Christmas this year was spent sitting on the idyllic island paradise of Koh Tao. There, the sun and the water are warm, the drinks are cool and the men hot. Still I find myself relieved to be going home. Even if it is only for three days I crave the comfort of normalcy and my 20-40 baht (33baht = $1) meals. Still it felt like a vacation through and through. The white sand beaches are littered with beautiful Farang (Foreigners) sitting exposing their skin to the suns harmful rays. We all know it and we lather our skin with sunscreen and [View Full Entry]

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Hello Everyone just a quick update to let you know whats been happening over here, and to wish you all a merry christmas :) I done my first freediving course the other week had so much fun - I got to the maximun allowed- 20 meters on the second day, it was absolutely amazing feeling so relaxed in the water :) I learnt some yoga and other relaxation techniques in the course as well which helps with my meditation. Plan on doing my advanced course in January after I finish the seasonal celebrations ;) Spent my day today snorkelling with a [View Full Entry]

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After departing the Asia's party capital we headed to another Thai island, Koh Tao (English translation: turtle island). Almost immdiately as we arrived at the Big Blue diving resort we met up with the Koh Pha-Ngan gang: Banksy, Wozza, Ray, Andrea and Charlotte. We could't get rid of these stalkers! Walking down towards the sea, I heard an 'Oi!' from a nearby beach hut's hamock, it was my dad... uh oh! There was no time to rest, we enrolled onto a scuba-diving course and began less than an hour after arriving. The following day was the first time Guy, Banksy and [View Full Entry]

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Okey dokey then... following on from the Bangkok and terrible-journey-south blog, the following shall deal with our experience on Koh Tao. As said previously, we stayed in a little bungalow on the southern coast of the island. We had a beautiful crescent shaped beach, approximately 2 football pitches in length, literally on our doorstep. We had almost unbroken sunshine for 7 days, and spent our time eating, drinking, eating, frisbee-ing, snorkelling, eating, and when bored, eating. Our friends John and Emma were staying on the same beach, and we spent almost the entire time with them. Ou [View Full Entry]

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Hi Everyone, We finished our massive journey this morning - After some 37hours of commuting and waiting around - to get from Chiang Mai to Koh Tao. So we are still pretty tired. After we got off the train yesterday we ended up at a tourist information centre. This place sent us to a place nearby called ‘farang bar’, where farang means foreigner in Thai. We bought tickets and ended up having to wait till 11pm to get on the night car-ferry. So we had some time to kill, cause we got off the train about 3, we then walked around, [View Full Entry]

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Homework done and to the classroom for 0900. Get most of the reviews out the way and then its our first Open Water Dives this afternoon. Dive number 1 at Twins-Koh Tao, entered water at 13:27. Went to depth of 12 metres and was there for 28 minutes. Had a brief exploration with some mask clearing and buoyancy stuff. exit the water at 13:55 with Pressure Group E. Dive number 2 at Sairee Beach-Koh Tao, entered water at 15:35 with pressure group A\. Went to depth of 10 metres and was there for 46 minutes. Many drills taught in the [View Full Entry]

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On Ko Tao, I went to the Big Blue resort, which is nicely located at the beach and is combined with a dive school, where I could do my Advanced Open Water course. This course is done in 2 days with 5 dives. With a small group of 4 people and our dive instructor we did a navigation, a buoyancy and a night dive on the first day. The night dive was great. There were many more divers in the water and the torch lights made it look very surreal. The darkness combined with the weightlessness makes it a great experience. [View Full Entry]

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Hallo zaeme Nun bin ich schon eine ganze Weile auf Ko Tao und eigentlich weiss ich gar nicht so recht was schreiben. Ich meine, Ko Tao ist ja ne ganz niedliche Insel, aber ausser Touristen gibts hier nichts. Eine Tauchschule reiht sich an die andere und es wird mit lukrativen Tauchangeboten nur so um sich geworfen. Fun Dive hier, Adventure da, Rescue, Master, Scubaduu... Hm. Schoene Straende sucht man lange, ueberall sind Bungalows an den minimalen Strandstreifen aufgetuermt und von dem wahren Thailand ist weit und breit keine Spur. Ich habe 2 Tage damit verbracht mich ein bisschen einzu [View Full Entry]

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After the scariest boat journey of my life we arrive on Koh Tao and it looks like absolute heaven compared to the hedonism of Koh Pha-Ngan. We were on a fairly small ferry and the waves were huge and at times it did feel as though we were going to go over the edge. People were being sick into bags all around us and everyone had a slight look of fear that said 'maybe I won't get off this boat alive'?! But we did and as we got closer to the island the waves got smaller and it became a little [View Full Entry]

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Now...every traveller is supposed to have at least one nightmare journey story. I'm not sure if this counts as once I got past the incredibly strong conviction that I was going to meet my end in the seas off Koh Phangan, it was actually quite the adrenalin rush. But anyway... As I think I mentioned last time we had been stranded on Koh Phangan for an extra night due to bad weather conditions. As it turns out there was good reason the boats weren't running that day. Choppy is not even an adequate enough description for the boat ride we endured [View Full Entry]

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