Koh Tao

---

After the seclusion of bottle beach in Koh Pha Ngan we decided to stay somewhere a bit more mainstream in Koh Tao. We'd been recommended a dive school by some random Irish guys that we met in a songthaew so we thought we'd follow their advice and ended up at Sairee Hut Dive School. Through our 5 nights on Tao we changed rooms three times but we stuck with the dive school. They seemed to know what they were doing but were really chilled out and relaxed at the same time. And strangely enough one of the main dive instructors, Neil, is from Harefield (the village my mum grew up in) and his Dad used to work for my Grandad! Small world hey!

We started our diving almost immediately with a 7.30 start the following morning. We had told the instructers that we hadn't been diving since we got our open water which was 4 months ago an they promised to hold our hands a little through the fun dives. The first dive was amazing! The visibility was astounding! It felt like you could see for miles. A far cry from the 2/3 meters that you could see in Sri Lanka.

I really enjoyed the first dive but felt drained after. Apparently my body isn't used to the extra nitrogen yet. I didn't do a second dive on the first day, but Rich did. I wish we could have taken the camera down to get some pictures becuase it was immense. It was like a scene out of Finding Nemo. There is one scene in the film where Nemo is going to school and there are set of traffic lights managing all the fish, Nemo has to wait for the green light before he could cross to get to school. I really could have done with some traffic lights! I felt like I was trying to cross the road on Oxford Street except you don't just have to look left and right, but up and down as well. It's so so busy down there, I don't know how all the fish don't crash.

We got back to home and showered up, both of us utterly exhausted, and found a lovely beach front bar to have lunch in. That afternoon Renton came to join us! We got him signed up for a try dive and checked into his room and headed back down to Vibe on the seafront for a sunset beer. Now this was the Thailand Renton had come to see. The sky was stunning! A few more beers and we headed off for dinner, then a few more beers, lots of catching up and a few g & t's later and we were watching the flame throwers at Lotus. Time for bed!

Urgh! The next morning I was really suffering with a hangover, a little reminder that I should not match my gins with the boys beers, the gin is stronger and the boys are bigger than me. Ouch!

Diving in the afternoon sorted me right out though. We did 2 shallow dives around some amazing corals and saw all the characters from Finding Nemo, some moray Eels, some cool blue spotted pufferfish and loads more. We even encountered a few trigger fish. We know to stay well away from them, as they are known to get aggressive - previously one diver had had her face slashed by an aggressive trigger fish's antenna!

Renton did brilliantly, taking to scuba like a fish to water..... Almost! It's wierd getting used to the idea of breathing under water. But you forget that feeling so quickly and after one or two dives you wonder why you were so worried in the first place. I still hate having to jump in off the boat though- wimp!

We got showered up and joined the rest of the diving group for a well earned dinner and beer (and non-alcoholic iced tea for me) before heading off for a fairly early night. We left Renton having one final beer with our friend Dan, or so we thought.... Turns out he stayed up till 3 am drinking and doing cartwheel on the beach with a load of the divers!

Our plan for the next day was to hire bikes and head over to Shark Bay. Apparently it lives up to it's name and is the best place for spotting sharks. Rich snorkelled out off the rocks and spotted 6 sharks on the sea bed! Very excited he swam down to try to touch them but they all swam away. Sadly they didn't fancy being stroked.

After shark chasing it was time for the full moon party. I will let Rich tell you all about his antics on Koh Pha Ngan. I planned an early night but ended up out with the divers eating, drinking and dancing till about 3 am.

..........
Renton and i were both keen to see the full moon party - we'd heard lots of bad press about it, but intruege got the better of us and we booked up our return tickets for the Catermuran. The boat left in true Thai style - an hour late. Although with all the things, we kind of expected it - as did the boat company, they had a printed sign in their shop informing us (guess they use the same sign every month?!). Not a problem though, it meant for extra drinking time and gave me a chance to catch up with an old work mate, Shifty Pete, who I'd randomly bumped into a couple of days before after he'd quit his job and had come travelling! We have similar noctural interests and had always planned to go out on a large one and it had never happened, so it seemed like travellers fate had presented a decent opportunity!

