It's easy to see how you could get sucked in to staying here for months. Just stay for a few more weeks until the weather gets better to do some good dives. Then stay another week to do the Rescue Diver course, and dive some more. Then you might as well go for Divemaster. Then get a job, but the money's in teaching, so you have to go for Instructor. Now your 'e set to stay in paradise indefinitely. This is exactly what happened to Henrick. After a month of sitting around reading a smoking weed, he figured he should try diving, which he had never done before. Eight months later he was an instructor, and now he's been here 14 months. If you think that's good, Nils has been here ten years, speaks fluent Thai, and has a Thai wife with a baby on the way. I better get out of here before I become a resident. But the weather gets better in a couple weeks...

That's the great thing about traveling with no onward ticked. I can stay here as long as I like, then go where I want. I've talked to a bunch of travelers who have recommended Koh Samui, Phuket, and some other islands I can't remember. The last one I talked to, a Swiss woman drawn to the mystical wonders of my banana pancake, said she absolutely loved Koh Pha Ngan. That's the island immediately to the south, and even though it's bigger and more developed it has what Koh Tau lacks: beaches. It's about time for some R&R.

Oh, and what did I do today? Nothin'. But it would be nice to do nothin' on a nice beach.