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Published: November 6th 2012
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The buses from Georgetown to Koh Tao were a collection of small minibuses. The main part of the trip was on the first bus which we shared with a small collection of people; a Malaysian man and his wife who fancied a day trip to Thailand as they had never been, a classic first time travelling bus user who didn’t anticipate the bus being so cold nor could comprehend why the bus driver would inflict this temperature on himself and his passengers (I felt bad for the man but a little smug in myself for possessing the knowledge of temperature and a full on tracksuit) and lastly another English traveler who kindly informed myself and Maciej that our destination wasn’t up to much and he knew a thing or two about diving as it was kind of what he did. We chose to ignore him as we had bought our tickets.
After 3 separate buses we arrived at Suri Thani. This was the port where the night ferry would leave from to take us to Koh Tao, as a place in its own right it was a treat, mainly for the food market and the night views over the sea.
The market was well laid out and as we went along the strip it the items graduated in the order that you would hope, initially there was drinks, followed by starter type foods (mainly consisting of barbequed meat and sea creatures on sticks), then main meals followed by fruit stalls and finishing with collections of Thai sweets. I selected water from the drinks, phad Thai noodles for mains, then a bag of mixed sweets which included sugar pineapple, sugar coated peanuts, seasame seeds in some form of toffee and mixed nuts in a similar but softer coating.
We were the first people to board the night ferry as we had arrived at Suri Thani with 3 hours to spare before departure, on it was approximately 80 thin plastic mattresses all placed shoulder to shoulder and around two foot wide. The sight looked funny but slightly concerning about just how snug this ship would be if they managed to sell all 80 tickets, luckily they had only sold around 20 so there was ample space for all involved on the trip. As it was late I quickly fell asleep then soon woke up approaching the port in Koh Tao.
The main reason we chose Koh Tao as a destination is that it hosts a large collection of diving schools and is well laid out for people who want to learn, in high season I would imagine it to be packed with people but as it was low season there wasn’t too many people around. I enrolled on an open water dive course at SAMs diving school, they also provided free accommodation for people learning to dive to for a mere 190 pounds I was able to spend 4 days diving and get 4 days accommodation.
As the course didn’t begin till 5pm on our first day there we hired a couple of Kayaks to paddle around the islands that were around. This was fantastic, as we paddled out the water was still like glass and you could look down to see the sea life below, it was also nice to just plant yourself in the middle of the sea, just sitting and looking at the surrounding islands, forestry and rocks (doing this also gave a break from paddling which is considerably harder work than I remembered from childhood).
At 5pm my diving class met for the first
time under the direction of our instructor Cathy. Like all instructors we came into contact with on the island Cathy was a young, attractive female with an excellent tan (although after a couple of days we weren’t quite so sure as to how young Cathy actually was and after much deliberating and investigative questioning around the topic we placed her in her mid/late 30’s but with the body of a 20 year old). In the dive class, which according to Cathy was the best dive class she’d ever had, due to our natural abilities to control our buoyancy (although I am sure she might say this to all her classes) was Gabi who was 23 and from New York although he had been travelling and working since the age of 18 and Brock a Canadian mountain firefighter who was travelling for a short trip with his wife.
The course consisted of theory and practical elements and had a test at the end which you had to pass. Though they kindly assured us that everybody passes the test so you would have to be really really dumb to fail it . . . or you would think . . . not really I passed. If there was ever a question in the test you didn’t get you just had to ask and Cathy would inadvertently give you the correct answer through questioning techniques.
On the last 2 days of the Scuba course we did 4 dives in the sea (as an alternative to the swimming pool were the first few took place). Under the sea we saw plenty of fish as you might expect, these included trigger, puffer, stingray, barracuda, clown and many more. As the water was relatively shallow there weren’t any really big fish but there was enough for me. I was particularly enjoying the experience of being able to move in so many different directions that as we cannot float up and down on the land we can not enjoy. On the sea bed there was a collection of obstacles (mainly hoops) that we navigated ourselves through, positioning ourselves using our lungs to control buoyancy, breathe in to go up, exhale to go down and never hold your breath as your lungs could explode!
At night on Koh Tao there were several bars to go, with their main draw being to caliber of fire show that they would put on. From what I saw there were 3 different levels of fire show experience. Firstly there were the fire shows from a distance, here the fire performer would spin fire round their own body, throw it in the air and catch it again (although occasionally they wouldn’t). The next level was the fire performer who would like a slight audience interaction, this would involve spinning the fire around an audience members head or wind milling the fire in front of their face so the observer could utilize the flame to light their cigarette (this was very impressive however you couldn’t help but be a bit scared when the fire guy was a bit of a dropper) The last phase of fire show was full blown audience involvement where they would set fire to a rope and use it for communal skipping or limbo, I had a go at the skipping doing a couple of successful jumps before quickly retiring but the limbo seemed a little risky for my levels of flexibility.
We left Koh Tao on 14/10 to go to Bangkok, during this time Maciej may or may not have contracted Dengi fever but he needed to go to a hospital in Bangkok so they could check his platelet count.
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