23rd September at 7am I had landed safely in Bangkok. I was so excited to not have to constantly be on edge and aware of my surroundings like I was in India. To keep myself entertained with my 30-minute walk to the hostel (because of my cheap skate ass), I decided to try and learn some Thai! I said the saying good morning about 5,000 times, before opening my mouth to a local. The last thing I wanted to do was offend a thai woman at 7am in the morning! But still my brain couldn’t remember the saying!

I eventually landed safely at my hostel bed station where I sat down with a cigarette. Whilst in my own world I had three boys knock my shoulder to ask for a light. I found this is how I have met most people. Smoking may be a bad habit, but it definitely ensures you make friends. After a solid conversation and discovering one of the boys has a huge farm in the Netherlands, we decided to venture out discovering the day markets in Bangkok. We spent the day eating, bartering and laughing continuously. This then led us to the first night in the big city.

Now these three boys weren’t like me they hadn’t got a single budget in mind, their main goal was just to have fun. They were on holiday for 3 weeks. So, as you can imagine we ended up in the best club on Koh San Road, with bottles of vodka and beer towers surrounding us. We danced the night away in luxury.

Finally, they got bored of the stuck-up atmosphere and decided they really wanted to discover the true Koh San Road. We took our last full bottle of vodka and fled into a rundown club bumping into all sorts of fellow travellers. Now this is the atmosphere I enjoy. The dazzling lights were flashing in your eyes blinding you from the awful place you were emerged in and the cheesy music blasting in your ears not allowing you to think straight. I then decided to take it upon myself to share the vodka around the club. I screamed in people's faces just to get their mouths open wide for the absolute vodka I had in my hands. 2 minutes later and it was all gone! Whilst participation in this charity work, I met a guy…

I saw him from a mile off with his beaming white smile and dark intense eyes looking into my soul. We sparked up a conversation while I continued to stare directly at his perfectly positioned features. Whilst enduring in this conversation, he let me know that he had decided to go to a little island called koh Tao tomorrow evening. He asked me for my future plans immediately after and myself knowing full well I had a flight booked somewhere else, I told him with a straight face I didn’t have any. So, as you guessed it, I followed him. Little did I know this little Thai island would make a huge impact on my travels.

That next day we booked our overnight train and ferry and got ready to endure the next 24 hours together.

We left the hostel in plenty of time for our night train and decided the best thing to do was grab a tuktuk in Bangkok. Wow did we mess up. This Thai grandad did not speak a slip of English and would not let me direct him to where we wanted to go. Long story short he took us to the wrong place. I started to freak out and panic about how we weren’t going to make it. I was certain the travel gods had doomed us with an awful future. I had already made the one big main mistake when travelling, changing your plans for a boy.

After finding someone that could translate and have a conversation with the old man, we finally reached our train station. We boarded the train eager to find some little beds in a cabin patiently waiting for our heavy heads. But no. We were greeted with diner booths for a train journey that lasted for 12 hours. But it was beyond my awareness this would be a memory that I will treasure forever. We got comfortable on the train and discovered who our neighbours would be for the next 12 hours. We were sat next to a gentleman from Egypt, a sweet youthful couple from Germany and a older strong minded thai gentleman. He was the first reminder in Thailand for me on why I decided to travel. This older gentleman had the most incredible story, but then again doesn’t everyone have one. Since travelling I had discovered how interesting strangers are and how much you can learn from one another. This gentleman had a very noticeable disability where he was missing half his jaw. He had the face of an 80-year-old man but the body of a 25-year-old body builder. He was strong minded and bodied and knew exactly what he wanted in life. He proceeded to tell us how he had a cancerous life-threatening tumour and yet here he still is living and travelling and not stuck anywhere, he’s independent. This is what I crave in life freedom, fun and risk. My life isn’t worth living if I can’t do what I want when I want, I want the independence and I despise how money has to be tied in with this. I’m on the other side of the world yet im still not free. When will I feel free like this courageous man?

Whilst enjoying this train journey we all grew close together in the intense environment of the train cabins. I was able to learn new card games I became obsessed with as we watched the stars shine down from the sky whilst we hung like monkeys out the side of the train screaming our joy of the moment. We laughed, we ate, we slept(barely), but mainly we were just enjoying our current moment and I knew I would treasure it. We saw the sun rise above the fields we flew by and finally reached Chumpong. This is where we waited to get the ferry to the little island, Koh Tao. Oh, how my life changed from this moment on.