Welp.
Yikes.
Here goes.
Tash has left.
I'm officially traveling on my own now, and I'm pretty nervous to be doing so. I know this sounds completely ridiculous, because didn't this entire journey start with me traveling alone? And while that's true, I was traveling to Cambodia to meet a bunch of people who were also traveling alone. We were all alone, so it made being alone not so lonely. The loners had each other. This time around however, I'll be hopping from hostel to hostel trying to meet people who maybe aren't alone, who maybe already have "their" people, who maybe aren't doing the same thing as me at all. Then what?
Luckily I had lots of time to mull it over. A whole day to be exact.
The van picked me up at my hostel at 8am. The driver told me we would be full ('would be' being the key words here) so I'd have to sit in the front middle seat of the van. Considering the van was competely empty at the moment, bar for one passenger in the front seat, couldn't I sit in the back until it filled up? Nope. Not an option. I had to be in my seat for the entirety of the ride. Alrighty then. In I climbed. My knees were in my armpits and I was in the middle of a pretty thick shoulder sandwich, but hey, at least I wasn't alone, right?
Thankfully as we stopped for another pickup a family with small children inquired about boarding the van. I was relieved of my duty as keeper of the middle seat and was permitted to crawl in back. Although I was still a key ingredient in the shoulder sandwich, my knees were not in my armpits and I still wasn't alone. Things were really looking up for me.
The van drove for about 2 hours before stopping for lunch. I ordered some soup-- thank god because little did I know I wouldn't be eating again for another seven hours. The van finally let us off at a bus station where we sat for about an hour before boarding a large bus. The bus took us to the ferry dock where we boarded the boat that would take us to Koh Samui. After spending forty five minutes on the boat we were able to see the island. After exiting the boat we took yet another van to get to our hostel. Over the course of my nine hours of travel, I had met some really nice people. Maybe traveling alone wasn't so lonely after all.
I finally checked in to my hostel. I was totally exhausted, and starving. I needed to eat. The girls in my room were super nice. They had already eaten, but offered for me to hang out with them later. On my way downstairs, I ran into a few guys who invited me to join them for dinner. One of the german guys offered to take me to a really good place down the road so I accepted. Minutes later, I was eating a super yummy dish, listening contentedly while my new friend told me about his travels.
Maybe I could do this whole traveling alone thing.
On our way back from dinner we stopped at the Sev to pick up some beers and headed back to a lively party in the lobby. Cards, beers and a little live music were what kept our hostel going that night. A group of us decided to head to the beach to check out the bar scene and believe it or not I actually ran into one of the guys I had spent numerous hours of travel with earlier in the day. By the end of the night I already had an invitation to go hiking for the next day.
I don't know what I was worried about. Traveling alone has actually turned out to be super fun, and not even a little bit lonely after all.
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