Crossing the Friendship Threshold

Sometimes all it takes to make new friends is to take a solo trip halfway around the world for a beach volleyball camp.

At least, that’s what the tote bag said.

On the first day of the Sri Lankan Beach Box camp I went to at the end of last year, we were given bags with the slogan: “Where real friendships are made, the vibes are golden, and memories last a lifetime.”

I distinctly remember thinking they might be overpromising just a bit.

On my flight home, though, I kept coming back to how accurate the marketing turned out to be—and how unnecessary all my pre-trip anxiety had been. There’s never a guarantee you’ll meet your people on a trip like this, and to be fair, I don’t think it happened for everyone.

I just got lucky.

A lot of that came down to the group that eventually became known as the “Sri Lanka Gang” in our WhatsApp thread—a group I was only added to after the trip, which felt appropriate. They all knew each other already and were clearly still vetting me.

At first, it was just proximity. Derek, CK, and Alessandro were in my training group, so we started spending time together between sessions, then meals. At some point it stopped feeling incidental.

I remember Derek booking a group massage and casually including me, which was probably the moment I felt officially in. Nothing says friendship like being added to a plan you didn’t make.

One moment still makes me laugh. My first impression of Bo was that she had very little patience. The Sri Lankan people are incredibly kind, but efficient service is not exactly their forte, and Bo had no issue reminding the wait staff of that.

I remember telling her, somewhat self-righteously, that she should be more patient.

“I don’t have patience,” she said, like it was obvious.

A few days later, I found myself at a newly opened juice bar waiting an unreasonable amount of time for a second smoothie. It felt like they were waiting for the fruit to ripen. Eventually I started asking where my drink was. More than once.

Alessandro looked at me, smiled, and said, “You’ve become Bo.”

By the end of the camp, it felt like we had been hanging out for forever. So when we heard Stefan was planning to coach a camp in Vietnam a few months later, we all decided to go. Or more accurately, everyone else signed up immediately, and I started rearranging my prior commitments so I could make it work. The fomo was real.

Vietnam turned out to be a completely different type of trip, and somehow even more incredible than Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka had been strangers becoming friends. Vietnam felt like a friends trip.

We skipped the early parts—no figuring out dynamics, no wondering where you fit in. We just picked up where we left off. The days looked similar—training, meals, hanging out—but they played out differently. Easier. Funnier. Everything landed quicker.

Stefan played a big role in that. He would turn free moments during lunch and dinner into a game of some kind: cards, board games, mafia. It was a great way to get to know him and the rest of the group better.

A friend reminded me that there’s something special about spending extended amounts of time with people. It’s not just that we don’t spend this kind of time with new people—we don’t really spend it with anyone. Even with close friends, time together is usually carved out in pieces.

A dinner here. A few hours there. Something scheduled and contained.

This was different, and continuous.

Something happens. Not all at once, and not in a single conversation. Just slowly, in the background.

Enough that the next time you see each other, it doesn’t feel like starting over.

You just pick up where you left off.