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Published: August 12th 2008
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The beach at Koh Tao
Stunning, but a little too shallow (and warm!) for swiming. Last time on "team shwinter does asia", we were leaving rainy Chiang Mai for the sunny islands in the south of Thailand. Our heroes were sore and tired. Three days travel to get to Koh Tao didn't necessarily help that...
First off was the 14 hour train back to Bangkok. Then, to a dingy little hotel for the night. Next morning, jump on a plane to Surat Thani. Arrive at airport throughly at a loss at how to get to the island. Pay for riduculously overpriced bus and ferry ticket, realise that the ferry can't get you to where you want to go. Stop off on another island, staying overnight then finally, catch the 1pm ferry the next day to arrive where you wanted almost three days later. Then cue the comedic dance in and out of dive shops/resorts trying to find somewhere reputable that gave us a good deal. Finally, we found somewhere and went to collapse exhausted from the walking (by this stage, our bags are fair laden with cut price goods 😊 )into a cosy little bungalow. Alas, we got a random hotel room and then realised we needed to watch two hours (!) of videos as
Soliid
Our dive instructor had an Italian accent. It wasn't quite french, but it'll do (for those that don't understand, watch 'along came Polly' - not as bad as it sounds) part of the learning for our diver course - arrrgh!
Anyway, we got through it all and after a short night's sleep (the ladyboy show next door started up at 11, going till about 3 and in the process covering the full back catalogue of ABBA, cher, Celine Dione and Gloria Gaynor - or so it seemed) we continued with the 'learning', managing to do fairly well on the test (for the record Kelly did better on the test than Andrew .. bugger). Then, after so much anticipation (remember that we've been trying to dive since Vietnam), we got in the water that afternoon! We did a bunch of stuff including whipping off your mask, various gymnastics underwater and taking your regulator in and out. We loved it and any concerns about getting freaked out were unfounded!
Next day was a little more revision and then the final exam - dum dhan! Again, we passed (and again, Kelly did better than Andrew but Andrew did excel at explaning the buoyancy portion to the rest of the class much better than the instructor... physics geek!. So, proving that we weren't stupid, we went and did a 12m deep dive.
Bucket No. 1
Just a quiet drink with dinner ... The first dive was only in 2m water so this was a step up and we both did our skills well enough to continue. And this time we actually got to see stuff (and bump into coral - ouch!). For the first time we saw brain coral and heaps of beautiful fish (names escape me right now). We did two dives and were really getting into the groove.
The next day (sorry for the lame joining phrases ... suggestions welcome), we got ready for dives 3 and 4. These were deeper again at 18m (the limit for an open water diver) and we had to complete some advanced skills at deeper depths. Alas, when we had to clear our masks underwater, Andrew managed to inhale a good portion of the Gulf of Thailand and, feeling like it was all stuck in his sinuses, had to pull out for the rest of the day - bummer. However, Kelly endured and finished all her dives and skills perfectl, thereby becoming the first shwinter to get her PADI open water ticket - awesome.
Taking a couple of days to recover from the salt water, we headed to Koh Pha Ngan, the
Our beach on Koh Pha Ngan
Again, gorgeous, but a little too shallow and warm ... fairly minor complaints admittedly. next island in the chain. Thankfully, our dive instruction had recommended someone on this island to use so Andrew could finish his ticket. So we hooked up a deal with him and headed to our resort. Our gorgeous, gorgeous resort. On the southern tip of the island (close to, but far enough away from, the big party beach) we had a semi-private beach, enormous pool, coconut trees, white sand and plenty of topless sunbathers (which Andrew was ..er.. disgusted by 😊 ). It was awesome, and just the ticket for realxing and plowing through some books. Andrew finally finished war and peace on the train down so was free to indulge in trashy sci-fi novels .. yesss!
Anyway, we slept in, relaxed, walked around and had mango shakes until Andrew had dried our enough to go diving again. We jumped on the boat and headed out to one of the premier dive locations in the Gulf called sail rock. Basically, its about an hour and a half from anything else and is a very large rock that sticks up from the seabed. Random and very cool. After passing the skills section and saving face, we went diving and saw
Kelly swings
we made it B+W cause the colours were washed out anyways - I think it came out ok schools of mackerels, barracuda, triggerfish, a moray eel and a whole host of others. It was beautiful - just amazing to float about in a school of 200 fish. The worst part was coming back up to a 6 foot swell and, rather ungracefully, flopping ourselves into the boat. The trip home was fairly rough with a bunch of people needing some 'relief' over the sides but despite being wet and cold (cold was an odd feeling!), we made it home safe and sound - job done!
With that sorted, it was time for a bit of celebration. we bumped into a couple of Irish girls we'd met in Chiang mai and had a drink .. or two. To fill you in, the specialty drink on Koh Pha Ngan is the bucket. Hmmm. Yes well, the beach is a popular place and once the music got going we had a good old fasioned boogie on the beach. Not quite making it till sunrise, we nonetheless had an awesome time and Andrew spread the gospel of the double clap even farther and wider.
After all these good times, we headed back to bangkok, getting ready for the next big
Always with the fire dancers
Pretty much a Koh Pha Ngan standard - guys with fire sticks, fire balls, fire limbo and fire rope swing. step. That is, Dublin. We fly out in 3 days time (4 months gone just like that!) and are fighting all the natural anxious feelings one does when taking a big step like this. We haven't got jobs yet, or a place to live, but we're getting there!
Anyway, we'll blog it up one more time when we get there. After that, we'll probably just send out some update emails every month or so (I can't imagine we'll do quite as much as we've managed to cram into the last few months but who knows!), so drop us an email and we'll put your name on the list.
See you!
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