Oh wow - Koh Tao (Day 111 - 114 by Chris)

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Tuesday 5th January 2016

We were awake at 6am and out of the hotel by 6:20. We were met by the assistant to the hotel owner and we gave her the key and 200 THB for the motorbike rental the day before. Thankfully she told us to keep the money due to the problems with the room. Had it been the owner standing there, I'm pretty sure he would've taken the money.

We left the hotel and walked a couple of minutes down the road to the tourist office where we had bought the tickets from a few days before. We were meant to be collected at 6:40am but the minibus arrived at 7:15am. We then drove for 10 minutes to the pier. We had decided to take a different boat this time as the catamaran we used to get us here was very fast but bouncy. We opted for a slower ferry, but a more traditional looking boat rather than a fancy catamaran. The benefits to this was that the pier was very close to us, rather than the opposite side of the island, it was cheaper by 100 THB per person and would mean that the journey would be smoother. The downside is that the trip takes about 30 mins longer. A trade off we were both happy with.

We arrived at the Seatran ferry terminal and checked in. We boarded the ferry which looked a little run down inside with old seats and dirty floors, but this didn't matter to us. We had our choice of seats as at this time of the morning there weren't many people coming aboard. We selected some seats in the middle and at the back of the boat as apparently this is the best place to sit for a choppy journey. We'd already taken our travel sickness pills on the bus, so we were ready to go. After sitting for 5 minutes a bunch of boys from Rotherham (I guessed Rotherham due to the accent - they sound just like my mate and previous travel companion Dan Young). They then spent 10 minutes talking in the strongest accent you'll ever hear about cocaine and whether you can catch aids of a prostitute by kissing them. Gemma couldn't understand a word they were saying so I had to translate for her, just like when she speaks to Dan. Thankfully as the boat pulled away they all fell asleep.

The ferry stopped after 30 minutes to drop off and pick up people from an island called Koh Pha Ngan and then continued to Koh Tao which would take a further 1.5 hours. The sea was like a swimming pool so thankfully meant we had a very smooth journey. I wrote the blogs from the previous days and Gemma slept the whole way.

When we arrived at Koh Tao we collected our bags and were clever enough to have booked a hotel close to the pier. We walked up a small hill street lined with clothes shops, bars, restaurants and diving shops before we arrived after a short 200m walk at Nadada Resort which from the outside looked great. The building looked quite new and clean and the gardens were quite odd with lots of Thai versions of gnomes I assume. Lots of porcelain little children and windmills etc covered the garden. We were lucky to be able to check in on arrival as we had arrived 4 hrs before the actual check in time. We had the obligatory "are you related to Harry Potter" which Gemma keeps laughing at until she realises that this will be an annoyance of hers eventually. The room was lovely. It has a balcony that looked over some beautiful scenes of jungle covered hills and the sea. The door locked and the appliances worked. Unfortunately though we had only paid for a fan room, but the fan was powerful so no complaints.

After dropping our stuff off in the room we headed out to find the beach. Koh Tao is a small-ish Island but has many beaches, some small and secluded, some private that belong to resorts and some that are open to the public and therefore more popular. This is where we headed today, to a beach called Sairee Beach which is the longest stretch of beach and is located on the west side of the island in the middle. Our hotel was only a 5 minute walk away, close enough to walk to without the need for an expensive taxi and far enough away to be peaceful and relaxing.

We walked down the beach and found a spot for the day. Its only 1pm and we had the whole afternoon ahead of us to do nothing. We spent the afternoon sunbathing (again!) and then swimming in the sea. The sea here is the best I have seen in Thailand so far. The water is crystal clear and on the bottom of the sea is powder white sand. The water is quite shallow, roughly knee height for about 100m before it gets deeper, and as well as that there were no waves, which made this more like a swimming pool and the perfect place to cool down. The beach, being the largest beach on the island and close to the cheaper hotels was quite busy as a result, but not enough to feel too crowded. There were bars that lined the beach, but not blaring out dance music, but more relaxing chill out music giving the whole area a relaxing vibe.

After a good day of relaxing we decided to pop into a bar to use their WiFi and look at some onward travel plans and then we walked back to the hotel to shower, change and head out for dinner. We wanted to have pizza in an Italian place which was recommended on Trip Advisor and when we found it we were told that food could take up to 45 mins to arrive on account of it being busy. We therefore knocked this place on the head and found another place where we had a lovely (cold!) glass of red wine and a pizza and calzone before heading home to get some sleep.

