It’s officially been gray skies and periodically rainy on Koh Tao for over a week now. Yesterday, we both found ourselves with a day off and decided to make an exploration out of it. I get two days off a week, and on my days off Mike and I usually will go out for breakfast together at one of our favorite cafes, Zest. 



Yesterday morning over eggs and fresh fruit, I shared with Mike some research I’ve done on our potential next home and a few details on his birthday trip I’m planning out. For Mike’s birthday last year, I took him to a New York Giants game, so this year as I’m obviously trying to step up my game, I decided he deserves a trip to China. (Next year, he’s getting a handcrafted gift) After we finished up our iced green teas, which surprisingly tasted no where as good as my usual Starbucks fix, we head back to the bungalow.

We were planning to go spend the day at Freedom Beach than hike up this amazing view point that we’ve heard about. But as we got back home, the rain started rolling in, and we opted on a movie while the storm passes by. A few hours later, when the rain stopped and our attention was completely lost by my ridiculously bad choice of a movie, we decided to head back out and get our day started.
Mike parks his bike up at the top of the hill right before the steps to our bungalow, I park mine at the bottom where there is clear parking space. I take my keys out of my bike always. Mike never takes his keys out of his bike. If anyone reading this is on Koh Tao and needs a free bike, come find Mikes, his keys are sitting in there waiting for you to come drive off.
Mike’s other problem with leaving the keys in the bike is he doesnt turn the bike off resulting in a dead battery. Now, I wouldn’t be bashing on him if this happened once and he learned his lesson… but yesterday I believe this was the third time Mike found himself with a dead battery.
He tried to kick start it, and kept trying, and no success. So we think okay, we’ll take my bike and worry about yours later. When we go to start mine, that too is dead. (I swear its the Mafia, which by the way guys we love the sopranos)

Thank god we live on top of a mountain and the only way to town is down hill, because we both did the walk of shame with our bikes. Coasting down the hills, than getting off and rolling it up the flat surfaces, than rolling back down gaining full neutral speed. We were those American idiots, rolling with our dead motorbikes and laughing our asses off. We finally made it to Pong, the mechanic on the island that I’ve heard was the best. He’s doing a full service check on my bike, and recharged Mike’s battery. He told us to come back in 3 hours for Mike’s bike, so we took a walk. We walked down to Mae Head and across to Sairee. We went full on tourist, and went in every shop, book store, stopped at the street carts for a fresh mango shake and a nutella, banana, coconut pancake. We walked the beach and bought handcrafted necklaces from a man we watched working at his open stand. 







We stopped for lunch and played cards and hung out until it was time to walk back to pick up Mikes bike. When we finally got his bike back, it was 4:30 and we were finally ready to start our day as planned.