easy. Walk outside and look for a moto-taxi, one is ready (and willing to bargain). All activities you book pick you up and drop you off for free. The road is paved, the rooms sport wifi and a/c, towels and bottled water, even q-tips. Yet the jungle creeps right up to the door, the mozzies resist even the strongest Deet spray, and tropical storm devastation (trees keeling over onto homes, rows of deserted bungalows slowly sinking back into the dirt, soggy wood dripping back down into the pier) throughout the island serves notice that the trappings of western civilization have a tenuous hold here.

Buddhist and Muslim with a bit of Hindu thrown in, many of the locals wear full cover and headscarves, many do not. Elaborate miniature Buddhist shrines sit outside bars and 7–11s (which seem more plentiful in Thailand than in the US). We hear the baritone of the muezzin and look around for a minaret, but find a bullhorn speaker attached to the jumble of wires on the electric poles. Trucks blaring the call to prayer and others advertising the big Muay Thai fight on Saturday come up from behind, get loud, and fade into the distance as they pass.

We are fascinated by the differing cultural norms of tourists of every nationality. Brazilians parade proudly in their trademark thong bikinis. Russians smoke a lot. The Chinese are the reigning selfie champions, posing for the camera along the water’s edge. Many stay very covered up, with giant hats and Lycra arm coverings that evoke figure skating costumes.

Lying under the umbrellas of a beach restaurant one day, we watch the Thai server ask a Chinese woman about the strength of her sunscreen, and she replies that it’s really strong because she wants to keep her skin light. “Why? What’s wrong with skin like mine?” His is a rich deep tawny.

“Dark is ugly,” she says, without an ounce of hesitation.

Saving face, the waiter defends the hardiness of his stock without seeming as offended as he surely must be. The pasty white Swede in the next chair tries diplomacy. “I wish I had skin that could tan like that, mine just goes red.” He and the Chinese woman compare sunscreens for a few more minutes, and the conversation moves on.

When we eat dinner there later, the owner comes out to chat with us, assuring us that he makes the curry from real coconuts (evidenced by the coconut husks fueling the fire in front of us, as well as by the delectable creaminess of the sauce). His rice is fluffy, tender, and wild, not the standard white. He’s clearly trying to differentiate his place (Blue Moon, for anyone who makes it out here) with a personal touch and commitment to quality.

He has to. The sheer volume of small businesses, from little resorts and hotels to dive companies and boat tour operators to restaurants, is fascinating. Lanta is a bit off the beaten path compared to Phuket and nearby Koh Phi Phi, and while there are tourists all over the island, we hear it’s only fractionally as busy as usual during peak season (which it currently is). How do they all stay in business? It reminds me of the braai market in Khayelitsha where all the sellers sell the exact same meat every day. When I asked a local how she chooses between them, she said “muti.” In this case, I think Trip Advisor is a more likely answer than being lured by herbal medicine, but there are way more bungalows, resorts, and tour operators in reality than there are online (though Chinese and Russians must have different travel sites). The sheer variety of human preference, online planning, and offline spontaneity creates near perfect competition (indeed, an hourlong massage is 300 baht -$8 — nearly everywhere, though quality varies widely). It’s reassuring that so many people can live off these little businesses, especially when in the startup world we’re used to, scale is the Holy Grail, and anything that doesn’t provide an Xx return to investors is derided as a “lifestyle business.” The small businesses here obviously wish they were busier, but a lifestyle where you have the autonomy of being your own boss and providing for your family without much overhead doesn’t sound like something to sneer at.

The highlight of our time on Koh Lanta is our diving trip to the uninhabited marine park of Ko Haa, a 90 minute boat ride away. Astrid, our wonderful dive master, goes over all the fish we might see before each dive, and the rocky little island doesn’t disappoint.

Moray eels open their jaws from their caves in the reef, electric blue tendrils swirling around them. A tiny golden seahorse uncurls itself in a pocket of pillowy seaweed. Schools of baby blue and sunshine yellow fish mission by. I am bowled over by individual fish with color combinations even Versace could not dream up: magenta, army green and cantaloupe. Azure, lilac, chartreuse, and fire engine red. How does nature do this?! It strikes a complex chord somewhere deep within me, and I can’t tell if the saltwater in my mask is seeping in from the ocean or out from my eyes.

After a rocky start (had to switch masks 15 meters down during the first dive after it kept flooding, no mean feat for a newbie like me), the second dive goes much more smoothly. From inside an underwater cave, we peer up to the turquoise surface as the fish cruise by, the still, clear water letting us see way into the distance. We revel in the joy of weightless meandering around marine life only a handful of humanity will ever see. When Astrid comments that bluefin tuna will actually be extinct in the next month, we have to wonder if our children will ever get this same privilege.

Tired but elated from our day well spent in the sea, we return to the most spectacular flame and rose sunset and have our last dinner at the same restaurant we started at, feet in the sand, cold beer in the hand.

Beach chill out success! Thanks, Koh Lanta, you are all we hoped for, and set a meditative, relaxed tone and a high beauty bar for our travels. Next stop, Yangon, to seek the splendor of some of the world’s most elaborate Buddhist shrines.

Slowing Down in Koh Lanta was originally published in Pulling Focus on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.