They mostly come out at night...mostly

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EDIT: Photos on this entry should actually be on the following blog I have yet to publish, too late to change it as finding a computer thats agreeable to my cart reader is quite a mission. Photos will obviously make more sense next entry...

The Thai New year is held on the 13th of April and is known as Sonkran. On Sonkran, buddas are bathed in water and monks bless the younger thais by pouring water over their heads. What also happens though is that the thais let off steam and kill of any tension built up during the year by having a countrywide waterfight, yep you heard it, for the entire Sonkran festival the entire populance tools up with buckets of water and supersoakers and sets about drenching everyone they see.

If anyone remembers when they were a kid trying to synchronize an epic water fight between all the surrounding housing estates well this is sort of like a countrywide version of this. The thais and tourists all begin to hit the Chang and buckets at midday, business shut down and their proprietors fortify their establishments with water tanks fitted to garden hoses, gangs of excited little kids hefting supersaokers twice their size launch surprise attacks on unsuspecting passers by. Other thai's jump in the back of pickups and carry out drive by soakings on anyone they see, in the bigger cities like Bangkok and Changmai elephants even join in hosing people down using their trunks and its utter madness. You have two options, hide in your hotel or grab a bucket( which once the contents has been drunk can doubly function as a soaking device) fill up your supersoaker and join in.


I got off the boat from my final dive and took a walk down the road to get some cash out of the ATm when what appeared to be a large farm bucket with sandles appeared giggling around the corner. The grinning smiling face of an adorable little thai kid appeared around the side of the bucket and laughing he positioned himself to dunk me but held back at the last minute hesitantly. I saw his bucket of water was filled with ice cubes to make it extra potent, the water fight equivalent of dum dum bullets. He looks at me, obviously wanting to dunk me but also a bit worried I'll take offence, I just couldn't refuse the little fellas request and indicated he was free to fire ahead and within seconds the I was drenched with frigid water and 4 or five previously unseen miniture water warriors appeared and out of no where drenched me from all sides.

Cameron has arranged for all of us on the course plus the other instructors to meet at Crystal's bar and from there we would all walk over to the next bay where apparently all liquid hell was breaking loose. We were told under no circumstances to bring anything electronic we would be waterlogged and our skin would look like a freshly ploughed field by the time we were a third of the way there.

Cameron wasn't lying, if the street was a barrell we were the fish, buckets of water, garden hoses bombarded us and we had to endure grazing fire from supersoakers, thankfully we all took tactical 'Chang and Singa" stops along the way and a bottle of rum was being generously passed about.

While being half pissed helped to put up with the soaking the day was a scorcher so getting constantly drenched was actually very refreshing. It was also nice to throw buckets of water back at total strangers , an act that probably would get you boxed in the mouth back in Ireland, and have them actually enjoy it.

The end of the parade finished down at the beach which was already sprinkled with bodies of those who found the ordeal of drinking buckets of thai whiskey from after breakfast proved too much to handle. I disgraced myself taking part in a game of beach football while Joe despite being on the Singa express all day himself was showing some seriously talented football skills.

The early start to the day meant the beach rapidly emptied out and by 8 Am only about 1/4 of the orginal crowd remained standing. I staggered back home at about 9.30 and much to naimhs disaproval carrying a cat I had found along the way. Don't worry, I backtracked and carried the poor little puss right back to where I found it.

The following day was my last in Ko Tao and I decided to sign myself up for an adventure dive, I needed five of these to qualified as an advanced open water diver, Crystal offer a package offering all 5 at a discount over a day and a half but time unfortunatly wouldn't permit this to be undertaken so I only had time for one...a night dive in darkness using a torch.

Night dives are quieter, the boat has less divers and hence much more sealife is around. A lot of Ocean predators such as sharks, stingrays and Barracuda's also hunt at night and I desperately wanted to swim with something that was capable of eating me. There are black tip reef sharks out there, which although not considered dangerous, would satisfy the swim with sharks requirement that sits near the top of my bucket list.

There are also Bull Sharks which unlike the Blacktip are 3rd in the league table after the Great White and Tiger shark for munching on the most people. Swimming with one of them would be a complete adrenaline buzz assuming i dont fill the seat of my pants with half digested Pad Thai and survive the experience without any vital chunks missing.

I kiss Niamh goodbye, say a short prayer that I see see a shark and another short prayer that should my original one be answered I come back with all four limbs attached and set off down to the boat. The only addition for the night dive was a torch which I am told to hold tightly then I jump into the water. Its secured on my arm with cord but the force of hitting the water at speed wearing heavy scuba gear could cause it to fly into my face and smack me on the forehead, not fun, and leave me either with a sore head or unconscious.

I hit the water first and swim a safe distance away so Joe can follow suit and the Swedes and Cameron thereafter. I put my head into the water and see nothing but blackness. I shine my torch light below me into the murk and to my absolute nerdtastic delight it looks exactly like a lightsaber. I slash and parry it around for effect , my darth vader breathing through the regulator only increases the thrill. Ian, who is surface cover on the Dive boat tells us to remember our shark warning hand signal, despite feeling worried I secretly hope Ian isn't joking but before I can think about it Cameron gives us the ok to deflate our BCD's and go under the water.

Being underwater is like floating through space, the only visable objects are the seen in the tin can sized radii of my beam of light and the other staffs of light that are projected from the torchs of the others. Every now and then a flicker of a fish darts past, some big , some small. The water is so warm even in the dark of night that the the space illusion is complete, the 4 to 5 foot long great baracudas playing the part of space aliens, they dart from the gloom, swim slowly from side to side no more then 5 or six feet away before darting into the black and emerging from another completly different location. Their scales are sprkling silver and their teeth twinkle in the torchlight. The bubbles start coming from my regulator a little faster at this observation.

We follow Cameron, the Swedes immediately behind followed by myself and Joe, toward the end of the dive I hang back and swap places with Joe . Being at the back is unsettling, normally the flicker of Joes light could be seen either below or above me but now the entire 180 degrees behind me are pitch black.

I turn occasioanlly, shining my torch which reveals nothing. A disturbance in the water behind my head causes me to turn and see a curious batfish the size of a basketball no more then inches behind my head, both me and the batfish's eyes widen in mutual shock and he darts off brushing aganist the fringes of my mask and fades into black.

Cameron also had us smother our torches aganist our chest to block out the light momentarly, once we did so the surrounding corrals began to generate their own light through phosphoresce.

We werent the only other divers out there that night and every now and again, torch beams from other diving groups could be seen flickering in the far dark and amid them you can make out the brief shadowy outline of the other divers as they glide slowly and ghostlike over the corals before they, like everything else were swallowed up by the darkness.

When it was finally time to surface we went up slowly via the diving boats anchor line, as I was at the back of the group before long all I could see below me was blackness and shining my torch made little difference, looking up I could see the silhouette of my diving buddy's bathed in torchlight. Once I broke the surface and saw the lights from the island's houses light up in the distance and hear the hum of passing boats it was like stepping back on planet earth after a little trip to another world. All I can say it was worth every single baht and if I wasnt on the first ferry the following morning I'd have gladly done it again and again.

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Photos

The beach in Chumporn
Yes Thailand isn't so bad!

Ko San Road
Worlds largest open air asylum!