Taximen, Diving, Surfing and Uncharmed Snakes

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When we woke up in our tent on the beach, we went for a quick underwear dip, packed up and caught a bus back to town, where we hung around at the guesthouse for a few hours. We caught a much needed breakfast, surfed the Internet, and found the time to shower ourselves. We did some wandering through the town and market, I saw cooked rats for sale, we chewed some betel (because I wanted to show Alan how), and then just kinda lazed around til we got a ride to the port for a night ferry to Koh Tao island.

We arrived at Koh Tao, completely sleep-deprived, at 6AM. Nearly nothing was open, and we found ourselves being harassed by two taxi-men and a drunken white friend of theirs within minutes. I guess it's not that hard in a place like this, which is very touristy. Anyway, it ended up with them trying to sell me a Koh Tao map, clearly labeled as free, for 100 baht, me quite angrily calling the man a liar to his face, and us leaving. It was kinda funny in retrospect, because the man must have been pretty dumb to try to pull that. So we walked to the far end of the island to try to find a good camping spot, but it's all resort space, so we settled for a room on Chalok Baan Kao, the quieter beach of the 3.

We came to Koh Tao strictly to go diving together, and other than walk around aimlessly during free time, that's what we did. The first day, we went diving at Shark Island and Ao Leuk point, which were only alright by my standards. The coral wasn't bad, but I guess I'm always more amazed with 10 meter walls like what I saw in Philippines. The second day, we went to Green Rock and Mango Bay. Mango Bay was mostly sandy bottoms, which I don't like, but Green Rock was purely amazing. This dive had several swim throughs, which are like short caves through coral formation. We saw barracudas, 3 moray eels, boxfish, etc. The visibility was excellent for most of the dive, and I didn't want it to end. Of course, it always has to when you see you are low on air on your meter. For these two dives, me and Alan rented an unwater camera to capture the moment, and have something to show others. There should be photos on Facebook.

We headed off the island on another night ferry, just after meeting two cool girls on different occasions. It's funny how you seem to meet to cool people just before you have to leave. Anyways, we were still glad to leave this commercialized island. It seems more and more like all the paradises of the Earth have been commercialized. That's disappointing to me. When we got back to Chumphon, we made a repeat breakfast/Internet/shower performance and headed off to Phuket, Thailand's version of Cancun:

-Walk 45 minutes from Felang's Bar to highway 4.
-Rode with "Pop," a woman in her 20s, in sedan on highway 4 for 10 minutes. She told us to give her a call if we come back to Chumphon.
-Rode with young couple in box of contruction pickup on highway 4 until Krabuburi.
-Rode with young man in semi truck from Krabuburi until Ranong.
-Rode with young man in pickup for 5 minutes. He had two school kids in the box of his pickup.
-Rode with young 3-piece family in white sedan until a road checkpoint. He English was surprisingly good, and he gave us a lot of good info on Phuket, where he used to work.
-Rode with two young men in box of a construction pickup with some ordered glass in the box, right beside us, from checkpoint to Kapoe.
-Rode with a young man and a middle-aged man in pickup truck absolutely loaded with mangosteen fruit, all the way from Kapoe to Phuket. They dropped us off, and the young man came back to us on the street with his motorbike to help us find a place to sleep.

In Phuket, we ended up staying with some Buddhist monks at their compound. Monks are not at all what you might expect. They love to chit-chat and ask questions, etc. Some of them even enjoy their cigarettes and tattoos. The put us in their guest house, supplied us with bamboo mats and pillows, a fridge stockpiled with water and juice, and food the following morning. It's funny how these Buddhist monks are more hospitable than some dedicated Christians. I wish I saw this amongst more Christians I met, because it's in the book to be hospitable to our brothers and sisters, and I am a firm believer in that. Hospitality is truly an amazing thing when executed. And no, I didn't feel all wierd with them. We left the next morning on foot, and grabbed a bus to Kata Beach.

We went to Kata Beach, because I heard you could surf there, and Alan heard there was snake charmers here. There wasn't any snake charmers, but there was surfing to be done here. I rent a board for 3 hours, figured it out, and was complaining about crappy waves by the time I was done. I was content to be able to cross surfing off my list of adventures, but I'd like to do it again at a beach better for surfing. Thailand is not known to be a surfers destination. We camped out on the beach (1-man tent) for our two nights and met some cool Thai girls and a Swedish boyfriend following the first morning. We had a good beachside Thai meal, and some good talks, and that was it. The second morning, we left the place, wuite intentionally. This place, is the undisputed epitomy of family-package resort-deals and is so completely un-Thailand, they have to re-Thailand it by importing elephants and monkeys from the North to a theme park located nearby. It's all restaurants made to look like caves (very obvious), foot messages, banks, 4 star hotels and cushioned beach chairs here. A paradise of some kind, yes, but amidst the lazy tourists who want this place for it's beaches, not it's culture. I can't recommend this place to anyone, personally. And it can't be that much different than Cancun or Boracay.

Now we're back in Phuket Town, which is away from the beach, trying to figure out where we'll go next. Until next time, stay awake and eat lots of greasy food.

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