Day 8 - seclusion & snorkelling - Ko Tao

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We started our day by going to the restaurant for a drink and to sit in some shade to write yesterday’s blog (we were too drunk last night). Sarah sought out another hammock to sit in and attempted to write the blog from there. Lise (the owner) came over after a bit and we told her our news and talked about weddings. She told us about the wedding they had at Seaflower earlier in the year and it sounded amazing.

After writing the blog we were hungry and decided to eat something in the restaurant, we went for sandwiches as it was a weird time of day (too late for breakfast and too early for lunch really), the sandwiches were amazing and confirmed to us what a fab place Seaflower is. We talked about returning soon.

It was soon time to pack up and get a lift to the pier with Chai (Lise’s husband), so we said our goodbye’s and promised to return and before we knew it we were heading back down that sandy track we had come up only a few days before.

At the pier we checked in and waited for our catamaran, people watching whilst we waited. Most people seemed to be in their early 20’s on a gap year and had been in Koh Phangnan for the full moon party a few days ago. Quite a few had various injuries, and several were on crutches. The catamaran ride was fairly uneventful, we spent some time inside in the aircon (a luxury we had missed being in the bungalow) and some of the time outside on deck, which was a bit more exciting.

After an hour and 15 mins we arrived in Ko Tao. After waiting for all the luggage to be unloaded we set off to find the people who would be meeting us to take us to our hotel. We were ushered into a cafe to wait for the others coming with us. Sarah used this time to get some cash from an ATM (and lucky she did as where we are staying is a little more isolated than we thought so nowhere to get cash at all!). The main town looked like any Thai town really, lots of cafes, bars and shops.

After a 10 minute wait we were told we were ready to leave. It then emerged that there were two extra people that were not expected coming with us (it later emerged they got the name of their hotel wrong and over an hour after arriving at our hotel we could still hear them arguing and demanding to be taken to their correct hotel), they were put into the air con vehicle first and we were told there was a second car for us, which was a little annoying as we had arrived first. However we were then told we had to get into the back of the pick up truck with all the luggage as there was no other vehicle, if this was a proper pickup truck with seats and handles that would have been fine, but it had some loose benches in the back that slid around and absolutely nothing to hold on to. We were assured it would be fine. It turned out to be terrifying. Tom was laid almost flat across the luggage and Sarah was gripping on to her bag. The roads were sandy tracks up and down mountainous terrain, perfect for a 4x4 adventure, not so perfect for two Westerners sat in the back of a truck in the midday heat clinging on for their lives. After 25mins we arrived at our resort. The guys could see we were not amused and checked us in first. We had booked a deal online and got a superior room for cheaper than a bungalow, we had wanted to change this for a bungalow, but upon seeing them (quite high up the mountain side with lots and lots of steps and not looking the best) we decided to stay with what we had. Our room is gorgeous, and already has enough steps to get to it without having to go further to a bungalow. No aircon again though. After discussion we decided to treat ourselves to aircon (there is a unit in the room but you have to upgrade to be allowed the remote to operate it), Tom set off to reception to arrange this but was surprised to find out they wanted £25 a night, which would double the price of our stay (and not be very backpackerish) so we resigned ourselves to being hot for the next 3 nights!

After unpacking we decided to have an explore. The bay is a lot smaller than we expected, but gorgeous. There are four small resorts in the bay, each separated by rocks to clamber over. Everywhere seemed pretty quiet which was good and we went to one of the hotels for a drink. The views from the tree house type restaurant were amazing, but we were attacked by ants so did not stay for long!

We then visited the dive centre and booked in for some diving tomorrow, Tom is going to do a try dive and Sarah can accompany him on this, so we’re looking forward to that.

We then decided to go snorkelling, which was totally amazing. The coral was not that colourful (probably as a result of coral bleaching) but there was an abundance of colourful fish, Sarah saw her favourite parrot fish and we both enjoyed spending about an hour and a half marvelling at the sea life. Sarah also realised that Tom can snorkel without powering off ahead at the speed of light!

After this we got a bottle of beer, bottle of water and large pack of crisps and enjoyed a little picnic on a secluded bit of the beach. We relaxed here for a bit before going back to the room to get ready to go out.

We went for a wander in the evening to check out the restaurants in each of the four places. All are a little pricey compared to what we’ve been paying so far, but that’s what you get for being in such a secluded resort. We decided upon the busiest place, thinking it must be good if everyone else is there. It was very relaxed (sat on the floor with cushions in a tree house overlooking palm trees and the sea). Service was really slow, they didn’t seem used to having so many people there, but they were friendly and we enjoyed a few large Changs whilst waiting for food. Tom went for chicken pad thai and Sarah decided to try something new, glass noodle coconut soup with shrimp. Both were gorgeous, but smaller portions than the generous Seaflower resort we’d come from and we noticed most people seemed to be ordering two main dishes each. By now it was nearly 9.30pm and they did a last call for food so we decided to share a dessert, after having amazing pineapple fritters in Seaflower we went for these again. However we were really disappointed. The batter was greasy and thick, like you get back in the UK. We left most of them, thinking it was better to save the calories for something we enjoyed.

We decided to have a beer in the beach bar at our hotel before heading to bed. This was really nice as it was really quiet and we basically had the beach to ourselves. We found ourselves chatting about weddings and yesterday’s events were finally sinking in!

We decided to have an earlyish night as we plan to do lots more snorkelling tomorrow, we’re hoping to get up early to increase our chances of seeing sharks.

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