Scuba Island

---

Koh Tao is a small island in the Gulf of Thailand, known in particular for the great scuba diving offered by its abundant coral reefs. We decided to spend about a week in Koh Tao to take a scuba course and soak up some sun. We took an overnight train from Bangkok to the mainland coastal town of Chumpon, then took an early morning ferry to Koh Tao. The train was more spacious and clean than the Indian trains we’d taken, but for whatever reason the bright fluorescent lights stayed on all night, making it hard to sleep soundly. Our four a.m. wake-up time didn’t help either, and we stumbled into the Chumpon train station in the darkness to wait for a taxi, which would take us to a bus, which would finally take us to the boat ferry. The ferry was air conditioned to ridiculously freezing temperatures, and it was much more pleasant on deck, watching the sun rise over the ocean as the boat neared Koh Tao.

The majority of infrastructure—and, consequently, tourists—stay on the west side of the island in Mae Hat, near the largest beach. We opted instead to stay on the east side, in Tanote Bay, a cove with a small rocky beach and just a few restaurant/hotels offering cheap bungalows, plus a couple of scuba schools. Reaching Tanote Bay requires an extremely jarring 20-minute ride in the back of a pickup truck taxi, bumping over the terribly corroded dirt road. The island itself was beautiful, with enormous boulders scattered throughout the thick trees.

We picked out a $7-a-night very simple bungalow with a bed, mosquito net, bathroom and hammock on the rough wood porch. The ocean was a half-minute walk from our bungalow, although there were trees blocking the view. We had a meal at the hotel restaurant, and then went to sign up for a scuba open water course. There were a few different options in Tanote Bay, but we ended up going with the German-run dive school called Calypso, since the instructors seemed to be the most friendly and knowledgeable. They mostly teach classes in German, but they were happy to teach a bilingual class for us and a German couple who signed up at the same time. The four-day class started early the next morning, so after a dinner of fresh fish and seafood, we went to bed early.

In the middle of the night we heard, coming from the bathroom, what sounded like a monkey wrestling with a plastic bag. The bathroom was only partially closed in, with a large gap between the wall and roof, so the monkey-and-plastic-bag theory wasn’t completely unlikely. I checked for monkeys and didn’t see anything, but in the morning we found snake skin all over the bathroom. We weren’t too pleased with our roommate, especially since we had no idea if there were poisonous snakes in the area, so we moved to a different bungalow the next morning, with a better-sealed bathroom.

Our first day of scuba instruction started with a few hours in the “classroom” (actually a table under a tree) learning basic skills and information. The other two people in the class—Kay and Nadine—were a really fun German couple on vacation in Thailand, and our instructor, Balu, was very knowledgeable and friendly After a few hours of talking we got our gear on and practiced some basic skills at about 6 meters under water, kneeling in the sand right off shore. I had been scuba diving in the past, years ago, but it was extremely exciting to be doing it again. For Jeff this was a first, and something he’d always hoped to experience. Even at such a shallow depth there were a multitude of fish and clusters of coral, and we couldn’t wait to do real dives over the next few days.

The scuba course kept us busy for the next three days, diving and practicing skills from 9 a.m. to mid-afternoon. Our scuba course took us on a variety of dives, including a visit to a sunken catamaran. In the evenings we usually got dinner with Kay and Nadine at one of the restaurants in the bay, often freshly-caught fish and seafood. Their bungalow was high on a cliff with a magnificent view over the bay, and we spent some time on their porch in the afternoons. One evening we went into town (Mae Hat) with a group of divers and students from Calypso, had dinner at a great Italian place, and played pool at an Irish pub until fairly late. Generally, though, we stayed in our quiet cove instead of braving the taxi ride and the tourist shops and touts in Mae Hat. Tanote Bay was wonderfully peaceful, with only a few people lying in the sand or snorkeling among the shallow reefs. After four days of diving and practicing skills we received our scuba certification, and decided to take the next day off from diving before signing up for dives in the surrounding areas.

