After the seriously stomach-crushing day that I had at Sail Rock, I wasn’t exactly dying to get back onto a dive boat. But the sudden realization that I would soon be off the island and not know when my next dive was coming prompted me to give a resounding “Yes!” when another all-girls dive trip was…

Since I left home last June on my Great Escape, I’ve been doing (very delayed!) monthly roundups. As this blog is not just a resource for other travelers but also my own personal travel diary, I like to take some time to reflect on not just what I did, but how I felt. I also like…

My blog is usually about two months behind “real time” for a myriad of reasons, most to do with scheduling and turn-around time. Occasionally, though, things are just too painful to write about straight away. The incident which is the subject of this post happened back in January when my family and friends were visiting Mark…

Psst. Did you read yesterday’s post about my diving dilemmas? If not, check it out. I need your help! After a month stateside, I was itching to get back to Thailand and into the water. Luckily on my first day back on Koh Tao my friends had arranged a massive group trip to Sail Rock, one…

The visa run is an inevitable fold in the fabric of life on Koh Tao. Most expats on the island are not on work permits but on “multiple entry” tourist visas. That means that every 60 days, or every 90 days if they have extended their visas in Koh Samui, tourists must leave Thailand and renter…

While I’ve written dozens of posts about life in Koh Tao… diving, learning to drive, finding an apartment, I never feel like I wrote a post that summed up what it feels like to live there. In Koh Tao I often experienced moments that stayed with me, rolling around in my consciousness a day or a…