New Year's Eve on Ko Samet

2015 came to an end more quickly than expected. I'm finding that the feeling of constant summer is really throwing off my ability to properly acknowledge time passing. There have been numerous occasions where I think it's July or August and get genuinely startled when I check my phone and see it's December (and now January). Living in a tropical climate is something completely new to me, and this was my first Christmas celebrated in the warmth. I've never been much of a beach person and I have a tendency to avoid direct sunlight, so I often questioned why I was voluntarily moving to Thailand, but it only took a few weeks for the charm of Thailand to hit me and suddenly I've become a tanner version of myself who craves the beach. So I was more than ready for New Year's break to come so I could head south back to Ko Samet Island!

We got five glorious days of vacation from school and we used our time well, heading for the island right after school ended for the week. There were a total of 10 of us staying in a house which we found on AirBnb (sign up here for $20 credit towards your first stay!) We were a crazy mix of Americans, English, Irish and Thai, and we meshed perfectly together! Most of us are English teachers through the same company of AYC and we picked up a few strays along the way to complete our happy Thai family.

Went on a bit of a hike to visit
a more secluded beach for the day

Our days consisted of no fixed schedule and no place to be except the beach, which is exactly how vacation should be. Most of my travels have taken me to a specific location or city with a huge list of things to see/do, so it's been really fun spending my vacations on islands where the only things on my list are get a nice tan and spend some time in the water.
Ko Samet island is rowdier than the smaller islands nearby and there's always a place to be each night. I had high hopes for New Year's Eve, planning to watch the fire show at Ploy Bar and then dance the night away under neon lights at Naga Bar. However, tragedy struck around 8pm on New Year's Eve and suddenly I was in the throes of my first case of food poisoning. Nausea hit hard which resulted in my New Year's date being the toilet. Definitely the most anticlimactic midnight countdown I've had in a long time. In terms of food poisoning I seemed to be on the lucky side, because I was fully recovered within 24 hours, leaving me a few days to still enjoy my vacation. I'm not 100% positive what got me sick, but about three hours before symptoms started I ate a full salad that we presume was washed with tap water as opposed to filtered water. This is what I get for trying to eat healthy!? Definitely learned my lesson on that one and will always be asking how the salad is washed from now on!

Drinking out of a coconut on the beach, life is good! 

One cool thing that I'm realizing is that Thailand really knows what it's doing when it comes to over the counter medicine. Even on the island they have a clinic ready to accept any ill or injured patients, but your first stop should always be 7-Eleven. They have an entire aisle devoted to various medicines, vitamins and supplements. I was able to buy a pill to stop nausea and found a few powders targeted towards people who had been throwing up too much which was full of nutrients to replenish everything lost through dehydration. On top of that, Emily got hit with a fever (it was a weird weekend of maladies) and was able to find a huge assortment of different medicines which worked wonders. And the best part is that everything is so cheap! We spent a grand total of $5 for a nice supply of meds and felt so much better afterwards.

Besides that little setback the time on the island was lovely as always. It was great to see some of our friends who we haven't seen since orientation in October. Although we're all teachers here we're each having such different experiences at our individual schools and it was really awesome to compare stories and see how much everyone is learning. And of course one of my personal favorite parts of vacation: warm showers! I'm slowly getting used to the chilly showers my apartment offers (that's a lie, I'm a wimp when it comes to cold water) but the warm showers are always something to look forward to when staying somewhere else for the weekend.
We spent our last evening on the island splurging on western food and playing games at our apartment and then went our separate ways back to our cities throughout Thailand to start week 11 of teaching!

Wave riding on a windy day

One thing that I might have failed to mention previously: Thailand is currently in the year 2559. They run on the Buddhist calendar so their year 0 started when Buddha reached Parinirvana. However, the thing that confuses me is that technically Thai New Year is in April and the one we just celebrated is known as "international new year" to them, yet their year still changed. I was fully expecting it to stay 2558 in Thailand and was baffled when it switched to 2559. There's already talk of the Thai New Year in April and there's always a big hoopla for it, so I'm intrigued to see if it'll be treated the same as New Year's Eve, or if perhaps it's just a weekend of celebration.  Lucky Thais though, they get two new year celebrations!

Until next time, Ko Samet :)