Day 204! Today was another very nice day off from diving. My tattoo is healing very nicely so I’m hoping I’ll be back in the water soon! But for now, I’m having days of enjoying the island.

After a very nice day off, it was time for another!

I woke up this morning and decided I finally had the time to restring my guitar! So I took my new guitar tool, which I got from Lazada a week or two ago and went to work.

I’ve never done this before… and it proved to be a little more challenging than I had anticipated. But, after one YouTube video and some trial and error later, I was left with a freshly stringed guitar!

I of course had to play a bit before fully starting my day. So I worked on a song I started writing a few weeks ago and made a lot of progress on it. I’ve felt pretty inspired on my travels to start writing music and I’m looking forward to sharing it sometime!

Around 10am, I made my way over to Taco to pick up my leftover Pad Thai from yesterday. I warmed it up and ate it for a quick breakfast. I also played a number of games of pool against the Taco Shack employees.

Honestly, the pad Thai was great leftover and made for a perfect way to start my day.

My friend Lydia, who just finished her DMT, is still on the island and wanted to hang out. So we met up and went out for my second breakfast.

We went to a restaurant down the road, called pork leg. I got a Tom Kha soup, which is a coconut based soup that’s filled with vegetables. Also this restaurant has a Thai tea smoothie, which is one of my favorites!

I had never had Tom Kha before. It was alright! It didn’t go super well with the Thai tea, but I wasn’t opposed to the soup as a whole.

After breakfast, Lydia and I met up with Chelsea and Hector, two of my instructor friends who were also off this afternoon. I couldn’t swim, but Hector wanted to go practice his bubble rings in a pool. So I joined them and watched as they practiced bubble rings and other various diving skills that aren’t really necessary to diving (but super cool).

Hector is insane at blowing bubble rings. This is a screenshot from a video where he blew 11 in a row! Halfway through our time at the pool, a torrential downpour of rain rolled through. It lasted for 25 minutes or so, but it came out of nowhere and essentially disappeared in the same manner!

For my friends it didn’t matter, but I hid under a tree and got as minimally soaked as possible.

We then decided to go to Hectors apartment and play some cards!

We ended up playing many rounds of shit head. It’s been a while since I’ve played, but I hadn’t lost my touch! The games got pretty competitive, but in the end Chelsea was the winner because she never lost a game.

Hector then had a really fun idea! He had a projector and a Nintendo Switch. That meant we could put Mario kart up on the wall of his apartment! So we all gathered around his futon and stared at the ceiling while we raced our hearts out!

After playing a lot of Mario kart, Lydia and I were very hungry. So we went down the road to a restaurant called pork leg… now this isn’t the one from earlier. This one is near the pier, not in Sairee.

I got duck on rice which was very delicious, cheap, and a great precursor to the decedent desserts we were about to get.

This restaurant was almost right across the street by French Market. At the French Market, they have by one get one free on all their pastries after 4pm. Specifically, we were looking for another Crookie (croissant and cookie combined. But they didn’t have any, so we settled for a chocking hazelnut croissant. We then split a brownie we got as well.

The deserts ended up being 90baht. This was a freaking steal for what we got.

We brought our deserts back to Taco and this is when I fell into a game of chess against one of the Taco Shack employees

He’s already much better since last time… but after two games of me winning, we switched over to look where he dominated me!

After chess, Lydia and Kit showed up to the hostel and we played more pool, chatted and I enjoyed a taco before we left the hostel for the night.

The power went out while I was around and only stayed until it turned back on! It’s actually been a while since side the power went out.

I played pool against, Kit, Chris, and a couple other Guys before meeting up with Pauline and Lames at Echo hostel.

At Echo, they were celebrating some divers who had completed their instructor developmental course! The hostel was more packed than I had ever seen it and Immy was working like a dog.

We ended up having a very fun night of hanging out with friends new and old!

It was another lovely day off. I am missing diving, but at the same time these days off have been really nice.

Tomorrow I’ll be going on a visa run to Myanmar. This time around I’ll actually get 60 days upon entry, which is amazing, especially for instructors needing a longer stay in the country.

– Elie