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Published: January 28th 2016
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Next on our island hopping adventure was diving mecca, Koh Tao. My second time touring the islands and without a doubt my favourite. Thanks to my lonely planet travel guide we found an ideal diving school with minimal effort. The accommodation on the island gets pretty busy with the hoards of full moon goers traipsing over to the island, but if your going to be doing a diving course, or even not, it's a good idea to have a look on the diving school websites, they have a quick turn around of guests as you can imagine and take pre-reservations.
We stayed at "Big Blue Diving Resort" which was bang on the Sairee beach, where all the magic happens! With our reservation they had already arranged accommodation for us, a private three bed room with an extra mattress on the floor, fan-assisted only as with the combination of our course the accommodation was free! Ideal. Our open water course came to 9,000BHT - about £180. Near enough the same everywhere we looked. We started the course straight away, first off we were chucked in a classroom and instructed to watch a whole load of safety and instruction videos, with homework
to do on each. I've got to say the amount of classroom time on the course was well above what I expected, but all well worth it when we finally got in the water. The second half of the second day was spent in the pool practicing skills and getting familiar with the equipment. 5hrs in the pool... Safe to say I was tired and bloody wrinkly. I should mention as well our instructor, we had G, a chirpy and enthusiastic dive instructor who had been diving for 17 years and done over 1,200 dives! Absolutely mental. She was a good instructor, thorough and really safe but will take absolutely no shit. To start off with I did find her kinda patronising and was scared to ask questions, she was also punishing me for being hungover on the first day.... Perhaps a bit of a rocky start but by the time we were out in the water she was our mumma G and we were having had the best time. Would recommend anyone to do their open water certification for sure. Kinda regret not doing my advanced course but there are plenty more places with awesome diving to do that.
Koh Tao without a doubt is my favourite island in all of Thailand. Such a chilled out vibe and so much to do. We spent most of our time on the island with the crazy Americans from Koh Phanghan, Ryan and Caleb, and the super cool French gent, Elliott. Thailand fam has formed! We got mopeds and went exploring around the island. Some awesome snorkelling spots on beaches dotted around, Freedom beach, Ao Leuk Bay, Mango Bay and Tanote Bay with a crazy cliff jumping spot too. High bar and Natural high are also a must to go see. A super chilled out bar/lounge spot with an incredible view of the island and some naughty treats as I'm sure you can imagine... Signs dotted around the bar "Boys and girls make sure you leave with your drugs in your underwear..." were pretty hilarious. Close by to high bar was another great restaurant with some awesome shakes "Recovery Angel" is the one for your post Sariee beach mash up. With a beautiful infinity pool overlooking a beach, if your lucky enough to see turtles at sunset, that is a sight for sore eyes. It's name has completely got lost in
my mind but it's on the right a bit before high bar on the left.
Food wise there is a secret mini town behind the Main Street by Sariee full of some more fancy places. Look for the Blue Wind Yoga Hostel, opposite and slightly to the left is a side alley, carry on down there and it will open up to a mini city of delicious places to eat. Barracuda is a definite recommendation, fresh fish at a five star standard but at a one star price! The island isn't short of street food either, make sure you try a crispy chicken sandwich for something ridiculous like 60BHT, those bad boys made my day. Nightlife in Koh Tao was a tad more relaxed then it's sister island Koh Phanghan.
Of an evening we spent a lot of our time at Lotus Bar and Sunset Bar, watching the ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE fire men. Literally mind blowing the tricks they were doing. And could easily get lost watching them for hours with some drinks on the beach taking in the beautiful scenery. Things start getting a bit more crazy around 10 when the music notably becomes more upbeat and the
crowds grow and become more rowdy. Until about
2am the parties along the beach bars are popping off. We still managed to have some seriously messy nights on the islands. Celebrated two of the boys birthdays which turned out to be a ridiculously hilarious night running around the beach causing havoc. Our 3 days there turned into 5 into 7, could have easily stayed there longer! We had a great little group and definitely hand some of my best travelling memories on that island.
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