Diver, Diver ! Are you OK ?

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It's time to leave Viet Nam...what an adventure this country has been ! From the busy waterways of the Mekong Delta to the soaring peaks of Ha Long Bay, passing through the crumbling palaces of Hué, our time in Viet Nam has been a continuous stream of colour, flavour and noise. This country has more than a smidgen of the Wild West to it which, although at times overwhelming, has made the past three week an exhilarating ride.

On our last evening in Ha Noi we went to see a performance at the Water-Puppet Theatre - a ancient and uniquely Vietnamese art-form that traces its origins to the countryside paddy fields. To the accompaniment of traditional Vietnamese music, hidden puppeteers re-enact scenes from Vietnamese rural life (rice harvesting, religious festivals, frog-catching in the fields) over a pool of shallow water which acts as the stage. The exquisitely articulated puppets can thus wade and swim as well ! It was a lot of fun - much effort has been put into maintaining this extremely rare form of entertainment.

The following morning we catch our first Air Asia flight from Ha Noi to Bangkok. Air Asia is the region's answer to Ryanair (without the "that'll be five pounds for the sick bag please, sir" aspect, we sincerely hope). The airline operates a huge network across the region at bargain-basement prices - a real boon for the average penniless backpacker (and for us). We arrive in Bangkok reasonably impressed by the service, if not by their pilots' landing skills (but who cares ? The tickets only cost twenty quid...!) - this time we've decided to stay close to the commercial heart of the city near Siam Square, rather than in the usual, more far away Banglamphu. We have a train to catch tomorrow evening and don't want to get caught out by Bangkok's wonderful traffic-jams. We use our evening in Bangkok to catch a film Pirates of the Caribbean II (not really worth the trouble,in case you haven't seen it, although after living in London it was very satisfying to pay four pounds for two cinema tickets !), and the following morning (before catching the train) to stock up on supplies.

Our train pulls out of Hualamphong station at around 5pm, and should get us to Chumphon at the highly sociable hour of 1am or so. Rather inconvenient timing, but the later 7pm train was booked out - we didn't think twice about it at the time but we should have realised this would be a sign of things to come in Koh Tao...We have a 1st class airconditioned sleeper cabin in the last carriage, equipped with two bunks and a little basin. Shortly after leaving Bangkok, a State Railway employee comes in to set up the bunks and make the beds. In a minute flat he's converted the small space into a cosy bedroom ! Another employee had passed by a little earlier to deliver some dinner - how's that for service ?

We arrive in Chumphon an hour behind schedule at 2am. The first boat out to Koh Tao from Chumphon harbour won't be leaving for 4 or 5 hours. We have a bit of a wait at the station ahead of us ! We know what to expect, however, since we were sitting on this very platform waiting for a pick-up to take us to the harbour three years ago, nearly to the day. We'd been to Koh Tao in 2003 on holiday, and had excellent memoried of our time there, of the diving in particular. Then the island was very quiet, almost deserted despite it being August, and utterly relaxing. Well, all illusions rapidly started to disintegrate when, at 6am or so, the next train (the one that was fully booked and that we had taken in 2003) pulled in at the station and disgorged dozens upon dozens of foreigners. Alex and I looked at each other, and realised that Koh Tao would not be the same.

We were right. Kind of...after a very rocky ride across to Koh Tao (thank you for the Stugeron) we arrived under distinctly gloomy skies. The weather certainly didn't help to reassure us. "Don't give up just yet", we thought. But it turns out that all the 4WD taxis on the island (impossible to get around any other way) had all got together to fix their rates phenomenally high (even for Thailand), all the hotels were packed solid and you practically had to wait in line to be seated even at the more basic beachfront eating places. Urgh. The first hour alone had completely dissolved my enthusiasm for spending two months here, and by that time I was quite certain (subconsciously, somehow) that we wouldn't be staying.

After a few days on Koh Tao, the crowds started to subside. It was particularly busy as our arrival coincided with the couple of days following the full moon, when all sorts of complete idiots (sorry but it's true) descend on Koh Pha Ngan, the neighbouring island, for the famous "Full-Moon Party", an event I find the idea of which so depressing that I can't even face describing it here.

We decide nonetheless to stay here for a couple of weeks, first of all to complete our Rescue Diver course and secondly to spend a few days on the quieter Eastern shore of the island in a little bay that we have fond memories of from our last visit here.

