Advertisement
Ko Tao March 08
Years ago on a lad's holiday to Tenerife I had attempted scuba diving, it was awful! It was a bit of a cowboy operation to say the least. I had trouble with my ears, not enough weight to take me down, the equipment......everything. Even the shopping trolley I saw at the bottom could not make up for it.
Many people we have met, especially in South East Asia have always told us that Thailand is a great, cheap place to do it so I thought I might as well have another go at it. Ko Tao has many dive centres and doing the course gives you free accomodation, well sort of free! The Island itself is really nice althought the weather was really changeable all the time we were there. The room was really basic, just a bed, a mosquito net and a cold water shower. Mind you it's that humid that you don't mind.
I must admit to being really nervous before the first day but the instructor was a nice Aussie fella and to cut a long story short I loved it! I did the three day course and have since
done six extra dives. The open water course allows you to dive down to 18 metres, on the day we did this I saw quite a few grey reef sharks ranging from 1 to 2 metres in lenght.They were amazing to watch and as a bonus not interested in eating you! The sharks were at a depth of 30 metres, so the next day after finishing the course I went deeper to get a closer look at the sharks! I was lucky that on the day one of the instructors brought a good underwater camera with them, I was made up with the pictures!
On another day we hired a moped and went to have a look around the Island and it's more remote beaches, freedom beach and sharks bay were both beautiful.
Our hotel had a restaurant on the beach with descent food, most nights they did a BBQ with a variety of fresh fish. One day we met two lovely Canadian girls called Lianne and Laurie and we arranged to meet up with them for dinner one night. When we met up they had already had a few beer Changs. Now that doesn't sound like
a lot but chang is lethal stuff, rumour has it that the alcohol content is not regulated and it can range from anything from 6% to 12%. Anyway Lauire started to feel a little worse for wear and wanted to go to sleep but we had just ordered food, unable to stay awake and not allowed to go to bed, Laurie opted to get under the table and have a little kip there on the beach ! It was very busy in the restaurant and we were getting a lot of funny looks from fellow diners. When the food arrived Lianne tried to wake up Laurie and whilst leaning over managed to fall on the floor next to her ! Comedy. These were our kind of girls, hilarious and great fun! Laurie did manage to wake up and eat dinner but after that she started to feel sleepy again so went back under the table again ! Brilliant.
Another night the four of us went to watch a drag caberet show. I really didn't want to go but being with 3 girls i didn't have much choice ! It was ....erm ..... weird ! Men / Ladys dressed up
doing a kind of miming / dancing is not my cup of tea but the girls loved it so i was in the minority ! Then we all posed with the ladys , i was more comfortable with the sharks and tigers !
Advertisement
Tot: 0.062s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 10; qc: 22; dbt: 0.0334s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Lianne
non-member comment
anything to get a good pic!
Ha ha! I'll never forget what I can remember of that night! Beer Chang is the BEST!!