Surrounded by bubbles, fishes and the one&only - WHALE SHARK!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW...

Bubbles, blueness, fishes in all kinds of colours&shapes, corals...it is like swimming in the most diverse aquarium that u can imagine!!! I was amazed.

We decided to spend our last 2 weeks on the beaches of Thailand. Great decision - especially after months in India. We wanted to dive a little bit, so we picked Koh Tao island which is well known among divers. We weren't dissapointed...just the opposite :) Instead of one week we spent there 2 weeks...and wanted to stay even longer and longer and longer...Koh Thao is one of those places where we could spend much, much more time :)

I did my Padi diving licence, fall in love with this fantastic floating under the water and (again) met incredibly friendly people, which reminded me how enjoyable is life :)
Without a doubt I found a new hobby for myself - the only problem is that it's not the cheapest one :(

The maximum of our diving days on Koh Tao was this huge surprise under the water... the largest fish in the sea - the one and only WHALE SHARK!!!! We were swiming with this giant animal for more than 50 minutes, just below the sea level :) It was approximately 5-6 metres long and soooo elegant. What a feeling :) I have to mention that we were extremely lucky that we saw a whale shark... Saso even saw two of them!

Every dive was a story for itself. Moray eels, devil scorpionfishes, porcupinefishes, bannerfishes, barracudas, bat fishes, spider crabs, angel fishes, rays, flat warms, turtles, cleaner shrimps, jelly fish, groupers, triger fishes, tunas, ...and much more. Coral reefs are fantastic.

A little bit more about whale shark. It is a slow filter feeding shark that is the largest living fish species. The shark is found in tropical and warm oceans and lives in the open sea. The species is believed to have originated about 60 million years ago and weighing up to 60 tons with a capacious mouth which can be up to 1.5 metres wide and can contain between 300 and 350 rows of tiny teeth. It feeds on phytoplankton, macro-algae, plankton, krill and small nektonic life so it's not dangerous to us.

At the beginning we decided for Big bubble dive school (they are really great so I recommend this dive school to everyone) in less crowded Chalok baan kao bay which was very good decision. Close by this peaceful bay is another one - Shark bay. And why they named this bay after sharks? Well...if you take only snorkel and fins you can be very soon surrounded by Reef sharks. Lots of them. And they are not so small aswell. They come every morning&afternoon and feed around the reef. It was quite scary and I admit it - if I would be alone in the water...well - I would be out of the water in a second.

Days went by far tooooo fast and unfortunately we had to go back to Bangkok. We spent there last few days of our trip, met again with some friends which we met along the trip and simply enjoyed in chaotic Bangkok. I like this big city. My conclusion is that Thailand is great for 3 things: food, beaches and shopping!

That is it. The end of this unforgettable journey.
After all...I realized that every good thing has to come to an end eventually - otherwise it can't happen better and better and better one... :)

JANA

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