Day 246! 6 more days till I fly out from this amazing country… it’s crazy how long I’ve been living on a jungle island and even crazier that I’m about to embark on another insane adventure! I have no clue what to expect…

I decided to take the day off from diving today. It had been a long week and a half of diving every day and I wanted to take a breather.

I slept in as late as my body would let me… it tried to wake up for the morning boat… and when I finally woke up, I decided to finish up my blog post from the day prior. When I start falling asleep while writing a post, I know it’s time to put it down and leave it for the morning.

I got out of bed and decided to take a walk down the street for breakfast. It was bright out, but cloudy, and was slightly drizzling all morning. Even so, it was a very pleasant walk.

I went to a restaurant I hadn’t been to in a while, probably since I stopped volunteering, called Pork Leg. I got my favorite meal there, a Thai tea smoothie and Thai cashew chicken. Starting the day with a meal by myself was really refreshing and gave me time to sit and think about life. Which I have to say, has been really great lately.

While I was eating, a very loud plane (I’m assuming a bomber jet) came flying overhead. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it made me jump! In the US it’s quite a common thing to hear, but I’ve never heard it in Koh Tao or anywhere in SE Asia I’ve been.

After breakfast, I went to Taco Shack where I played more pool. I can’t get enough of it I guess. I started off playing regular 1v1 games against the hostel staff. Then it turned into playing killer pool… for Baht. They love playing for 10 Baht and usually, I lose. And I did lose one of the games today. But FINALLY, after many games over the past few weeks of losing… I finally won a game! And then proceeded to lose the next.

Lunch time rolled around and my friend and former manager, Yi, invited me to get lunch with him and Chelsea. We went to a restaurant I had never been to before called Asia Mood.

The ride over was similar to my walk to breakfast and at first I was miffed that I had to drive in the drizzle. But then I thought, “man… how many more chances am I going to get to drive a motorbike through a warm drizzle on Koh Tao.” This put me in a much better mood and helped me enjoy getting stung by the rain drops.

I had a Japanese curry, which was very tasty. Yi and Chelsea both didn’t finish their meals, so I enjoyed the end of both of theirs as well: I’d probably never go to this restaurant again, since it’s so far in the other side of the island. But it was very tasty!

I then made my way home and played some guitar! And thennn I went back to Taco to play more pool. I’m obsessed.

As the evening quickly approached, the weather started getting much better. Tom and I decided to go play some volleyball on the beach. But when we arrived, no one was there.

We at first thought it might’ve been because of the wind, so maybe they decided not to come. But after 20 minutes of waiting the Thai guys started showing up.

After we helped them set up, it was time to play some more quads!

It was a really fun way to spend the evening and we played till well past the sun went down. So much so, it was insanely hard to see the ball on the last game we played.

After some fun exercise and competition, Tom and I went home to shower and met back up to head to Buddy Restaurant for dinner.

Chris was going on a border run tonight, so he didn’t stick around for long. But it was nice to hang out with these two for dinner.

Bee was also very happy to see me and sad to hear I was leaving soon. But she told me she expected a gift from Australia when I come back to Koh Tao.

I finished off the night hanging out at Taco Shack. There was a lot of killer pool being played, but I was pooled out. So I sat and chatted with my new friend Helen, from Germany, who I met yesterday.

Then it was time for bed! I decided to sign up on the pro list tomorrow and spend 300 Baht on the two dives. I’ll also have a refresher in the afternoon, so I’ll add a nice amount of dives to my log. I’m looking forward to double boating!