Wednesday 6th January 2016

We had quite a disturbed sleep as the fan, despite being powerful just blew hot air around the room so when we woke at 8:30am we were still quite tired. We showered and packed a beach bag with our snorkels and headed out. We first stopped in a bakery where we had coffee and a pain au choclate for breakfast and then went to look for a beach.

The hotel we were staying at provided a free copy of an island guide which shows maps and routes, plus detailed descriptions of the islands beaches. We had decided to try a beach called Sai Nuan Beach which is located in the south west corner of the island and a 15 minute walk from where were based. We bought some water and headed off and the walk was a long and sweaty one. We had to climb up and down steep steps, ramps and through a resort was built into the jungle, which made the walk a very humid one.

We arrived at Sai Nuan Beach and were pleasantly surprised to see only a hand full of people here. This is really a resort and we had read that you had to pay to use the beach, but we were never asked for a penny all day, so either its not true, or we got away with it. The beach is very tiny and is a small bay surrounded by huge boulders in the water. The water itself was very clam and had a lagoon feel to it. The sand was white and the views were amazing. We put down a couple of towels and as we were covered in sweat decided to head straight to the water. After only a few steps we got straight back out as we couldn't believe how many fish were so close to the edge. We grabbed our snorkels and the Go Pro and headed back into the water. We spent the next hour swimming around looking at all the fish in the very clear water. As there are lots of boulders in the sea, plus lots of coral there are tonnes of different fish swimming around. At one point we had swam a little further out than we realised and were about to turn back when a huge shoal of fish swam past. There must have been over 100 of them, all the same orange colour and about the size of a haddock that you'd buy down the chippy. We followed them for a while before realising that we were swimming too far out and headed back to the beach. It was a brilliant day of snorkeling and then we spent the rest of the day in the sun, occasionally popping back to the water.

At 4pm we decided to walk back to the hotel to shower and have an early dinner. On the way we popped to the ferry terminal to buy our ticket back to Koh Samui for use in 2 days time when we would be catching a flight from Koh Samui to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We headed out for dinner to a place called 'Bros and Sis' which is a bar/restaurant/hostel which we had been given a flyer for. It was right next to the pier and had a seating area that looked out over the water. We ordered spicy salad, pad thai and a curry and then sat and watched a live band. The band were Thai and sang in English, although some of the words they sang could've been any other language. The drummer looked like a Thai version of Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones. After a few drinks, of which I had a Mai Thai (we are in Thailand) and some beers we headed to bed.

Thursday 7th January 2016

Today we decided to explore the island and hired a motorbike from the guesthouse for a standard 200 THB. Reluctantly I left my passport as insurance and signed an agreement that basically offers no trust to the renter. For the bike you have to sign and agree that should the bike be damaged in any way, including scratches that the guesthouse will choose the garage to get the broken piece replaced (not fixed) and you pay whatever the fee would be. I was quite confident that I wouldn't have any issues as I am quite a slow driver given my lack of experience on a scooter and we set off on our blue Honda.

The island is very small so you're never further than 10 minutes drive away from anywhere. We decided to head to the south of the island first to see a view point called John - Suwan viewpoint ( I don't know who John is or what he did to get this place named after him) and then onto 'Freedom Beach. Gemma's work colleague who was in Koh Tao only a few days before us recommended the view point and the information we read on it point suggested wearing sensible shoes. Gemma took this to mean wear sensible shoes but I thought flip flops would suffice. On arriving at the entrance to the start of the mini hike, we paid 10 THB each and started to walk up the sandy, dusty path. The walk took no longer than 5 minutes but sensible shoes were required as at times the climb was steep and ropes had been tied to trees to assist in pulling yourself up. We made it to the top which is basically a huge boulder (there seems to be many of these on Koh Tao) and over looks the island. In front of us we could see 2 bays separated by a strip of jungle in between. The jungle was green and waters were all different shades of blue. It was a beautiful sight and unlike the viewpoint in Koh Phi Phi there weren't lots of people at the top, here there were about 7 including us. After a good 5 mins of admiration for the beautiful Koh Tao we took a steady, slippery walk down.

