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Published: August 7th 2013
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(sorry voor de Engelse taal. Probeer google translate?)
Around 1 week passed unnoticed when we were enjoying our stay in Koh Thao, a wonderful island North of Thailand literally meaning: turtle island. It's ambience was amazing and probably everyone who's been here would understand how difficult it is to leave it. It must be one of the most beautiful places on earth. It's like if god would take a few boulders together, mix them with vivid green plants and drop all of it in the middle of a bright turquoise see.
The first that we did on the island was starting our diving course and gain our PADI open water certificate. The whole program took us 4 days, 3 of which were dedicated to diving in the sea and watching the most boring movies ever. Nevertheless, our lessons were still fun with our American and Swiss classmates. Getting into the water for the first time was one of strangest experiences. For me (Alina) it was very stressful as I could not stay underwater and breath slowly, which made me float on the surface for the whole time. But when we were allowed to swim around the whole
stress disappeared, making place for excitement and happiness.
Diving is like being on drugs, hahaha. The underwater world is a completely different world as everything looks and sounds different. And of course there are lots of creatures that we have never seen before in our lives, except for some of them on our plate, maybe. The underwater world of Koh Thao is incredibly rich. Already a few meters from the shore you can spot a huge variety of corrals, colorful fishes and some turtles.
After completing our course we decided that it was time for us to get lazy, so we moved to the other side of the island to the Hin Wong Bay. This bay was pretty tiny, housing only 3 small resorts with the houses randomly situated on a steep hill. Our bungalow was somewhere in between the top of the hill and the sea, and the view from our room was just breathtaking.
Unfortunately instead of being lazy for 4 days, we've done it for only 1 day :p. On his birthday Bart started a free-diving course where they taught him to dive until 20 meters without an oxygen tank (saying hello to the
scuba divers). In the meantime I was planning our trip to Cambodia and shopping a bit. The next day we tried to do some bouldering on the island. Unfortunately, it appeared to be less cool as we've expected it to be, as we spent more time searching for the boulders than actually climbing them.
Each active day, exhausted as we were, we finished by chilling on cushions in restaurants at the sea shore and filling up our bellies with delicious Thai food and drinks. Thai food is really great and cheap. Amongst our favos are all the varieties of curry richly filled with seafood or meat and veggies, fresh and spicy green papaya salad, Pad Thai, fried noodles with eggs and about all the rest. Next to this tasty food goes a fruit shake: a piece of fresh fruit blended with ice and water, yogurt or milk. Fruit shakes are good competitors to coca cola 😊. The last day we visited a "lady-boy"-cabaret show. It was funny, but in the meanwhile a little strange..
Oh well, enough about Thailand, our next destination is Siem Reap, Cambodia and a bus-bus trip of more than 24 hours.
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