Ko Tao. It’s time to go.

There’s a skinny cement path that goes all along Soiree Beach to the pier. It’s littered with stores, resorts, people, dogs, motorcycles, scooters, and motorcycles with a side attached to carry supplies. It’s very annoying to walk down.

To get to Krabi, we have to take a ferry, then a bus. The ferry leaves at 9pm and we’re to get to Krabi at 8:30am. It sounds long, but at least places should be open when we arrive.

We walk along the path to the pier, trying to find the best price from a travel agency. Our packs weigh a ton. After traipsing all the way to the pier, the best price was actually kilometers away, close to the resort we stayed at. We had stopped there, but no one was working it seemed, and thus, moved on, thinking we’d find the equivalent price along the way. Nah. So we walked all the way back, discovered someone working there, bought our vouchers, then went all the way back to the pier to wait. For hours.

We turned in the vouchers and received tickets, and then did what any North American teenager would do to kill time: we hung out in front of 7-11. Oh yeah, 7-11’s are everywhere here. They’re as popular as European tourists with no shirts.

In front of 7-11, we bump into Sabrina. This part isn’t very crucial, but it’s nice to finish off her story-line, as that rarely happens in real life. It turns out, she can’t dive due to an inner ear issue. It felt like her eardrums were going to pop, so on her third day at the diving school, after taking nine minutes to get less than a meter deep, the instructors told her she can’t do it. She was understandably heartbroken, as all that time and money had been wasted. They gave her a voucher, should she decide to return and finish the course, but that’s not likely as it’s not something she can control.

Anecdote: Her accommodations at the scuba school weren’t great. She bumped into a fellow German (surprise, surprise!) and they decided to bunk together. The other German flooded the toilet, saying “I pooed too much.” In response, all the school did was plug the hole that was leaking the water. They didn’t even mop up the mess.

In the next day or two she’s off to Ko Samui, which is the most popular island around here I’m told. That was our plan too, but we couldn’t handle any more tourists, so we skipped the islands to head straight to Krabi.

Off to Krabi!