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Published: August 20th 2017
Country number 12 - Thailand!
Classic Long Tail boat on Sairee Beach, Koh Tao Crossing over the border to Thailand our first destination was the tropical island of Koh Tao on the Eastern Coast. We travelled for a day and a half by land and sea to get there from Malaysia but it was worth every minute! Koh Tao or "Turtle Island" is renowned for its diving (we're told that 35% of all diving courses worldwide take place here) and with its clear and warm waters, we decided there was no better place to take the plunge! We signed up for our Open Water PADI course with Crystal Dive (a shout out to John Byrne for doing his homework 12 years ago) and before we knew it we were in classroom watching videos about scuba diving and completing quizzes! We spent our second day of the course in the pool with our scuba gear getting used to breathing under water and practising skills such as clearing a water filled mask, removing our masks, sharing air with another diver, etc. Our 3rd and 4th days of the course were spent out in the beautiful open waters around Koh Tao. On our first 2 dives we went to a depth of 12 meters. One of the dives
Chalok viewpoint, Koh Tao
Beautiful views after a sweaty hike! was to a man made reef that consisted of an underwater car wreck, gym, and toilets amongst other things covered in beautiful corals and surrounded by colorful fish and other aquatic life. Our last couple of open water dives were exciting as we went down to a depth of 17 meters and got to explore a shipwrecked catarmaran. Suffice to say we have been bitten by the diving bug and are looking forward to doing some more dives in Indonesia and Australia, both of which are renowned for their diving sites!
Koh Tao was definitely one of our favourite places so far. When we weren't diving, we were filling up on the amazing Thai food - Pad Thai, Masaman and Penang curries to name but a few. The island is a tropical paradise so we also squeezed in a few sweaty hikes to allow us to soak up the amazing views.
Next stop was the party island of Koh Phangan to attend one of its infamous Full Moon Parties. With August's full moon party falling on 7th / Donal's birthday we decided to celebrate Donal turning 21 (again) by drinking alcohol by the bucketload and pulling an all
nighter on the beach with 30,000 other holidaymakers! Sure why not! We were expected absolute carnage, but were pleasantly surprised! There were numerous DJ's playing music from different bars along the beach, food stalls and even a sleep area for those who just couldn't keep going! There were a few (hundred) crazy lunatics playing with a fire skipping rope and whilst we didn't join we did get some great entertainment from it. We danced through night and enjoyed a beautiful sun rise on the beach with thousands of other revellers before making our way home for what was admittedly quite a lazy day!!!
Our final destination on this leg of our Thailand tour (we plan on returning to do North Thailand in a few weeks) was the beating heart of Bangkok where we visited some of the local sights and enjoyed the mayhem that is Khao San Road!
Thailand, we will be back but for the next two weeks we will be exploring lovely Cambodia.
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