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Published: March 20th 2006
After our third and very brief visit to Bangkok and Khao San Road, we finally left there for good on a night bus to Chumphon, a small town on the coast from where you get the boat to Koh Tao. When we got to Koh Tao we taken to the resort where we were staying, on the north of Sairee Beach, the biggest one on Koh Tao.
The resort we were at was incredible, and because we were doing the PADI course with them we were able to get the room for 200 baht a night, which works out at about 1 pound a person. The resort itself is right on the beach, with mainly small individual bungalows and some rooms in a main building aswell which is where we stayed. It also had a pretty huge pool about 10 metres from the beach.
We started our dive course the afternoon we got there, with a Sweedish couple who were taking a break from Uni. It was just safety stuff and a couple of introduction DVD's to watch (or find boring and fall asleep through). We were then told to go over "what we'd learned so far" in the book they gave us before we started diving the day after, so unsuprisingly we spent the rest of the day in the sea and the pool.
Day two started with another DVD to watch, but in the afternoon we started the actual diving in the pool, learning all the basic skills.
The next day though was when the fun really began, and after some more classroom work we finally got to dive in the sea. The first dive was down to about 12metres, and was just a fun dive and we swam around for about 45minutes looking at the reef, and the huge amounts of fish there were. The next dive was then down to about 16metres, and we had to practice some of the more technical skills we'd learned under the water. Both dives were amazing because the water was perfect, and you could see for about 15-20 metres! There were also so many different kinds of fish it was unbeleivable, and apparently in about two months time thw whale sharks will migrate there and they''ll be everywhere!
The next day we had our final two dives, and we had to get the boat out at about 6:15 a.m.
The first dive was supposed to be to about 18metres which was the limit of what we were allowed to go to, but we ended up going to about 21. Our final dive was definitly the best we did. Our instructor Jonas spoted a sea turtle, so we spent about 5 minutes swimming around with that, and there was also a massive triggerfish, which apparently if you piss off just charges at you and keeps ramming in to you! For the last two dives there was also someone down with us taking a video of it all, so in the evening we went to a local bar with the sweedish guys and Jonas to watch the DVD on the projector screen.
For the next two days we just relaxed by the pool and on the beach in preparation for Koh Phangan which we'd heard was the party island, and seeing as me and bish got back to our room at 6 in the morning yesterday, I guess we heard right!
Koh Tao is more or less the perfect Island if you want to relax, with its warm shallow water, long white sand beaches, and chilled out bars for the evening, and when we left we were kind of sad because it was definitly the nicest place we'd stayed so far, but we decided to move on to Phangan, for a bit of a more lively atmosphere, and it certainly hasn't dissappointed so far.
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oi!
alrite mate, bet u didnt expect to see me on here!, Say hi to bish. Looks awsome what ur up to fella, we'l be in thailand in about 2 months time after we've done a clockwise expo of europe, cya ya soon dude. ps... anywhere to surf?