Saturday 23rd December
I slept really well in my tipi last night and despite my reluctance at leaving my island paradise I wanted to be in Kratie for Christmas so I have to leave today. So I packed everything back onto my bike and headed down the track towards the ferry slip. I hadn’t had any breakfast and I wanted to say goodbye to everyone I had met at Jungle Bar so I stopped there on the way.
As I was eating breakfast my new friends turned up and each took it in turns to try and convince me to stay for Christmas. They were very convincing. I had just been very ill and I was still feeling weak. I was in an amazing place and had met loads of great people. And I didn’t know anything about Kratie, except that it had the best opportunities to see the Irrawaddy River Dolphin. It felt wrong to stay in one place for so many days but I was pretty sure that I still had plenty of time to make it to Bangkok for my flight home. So after breakfast I booked a room at the Jungle Bar where I spent most of the day doing absolutely nothing.
The four of us later explored the island by foot, trying to find the best spot to watch the sunset. We bumped into a lot of other travellers and it appeared that almost all of them (except me) had crossed paths at some point before or had mutual traveller friends. It was good to get an insight into their way of travelling, it felt a lot more social than what I was doing. I also realised that they were missing out on a lot of the culture and the more off the beaten path places that I had seen because I wasn’t constrained by the tourist busses.
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