Day 10 - Stormy Weather

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Sarah awoke with a bad back, thanks to Tom kneeing her in the back really hard in his sleep, when she started to cry he shouted at her and went back to sleep. Despite this we started off the day early as we were meeting for diving at 7.45am, so we had a fresh orange juice before heading off. We were told it looked like a storm was coming in, but it would probably blow over as we were on such a small Island.

After navigating a small boat and then on to the main dive boat our first destination was Shark Island. Tom was going to snorkel, (he is not yet PADI qualified so unfortunately could not dive, and as the site was for advanced divers only he could not do another try dive), but the sea was choppy and the storm appeared to be coming in, so he decided to just stay on the boat. Sarah did a dive. It was beautiful (one of the nicest dives she’s done). She saw Cobia, which looked just like shark, amongst lots of other amazing things. It was really stunning. Upon surfacing though you could tell the weather was worse and it was a hard swim back to the boat against strong currents and choppy seas –she was grateful for the polar bears lessons she’d had as a child as she was the first to make it back to the boat!

After some fresh fruit and a relax on the boat (although this was chilly as the wind was picking up) a second dive site was done close to the resort, it started off as a wreck dive (of a catamaran, and weirdly a scooter was down there too) and in the end as everyone was doing so well on air we did the reef too and saw three massive Jenkins Whipray, amongst lots of other marine life. Poor Tom had to wait on the boat again for the dive as the sea was too choppy for snorkelling. Although he proved useful for Sarah as with her bad back she struggled to carry the air tanks etc and he was on hand to help!

After managing to get the little boat back to shore (a struggle as the seats were taken up with equipment so you had to balance your bum on the side of the boat, not easy if you have rubbish balance!) we returned to the hotel room to shower and change. Hungry from the morning, we then went out for lunch, which turned out to be our worst meal yet. We had sandwich and fries each and shared noodle soup. The soup was disgusting and could not be eaten. We were also surrounded by flies which was annoying and Tom’s food came ages after Sarah’s and the server seemed to think it was funny to pretend they had not ordered him anything – which wasn’t really funny given they had no personality until this point. We didn’t stay long.

After food we went for a walk on a beach and discovered some massive insects, like weird looking grasshoppers, one of the ‘joys’ of being so close to the jungle.

We then sat on the beach for a bit, relaxing. Sarah got stuck into her book and Tom indulged in some crisps to make up for lunch and nattered on about the wedding. Before long the weather was picking up again, taking a turn for the worse. We tried to remain on the beach, using a sun umbrella as an actual umbrella and covering ourselves in towels, but eventually had to admit defeat and return to the hotel room. Here Sarah continued reading and listening to the rain outside. Tom had a sleep.

By early evening the storm had died down and we shared a beer whilst packing up as tonight is our last night on Ko Tao – boo! We decided we would go into the town earlier than planned tomorrow in order to have a little explore and try some decent Thai food. We had considered going in this afternoon, but there was no quad bikes available and the increasing bad weather also put us off, given the state of the roads.

We decided to go back to Poseidon for food (the tree house we had eaten in on our first night in Ko Tao). We had great meal, washed down with several large bottles of Chang. Tom had an unusual tangy curry (no idea what it was really called as they just called it fried curry), Sarah tried yellow curry (nice but a little bland) and we shared tofu pad thai (ok but not the best pad thai we’ve had on the trip). We concluded that whilst we loved the remoteness of the bay, we had expected to experience something more authentically Thai due to the seclusion, when in fact we felt we were getting a more tourist version. We decided that were we to return we would stay in a more central place and hire a quad bike to visit the remote beaches on a daily basis. The other great thing about food was that we had open air seats so could lay back after food, sipping beer, watching the palm trees sway in the breeze, listening to the waves crashing on the shore and looking up at the stars in the sky.........gorgeous!

After food we decided to go to our regular beach bar for a beer. After settling on some great seats near the seafront and remarking on how gorgeous the setting was it started to rain, at first lightly and getting increasingly heavy. All we could do was laugh and drink our beer!! After finishing our beer and the rain getting worse we made a run back to our hotel room, buying a coke and diet coke enroute. We’re now writing our last blog from Ko Tao looking outside at the storm. Tomorrow we will get up early to do some snorkelling, then head to one of the main areas in Ko Tao for an explore. At 2.45pm we get a catamaran to Chumphorn, then a bus to the train station, we will probably have a fairly long wait, then a second class sleeper train back to Bangkok for 3 days. We are really sad that our beach part of our holiday is drawing to an end, although excited about heading back to BKK.

....pics to follow as no time to upload and the internet is rubbish here!

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