I had been liv­ing on Koh Samui in Thai­l­and for almost half a year and it had been excit­ing and fun. I was shar­ing a house with Laurent, a french frog­man, oppos­ite Big Buddha Pier in Ban Bang Rak and we had a ball there. Diving by day, watch­ing the sun­set by dusk and going dan­cing, meet­ing friends for din­ner or hav­ing a party or a barbe­que by night. Life was easy, chilled out and great fun. Nev­er­the­less, I felt ready to leave, go some place else, move on. Six months in one place was a long time for me then. Most of us left Samui around the same time.

About a year later said frog­man asked me to work for him at his new dive school over on Koh Lanta. I took the chance to visit some friends on Koh Tao and Samui before get­ting stuck into work. But while being on Koh Tao was fine, I couldn’t stand Samui. Everything seemed sad, miser­able and sleazy. Where before the island had been a fun place to be, now that my friends from before were miss­ing, ‘my Samui’ had lost it’s soul. At least for me. I only stayed a couple days and haven’t been back since.

Mean­while I hardly return to my favor­ite places. I like to keep the pic­ture I have of them, as they were then, in my head. Think­ing back on my travels, going back hardly ever worked out for me. The more recent bad exper­i­ence then also seemed to over­shadow a little the great time I have had the first time round and I don’t want this to hap­pen. What about you? Do you like to return to your favor­ite places?