I’d obviously slept in late because as I walked into the shared hostel bathroom with a mouthful of toothpaste, I found all the sinks to be occupied. I stood there doing some extra swishing, thinking it couldn’t be too bad to give my teeth some extended exposure to the fluoride intentionally absent from my Oregon drinking water. A space cleared, and I was able to expectorate before grabbing a razor to smooth my scruffy face.

When I returned to the room, there was a quick shuffling as several young women rushed to cover their heads or closed the curtain to their bed spaces. You see, I’d come back to my hostel room yesterday to find it filled with several young women in headscarves. I thought it odd that these Muslim women would book a co-ed dorm in a hostel that also has mixed gender bathrooms, but there I was, sharing a room filled with virgins without even having martyred myself. Praise be to Allah!

Anyway, the morning before I’d awoken around 5 am. The nice thing about being on holiday is that it doesn’t matter if you don’t sleep well. You can always catch a nap sometime later in the day. I was out of the hostel before 7 so I didn’t know that daily yoga classes were conducted in the common room at 8 am. It created an obstacle course this morning as I had to weave through the practitioners in order to get to my coffee. I felt no guilt for my intrusion as I was neither the one who chose this space to practice yoga, nor the one who placed the coffee pot at the opposite end of the room.

Having procured my liquid stimulant, I headed out on the first of my days’ errands: to purchase a ferry ticket for my departure the next day. I truly loved this island and considered spending the entirety of my trip in southern Thailand here. Even now I wonder if I should have, but having circumnavigated the entire island yesterday before noon, I figured it wouldn’t be long before I’d become restless.

I checked with several ticket vendors the day before and decided to head down to the ferry dock where I figured I could get a cheaper price. The woman at the dock quoted me 1200 Thai baht, and right then I couldn’t remember whether the guy in town had quoted me 1050 or 1500. I figured the price at the terminal must be the cheapest, but as I walked away with my ticket in hand, I realized that no one had quoted me more than 1300, so the other guys’ quote must have been 1050. I had just overpaid by 150 baht!

You wouldn’t believe the amount of time I spent cursing myself for the mistake, having only wasted the equivalent of five US dollars, but before you go calling me a cheapskate, you have to understand that 150 baht can buy you as many as 3 meals in Thailand. That was a big oversight. I consoled myself with the fact that I will have completely forgotten about this one year from now, and I continued across the island to have breakfast but not before picking up sack lunch for the afternoon: 40 baht.

My breakfast spot was a departure from the usual rice or noodle dishes I’d been eating in accordance with local tradition, but I’d seen the sign for banana pancakes yesterday afternoon and decided to indulge myself today! The place was a covered wooden deck with tables and chairs facing the Andaman sea. It was a warm morning, but there was a light breeze blowing across the beach.

In addition to my pancakes, I further splurged by ordering a cappuccino. I didn’t feel too bad about my indulgence as I had planned to be there writing for at least an hour before my laundry would be ready. Besides writing, I’d committed myself to learning a few useful Thai expressions. You’d be surprised how happy it makes people if you take the effort to learn even just one word of their language, especially a simple pleasantry.

The usual expressions I attempt to learn in a foreign language are: hello, goodbye, please, thank you, sorry, and excuse me. I thought I’d already known the expression for “thank you” but learned I was slightly mistaken. I’d simply copied the expression I heard so often said to me. As it turns out, there’s a masculine and a feminine version, and for the past two years, I’d been using only the feminine version whether addressing men or women. It occurred to me that perhaps this could be the true reason for the mirthful smiles I’d been receiving and not the fact that I’d learned some Thai. I committed the new phrase to memory, and used it appropriately the rest of the day: Kop kuhn krap, to be used when thanking men and Kop kuhn ka when thanking women.

After my foreign language study, I moved onto writing until it was time to pick up my laundry. I showed up about an hour early, but I figured there was a good chance they’d have it done since I’d dropped it off early the day before. They told me that because of the rain, it wasn’t completely dry, and they took me to the back clothes line to feel for myself. I communicated it was good enough for me as I wanted to go to the beach before the hottest part of the day. They folded it nicely into my plastic trash bag, and I stopped by my dorm to drop it off before continuing on to my next errand.

