Day 203! Well I had a day off today… but I’ll have a few more because of my tattoo. But I’ll talk about that more soon. It was a great day off, I have some amazing friends on this island that I really enjoy spending time with!

Today was my day off, so I had a nice lie in in bed! While lying around, I FaceTimed my grandparents and chatted about everything they had been reading from my days on Koh Tao and I heard what they had been up to as well! I love chatting with them so much and I’m so glad technology allows us to FaceTime.

I also FaceTimed my friend Dylan from back home. We hadn’t had the chance to chat in a while, we both are very busy, so it was really nice to catch up and hear what’s going on in his life.

I was supposed to meet up with my friend Immy for brunch, but it seemed as though she slept in even longer. So I made my way over to the Taco Shack lobby to eat while I waited for her to wake up.

While I ate, I chatted with a number of the instructors waiting for the afternoon boat. They all were complementing my tattoo… but they had some concerns about the tattoo parlors thoughts on diving with it bandaged directly after getting it.

This made me second guess myself a bit on when I should dive… so for the rest of the morning I did a lot of research and went back to the tattoo shop to chat with them.

The tattoo parlor showed me how they were going to wrap my leg to dive tomorrow… but when I went home afterwards, I laid on my bed, did some frog kicks (how we dive), and then went to shower and water immediately went into the bandaging… so that made my decision clear.

As frustrating and bummed as I was, I chatted with my mentor, Chris, and I decided to at least take off from diving until Friday. I don’t want to risk anything happening. Also, I’m low key looking forward to a few days off. It’ll be nice to enjoy a couple days around the island again, like while I volunteered at Taco Shack.

One of the days will be my border run as well, so it should work out well.

So far, my tattoo is healing very nicely! So as long as I take care of it this first week, I should be okay. After that, I’ll wrap the heck out of it and figure out some ways to make sure no water can get in. But if a little does, it won’t be the end of the world at that point!

Immy and I decided to meet up around 2pm, but she lost her motorbike key… so I rode across town to pick her up and we made our way back to Sairee to eat and chat at Mama Tams.

It had been over a week since we had seen each other so we had a lot of catching up to do. It’s always nice to hang out with Immy! I wasn’t super hungry, but I still decided to get some pad Thai and save what I didn’t eat for a meal tomorrow.

My friend Lydia came a little later and joined us and we stayed for quite a while just chatting. So far, it had been a great start to my day off.

I was full to the brim with good food, so it was time to take a nap! When I woke up, my friend Pauline wanted to hang out at Koppee. So Lydia and I made our way across the island to meet her!

We enjoyed a cheap cocktail and engaged in more chit chattery. As it got later in the day, we decided to change scenery to one of the sunset bars on the island, secret bar.

Kit, Chelsea, and James came and joined us to watch the sunset. Unfortunately, it was fairly cloudy on the west side of the island… so the sunset wasn’t great, but the company was!

After the sunset, we made our way back across town to eat dinner together. The first restaurant we went to, a Khao Soi place, was closed. So we went to Blue Chair instead.

We ate and chatted more and then when we were finished we got into a very heated number of matches of Dobble!

Now, I did dominate… and rubbed it in Hector’s face because he’s very competitive and did that to me the last time we played cards. Revenge felt good! But in his defense, English isn’t his first language so it was a bit difficult for me. BUT that doesn’t take away that I did beat him this time around at cards.

After dinner, I went back to Taco and played some pool with my buddy Myo who works at Taco.

Earlier in the day, I beat him 2-1, but tonight, he came back with vengeance and beat me 3-1. It was a fun way to end the night and I made my way to bed afterwards.

Tomorrow I’ll have another day off and the day after I’ll be making my way to Myanmar for another border run! We’ll see what I get up to, but hopefully we’ll be back to diving soon!

– Elie