Location: Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand

So obviously today didn’t start until the afternoon, given that we were all a little worse for wear. I was among the first few to wake up, so I trudged over to Tom’s next door to have some breakfast and do a little writing with an iced coffee. Over the course of a couple of hours everyone crawled out of their respective nooks, still pretty exhausted.

A few people were doing better than others but we sat around chatting and laughing about the evening, recounting stories that some had forgotten. A few personal favourites:

• Orlagh knighting everyone with random abandoned shoes that somehow showed up near us. We all knelt in the sand for this. Completely unclear why but no questions were asked by anyone even the second and third time.
• Sean putting his socks on while almost standing in the ocean. Why? Who knows. His shoes almost got swept away by a wave in the process!
• Annie and I ordering three full plates of chicken nuggets at once and devouring them all except the one I very sadly dropped in the sand. RIP.
• Annie and I creating a limbo pole just with our arms that pulled in many strangers.
• Orlagh ‘stealing’ Sean’s wallet without him noticing but ‘it’s our money’ so it’s fine.

As we were laughing about the night, Moss showed up and just goes ‘what are we doing today?!’ and for a heartbeat I just stared at him like…

How do you.

Have energy.

For this.

Wearily eight of us piled into the back of the truck and he dropped us at rooftop bar Apichada, where we could all lay down (thank god) on the floor cushions and order food. Eventually the sun went down over the mountains and I couldn’t have been more pleased that really all we we did with the day was lay around and chat. None of us wanted to go out tonight obviously, but we also didn’t want the night to end because we all part ways tomorrow.

Orlagh, Sean, Annie, Jacob, Moss and I decided to go to the Muay Thai fights given that Annie hadn’t seen them yet! The Thong Sala stadium was nothing like the big professional one in Bangkok, nor the outdoor arena in a market in Chiang Mai. The whole building was basically a bunch of metal flashing practically stapled together, housing extremely steep bleachers surrounding the fighting ring. The crowd was the rowdiest I’d seen yet with people betting and screaming in every corner. Nobody got knocked out but there was a lot of instant bruises and big moments that we all cheered, cringed and yelled for.

I spent all the energy I had attending that fight and crawled into bed immediately upon returning back to Domingo. I’m ignoring the fact that I have goodbyes to say tomorrow because I just love the friends I’ve made here. It’s a trade off I suppose – you make such great friends when you travel but the constant goodbyes are so hard.

Ignoring it! Ignoring it.

Sav