This is it. I’m leaving. I’m actually going. How did that happen so quickly.

To tell the truth I didn’t expect to be going back. Mind you I didn’t expect much of what’s happened these last 12 months or so, but it’s been a funny sort of year and what I’ve planned and what’s happened hasn’t necessarily always been the same.  It’s been the sort of year where receiving yet another job rejection letter on a dreary Tuesday results, a few hours later via some hasty decisions and a few rapidly banged out emails, in a set of plane tickets for a tropical island 6000 miles away, a place on a Scuba Diving Instructor course, and the prospect of a fresh start half way across the world. I won’t say it was the most logical response to notification of continued unemployment, but it was certainly one of the most satisfying.

In a way it’s fulfilling a promise I made to myself back in 2009. After one gorgeous summer of sunshine and diving, the prospect of getting back on board the catamaran to take me back to the airport, England and university, seemed like torture. Who’d swap sunshine and scuba diving for cloudy skies and half hearted trips to the library to research events nobody has cared about for hundreds of years. I promised myself that my final year was just a minor delay in my professional beach bum diving career. That in twelve months I’d be back there, salt encrusted jetty boards beneath my feet, hopping off the ferry to start my IDC and a life in the sun.

I was in hindsight lying to myself, otherwise I doubt I’d have ever got on board the ferry. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to come back. I just wanted to do other things more; had other plans for where I wanted to go in life. But three years later, one degree, two jobs, one broken hip and six months of physio later, here I am, bags all packed and stacked precariously against my wardrobe, e-tickets still warm from the printer ready on my desk, about to stick to a promise I’d never intended to keep. I’m going back to Koh Tao after all.

I am of course very, very excited. How could you not be. Six months or more of diving and sunshine beckons, pineapple and coconut slushies at the bar, beachfront barbecues with bevies of bikini clad beauties, maybe even a job at the end of it all. I’ve said my goodbyes now; to friends, family and the rain that doesn’t seem to want to stop (as if any further encouragement was needed to pack dear old Blighty in). I fly out tomorrow, but wanted to take the opportunity to put this all in writing this first.

It was Tom’s idea really, half cajoling half an order, to do a travel blog so that people back home can see what I’m up to. To me it smacks uncomfortably of a diary, something that I’ve never been able to keep up with despite many attempts, as the half dozen empty notebooks in my desk, all with ripped out pages from aborted journals, will testify to. But maybe a blog will be different. I’m going to try and write an update at least once a week, or whenever something interesting comes up. Maybe writing for other people will encourage me to put pen to paper, or at least fingers to keyboard. Here’s hoping anyway.

And so with the introduction done, let’s go to Thailand guys!

Jon