I’ve been blogging about my travels for years, but I realize there are some things that are better suited to narrative video. The night before I’d read a “best practices” web site for vlogging and decided I would start with a short and easy guide to a secret beach I’d found the day before.

I hiked about 40 minutes across the island to a place I envisioned as a good start for the video. It was where the paved road ended and became a dirt path. On my way, I ran through the narration in my head so I’d be prepared when the video started rolling. What I hadn’t read about in the best practices, or realized how difficult it would be, was to give continuous narrative.

Upon reviewing my first take, I was disgusted by the number of “ums” that I uttered. I quickly rehearsed my monologue and tried again. Still, there were a few “ums”, and it took a surprising number of takes before I got it cleaned up. I was rapidly losing interest in vlogging as I could see that between the scripting and the editing, this was going to be a laborious process, even for a short video.

I followed through though, doing several takes at relevant spots along my hike, figuring I would learn how to splice them together later. At one point I stopped for a swim and then continued shooting but realized I’d taken off my hat. Continuity was something I knew to be important in videography, so I replaced my hat and tried again.

When I’d filmed all the pieces I thought I’d need, I headed back to a town for an iced green tea. It was something I’d discovered by accident the day I first arrived there. The health effects of the green tea are probably negated by the condensed milk and sugar, but it’s the kind of refreshing beverage that tastes just right when you’ve been walking under oppressive heat for hours.

I decided to take one last dip in the water before calling it a day and walked a couple minutes down to the beach. I’d seen signs warning of fines for stepping on the reef so I suspected there’d be some rewarding snorkeling. How right I was!

I saw an assortment of sea cucumbers, sea stars with spiny extended legs, clams of a variety of colors, and of course lots of tropical fish. Something else colorful caught my eye, and I swam closer to see a 50 Baht thai banknote drifting on the seabottom, just outside a little opening in a rock.

My first inclination, of course, was to reach down and grab it, but the way it drifted teasingly in and out of the hole made me reconsider. I envisioned an eel or some venomous sea creature waiting just inside the hole, ready to attack my fingers as they grasped the bill.

I studied it for about a minute before making my quick strike, the way a fish breaches the surface for just a moment before taking its food back into the safety of the water. My hand came away unscathed, and I headed back to the shore 50 baht closer to making up for the morning ferry overpayment.

I rinsed off the salt water at the hostel, got dressed for the evening, and headed out to a little Thai place I’d seen on a dead end street the first day of my visit. It was much less crowded, and I sat down to have some Pad Thai and a Thai iced tea, something I’d held off from ordering the couple days, lest I appear too much an unadventurous foreign diner.

They had neither of those things. Perhaps I’d found a place that was so authentically Thai, it didn’t serve westernized Thai food, but either way, my comforts had to wait for another day. I tried a stir fry with rice, which indeed seems to be what most locals eat three times a day. It was fine, and the cheap bill certainly reflected an authentic Thai eatery.

Feeling somewhat cheated on my desired dinner experience, I decided to reward myself with a nice dessert before heading home to bed. I’d seen a guy making Thai pancakes earlier in the evening, but apparently he’d sold out because he was gone when I passed the place he’d been selling them earlier.

I saw a woman with an ice cream cone and asked her where she got it. I headed up the hill, and there on the corner was a busy little ice cream stand. The serving girl was particularly friendly and spoke good english so I decided to sit down on the little plastic chair in front of the stand to savor my single scoop of coconut ice cream in a cone.

When I was finished, I turned to her and said, “kop kuhn ka”. She giggled and began to instruct me, “That’s not correct. That is the way a woman should say it. You do not address men and women differently. In Thai, you use the masculine if you are a male speaker and the feminine if you are a female speaker.” So now I know, for the past two years, I’ve been declaring myself a Thai ladyboy. Kop kuhn krap.