As we made it to the bottom of the hill we continued for another 100 metres to Freedom Beach, which is a private beach and belongs to a resort who had decided to open it up to the public. This was an unusual beach in that there were trees lining the water line and the sandy beach was set back behind the trees. This meant that your view of the water was obscured but you could see some twinkling blue between the branches of the trees. The sand was also very rocky, but nothing like Brighton beach so no need for complaints from us. We did venture into the water which like most of Koh Tao was a mixture of blues and greens. The water was a little choppier than Sairee beach on the west (we were at the south now) so swimming wasn't as easy but there were tonnes of fish swimming around.

We decided to leave Freedom Beach after an hour to explore another part of the island. We had a handy free guide book provided by the hotel and opted to visit a beach on the east of the island, a beach called Aow Leuk wich in Thai means 'deep bay'. Unfortunately we didn't arrive at Aow Leuk as we took a wrong turning and spent 10 minutes bouncing around a dusty road. The thing is with Koh Tao is that they are basically bulldozing through trees to create roads that link north, east, south and west. Some of these roads have been laid with concrete and some of the newer ones are just dusty roads that are yet to be flattened. This makes for a slippery ride but with most of the motor bikes (ours included) coming with off-road heavily treaded tyres, it meant that maneuvering through the dust was simple enough. When we reached the end of the road we found ourselves at a Tanote Bay which we decided to stay at. This was a wide beach made of lots of small pebbles and the sea was quite rough with big waves crashing against the shore. About 100 metres directly in front of the beach was a massive boulder which had a rope allowing some people to pull themselves up. These (brave or stupid) people would then jump off the boulder into the water. The jump was about 10 metres high and we spent a few hours watching some people jump and others stand with wobbly legs for about 10 minutes before realising the only way down was to jump. Thankfully our entertainment didn't result in anyone being hurt.

After spending most of the day at Tanote Bay where we had lunch in a beach side restaurant we drove the bike back to the hotel via the bumpy road again and showered. We were dusty and sweaty and after feeling refreshed we headed out for a pizza at a restaurant close to the hotel before heading back to the hotel to attempt to apply for a Myanmar visa online, but unfortunately their website wasn't working. Instead, we watched a few episodes of The Sopranos and went to sleep. Our sleep was interrupted a few times by the unbelievable heat on account of only having a fan in the room. We have since discussed only air con rooms from now on.

Friday 8th January 2016

We extended the rental of our motor bike as we wanted to explore some more of the Island. We stopped off for a breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast and made our way to Aow Leuk Bay, which is where we intended to visit the previous day. We found it this time without any problem and after a short 5 minute drive, again on some bumpy and dusty roads we arrived at the Bay. We were met by a German man who told Gemma (in German) that he was staying at this beach in one of the bungalows and that the beach didn't usually look like this. What we saw were some big waves which had washed up lots of seaweed and rubbish onto the beach. If it hadn't been for this, the place would've looked beautiful, but considering this was our final day on Koh Tao we wanted to go somewhere a little more peaceful. We got back onto the bike and headed north west over the island and to Sairee Beach which is where we had spent our first day. This time we opted to go to the northern side as opposed to the southern section.

When we arrived and parked up we realised that this section was clearly the 'party' section as there were many more bars and people offering flyers for free shots. We walked onto the beach after taking a look in a few shops and walked south along the beach to locate a nice spot to spend the day. After only 3 minutes or so of walking we found ourselves at exactly the same spot as on our first day. Sairee Beach we discovered wasn't very long at all. We put some towels down and went into the water to cool down.

We spent the whole of the day sunbathing and swimming in the placid waters whilst also watching some beach dogs (actual dogs) playing around and getting amorous (we didn't watch that bit!). At the end of the day we witnessed yet another beautiful sunset and then as it was getting dark headed back to where we had parked the bike. We drove the long 5 minutes back to our hotel in the dark and went to the room to shower. Whilst heading out for dinner we returned the keys to the hotel guy and he inspected the bike for any damage. He spent a long time inspecting and we were worried he was going to find something we had missed. Thankfully there was no damage and he returned my passport. We then headed out to an internet cafe where we printed out boarding cards out for tomorrows flight to Chiang Mai and had pizza again at the same place as last night. Gemma had a cold refreshing Sprite and I had a cold and tangy glass of red wine. We then headed back home to pack and watch some more Sopranos before sleeping and ending our wonderful 4 day stay in the absolutely stunning and laid back Koh Tao. Our final and favourite Thai island.

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