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Published: August 7th 2007
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Sai Ree Bay
Deep blue sea and lush corel reefs make an amazing setting for scuba diving. I left Bangkok on an overnight coach heading out to the lovely little island of Koh Tao where the real fun was about to start. It's a small island a few hours boat ride off the east coast in the Gulf of Thailand, part of a group of islands along with Koh Phangan and Koh Samui. It's well known for being the cheapest place in Thailand (possibly the world) to learn to dive. There are beautiful coral reefs which have good visibility and enough tropical fish life of various sorts to bewilder any new diver. Buddha View dive school is one of the biggest dive centers on the island largely down to its aggressive marketing campaign in Bangkok. This is great news because I got to meet loads of other newbie divers and generally have a great time chillin out in the evenings when I was not 'studying'. The dive instructors at Buddha View were a great laugh and always making jokes during the 2 days of boring lessons. It seems that they actually love doing their jobs. And who could blame them? They get to go diving every day!
Scuba diving will definitely go down as one of the
Morning truck
I'm looking and feeling my best first thing in the morning on the daily truck ride down to the dive boat. best experiences ever. Diving down into shoals of fish and coral reefs can only be described as 'visiting another world'. If you have ever wondered what life was like on mars or dreamt you had been molested by aliens, as I have, then you'll really appreciate how fascinatingly different this underwater world is to our own air filled controversy. At first it is difficult to take it all in. I only remember bits and pieces of my first few dives. A lot of the time I was too busy worrying about my buoyancy and whether or not I was going to shoot up to the surface or crash into the coral below. Or I'd be occupied with my breathing in order to navigate the underwater peaks and valleys. I'd be conscious that I was not kicking my buddy in the face or swinging my arms into people but staying close to the group so as not to get lost or left behind. And just when I thought I was getting comfortable with all that and got busy admiring the marine life, I looked up to find my group had disappeared. I found myself all alone at the bottom of the
Dive instructor
Kornelis is always joking around and being very cool (unlike his name!). Luckily he also knows how to scuba dive and doesn't bear a grudge. ocean. But after swimming off in completely the wrong direction I was fortunate to bump into a dive instructor from another group as we began writing messages to each other on her underwater white board before we spotted my party swimming around looking for me. She also turned out to be the cutest female instructor at the dive center.
It wasn't until after my open water course that I began to feel comfortable enough to start appreciating this weird and wonderful world. But I'm afraid I don't have any spectacular pictures of sea life to show you. For some unknown reason I need a waterproof housing to take my camera underwater. You can instead see some pretty impressive pictures by searching for the fish I saw in 'Google Images' to get the basic idea.
Amongst the staggering variety of marine life I saw were; colourful arrays of Christmas Tree Worms, Blue Spotted Stingray, Blue Ringed Angelfish, cheeky White Eyed Morey Eels, Butterfly Fish, large shoals of Yellow Tail Barracuda, large Grouper, poisonous Scorpion Fish, a famous pair of Saddleback Clownfish, the infamous Titan Trigger Fish (that will charge you and bite your fins!) and a 1.5m Grey Reef
Surprise!
Sasha was my dive buddy for the PADI course. A cool girl from London she does great impersonations. Shark speeding about and snapping his jaws and who totally ignored my cardboard sign that read "Take Me!", "Take Me!". Instead I had a close encounter with two Indian Ocean Walkman (Inimicus filamentosus) hidden in the sand. It began during our buoyancy control lesson and I was performing 'fin pivots' lying on the sea floor when I noticed two beady eyes lurking directly beneath me. His spines looked probing enough so I tugged on the fin of our instructor who suddenly reacted 'get the hell away from that'. Underwater that means arm waving and audible but muffled shouting through the regulator. These guys are so well camouflaged that it took me a minute or so to notice his mate sitting a few inches away. Our instructor had to warn other groups diving in the area. These babies are what I imagine would feature on National Geographic. They are extremely venomous! Fortunately there are not too many of them about and apparently hadn't been sighted in the area for a good while. Considering their camouflage I can't say I'm surprised.
I enjoyed my PADI open water course so much that on the last day I immediately enrolled on the Advanced
Free Coffee and Biscuits
Refueling for the next dive (bring your own ciggies or bum off your instructor). course. This allowed me to dive up to a depth of 30m and it's so cheap I thought 'why the hell not?'. In theory I can also go buddy diving without the need for an instructor. But it helps to go with people who know the dive sites and I don't have a boat. But it was well worth the extra effort. In addition to the deep diving, I learnt about underwater navigation, buoyancy and night diving. Diving with a torch is pretty spooky and it's surprising how much difference it makes to the experience and the type of marine life going about their nightly business. After the advanced course I decided to go on some more fun dives; just to get a feel for what it was like to be qualified!
So I was disappointed to have survived the tropical waters of Koh Tao without being eaten or stung in the process. Although it's funny when cleaner fish start nibbling on you. In fact practically all accidents happen because divers interfere with the aquatic life by touching or disturbing habitats. It was extremely normal to have come away unscathed. According to our instructor, more people have bowling accidents
than scuba diving! And if you happen to be dumb enough to run out of air, you can always rely on your buddy's, so long as he's not a rookie like you. And if you happen to dive too deep, you can be reassured that nitrogen narcosis will have you die feeling like the best thing on earth. So there isn't any real reason to be afraid to go scuba diving.
I rounded off my time in Koh Tao by experiencing the bi-weekly full moon party on Koh Phangan and hiring a 250cc quad bike for a few days to burn around Koh Tao.
The dirt tracks make access difficult to beaches in the north and east, and besides quads are just so much fun I didn't really need a good excuse in the first place. I should probably have checked the fuel more regularly before burning out to the middle of nowhere. Happily some Thai guys came to my rescue and I made it back in one piece. Surprising really because some of the tracks are dangerously steep!
The full moon party on the other hand was a much more messy affair. Twice a month everything goes completely
The gang
Dominic, Faye, Helen, Sasha and Paul sit down with a beer after a hard days diving. crazy as people from all over descend on one beach for a good old rave party. I met up with my bunch of friends I had made during the diving. It was good fun despite the lengthy, stomach churning catamaran ride before and after the party and I wasn't even one of those unfortunate enough to be crammed in so tight they couldn't escape the lashings of sea water coming overboard. It was all a bit of an effort to get back to my room on Koh Tao at 10am the next morning having not slept. And we had to contend with aggressive Songtaew drivers who are used to ferrying completely smashed up westerners around the place and who really don't give a monkeys if they take you to your desired destination or not. "You pay, you pay!" he demanded before cowardly hitting one of the girls.
Nastiness aside, I spent over two weeks on Koh Tao and really had to drag myself away. There isn't much to do here except dive but for those that do, the bars are chilled, the island is beautiful and everyone is very friendly and laid back. I can understand why some people
Shark Bay
If your lucky you'll see Black Tip Reef Sharks in the bay. I obviously wasn't tasty enough. get here, end up spending months becoming trained and then get a job teaching on the island. I'm sure its not as easy as they make out but it would certainly be fun to try!
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anonymous
non-member comment
very cool looking place, looks like the talent is keeping you amused m8 hehe keep it coming, we all dead jealous here at the office.