Day 161! Wow, the day is finally here… it’s time to move out of Taco Shack and start my journey as a dive master in training! I’m so excited to see where this new path takes me. But… I’m luckily not leaving Taco Shack, since I’ll be right next door! I can’t wait to spend another 2 months on this amazing island.

I woke up this morning at 9am and prepared to say goodbye to the bed I’ve called home for the last month.

My stuff was “tidy” but I still needed to pack it up and move it, as I was checking out today. My new room at the building next door was ready for me so I went over and paid before officially moving in.

Moving only took one trip… as I really don’t have much with me. But it’s really nice to have a space to call my own for the next month or two! It’s been 5 months since I could say that.

The room itself is very simple. It’s just a bedroom and a bathroom. But it does have AC, a fan, a table, chairs, dresser, and a fridge! For 7500 Baht, I really can’t complain

After moving in, I went over to Taco Shack and gave them my towel and room key. I may not be living there anymore… but I can still enjoy my cheap muesli bowls!

My advanced diving instructor, Theo, had some honey and doused my bowl with it. It was a nice addition to an already delicious breakfast.

I spent the rest of the morning playing pool, chatting with travelers, andddd officially signing up for my dive master course!

There’s been a lot of transferring of money, for the course, the equipment I need, etc… that has been kind of stressing me out. But once I get the course going I know I’ll be in love and loving life!

To celebrate, I got a green curry at the hostel and enjoyed my meal with two of my lovely coworkers.

After I finished up my last morning volunteer shift, I had some errands to run. The first was filling up my back motorbike tire with air. I’m not sure when it lost air but it was needing it pretty badly.

Surprisingly it was free! That was a nice bonus to the day.

I then went on a scavenger hunt for a battery. Iris, the manager of Taco Divers, had a hand-me-down dive computer (the watch divers use to track their dives) that she is trying to sell. But it needed a new battery. So I went around seeing if anyone on the island had it and came up short.

I’m still going to test it out on my first fun dive tomorrow, but I doubt I’ll buy it if I can’t find a battery!

When I came back to the hostel, the reception deck was “busy at work” testing out their art skills by drawing my face. This is what they came up with:

Accurate? No… but can you tell it’s me? Yeah. It gave them a good laugh though, which made me happy.

I had some more errands to run, but my friend Kit was arriving today. He’s also doing his dive master with Taco Shack and I thought I’d just do the errands with him since he would need scuba gear as well!

Instead, my friend Emma wanted to go on a hike. Specifically, she wanted to hike to a lighthouse on the north east side of the island. So we set out on a very hot adventure to find the hike.

We had to drive towards a popular viewpoint called mango viewpoint. This is where the roads got a little dicey.

But we drove on and eventually hit a part of the road I was not willing to drive on. So we hopped off and walked the rest of the way.

The road led us to a house that was the start of the trail. For 100 Baht, they gave us a bottle of water and entry to the trail.

The hike quickly descended towards the sea below. We were completely surrounded by dense forest and outside of the steepness, it was a very nice hike!

We also had a very adorable dog leading us down the trail.

After a solid 30 minutes of wandering through the forest, we arrived at a rocky beach! Funnily enough, the Taco Shack diving boat was at this bay for a dive outing.

We were a bit confused though… there was no light house! So we just climbed around on the rocks for a bit trying to see what we could see.

Unfortunately we had no service either. But luckily Emma had the hike webpage still open so we could see the details of what we missed. All we had to do was keep wandering the coast and we would’ve found a big white arrow taking us up to the light house… and we did just that.

It took us a steep 5 minute hike, but we arrived at the light house!

It was a hot and sweaty hike, but we were feeling very accomplished! The view at golden hour was very nice too. We sat up at the top of the light house, admiring the view… but the sun was quickly setting, so we made our way back down the light house and back towards where we came.

We really came a long way since the hike was so steep. And now we had to hike back up the steep path.

We were sweating buckets by the time we reached the top again and we still had more walking to do to get to the motorbike.

In total, it took us around 2 hours to do but it was totally worth it! I think I’ll take some other friends out here sometime to see this hike in the future.

I got back to my new room and desperately needed a shower. I didn’t have to wait for anyone either since it was a private room! Crazy!

I went to the hostel and got a chicken fried rice for dinner. While I was eating, I chatted with fellow travelers and also got to catch up with Kit for a bit! We’re both super excited to be going through the dive master course together.

For my last official night as a volunteer at Taco Shack, it was only fitting it’d fall on a karaoke night!

I enjoyed a fun night of singing my heart out with all my friends new and old. Not many people wanted to sing on the microphone, so a select few of us were singing songs back to back. It was a blast!

I ended up leaving the karaoke night a little early because tomorrow I start my diving! I have to be on the morning boat by 6:50am. I’m soooo looking forward to getting this show on the road and be on a path to being an even better diver!

Get ready for 10 weeks of scuba diving content!

– Elie