Day 156! I’m in love with Koh Tao. I’m not sure when I’ll be ready or wanting to leave… but for now, I’m very content with hanging out here and exploring. The island life suits me very well and I’m a big fan of having so many beautiful beaches within arms reach. Today was another great day and I got a special gift from a friend too!

I got up and at ‘em today and was out in the hostel lobby before 10am. I needed to send the video I edited on to my client and I knew uploading would take some time on the hostels wifi.

So I got my muesli bowl for breakfast and waited.

As it was uploading, I chatted with a traveler from England, Dylan, and the owner of the hostel, Kai. We got into an interesting conversation about music… I’ll spare you the details, but it was a discussion about if music was worth people’s time and the community it can breed.

I also played some stellar games of pool, which made up for a lot of the bad ones I played yesterday.

It was a nice morning, which ended up becoming even better! My co-volunteer, Pi, was celebrating his birthday today. He had told me the day before that he had an extra guitar that someone gave him for free… so he was wanting to give it to me for free! It was super sweet and super backwards that he was giving ME a gift on HIS birthday.

I was super thankful for it since I haven’t had the chance to play guitar in a month or two!

I took the guitar and my laptop back to my room and “officially” started my shift. Even if I’m not working and I’m at the hostel, I’m essentially working still.

After chatting and playing more pool, I sat down and ate one of Taco Shack’s superb quesadillas.

While I was eating, I heard a quick scream and saw two travelers moving quickly away from their table.

I guess out of nowhere a snake appeared and this was no small snake!

I thought it was pretty cool, but there were some not as excited people nearby.

It eventually slithered off, but I thought it was a neat thing to spice up the morning.

2pm rolled around and I went on a quick drive to the pier to pick up a friend! My friend Emma was coming back to Koh Tao so we could do our advanced diving together.

It was so nice getting to see her again and I drove her back to Taco Shack. She took a bit to get checked in and pay for the diving. But we eventually set out to Aow Leuk beach to hang out for the afternoon.

I brought along the guitar and after taking a nice long swim, we came out and I strummed away for a bit. It was so nice being able to play and sing again, especially with someone who’s down to listen!

There was even a traveler nearby that started singing along when I was playing Stay by Post Malone. It really made me so happy to have a guitar that I could play on.

Around 5:30pm I drove Emma and I back to the hostel to get ready for dinner. After we were cleaned up, we set out to a new restaurant called, Pranees Kitchen. One of Emma’s friends from home suggested it.

It was really good! The smoothy wasn’t my favorite I’ve had, but I got a Penang curry fried rice which was incredibly tasty.

After dinner we made our way back to the hostel… but we were both in the mood for a sweet treat, so we stopped by Dairy Queen and a roti stand to devour some sweets.

I then dropped Emma off at the hostel and immediately set back out with, Lena, Ami, Albert, Olly, Lydia, and Pi for Pi’s birthday dinner!

His dinner was at a restaurant called barracuda, which is one of the fancier restaurants on the island. I only had time for a beer before having to run back to the hostel to host tonight’s event. But it was nice to be in an upscale restaurant for the first time in a while.

Tonight’s event was beer pong… one of my least favorite to run because it’s mainly pulling teeth to get people involved. But tonight was different. We actually had an abundance of people wanting to play and I felt really bad having to tell people we had too many. BUT this made my life a lot easier.

Over the next hour, we flew through 7 games of beer pong. Some were faster than others, but two of them came down to the wire with some intense and heated finishes!

While the games were going on, our big blue gecko (which I’ve named Taco Jr.) came out to hunt. I watched him absolutely devour moths, it was an impressive sight!

In the end, the beer pong tournament finished off with a very competitive game. But only one team could be the winner, and it was Braden from Canada with his teammate Olly from England.

I was pretty exhausted and at 10:30pm I was off to my room to get ready for bed! Before bed though… I definitely regretted having some ice cream, BUT it was worth it for the delicious dessert.

As always, it was another great day on this lovely island. It’s really nice having a friend come back to hang out some more too! I’m looking forward to spending more time with Emma and also doing my advanced diving with her and Immy! Also, my ear felt MUCH better today and I didn’t even need ibuprofen. I’m hoping tomorrow I’ll be back to normal! But I guess we’ll see then!

– Elie