The Rescue Diver course takes about three days and involves quite a bit of theory involving first-aid, dealing with tired or panicking divers, how to deal with various diving emergencies and so on. Of all the courses Alex and I have done, this one - on top of being the most fun - was the most useful and the most challenging. Amongst the various scenarios we had to learn to deal with was the "panicking diver". In such a foreign environment, carrying heavy equipment your life depends upon, as well as the presence of potentially harmful creatures (combined with an overactive imagination), sudden panic is unfortunately not a rare phenomenon in divers, especially beginners. Panicking while 30 metres underwater can have potentially desastrous consequences - so learning to handle a panicked diver underwater and at the surface is an essential skill. Our instructor Dean made an excellent fake panicker, yanking regulators out of our mouths underwater and causing all sorts of trouble we had to learn to deal with. By the end of our three days we were utterly exhausted but quite proud of ourselves. Here's hoping we never have to put our new-found skills into practice...

A couple of days later we went on a full-day trip to three of the more distant dive sites around Koh Tao,including the famous Sail Rock, a giant underwater rock chimney you enter through the top, swim down and out through the side at the bottom. The sea life was as staggering as ever, and on one of the three dives we came face to face with a nice large grey reef shark (classified as "dangerous", don't you know !).

We left the main beach of the island, Sai Ree Beach (where many of the dive operations are based) for the much more isolated bay of Ao Leuk on the other side of the island. Last time we were here, the only way to access the bay was by four-wheel drive over a joke of a road, followed by a steep walk down to the sea (very steep - Alex still has the scar on her knee from our last visit there !). To our relief this had not changed, and the isolation and difficulty of access has kept development under tight control - there are only two small groups of very basic bungalows sitting on either side of the bay. But naturally, some things weren't the same - the middle part of the bay, which had been blocked by large, sharp granite rocks in 2003, had been completely cleared, leaving a nice smooth sandy entry into the sea. Of course this made the bay even more fantastic for swimming, but the real purpose was less welcome. The new bay allows massive speed-boats carrying tourists from Koh Samui (mainly Italian poseurs, actually !) to come right up to the beach. Can't they leave anything alone in this country ? Well despite this the bay is still staggeringly beautiful, and the hordes from Samui only descend between 10am and 2pm or so, leaving the rest of the day (relatively) quiet for swimming and snorkelling along the sides of the bay, watching the immensely varied fish life and corals.

Apart from the two groups of bungalows, two tiny restaurants and a minuscule shop (selling ice-creams and not much else - life is hard) Ao Leuk is completely undeveloped. Thus for four days we did precisely nothing other than laze around, swim, snorkel and kayak around. Bliss !

So the big decision, what do we do with our the time we were going to spend diving here ? After a big of planning and flicking through the guidebook, we settle on spending half of the time (three weeks or so) in Malaysia, a country we hadn't planned on visiting at all, and the rest as extra time in Indonesia. Given where we are in Thailand, it makes sense to enter Malaysia overland, which makes our next destination an obvious one. The Perhentian Islands, a duo of coral-fringed islands off the East Malaysian coast famed for their calm atmosphere and fantastic diving. Sounds good to us !

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Photos

Ahhhhh...
Hard not to feel utterly relaxed when this is view from your balcony !

Now that's service !
The travel agency in Bangkok from where we were due to pick up our train tickets for the very same evening was closed ! Whoops...on closer inspection though this is what we found stuck to the shutters.

Headin' South
Bangkok rushes away from us as we head towards the South.

Not quite the Orient Express...
...but still a lovely way to travel. Beats the 12-hour bus - groan...Stir-fried chicken, rice and some pineapple. Perfect !

Turn-down service ?
The nice man from State Railway of Thailand prepares our beds for the night. Ten baht extra to tuck you in !

Paradise ?
Very nearly ! This is the view from the beach at Ao Leuk. The tiny island is Shark Island (after its shape only I'm afraid), and beyond it in the distance, Koh Pha Ngan.

Shame...
Alex thought the little parasol meant this was the ice-cream longtail (remember the ice-cream punt on the Cam guys ?). Sadly it was not to be.

After the rain...
The extraordinary sight that greeted us after a short, sharp downpour one afternoon. And it hasn't even been PhotoShopped !