The Last Half of the Holiday

I discovered some things about my tolerance for traveling. First of all, I can't keep up the traditional backpacker pace for long--you know, staying somewhere for one or two nights, seeing all the sights, and then heading off to the next place for one or two nights. It just gets exhausting. I ended up enjoying places more when I stayed for a week--a day to recover from traveling (especially if I used a night bus), a few days of sightseeing, and a few days of chill time before dealing with more public transportation.

Also, being sick while you travel is Not Fun, capital N, capital F. At the end of my first week on Koh Tao, I got food poisoning for the first time ever. I'd take the stomach flu over food poisoning any day--it's gentler. My stomach was determined to turn itself inside out from that pad thai. I had sore abs for a few days just from one night of throwing up--apparently it took more muscles than I possess.

On a brighter note, I spent a second week on Koh Tao learning to scuba dive. I got my PADI certification and even did a couple of deep dives. Ok, so we didn't see anything that experienced divers label as exciting, like turtles or whalesharks, but it was a blast anyway. I've never really understood the drive some people have to do things like skydiving or hang gliding, and I don't really get the "high" (ha, ha) that my brother does from mountain climbing, but I can understand why people might get addicted to scuba diving. I did scrape my foot on some coral while doing the swim test for the certification, and I can say that diving in salt water with a scrape is not fun (oh, the stinging!), but the rest was worth it. I would list all the different kinds of fish we saw, but it's pretty long, and I can't imagine that reading a list of the different kinds is anything close to as much fun as seeing them.

After two weeks with less than stellar internet on Koh Tao, I spent a day just hanging out in a hotel in Chumphon (the ferry point for Koh Tao) just doing internet things and catching up on the rest of the world. Then I headed to Phuket, which was a little bit the way I picture New Orleans would be. If New Orleans were Thai and had a Chinese quarter instead of a French quarter, that is. But I'm pretty sure I spotted the word Bayou in one of the shop names . . . My dad arranged for me to stay at a somewhat nicer hotel than the standard backpackers' destination for the last few days of my break (thanks, Dad!), and I spent those few days reading and enjoying the seaside at a luxurious snail's pace.

I feel like I've gained a lot of independence after spending so much time finding my own way to places. I've also perfected the art of long-term light packing, and I can load a backpack in ten minutes flat (and that's with everything scattered around the room beforehand, thank you very much). It's hard to go back to actual responsibilities after two months away, but I'd also started craving a bit more routine again. I know some of the places I've seen are places I will probably never be able to see again, because I won't have much free time to travel between now and the end of the semester when I return home. But it's been the experience of a lifetime.