Destinations

From Aachen to Bang Tao

Travel has been woven into my life since I was a teenager, when horses first carried me across the Atlantic. I lived and trained in Germany before I was old enough to vote, and destinations like Aachen, the cathedral city where the world's best riders gather every summer, became as familiar to me as home. During my competitive years the sport kept me close to the calendar, so my escapes were short ones: the Caribbean, Mexico, warm places I could reach quickly and still remember fondly decades later. Even then, I understood that travel wasn't a break from my life. It was a part of it I hadn't fully claimed yet.

That changed when I landed in Thailand. I spent my first year in Bang Tao, on the northwestern coast of Phuket, exploring every bay and enclave the island would show me. Then Sri Lanka called, and I spent six months in its southeastern and central reaches, a country of such astonishing natural beauty that it recalibrated what I expected a morning to look like. The water in front of my villa was a color I had only ever seen in advertisements for the Maldives. Giant sea turtles surfaced offshore. The sunsets were world class, night after night, as if the island didn't know how to produce an ordinary one.

Now I'm back on Phuket, and I feel blessed every day that I am. I live within walking distance of Monkey Hill, with a view that never stops working on me: limestone karsts rising from the horizon, crystal-clear turquoise water below. Phuket is still a magical place to me, and a deeply inspiring one.