Diving

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The border from Cambodia to Thailand was very easy and had reopened that day and I got my free 1-month Thai visa that would take me through to the end of my 6 months in Asia. Apparently there was a television camera there and the border hadn't been reopened to the Cambodians yet. The bus ride to Bangkok was great - a very luxurious minivan after the ones in Cambodia, and I arrived at Khao San road at 4pm.
My plans were to get to an island called Ko Tao to do a dive course, and I decided that it would be ideal to leave as soon as possible. I bought a ticket on the 8 o団lock bus that would transfer me to a boat and take me right to Ko Tao for the next morning and then went to take a shower at Nat II - the guesthouse I use in Bangkok. I bumped into an Israeli that I had spent time with in Laos and on Ko Chang and after a nice dinner jumped on the huge double-decker bus. I slept most of the way to the port where we arrived at 6am and then we all crashed in a large room for a few hours waiting for the ferry. On the ferry they showed Armageddon and I got chatting to a couple of guys from Holland and Germany. They were also going to dive so we hung out together for a few days while I did my open water and then my advanced dive courses. It was hard to be doing courses and having structure to my days after so long doing whatever I liked whenever I liked, but there were very nice people on the course with me and the instructor was great - a crazy Dane who has probably got nitrogen narcosis a few too many times, or maybe it was the under-ice football games that did it ;-)
Ko Tao was a nice place, and apart from working too hard with all the diving and classwork and missing Kristen I had a great time. After the courses were over we all partied and drank some Thai Buckets (Whiskey, Red Bull, etc) and my roommates left for Malaysia and I moved in with a Norwegian who is practically from the North Pole. After a few days relaxing on Ko Tao I decided to head to Ko Pyan Gan to set up before the full moon party there and Richard decided to join me.

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