Koh Samui — the hangover

Returning to Koh Samui was relatively uneventful. We stayed at the Samui backpackers hostel, on the northern shore of the island. After going out for our last dinner together, the guys went for a thai massage while I went back to the hostel to figure out my next steps and decide what phone I'm going to buy.

When they came back, me and Jorge played some pool (he won 2 out of 3 games) and soon was time to say goodbye. They were going to wake up at 5 a.m. to catch a flight to Bangkok. The end of an era!

When I woke up the next day Jorge and Tavares were gone. It was strange to be alone after two weeks with two of my best friends but maybe even stranger was how quickly it felt natural to be once again solo travelling.

I invited Tiphane and Sofiene for lunch and went to a shopping centre hoping to find my new phone. Tiphane joined me but Sofiene only joined us in the afternoon. He later told me that after the full moon party he had woken up by himself at 1pm in a bar, not remembering how he had gotten there, and his shoes were nowhere to be seen. When he arrived at the pier there were no more boats to take him back to Koh Samui... In desperation he decided to pay a fisherman 2k THB (~55 €) to take him across islands. Crazy!

Tiphaine very patiently kept me company while I carefully studied every single mid budget phone in every store in that shopping mall. And the worst is that I didn't make up my mind! I decided I could travel to Bangkok without a phone and buy it there where I surely would have more options.

Me, Tiphaine and Sofiene went back to the timeless hostel where they are staying. I requested a ferry plus transfer to get to the train station which I had booked an overnight train to Bangkok. To my surprise it was not possible! Even though it was only 14h and my train wouldn't leave until 21h, I had missed the last mini van to the pier and probably the last ferry.

Kids, never leave booking transfers that involve 3 different means of transportation for last minute. I learned the hard way. The train left without me that night.

The timeless hostel was fully booked, so I moved to the Blackjack hostel not far away.
With some extra time on my hands I finally managed to buy a new phone, joined the family dinner in the timeless hostel and started the process of recovering my accounts.

The upside of missing my train was that I got to see the Portugal vs Morrocco match for the world cup (spoiler: we lost.. maybe it wasn't such a great upside after all).

The following day I just hung around the timeless hostel mingling with other travelers until a car came to pick me up to start the 17 hour trip to Bangkok.Read more