Jeff, Kay, Nadine and I caught a pickup taxi the next morning to head into town to explore, get some food (variety was pretty limited in Tanote Bay), catch up on email and buy a few supplies. We ran into a couple we had met in Bangkok, and chatted with them for a while. For lunch we couldn’t resist returning to the Italian restaurant we’d already been to, to get Greek salads with actual feta! We returned to Tanote Bay in the afternoon and spent the evening at the rooftop restaurant owned by our “resort.” (They call it a resort but I’m not sure a collection of very roughly-constructed bungalows really counts.) We saw an enormous bat in a tree next to the restaurant—it must have had a wingspan of three feet!

We stayed five more days on Koh Tao, and spent 3 of those mornings diving. Our first dive after our certification was to Chumpon Pinnacle, which is a rock and coral formation known for its frequent grey reef shark sightings. Grey reef sharks aren’t interested in eating humans, making it a safe but still nerve-wracking dive. In fact, it was the most beautiful and surreal dive I’ve ever been on. There were indeed sharks, drifting slowly and gracefully a little ways below us, and the area was also absolutely packed with schools of fish. We practically had to push our way through them, and if I floated in one spot the school would re-form around me and I could practically touch the beautiful tropical fish as they flitted in perfect order around me. The coral was stunning also, with thick fields of anemones full of pink clownfish, and what appeared to be mine-fields but were in fact clusters of sea urchins sticking to the rocks. The sharks were the highlight, but the dive would still have been fantastic without them.

Other dives included a series of cave-like swim-throughs and areas of brilliantly-colored coral. On our last day in Koh Tao we went back to Chumpon Pinnacle to see the sharks and schools of fish once again. The dive was as fantastic as the first time, and the second dive of the day proved to be equally wonderful, because we came across a good-sized (maybe 3 foot) sea turtle. We knelt on the sand and watched her for about five minutes, and she watched us right back, seemingly curious but unafraid. Eventually we moved on, and she swam away gracefully, as if flying slowly through the water. Also on that dive we found an inside-out sea anemone, its tentacles tucked away safely, exposing its surreally-bright blue underside. It looked like a blue plastic ball, with a few tentacles leaking from the top. Our dive guide indicated that it was okay to touch it, and we stroked the soft blue flesh in wonder. It was the softest thing I have ever felt—like stroking a weightless silk cloud. I forgot I was breathing compressed oxygen and carrying a bulky tank, and got lost in the beauty of the world underwater.

We left Koh Tao the afternoon of our last dive, returning to Chumpon by boat ferry. The boat was nice, with comfy cloth seats and a big-screen TV. They played what looked like an interesting American movie, but the sound was turned off and the English subtitles were on instead. Unfortunately, it was an illegal copy of the movie, which meant that the subtitles had been written by, apparently, someone who didn’t speak a word of English. According to the subtitles, the characters were saying things like “I like thing me sometimes me for” and “No dough escape for him under house!” After ten minutes of attempting to decipher the ridiculous subtitles, I gave up and napped instead.

We had bought the ferry and train tickets (to return to Bangkok) as a package, and had been told that there was a taxi to take us from the boat to the train station. But this would have been way too easy… So instead we were taken by bus from the boat dock to a random restaurant, and told that a taxi would show up to take us to the train station in an hour. During this hour they hoped we would empty our pockets at the restaurant, and, infuriatingly enough, most of the other travelers did so happily. Apparently they didn’t understand that the boat-bus-taxi-train thing was intended to sell them overpriced mediocre food. We ate at a nearby local restaurant instead (to the chagrin of the bus attendant, who called out to us desperately as we walked away, informing us that we could find whatever we needed at the restaurant there). The “taxi” that showed up an hour later was another pickup truck, and we crunched ourselves and our bags into the back and were finally delivered to the train station, where we caught another overnight train back to Bangkok, suffering bright lights and loud cell phones all night as the train bounced along the track north through Thailand.

---

Comments

[Harmeet]

Wonderful !!
Wish you had some kind of underwater camera (or did you have one and snaps are coming up later??)

[iamlauracita]

we wish that too...
unfortunately, the cheap ones don't work scuba diving (they can't go past a few feet deep) and we can't afford a deep-water one! but believe me, we want one... maybe some day.