Day 206! Today’s the day! Time to step foot (literally) for the second time into Myanmar. I wish my stay could be for longer, but until their civil war is over, I’m not sure when that will be. For now, I’ll just have to settle for seeing its beauty from a far on this sketchy adventure! At least this time I was prepared for how the visa run works.

It was an insanely rocky ride to Chumphon. while I was sleeping I was being rocked around by the boat… and the couple of times I got up in the middle of the night made for an interesting groggy journey to the bathroom.

But despite that, I did sleep fairly well in the giant boat dorm.

The boat docked around 4:45am. When I got off I found the same man who met me last time for the visa run. This time I didn’t have any friends along for the adventure, but at least I knew the process this time around.

I hopped into the van and met a few other divers who were also going on the adventure to Myanmar today.

We took off on our two hour journey to the town of Ranong. As I said 2 months ago, this ride rivals the winding road of Chiang Mai to Pai. But I slept for the entire ride.

We arrived at the same 7-Eleven gas station we did last time. So I got myself a quick breakfast of a cheese toasty and a sushi roll. It’s my first cheese toasty in ages, so it was a nice treat. Also the prices were even cheaper than the island, which was a nice perk too.

We had to wait around 30 minutes for the immigration office to open. But once it did, at 8am, we were the first in the line, got our exit stamp, filled out a small land crossing form, and then boarded our long tail boat.

It was a choppy day on this offshoot of the Andaman sea. On our way to Myanmar we had two stops, again this time, the boat driver held on to our passports and ran into each stop.

The first stop was at the Packnam Checkpoint. The second one was at a little island checkpoint. But after the second one we made our way to the border of Myanmar.

As we approached the border, a storm was starting to roll in and it started to rain. But this created a beautiful rainbow over one of Myanmar’s islands… but on the opposite side, was a dark ominous storm.

We docked at the border and stepped into Myanmar. This was, of course, only for a very short amount of time. We literally walked to the immigration office, got our entry stamp, received our exit stamp, and took the long tail back to Thailand.

The storm had already passed, but the sea was still fairly choppy, which made for a bumpy boat ride. But we made it back safe and sound.

We then got our entry stamp into Thailand, this time for 60 days! I won’t be able to use it all, but it’s really exciting that the visa is longer now for most of the world coming to Thailand.

We then piled back in to the van to make our 2 hour ride back to the pier.

I snagged a couple delicious muffins for the rainy ride. I was looking forward to a real meal when I got back to Koh Tao.

About 30 minutes in to the 2 hour ride, I needed the bathroom bad. But, there was no stop to be had. So the ride ended up being a mental battle but we arrived to the pier just in the nick of time. If it wasn’t for the upbeat tunes of Billy Strings, I’m not sure I would’ve made it…

With that crisis averted, I got ready for my ferry ride back to Koh Tao. We had gotten to the pier with about a 15 minute wait till boarding the ferry. While boarding, I started chatting some more with two other people on my visa run, Revi and Nikki.

Revi is an instructor for a dive center called rocktopus and Nikki is a dive master in training at good times! Nikki also is doing Muay Thai on the island and has a fight in a couple weeks. So if time allows, I’ll go cheer her on!

The ferry ride was long, full, and hot. I spent my time reading The Hobbit… which I haven’t made the time to finish.

I didn’t finish the book, but I read through a few chapters! It was nice to dive back into reading again. The ferry arrived to Koh Tao and I made my way to my motorbike.

My motorbike was totally parked in, so I had to maneuver a lot of bikes to get it out. But eventually I was on the road back to Taco Shack!

I received a nice warm welcome back from the staff and the divers that were around. And then I ate my first real meal of the day, a quesadilla!

Our new DMT, Chris, came by and we played some pool before I headed back to my room for a shower and a nap.

When I woke up, I met up with my friend Lydia and we went to a nearby convenience store to find supplies to wrap my leg up for my upcoming dives.

We successfully found what I hope will be enough to protect my tattoo for the next few days while I get back into diving. The tattoo has already started peeling, which is good to see, and it’s healing rather quickly. So I’m optimistic all will be well!

I then hung around the hostel for a bit, chatting with my diving friends. For dinner I had chicken gra pow at the hostel and while I ate, I chatted with my former manager Yi. It’s always nice having time to chat with friends and talk about life and things outside of diving.

Tomorrow I’ll be diving on the morning boat and the night boat. So I played a little bit of guitar before calling it a night on the early side!

– Elie