Long live the King

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It's Kings Birthday today and pretty nice evening, little bit of fireworks going on and those candle air balloons floating in the air all the time. In Finland people thought last spring that they are UFOs until someone told that they are just lanterns in the air. Looks very cool though. I'm sitting now ate the beach bar sipping some singha and waiting for my coconut curry soup, so I'll write quickly what has happened during the last few days.

As normally, the flights sucked. The ground crew at Helsinki-Vantaa airport had a strike on the departure day and the flight was delayed for over two hours. Of Course after we were boarded the plane... Good thing was that all my stuff found it's way to bangkok at the same time as I did. Flying sucks big time... I almost never get any sleep and this time was no exception...In bangkok I had to wait 3 hours for the connection flight to Samui and the ferry took 3 hours to Koh Tao. The full moon party at Koh Pha ngan was the same day end the was quite a lot of people going there. Was dead tired after I got to Tao and went straight to Koh Tao Divers to ask for accommodation. Got pretty nice place from nearby, 400 bahts (~8€) / night and the bungalow has a nice view to sea and a hammock on the terrace! Not bad. Only drawback is that this is not in the Mae Haad town or at Sairee beach but in the middle of them and at least at the moment this is very quiet place. Actually I'm the only custome here right 😊 Might change the place in couple of days into a little bit more crowded place.

Next day was just chillin' and saw couple of swedes who i met in the ferry and hanged out with them for rest of the day. I was supposed to start the diving course on saturday but the was changed to friday because few finnish lads came from bangkok and we got enough peoples to start already on Friday. Last nigh we watched the introductory video and talked a bit about the course. Today we started in the morning with theory and then went to practise the skills in the water. We just walked across the beach "boulevard" and straight in to the sea. Was fun stuff but quite a lot of things to be learned. After the basics we did a small dive just from the beach. Our instructor Perttu, a former IT-pro who got bored to his old job and changed to diving instructor, said that the visibility was about 15m, which was not bad for this time of the year. but said that in the spring during the perfect conditions it can be even 300m! Same time as we did our excersises there was a group from Koh Tao Divers at Chumpon Pinnacles where some fishing boat crew had spotted a whale shark! They dived with it almost full hour and there was no one else! I though that there was no whale sharks in this region at this time of the year but apparently there is so there is a slight chance to see one. But still very slight. Tomorrow will be more theory and excercises and a small dive. Not quite sure when we gonna have the official exma for the course but day after tomorrow will be two proper dives and after that the course is finished. After that I'll prolly have a break from diving and will go to a snorkeling trip and hopefully finally will be able to try my underwater camera case. After that I'll propably take proper dives couple of days and then start to plan the next move. But there's lot's of time before that and we'll see what's the situation then. If the diving is good here might stay here longer.

One small thing i like here is the shoe policy. You'll take of your shoes when you enter the restaurant or shops and leave them on the fron door. Normal thing in Finnish homes but never experienced it in the public places but i like it. Creates a lot more intimate feeling.

Ok, enough for now. time to eat some curry. (And i didn't wait for the whole time writing this, wrote it already at the bungalow 😊)

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Photos

veranda
View to my terrace with the hammock