Koh Tao

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English people, we have successfully obtained our PADI Open Water licenses which means we are able to dive up to 18 metres anywhere in the world, we left the last blog with us about to start practicing in the swimming pool at our dive centre. After we had learnt the basics & skills in the pool, we were then sent to the classroom (LONG), we had to do homework to obtain the license as well as 4 tests & 1 final exam, however that's the boring shit. The actual dives we went on were amazing and we would recommend it to anyone, our first dives in the ocean were to 12 metres seeing loads of different fish swimming around big pinnacle rocks, sitting on the bootom of the ocean doing our skills, fucking around as you are weightless, and chucking some karate moves out there. The next day we had our dive to 18 metres, this was even better than we had hope, the size of some of this fish were unreal, not being able to see the top of the ocean was a scary but cool experience!
Finally we had finished at the diving school and drinking was on our mind as we had only been able to have a few beers a night and a couple of smokes (managed to find another bar called "eazy bar" which was 100m from our dorm) so I headed off to the other side of Koh Tao where the partying was to book us into a hostel, because Pat wanted to do one more dive to 30 metres which was to an Old War Ship that had been sunk on purpose a few years back, the dive was really cool and the further depth was something special.
Once re-united at our new hostel we met a new group of people, some who had been travelling together and some who like us had recently arrived to the party side of Koh Tao, that night we all decided to head to the bar crawl, where shit got really messy and the crawl included stopping to watch a lady boy cabaret (WOW.), we carried on the night without the reps (swedish girl & german bloke, absolute tossers) and ventured on down the beach to the other bars.
The next day some of the guys wanted to do water sports however because it's low season this wasn't feasible, I suggested that we go snorkeling in Shark Bay hoping to see some Black Tipped Sharks, we all jumped on the back of a truck (taxi's out here) with our snorkeling gear and we were excited at the prospect of seeing a shark, as you guys know from my facebook update we didn't actually see any sharks, however I spotted a FUCKING MASSIVE TURTLE MAN, it was amazing Pat & I followed it for over half an hour gob-smacked watching it eat coral, swimming up to the surface to take air which was literally breath-taking after seeing this sort of thing in one of the documentaries we've seen at Swaino's, best day of my travels.
That night we lost a couple of the group as they were on their last day in Koh Tao so the reminaing 7 of us choose to get on one, the night started with a pre in the dorm, which left most people half-cut before getting to the first bar, I managed to convince the group to take a long stroll past most the beach bars to one specific bar called MAYA which was so dead but the DJ from Clapham Common was just dropping bombs all over the shop, all strictly the finest deep house, we were surprised to see the rest of the group enjoying and dancing too! After a couple of hours and copius amounts of Thai Rum (Lethal shit called, Samsong) we moved onto AC bar for some pool and ended up getting balloons there......7 to be precise and some of the girls ended up starfished out on the floor having never touched them before, got to about 4/5 o'clock and trundled back to the dorms in drips & drabs.
The following morning everyone was in a real bad way, so breakfast was the first thing on our minds, where I had to have a tactical chunder before chowing down my food, (Pat and the rest of the group thought the food was shit). Spent most of the day on the beach hanging out of our arse's eating shit and drinking loads of fruit shakes & more beer, four of us went up to High Bar (which was recommend to me by Christy) a huge TREEHOUSE half way up a moutain overlooking one of the bays with a great view for sunset, after a few smokes and some homemade fries/onion rings we watched the sunset which was very clear until a massive cloud blew over the sun to restict our view of the actual sun, however the light that was being projected from behind the cloud formed this really cool pink colour across the whole horizon.
Our last night in Koh Tao had come around very quickly and most the group were also leaving so of course drinks were on the cards, tonight we headed to The Castle party, which is on 3 times a month playing minimal tech, deep house and trance set on a 3 terrace open castle/house looking building, very dodgey stairs where we saw a few people break their faces/smash their heads, this event was definitely more Pat & I's sort of thing and we got quite drunk, had a few balloons and before we knew it we were on the stage two-stepping & stomping the night away, due to the amount of fun we were having time flew past and it was 4am with some of the girls wanting to head back over to the beach to chill out with a few drinks, watching the stars and seeing 6 shooting stars.
After lunch the following day we headed to the port to jump on a ferry over to Koh Samui...................

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