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Published: March 25th 2006
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The Dive Team
Group photo after the completion of our PADI Open Water course. Well, it's been a while, and I've not been updating my blog lately so to all those dedicated readers out there, I'm sorry... I've just been having too much fun!
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Upon leaving Bangkok at the beginning of March, we caught a bus to take us to the beautiful sun-kissed Thai island of Koh Tao. We boarded the bus thinking it was yet another night of restless sleep, sore backs, and mosquito bites, however it ended up becoming the party bus of all buses! We were on the small lower deck of a double-decker with six other European people (I forget their names now but there was a Dutch couple (guy was called Ronald), two guys from Sweden, one Spanish girl and a guy from Essex). After finishing off the bottle of whiskey Ronald brought on the bus, we ended up buying copious amounts of more whiskey and beer at our first "toilet stop" and ended up keeping the rest of the bus awake for the entire journey singing and dancing on the lower deck. Not to mention the time which we ran out of coke so Ronald drunkenly asked everyone upstairs if their had any spare. The end
Ban's Bar
Where so many of our nights were spent in Koh Tao! of the bus trip meant we had to wait several hours in the middle of nowhere at 2am for a boat to take us to the island, which wasn't so great as we all now had hangovers. Around 7am we boarded the boat that would take us to our destination of Koh Tao.
On disembarking the boat, amongst the shouts and cries of “we have good hostel, you come, you stay”, we found a representative of Bans Resort and Diving Centre which we liked the look of when a man on the boat showed us some pictures. So we hopped in his truck and he drove us 1km down the only road in Koh Tao to the resort. As it turned out, choosing this place was a fantastic decision as its friendly staff, expert dive instructors, and the fellow travelers there were fantastic. We instantly enrolled for our PADI Open Water Diving course and commenced it on that day at 4pm. Our first lesson was to basically watch a couple of videos filled with great facts like "scuba is spelled S.C.U.B.A.", "scuba divers have more fun!" and "fish don't hold their breath". We all cringed but couldn't wait till
Ban's Bar Again
From the inside. our first proper underwater lesson the following morning. That evening we settled down to a few drinks on the beach with Sam, from Australia, who we met on the course. The following day we were up bright and early (and slightly hungover) for our diving lesson in the swimming pool, followed by a classroom lesson in the afternoon. Following on from the classroom, we all headed downstairs to the bar and partied very hard, to the shock of several of our dive instructors. It was a fantastic night, meeting Matt, Neil and various others (sorry for forgetting names), with us ending up skinny-dipping in the sea late at night!
That's where the memories become blurry. The next day we did go diving in the sea which was a fantastic experience that nobody should miss, and again that night we partied hard straight after class. And again, the day after, we went diving for our last two dives of our course, therefore completing our PADI Open Water course and becoming certified divers! As such, we of course celebrated even harder with all the guys we had met during the past three days. The following few days, the routine was fairly
To the Island!
Thilo, Me and Matt on our way to 'The Island' similar: wake in the morning feeling 'rougher than a badgers arse', spend the afternoon lying on the pristine and quiet paradise beaches, then head into the bar around 4pm and not leave until 4am. Most nights involved buckets of coke and whiskey, some swimming in the sea, and subsequent swims in the pool to warm up on the way back to the hotel room. Along the way, a LOT of things were lost; Emily had her bag stolen which contained her camera, my wallet and my phone, I managed to lose another wallet a different night (twice), the room key went bye-bye, thousands of brain cells perished, and to cap it all, some bastard stole my flip-flops on the day we were leaving - hence the now infamous phrase "Lost My Shit in Koh Tao".
However, this was a fantastic true paradise island and it really hurt to leave it behind. I WILL return to it in the future, there is no doubt about that!
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