MikeCatty

The taxi collected us for our final two dives at 0830 and this time we were joined by an Austrian family of four, two of whom would be diving and two Americans that were doing an open water course. Green Rock was the first site and we were lucky that Marco spotted a moray eel hiding under a rock - it hid away as I tried to capture it on the GoPro. We were surrounded by clownfish, angelfish and many others that I’d never seen before. There was even a swim through that was very tight indeed but we both made it through. Dive 5 - Green Rock Max Depth 19.5 metres Dive Time 40 minutes Water Temp 31c Our surface time was at Lighthouse, a site on the north east coast of Koh Tao that ... read more

The breakfast buffet put on by Pinnacle was excellent and the made-to-order omelette hit the spot nicely with the superb view from the deck of the restaurant making things just about perfect. We were due to go on our first two dives in the early afternoon and had some time to spare so we headed into Sairee Beach for a look around and a shop. I needed some sort of device to hold the GoPro while I was diving and found just the thing. Kho Tao is a very small island - certainly no more than seven or eight kilometres end to end. We figured that we may as well take a look at the northern side given that we were most of the way there already and were rewarded with a pretty view of Koh ... read more

Jo had booked what appeared to be a stunning little bungalow on the beachfront in Koh Tao, a small island in the Gulf of Thailand. We planned on getting in some diving and taking it easy for the remainder of the trip. This day was always going to involve alot of travel but we figured it worthwhile as Koh Tao looked like our kind of place. We were at the breakfast table around 0830 and by 0900 I had gassed up my bike for the final time and Jo had finished packing. We dropped the bikes back to Say Cheese Guesthouse and began asking around about how to get to Chumphon where we planned on taking a ferry to Ko Tao. There was one place that had a bus / ferry combo that unfortunately left at ... read more

After our final breakfast at Kanpuri Hotel, Jo and I headed out on the motorbikes to start making plans to travel south, with the coastal city of Hua Hin our proposed destination. We collected our finished laundry (4kgs - THB80 - NZ$3) and found the train station to figure out how best to get to our destination. Trains from Kanchanaburi were few and far between, and didn't seem to fit in with any connections heading south, we may have even had to go back to Bangkok. A mini-bus seemed to be the way to go. Before leaving, we had one more tourist stop to make in town - the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery (Allied War Cemetery) located across the road from the Thailand Burma Railway Centre. 6982 Australian, Dutch and British POWs are buried in the cemetery, ... read more

The hotel arranged our taxi as we checked out so we missed the usual fun and games of getting a driver prepared to use the meter. Victory Monument was the destination as we were advised that this was the place to book a bus to Kanchanaburi. There were no signs in English at all but a tout pointed us in the right direction. I was about to buy two tickets at THB120 each when I was told that we needed a ticket for our bag also. "Why would I do that?", I asked. Silence... We walked to the ticket counter next door and forked out THB120 per ticket with the bag travelling free. Within 10 minutes a mini-van rolled up and we were on our way on the two hour journey. Kanchanaburi lies around 130 kilometres ... read more