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Published: February 28th 2011
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Greeting from Koh Tao (Turtle Island) Thailand. (http://wikitravel.org/en/Ko_Tao) We traveled from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, to Koh Samui and then by ferry to Koh Tao. It was not uneventful, as most of our days we have come to expect the unexpected.
Long story short, our flight was delayed out of Chiang Mai, missed our first flight to Samui, but we ended up making it with about two minutes to spare for the last ferry to Koh Tao. Koh Tao is in Gulf of Thailand, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Try and find it on the globe, it is a speck of an island.
The first place we had for about 10 minutes. It was a little musty bungalow that had wood floors, no air conditioning and no hot water. It was only 10 USD, and we were prepared to rough it a little, but we decided that was a bit much. We got an upgrade to an AC room with hot water which we thought would work out a bit better. The bed was a rock (bed-spring), but Jeff figured out that the massage places must be in cahoots with the bungalow owners. All in all, it
was not that bad and we were able to manage two nights. It was right next to Scuba Junction, (http://www.scuba-junction.com) which was our dive shop in Koh Tao. I would highly recommend this shop as they were very professional and reasonable.
We are in the town of Sairee. It is an awesome little town that is quite the melting pot of nationalities. From European young people taking their gap year, to 70 year olds on a scuba holiday, to middle aged folks who came here diving and decided to make Koh Tao their full time adventure. After talking to a couple Brits, looks like you can live a pretty good lifestyle for about 850 USD a month. The food here is very good including beach barbecues about every night with other restaurants up and down the beach. If I was young again…..
After the first day of diving Jeff, Melanie and I decided on a late night massage. Melanie got her first Thai massage. If you ever had a real Thai massage, you know how you get twisted into a pretzel in order to stretch out each and every muscle in your body.
We did two days
of diving with Scuba Junction. Jeff and Kristin got certified and other than a crazy refresher class that they made me take (since I had not been diving in 16 months) with two 80 year old, the diving was great. I have gone diving with seasoned folks before, but these two probably should have hung up their regulators a bit ago. It took my UK classmate Pat 10 minutes to just jump off the boat into the water. So you can imagine, the rest of the class to me was about me and the instructor Jamie from keeping two people from drowning. Les ended up passing, but I believe Pat’s diving days are over. At the end of the day, it was a memorable day filled with warm water and sea life, so it doesn’t get much better than that. Day two of diving was way more fun as I dove with one of the three Americans employed on the island. Evan is from New York and we had a good time navigating the Japanese Gardens and White Rock. Jeff and Kristin are now open water divers as they finished their course with their dive master Lee, from the UK.
After our first two nights in Saaire Beach, we traveled to the other side of the island to Haad Tien Beach. We decided it was time for a bit of pampering after two nights sleeping on a box spring.
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Deb Davis
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Have been enjoying those photos! The video with Melanie witht the tiger made me jump! Such an adventure you all have had! Something you will never forget and probably be thankful were you live!