Goodbye Island Life….

So long story short, we have now left Koh Tao.

The place where we made our lives for the past 5 years; made a home, created life-long friendships (cheesy but true, especially when you work, drink, eat, even sometimes live aside one another!), and most importantly, started our diving careers from Open Water students, through to Master Scuba Diving Trainers.

To run through it quickly, the biggest reason we left the comfort of our island home is because we are looking for the next challenge, and in that, we decided that we needed to find something that will set us up for our future.

We love being Scuba Instructors, and we are great at it, and if you check TripAdvisor, I think a lot of our students agreed with us! But being a diving instructor is a physical job, and commission based, which means if you get injured, or have to fly home for emergencies, or even get pregnant, you cannot continue the job. Which means you do not get paid.

This is a bit of a worry, especially now that we are in our 30s. Eeek.

So, after 5 years of Tao, and being ‘locals’ we said goodbye to the diving, the friends, the staff, and the marine life, with two weeks of drinking (a lot), crying (by me mostly but a bit from Lionel), and visiting our favourite eateries by having our ‘last meals’ there.

This included meals such as the amazing kimchi ramen from Asia Mood (I had it 5 times in two weeks…), the thin-crispy pizzas from Sairee Cottage, the almost Melbourne quality coffees from SouthBeach, the f-ing exquisite, godsend, homemade, gnocchetti and buttery raviolis from Thaita and of course, our standard Som-Tum (papaya salad), Moo-Tod (crispy BBQ pork strips), and Nam-Tok (basil, chilli, sliced pork salad), from the local hole in a wall, that we so lovingly named, ‘that som-tum place.’

Oooof, who knew one of the biggest things I’d miss from living on an island would be the quality food choices!

Anyway, so we are currently in Bangkok, about to embark on our next adventure. For now our plan is to travel Europe to see our friends and families, with a trip starting in Stockholm (to see some of our best friends from Koh Tao! Ha! You can’t even escape Koh Tao even when you leave!), to Amsterdam, London, and of course, Switzerland, and who knows, where else.

Then, the plan is no plan, which is always a good plan…

Ideally, we want to return back into the diving world, but with a step up into management, or taking on more responsibilities in a diving career. But who knows. Like the flow of the ocean, you never know where the current will take you!

Scary, but exciting. It also means Two Green Backpacks will be back in action now that we’re back living out of a backpack!