Day 1: The Unforeseeable Journey to Koh Kood

4:30AM 

I woke up still half drunk from yet another farewell party of a colleague. Packed two hours before and was now calling an uber to go see my dearest friend at the bus station. Arrived a minute later than the appointed time and saw my friend waiting on one of the gray, not-so-comfortable looking bench. I thought to myself it’s going to be one efficient trip because this girl was actually on time, got us two tickets to Trat half an hour before the bus actually moves.

Ticket Counter in Ekkamai

6:00AM 

It was my first time on a bus travelling in Thailand. A two-way ticket cost us 450 baht each (what do you know, opportunity cost of a cocktail at Rabbit Hole!). The unfortunate part was that it was a long weekend and most of the seats were booked so my friend and I had to sit separate from each other, which was supposed to be okay, considering that we’re both very independent women. Only that it’s not. Turns out the guy who sat next to me was the type of man that you hold on to your purse tighter when he walks pass you. Hung-over and tired, I decided to not think about it too much and just tried to go to sleep.

7:00AM

I don’t know if you already know, but I have excellent olfactory bulbs. Meaning that I can smell things much better than an average person can. It’s a gift but at the same time, a curse. Mr. next-to-me had this morning breath that matched the level of Chairman Mao’s Dragon breath. He was breathing through his mount and literally leaning against me every 20 seconds. What did I do about it? I ‘accidentally’ elbowed the shit out of him when I was changing my sitting positions, also doing so to let him know not to fuck with me. The whole thing didn’t really work.

Chairman Mao Breathing

So I tried another method, which was to lean my seat back to avoid having to breathe in the same air as him (smart, eh?). The lever was rusty things moved a bit- I pushed the seat back with my whole body weight and tada it was working. I knew that my dear friend was sitting right behind me. I assumed that she would be sleeping by now, and that also she had short legs. She shouldn’t have been affected by me pushing my seat back- I didn’t even bother to look back after making that huge seat thud that made everybody turn around. My friend later told me that her knee bruised from that and that I was a heartless fat bitch.

12:15PM

We’ve finally arrived in Trat! We were trying to figure out how to get from town centre to the pier at this point. We were instructed to wait at the bus stop and someone will pick us up, so we waited.

By this time we were famished. We saw a motor noodle shop that we wanted to get some noodles from. We dropped our bags and at the bus stop and I walked back to the noodler. Only to find out that he magically disappeared in 30 seconds. I tried to look for him in other Sois. But he was just gone. I don’t know if we were hallucinating from the heat and hunger at or what but he was just gone into thin air. 

1:00PM

The two-row actually arrived and picked us up. Along with a couple of farangs and cornel Sanders. The cornel had a white beard, glasses, and was reading the Bangkok Post. He had one backpack and spoke zero Thai. We overheard that he was going to be staying at same resort as we were. So we followed him to the pier and to the boat and to the island. Surprisingly, without any of our help, he managed to get himself to his destination with flying colours. He disappeared into the rain when we got to Koh Kood though- never saw him again either, not even at the resort. Maybe we were hallucinating yet again…

Fellow Hallucinator on a Two-Row

5:00PM 

Fast forward two boat stops and two-row rides later. We finally got to our resort after storm passed (both literally and figuratively). We met a French receptionist and a French owner- Stephane. (Great, more French people to interact with!). It was okay because they were super friendly, positive and spoke Thai so fluently. Completely changed our perception on French people. French islanders are so nice! Or maybe they just weren’t from Paris. Who knows.

5:30 PM

The sun was about to set and we wanted to snorkel before the day ended to compensate for sitting in transport all day. So we tried…

Instead of entering the ocean from the sandy beach, we decided to go through the rocks. (Apparently coral reefs were supposed to be near the area) Don’t know what the fuck we were thinking. We stepped into the water...

Then we screamed. We screamed because there were things that poked our feet. We couldn’t step on to the bottom because it was pointy and you’re not supposed to step over corals. We couldn't see because it was dark. We wanted to swim further away but the water just wouldn’t get any deeper as we step further into the ocean. Our toes and feet were bleeding. It was a nightmare.

When we finally managed to find a sandy spot. We decided to look down with our snorkelers to see what’s beneath ourselves and figure out what the fuck we stepped on. We ducked down and half a second later looking at each other and laughed the shit out of ourselves. We couldn’t see shit. It was all opaque brown. Then we had this epiphany that because it had just rain, the water wasn’t clear.

Fool's Guide to Enter Water

The next morning when things cleared- the things we thought were corals was in fact just rocks. FML.

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Many more stories to come. Stay tuned!