Day 143! The power was out until around 2am this morning! It was the longest power outage yet… I’m not sure what caused it either since it wasn’t raining. But the entire island had no power for around 4-5 hours. But a little bad night of sleep didn’t stop me from having another great day on the island.

I woke up a bit early this morning and felt inspired to be a little crafty. So after showering and getting ready, I sat in bed and worked on a little project I’ve been thinking about.

I’ve been finding a lot of sea glass on the beach and thought it’d be a cool idea to start turning it into bits of jewelry. Yesterday’s ocean cleanup also helped inspire me a bit too and I used some fishing netting I found on the beach to use as the necklace. I also added one of the random shells that the Thai guy gave Dan, Sam, and I to the necklace and I think it was a nice touch.

I watched a quick YouTube video on how to make a slip knot and 30 minutes later I had a fairly cool looking necklace if I do say so myself!

I headed over to the hostel to eat breakfast and I received a number of compliments from my friends and the staff about my creation. I think I’ll start making some for the people I hang out and work with. It’ll be a nice little hobby to have while I stay on Koh Tao.

I of course started my morning with a muesli bowl, which instead of papaya it had pineapple. I actually preferred this a lot more! But as always, it was a refreshing way to start the day.

I didn’t end up playing much pool this morning and instead spent almost all of the morning chatting with new arrivals. A lot of people were coming over from Koh Phangan’s full moon party, so they were exhausted. But all still very game to chat.

I did end up playing one game of pool and I ended up beating the older Burmese guy who works at the hostel. I was pretty proud of that too! Starting off the day right!

Lunchtime rolled around and I got, what I think is, my favorite Thai dish at the hostel, fried vegetables, chicken, and rice.

My shift came to an end and some of my friends wanted to go to the beach! So I threw on my swim trunks and we caravanned over to Aow Leuk, our favorite beach on the island.

We spent the beginning of our time on the beach relaxing in the water and chatting. I was with my friends Travis from the US, Marie from Germany, Sade from England, and Lucy from England.

While we were swimming around, I actually spotted my first baby shark! The waters around Aow Leuk and Shark Bay are known to have many harmless/curious baby sharks swimming around… but I HAVEN’T SEEN ANY! Until today! I saw two!

No pictures unfortunately, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

But what I do have pictures of, is this GIANT inflatable unicorn!

There were three Israelis who rented it for the hour. Travis and I thought it’d be fun to push them out to sea (they were tethered to the beach). And after we helped them, they offered to let us hop in! So we all hopped in for a bit and then decided to go back to the beach to dry off.

While on the beach, I did some searching for more sea glass and cool shells to add to the collection for potential bracelets and necklaces. I found a ton of cool pieces which got me excited to make some more.

We stayed on the beach for 4 and a half hours. It was fantastic! But it was time to head back to shower and get ready for my night shift.

To start my shift, I grabbed some food and immediately some new travelers gravitated over to hang out and chat.

I decided to scran (British slang for you) on some burritos. It’s really nice having access to cheap Mexican food. I love Thai food… but I didn’t think I’d be getting this opportunity in Thailand so I’m taking it.

Originally, we had an UNO tournament planned, but a change of plans led to us doing musical bingo. I went around to all the different groups of travelers in the hostel and chatted them up getting them excited to play.

This was my first time hosting music bingo, but I had played it at other hostels throughout my trip. It’s bingo, but you have to know the song that’s being played to be able to cross it off.

We had a lot of people playing and I’d interject here and there with quips about the song being played or promoting our karaoke night for tomorrow night.

This was a perfect game to play with a lot of travelers still recovering from the full moon party.

It was a very chill rest of the night! I chatted with the few travelers hanging around the lobby, played a game of pool with my friend Myo from Myanmar, and then called it a night!

Tomorrow will be another fun night of karaoke… I also need to book my visa run to leave the country and come directly back to have another 30 days in this amazing country and on this amazing island!

– Elie