Koh Tao

Asia
April 18th 2010

Published: April 26th 2010

The overnight bus journey was not as pleasant as I would have hoped but was OK. After waiting around all day we had to bravely get to the coach from the travel agent whilst not getting soaked through. If you shake your hand and say no, Thai people will respect that and did all the way ... until some pissed teenager didn't see me saying no till after he had sprayed me. Dan thought this was well funny! The coach was fine once they let us on and we were able to sit on the front two seats with loads of leg room because of Dans injury. They had a good movie on (Law Abiding Citizen - watch it!) and nearly managed to get to sleep when they switched all the lights on and made us get out for a "toilet/rest" stop. We could tell we were in rural Thailand and there was no way I was eating anything from there...grim!

Finally after hours of uncomfortableness we arrived at about 5am to the ferry port. After sitting around waiting with some skanky looking dogs we were allowed on the boat. It was a lovely journey and I saw lots of flying fish and then eventually Koh Tao.... WOW!

It is everything you imagine a tropical island to be. It is amazing! We got picked up straight away by our resort and off we went on the back of a pick up truck (well Dan in the front as he couldn't limp up there) to Ban's Diving School. Our room seemed a bit cack at first but we have grown into it now. It's really cheap as I am doing a course and Dan is happy that it has a TV showing premiership football.

The resort is set on a hill and to get down to the beach you walk for 1 minute through the jungle garden and arrive at the resorts restaurant bar and then straight out onto the beach. It is wonderful.

Anyway, that afternoon I started my diving course and we just did a bit of classroom intro/paperwork stuff. Turns out the instructor, Ant, was from Wolverhampton too! What a small world! I was in a small group of 7 and over the next few days we completed out open water course together. I was so so scared at the beginning but pressed on and all was good. He then persuaded nearly all of us to sign up for the Advanced course which would mean that we could dive anywhere in the world on our own (well with a "buddy"). I'm so glad that I decided to go for it. It was again very scary as on the first day we had to do a navigation dive, a deep dive to 30m (to check we weren't suseptible to nitrogen narcosis) and then a night dive. After the night dive was over I felt so much better and the next two dives were amazing even though we were without the instructor.

The instructor was so good and knew what made people tick. He recognized on day one that I over thought things and got myself in a panic over little things. I eventually worked past the panic of taking my mask off and when my mouthpiece started leaking water into it on the first dive of the last day, I just calmly switched to my alternative one whilst underwater and carried on. I am so proud of myself and can't wait to dive again. Every course he awards a free dive to someone he feels has made a lot of effort etc... and I got it! I couldn't believe it!

After the course had finished we all went out on a big night out. You can't drink between diving (although not everyone stuck to this rule) so it was nice to finally go out. Dan also decided that one night out would be OK as he was very near the end of his antibiotic course. It was a bit of a night of chaos. We went to a ladyboy cabaret dance show thing which was hilarious. Dan and Allan (guy from the course) volunteered at the end to take part. When they emerged from backstage, I have never seen anything so funny in my life! Dan was dressed in a big white silky robe with a fan and enormous wig and Allan was in a bikini top and skirt! They then danced around and really went for it, Dan was definatly an audience favourite. It's one of those things that you have to see to believe so its a good job our friend Con has it ALL on video! After that headed to a beach bar and had a little dance in the sea. Hadn't quite realised how much Dan had drunk until the walk home and combined with the antibiotics it was bad news. Lets just say he was a very poorly boy that night and I was ready to move to a different room!!!

Had a nice day off from diving and got beaten by a hungover Dan at both bowling and mini golf. Bowling was really funny as instead of a machine putting the pins back up, there was just a guy sat at the end doing it. Much better and faster although a bit brave considering how bad my aim was!

Next day got up really early to do my free dive and I absolutely loved it! It was so nice to just dive and not have to worry about doing skills. We were the only group who didn't see the turtle whilst underwater but had a good view of him from the boat. Checked out and headed to the boat - was sad to leave Koh Tao but it was definatly time to go.

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