They don’t call it rainy season for nothing! I woke up to the sound of torrential downpour hitting the dorm I was staying in. I actually ended up sleeping super well though since I was the only one in the 8 person dorm. I decided to book one more night here just to try and explore the area!

To start the day off, I went and got breakfast! I got a meal I really love, Thai Basil Chicken with Rice!

While I was eating, I had a little friend come and join me 😅 I guess this kitten was hungry because it kept trying to eat my food, so I ended up letting it go to town on my empty plate.

Eventually my friend Aicha joined me and we had plans to go climb to a viewpoint and a lagoon! We decided to do this even in the rain and I’m glad we did, because on the walk to the start of the climb the sun came out and the rain stopped!

We were super stoked that the rain had gone and we finally had some sun! It took us a few minutes to realize where the start of the climb was… and when I say climb, this path was no joke.

I had never done anything like this before. Especially with no harness! There were some ropes attached to the rocks but at the beginning it was really a free climb that was pretty sketchy with how wet the rocks were!

It wasn’t the longest climb, I think the big Buddha was physically harder. But this one was definitely sketchier! Eventually we made it up the climb and wandered a bit through the trees to find a GORGEOUS viewpoint waiting for us!

On this hike, there’s an even more dangerous climb down to a lagoon. Since we were already up there we decided to check it out. Most of the climb down was alright, we hit what we thought was the lagoon but then noticed even more ropes that went further down… and with the conditions of the rocks we decided not to attempt it.

Even without making it all the way to the lagoon, I felt super accomplished that we had done something so fun and that we did it successfully without getting hurt! It was a super nice addition that it wasn’t raining and the sun came out too!

We then wandered to a nearby beach that had a special cave in it… where people leave penis shaped objects in the cave for good luck from the princess who’s cave it was 😅

The weather ended up really making for a beautiful day, so after getting back to our hostel Aicha and I decided to sign up for an island boat tour through our hostel!

Our boat ended up being a lot nicer than we thought it would! We thought we were going to be on the long wooden boats, which I’m glad we were not because the waves were very big when we first headed out!

The weather turned on us a little too at the beginning of the boat tour, but it wasn’t enough to put a damper on the tour!

We snorkeled and swam around chicken island. It was super pretty and I saw a lot of really cool tropical fish and some impressive coral (a lot of dead coral too sadly 🥲).

I didn’t bring my phone out a whole bunch since we were on the water. But we hit another few islands. One of which the tide was low enough that we could walk from chicken island to the other island!

We ended up stopping at an island for a late lunch. They gave us veggie fried rice, nothing too fancy.

We also ended up drinking on the boat which was fun! And all the people on the boat were super fun to hang out with! We got back to our hostel and it was pouring rain. When I got back to my room though there were new bags in it. And to my surprise it was my British friends from Phi Phi!

It was super nice to be able to hang out with them. But before I could, I wanted to go get dinner so I wandered off to eat.

I then met back up with the guys and we played beer pong late into the evening again!

After a bunch of games, there was a Muay Thai fight happening at the bar next door! So we wandered over there and watched two professional fights! It was super impressive and a bunch more fun than watching drunk travelers fight each other. We also had some very close seats for the fight!

I ended up going to bed after this because it was very late! But it ended up being such a lovely day! I thought the rain was going to ruin it but I was very wrong!

Tomorrow I’m going on another travel day as I’ll be heading to Koh Tao and taking a sleeper ferry to get there… we’ll see how it goes 😂

– Elie