Ko Tao

Ko Tao didn’t really turn out the way we had planned. When we got there Liv was told that she couldn’t dive because of her back operation. To make it worse she had already been in the class room for 2 hours. This was really frustrating because when we booked the diving in Ko Phangan, we spoke to the boss (that we found out later was the boss of the tour operator not the dive centre) who told us that the only reason why they asked about back problems was because you had to lift the equipment. What a load of bollocks! I may sound a bit over the top here but all these Thai’s care about is taking your money whether it’s fair or not. To be honest I’ve had about enough of it now, Thailand is beautiful buts it’s filled with day light robbers and scammers.

So basically I had two day of diving whilst Liv sat on her ass. My first two dives were underwater navigation and Fish I.D. For the navigation course I had to swim 30 meters and count my kick cycles (one fin kick all the way down then all the way up) and on the way back time the swim. I then had to swim 10 kick cycles north then 10 kick cycles south and finally navigate round in a square. This took about 15 minutes, the rest of the dive was spent swimming around the coral and checking out the fish. My second dive was fish I.D. Basically we swam round with a fish I.D card and noted all the fish we saw.
At this point I didn’t know about Liv’s bad news. I went back to the room as she wasn’t at the bar and found her curled up on the bed. To try and cheer her up we went in search of a posh restaurant and had dinner. (I think this worked :) We eat at a place called Sensi, which was also resort and had lots of lovely beach hut style accommodation. I would recommend Sensi to anyone visiting Ko Tao. The food was the best that I’ve had in Thailand so far and it was really cheap for the quality. It cost us around £8 for a main meal and a drink or two!

To finish my course I had to do 3 more dives, a deep dive, a wreck dive and a night dive. I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t experience nitrogen narcosis on my deep dive, which is the effect nitrogen produces when breathed under pressure. It’s basically like being pissed and usually effects people between 24 and 30 meters. My deepest point on that dive was 27.4 meters, so I guess I need to go a bit deeper. The night dive was pretty awesome and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little scared. It was a really good experience, when you looked up at the boat, all it’s lights made the water go green, which looked really cool. I nearly crashed into the coral a few times because I was too busy moving my flash light around and not paying attention to where I was going. Overall my diving in Ko Tao was really good, the water is warm and clear, and there is plenty to look at.

The next destinations are Ao Nang, Railay, Phi Phi and Phucket. I’m sure all of you reading this back home will feel our pain when I say over the last three days the weather has been a little cloudy and we haven’t had much sun. Hopefully the sun will come back before we leave.

Bye bye for now, Matt and Liv.

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