We caught a beautiful sunset from the boat, and arrived in Koh Phangan around 8pm, which was pretty early although arouund town there were lights, noise, and pre-party people everywhere. Getting to the beach early, you could see the sheer size of the party - it would take quarter of an hour to walk end to end! There were beach discos, regular clubs just off the beach, fire 'activities', adventure playground equipment and infamous 'mushroom' bars up on the rocks. So first we went up to the bucket bars - a line of 50 or so stalls each selling dodgy looking liquor, red bulls and ice in buckets. We'd been recommended to go to a guy called Leo as he was generous with his servings and cheap. Leo was very pleased to welcome us to his bar and after a few buckets we were all suitably refreshed!

From then on, the night was a bit of a blur, but the highlights included:-
Discovering that the variety of music was pretty decent. We'd been warned that it was very commerical and Yes of course there were some cheesier tunes from some of the beachside clubs, and what mass party wouldn't be complete with an R&B 'room', but the majority of places were knocking out some pretty filthy electro and some banging techno. Happy days!
After Rob (Shifty's friend) gave Leo loads of grief about his buckets being fake and not strong enough, we went to other bucket shops who clearly wouldn't be blagging us. However we were disgusted to find that all of the stalls were dodgy, with their broken caps and stuck on paper seals, so we decided that Seven 11 was the only safe option. To our drunken dismay, we realised that even the seven 11s were fake and that we were doomed to spend the night schober and not pisched.
Losing Rob. Well that wasn't really a highlight (well it may have been for Rob, we last saw him learing after some Thai girls)
We went to have a look at Mushroom Mountain to see what all the fuss was about. Seems a bit nuts to put a bar selling mushrooms on cliff edge, but we didn't see anyone try to fly on the night. Again, the music was pretty decent there.

As well as chatting, drinking and dancing, we did a few other energetic activities:-

* A spot of sand wrestling - whupping shifty's ass (literally)
* Freestyle sliding on the giant beach slide - I definitely won this with a head-first slide
* Beach gymnastics - managing a full headstand (for half a second!)
* Fire rope skipping - I didn't fair too well at this and ended up singeing my leg hair as i tried to get out!

The party flew by, and Renton suddenly announced rather concernedly that it was nearly 5am and the taxis would be leave soon. Despite our protests that Thai transport NEVER leaves on time, we put our flipflops back on and marched back to the taxis. Unbelievably, we actuallly missed the taxis to the boat (that's if they were ever there of course), and after finally persuading a songthaew to take us to the pier, we missed the boat too. Oh dear.

Outraged, Renton marched off to find the tourist police, stumbling at the first hurdle - finding a phone, while the rest of us settled down for the long wait to the next boat. We decided that charades and beer would be the best way to pass the time, and to be honest, we had an awesome time (considering). There was the most beautiful sunrise - something I'd never normally see, and we took a dip in the warm sea. The only thing spoiling it was a small lass who was clearly still pissed and was attention seeking like a spoilt child, so that was easily fixed - launching her off the pier bought us a good 15 minutes of peace :-)
Finally at 9am the boat to Koh Tao arrived, and Renton and I checked into the ViP lounge to finally get some shuteye and at 10.15 I finally crawled into bed to wish Rachel 'Good Morning'. What a night!.........


After Rich getting home at about 10.30 am the following day there is no surprise that we took it slow. In fact, I don't think we even saw Renton until dinner time. The next morning we got packed up and had some much need Thai massages before heading off on our journey to Bangkok. A boat trip to Chumporn followed by an overnight train.

The trains were much better than in India, they had much more head room, curtains and bedding. But the air con carriage was full so we baked! All three of us arrived in Bangkok having had very little sleep. But that didn't stop us giving Renton a whirl wind tour in 4 hours before his flight to NZ. We had a tuc tuc ride, took a river boat to the grand palace, didn't go in but had a nose around, explored some of the street markets and wandered around a local temple. Rich and I spent the rest of our time in Bangkok planning for our next big adventure.... Japan!!

---

Photos

Shark Bay
Where Rich actually did see some sharks

They knew me before I arrived!
At the bucket bar

Acrobatics
It's amazing how talented rum makes you

Raaaaaaaaa
While the cat's away....

Worth staying up for
Beautiful sunrise at 7am

3 words, first word sounds like battered...
Playing charades to pass the time

Shark!
He wishes! The sharks came later

Stop!!
The boys signalling to the boat that looked like it was about to plough right into them!