Day 171! It was a really chilled day today. It was nice having a day off from diving… but I also had no clue what to do with myself today. I figured out some admin tasks to do and took the day to relax as well!

Our schedule isn’t really finalized until around 8 or 9pm the night prior. So I wasn’t sure if I was diving or not till right before I went to bed.

But my instructor thought it’d be a good idea for me to have a rest day as I’ve been diving every day for the past 10 days. So I turned off my alarm and slept in as long as I could.

I eventually rolled out of bed around 10am, which was closer to the time I would get up at as a volunteer.

I got ready for the day and went over to Taco Shack for a classic breakfast of a muesli bowl.

Over the course of the next hour I played pool and also scrambled around to get documents gathered to extend my visa. Thankfully, I was smart enough to set a reminder on my phone and it reminded me my visa was up this week. Crazy it’s already almost been a month since my border run!

I got my documents sorted and headed over to the immigration office. It was 11am and they closed for an hour at 12pm. I was hoping to squeeze it in but was also okay with just getting a couple extra forms I needed to fill out and coming back.

Luck was on my side and I didn’t have to come back. The office was very empty and it only took around 45 minutes to get everything sorted. They were even playing The Hobbit (in Thai) on the TV, which was fun to watch while I waited.

I now have 30 more days, in this amazing country, added to the end of my visa. I will unfortunately have to do one more border run before I’m done with my DMT, but that’s a later problem.

I went back to Taco Shack and got lunch. I had a chicken gra pao, which was really tasty.

I played a lot more pool with the Taco Shack workers before heading to my apartment to take a nap. After I woke up it was time for some guitar playing!

I’ve been working on a new song called Northern Attitude by Noah Kahan, which has been really fun to learn.

After playing for an hour I decided to venture back outside… but it was raining. So I went back inside to wait it out.

Once it cleared, I drove back across the island to the place I rented my motorbike a little over a month ago. I hadn’t had the time to go renew my rental with all the diving, but the lady running the shop didn’t seem to mind. In fact she gave me a discount for renting it the next two months! 2500 Baht a month this time, instead of 3000… which is like $2 a day.

I then went to Taco Shack again and played more pool and a couple games of chess with the Taco Shack worker who I played with the other day. He was super excited to play again and we had a couple of fun games. On the second game he made a game ending move. So we went back and played through alternative endings together which was nice!

Dinner time rolled around and I ended up going with my new friend Jos, who is Lydia’s friend from home. My friends Lina and Albert came as well and we went to a new restaurant (for me at least) called Blue Chair.

Blue Chair is well known on the island for their massaman curry and their pad see ew, both dishes I really like! I ended up getting the massaman curry… and I’m so glad I did.

This curry was so delicious and was only 80 Baht too! I also got a cheap mango smoothie as well. It was a fantastic meal, but after eating it was time for me to head home and go to bed.

Even though it was a chilled out day, I was still exhausted. Diving has definitely drained my social battery a lot since I’m pretty tired a ton more. But at the same time, it’s been very rewarding too!

Tomorrow I’ll be back to diving. As of right now, I’m assisting an advanced diving course and will be doing an afternoon dive of classes and a night dive!

– Elie