A Fond Farewell

It was my final day on the island and I was pretty much at the middle of my trip overall. This was depressing in itself, everything from here almost felt like the beginnings of going home. I kept reprimanding myself internally for this continual display of negative thinking. There was so much more to come, so many more things to see and I would just tarnish that enjoyment if I carried on like this. I must snap out of it. Unfortunately an error on my part only made it worse.

I had planned to get the night boat over to Suratthanni arriving at 5.30am and then get a taxi to the train station to get an 8am train down to Sungai Kolok on the east coast of Thailand and get across the border into Malaysia. The Thais and the Malaysians had been fighting a lot of late and my 2007 version of the Lonely Planet advised me that due to the ‘civil unrest’ it would be very unwise to cross the border here. My thinking was that surely since 2007 people would have calmed down a bit and it would be fine. But when I asked at a travel agency they advised me to use the West coast entry point instead although she couldn’t really tell me why I couldn’t go the other way. I wasn’t put off though. I had a train timetable which said I could get a train and get a train I would. However – Thai train timetables are notoriously difficult to read……and I read it wrong. So I had no idea if I would find a train south and/or make my connection in Malaysia.

But I had booked the night boat for a 9pm departure so I’d have to figure everything else out from there. So instead of beating myself up about it all day and miss out on my remaining hours on this beautiful isle I decided to enjoy it. I spent the morning on the beach with Maira, did some last minute shopping and waved her off to her ay boat back to Chumpon. I then went for a massage which was as blissful as ever, ate some good food, read my book and finally started to make my way towards the port.

My final view of Koh Tao

It was strange balancing on the edge of the pick-up truck taxi on my own with no Buddies, dive related or otherwise, anywhere to be seen. The next 2 days of pure moving seemed like a very lonely prospect indeed as the taxi ploughed on into the darkness with this lone passenger perched in its boot.