Day 145! After a wild night, I needed a good day. Today was just that! I had a great day as a volunteer, got to relax on my favorite beach, and I got to show off the trivia quiz that I wrote myself!

9am rolled around and my alarm went off telling me it was time to get up for another great day of hostel volunteering!

But before I set out to the lobby, I whipped up a new piece of jewelry for my friend Sade. It was her last day on the island and we’ve been sharing a room for the past week and a half, so it thought it’d be a nice send off gift. She had also expressed interest in this specific piece of sea glass so I was glad to make something for her.

I headed over to the lobby around 10:30am to give it to her, but she was out diving. So I just started my day as usual.

BUT, today, my friend Immy from Hoi An, Vietnam, arrived at the island… and a group of people in the Taco Shack lobby called me out by name, but I had never met them before.

Apparently they had all met Immy on the boat to Koh Tao and she told them all about me! It was such a hype up for my morning and I’m super excited to have Immy back around for a bit!

Today was a busy one at Taco Shack. I got so swept up in chatting with the new arrivals that I forgot to order my breakfast till much later in the morning.

And when I say it was busy… it was realllyyyy busy.

But eventually I got my breakfast. I decided to get a Pad See Ew instead of my usual muesli bowl. And, I guess I forgot to take a picture of it… so instead, here are some cute pictures of the hostel’s dog, Taco, begging for food.

I spent the majority of the morning chatting with a ton of new travelers, getting to hear all about their travels and journey to Koh Tao, and also sharing my stories (which will be important to note for later in the night).

As I got further into the morning the lobby started to finally calm down. And I was able to get a couple pool games in against my coworker. He’s really good… but I beat him two times and then lost to him by potting the cue ball when sinking the 8-ball. He wasn’t too happy that I beat him again, I’m sure he’ll get his revenge soon enough!

For lunch, I ended up getting Taco Shack’s famous tacos. My stomach was a bit out of sorts from the night before, so I got tofu ones which were very good.

After lunch and finishing up my shift, a big group of us headed to our favorite beach Aow Leuk. A couple of our new friends had never been before, so we were excited to share this treasure.

Before we left, my friend Sade showed up and I surprised her with the bracelet I made for her. She loved it and immediately put it on her ankle. I’ll have plenty more to make as my friends are starting to disperse.

We were limited on bikes. So we did as the locals do and a couple of us rode 3 people on one motorbike. It all worked out great and made for a fun ride to the beach (much better than Lea and my ride in Sapa, Vietnam)!

We hung out for hours in the water and on the sand. My friend Travis and Sade brought a mask and a snorkel, which they let me borrow, so I had my first real snorkel excursion.

I had low expectations, but I was blown away by the beauty of this beach (more so than already). The corals were insanely vibrant, some were MASSIVE! And there were hundreds of fish swimming about them. I saw a fish that was as big as my arm! At first I thought it was a shark, but it definitely was not… but I still felt a little sketched out so I swam away from it.

I also saw schools of hundreds of fish and this little excursion got me very excited to try out scuba diving soon! Hopefully someone will have a waterproof camera for scuba diving and I’ll be able to share some cool sites.

One of our new friends, Giannis from France, was playing at a bar on the way home. Unfortunately I couldn’t tag along since I needed to scurry to the hostel to shower and eat before 7pm. But I dropped off a couple of my friends to help them get to enjoy the live music and the sunset.

I got back to the hostel and showered… this is when I realized that with the fanny pack mishap yesterday, I lost almost all of my rings. Luckily I still have 3, one of which I made. But I lost some of my favorites. Guess it means I’ll just have to get more later on!

For dinner I had the hostel’s fried vegetables with chicken and I asked for it spicy! And boy, did they make it spicy. It was really good, but I was sweating a ton from the heat. The staff was very impressed that I could handle the spice level, so I guess I won some brownie points.

Speaking of points, tonight was trivia night! And today was a special one because I actually made the entire quiz.

Taco Shack has used the same quizzes for the past two years and I felt like something needed to be done about that. So the other day, I whipped up a new 40 question quiz and was premiering it today!

The categories were Thailand, getting to know your volunteer, Pictures, and Music. The second round was one I thought of the other day… everyone gives me crap for forgetting their name or a conversation we had, but I meet so many people in the day. So I wanted to see if any of them could remember what I told them.

Also for the picture round, I made sure to include cartoon characters from all over Europe and not just the US (which is what our quizzes usually have).

In the middle of the trivia night, there was a birthday in the hostel, so her friend brought her a cake which was really sweet. We paused the game and everyone sang happy birthday to Alice from England.

In the end, out of the 7 teams, two teams tied for first with 25.5 points… both of which had friends of mine on it. BUT they both didn’t even have the highest points in round two. The Quizadillas got 7/10 points in that round, I guess they listen the best!

I felt kind of bad, a random group was at the hostel (that had never met me) and joined trivia night. I was hoping they’d destroy the round, but they didn’t know me at all, so they didn’t do super hot.

I might’ve made the Thailand trivia a bit too hard, but everyone really enjoyed the quiz and thought I did a good job. It was really fun watching people get stumped or when they figured out an answer.

It was also super sweet, this was easily the biggest trivia night yet and most people came because they knew I actually made it. The amount of support I got from people I barely knew was very touching. My friends I’ve been hanging out with even came back from the live music early to make sure they didn’t miss the trivia.

After another successful trivia night, I sat with some friends and chatted for a bit more before calling it a night!

Tomorrow morning I’ll be waking up bright and early to watch my cousin get married! I’m sad I won’t be able to be there in person, but technology is so cool and I’m glad that I’ll be able to “be there” even though I’m on the opposite side of the world!

– Elie