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Published: April 7th 2007
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Sairee Sunset
Beautiful to watch. Sat 31st: So having got the bus from Bangkok 6pm last night we finally arrived in Chumpon at 3.30am, and waited till 6am for our ferry over to Koh Tao. Got to Koh Tao and checked into the hotel, confusingly called AC Resort (AC 1), there is an AC 2 aswell. Which we booked over the internet before leaving and ended up paying 1000 Baht a night (about 15 quid, ouch!), and we just spent the day getting our bearings around Sairee Beach really.
After a while we bumped into Julie and arranged to meet up for dinner later where we all met up (Julie, Bernie, Chunkie and Toni)
Sun 1st: April Fool's day Again did nothing allday other than lay on the beach, went to a bar callled Choppers and managed to get a Sunday roast, although there was no Horseradish sauce or Yorkshire puddings, still it was nice.
Mon 2nd: Full Moon Party Well, we checked out of the stupidly expensive AC 1 and dumped our bags in Julie's room and killed some time till the ferry arrived for Koh Phangan. About 8pm we got to Koh Phangan and were all ready for the Full moon
Sairee beach - Koh Tao
Our secluded beach. It was really nice, and now no other beach compares. The bit of land to the farthest left is the 3 islands joined by a sandbar that Matt Scuba dived both sides of. party (A hedonistic beach party, complete with Trance music).
Started out with a bucket at the Reggae bar where we all met up with 2 people (Alex and Debs) that Julie, Bernie and Chunkie had met earlier on their travels. The Reggae bar had free paint that glowed under UV light (Like the 'Cyberdogs' at Gatecrasher wore a few years ago.), so we all painted stupid things on each other.
After that we hit the beach to join the Full Moon party proper, and got another 'bucket.', about 10 minutes after that it all gets a bit hazy for poor Matt and Bernie. It seems that our bucket got mixed up with someone else's (possibly while Matt went for a pee in the sea, as everyone there does).
Having no memory of the night, Matt is told that he spent first half of the night being all lovey-dovey (Very out of character), then kept falling over/collapsing -as did Bernie. He was 'baywatched' by some do gooders, and after Leanne carrying the pair of us to our groups' 'meeting point', Matt then managed to snap a large branch off a tree!, Bernie at the time decided that she needed to
sweep the beach with the broken branch.
After asking Leanne several questions like:
1. "Where is Leanne ? What have you done with Leanne ? You are not Leanne!"
2. "Why won't you take me home, you are selfish, I want to go home."
Matt then got in a strop because he wanted to go home and sleep in his own bed, and started being angry and aggressive. Meanwhile Bernie's eyes just kept rolling and she kept collapsing.
We think, or guess that it was most likely Ketamin, and our bucket got mixed up - well, it started as a blue plastic bucket, and suddenly we had a pink one ?, after noticing it, Bernie and I just said "F*** it! Let's drink it anyway.", big mistake.
On the way back, on the minivan from the beach to the pier we apparently had a psychotic driver. He was driving far too fast and kept braking really hard. He was possibly enraged further when Julie sprayed him in the face with air freshener (But he did deserve it.).
Tue 3rd: Leanne was hungover and Matt has never felt so ill. We didn't get up till
Matt on a ropeswing
Sairee beach again. 6pm, went for dinner and Matt went back to the room, the restaurant was too much and the prospect of any form of conversation seemed too much. Leanne stayed there about half an hour to swop stories and piece together the night before.
Wed 4th: Julie and Matt booked a scuba diving course, the PADI 'Open Water.' course. Leanne didn't want to risk it with her ear, which is a shame, but sensible. We went with Asia Divers and got the accomodation free with the course (9800 Baht/about 150 GBP). Then we all met up for dinner, Matt chose 'Jungle curry.' - Hottest thing anybody at the table had ever tasted, it made
the skin on 2 peoples' lips swell. He ate it all, but sweated at least 3 litres out.
Thur 5th: Matt did the theory part of the diving course, while Leanne spent the day at Sariee beach with
Bernie and Chunkie, sunbathing, floating on Lilos and so forth.
The water here is great, crystal clear, if you get a snorkel and go out about 20 metres where the water is waist high, the sea bed is all dead coral and has hundreds of fish around,
admirals, clown fish, butterly fish, bat fish - loads.
Fri 6th: Matt got up at 7.30am and and went to do his first dive. The first one was at Twins (which is just next to a set of 3 islands connected by a sandbar), that dive had loads of tasks to do, like mask clearing, taking the regulator (The bit with the breathing air in it) out of your mouth, throwing it away and retrieving it (all whilst 12 metres under water), it was fun and we saw loads of Fish, and living soft corals. the only problem was Matt's weightbelt had 6kg on it, which was far too much
The second dive, in the afternoon was at Green rock (the other side of the sandbar0, and it was awful. firstly there were about 5 or 6 boats around every buoy, so it was very crowded on the mouring ropes, second it was so crowded that it was almost impossible at times to know which group was yours or which instructor or set of people to follow, and thirdly we had to remove our mask and snorkel underwater and put them back on, and empty them. This was
Couplie sunset shot
Matt is sober here, he just doesn't look it. fine, but after it Matt's mask kept filling every 10 seconds or so, he couldn't see, plus we had taken 4kg off my belt so i was too light. Of course to empty a mask underwater you breath in, and breath out hard through your nose. When you breathe in you float up, when you breath out you sink. After a deep breath in and having too little weight, I ended up shooting up the full 12 metres to the surface in about 1 second (Oops!)
Again Leanne enjoyed some beachtime the whole day, swimming, Liloing, sunbathing etc with Bernie and Chunkie and everyone.
Sat 7th: Early morning again, Matt did his final two dives; the morning dive was back at Twins and had a few tasks, which were not too bad. The main problem was getting his buoyancy right (how much you go up and down as you breathe) and overall it was okay. And Julie had one of her flippers attacked by a Trigger fish, quite a big one.
The second afternoon dive was very scary, first it was in open sea at a place called Chumpom pinnacle and it was stormy. Rain, rough sea -
Matt's feet.
The water is so clear. 30 metres of visibility as if you wanted to know. lots of sea sick people, and the phsychological prospect of going down to 18 metres. As it turned out it was fine, stormy weather has no effect subaqua and 18 metres was nothing, Matt even accidently dropped to 25 metres and got told off (Oops!). Then we got back, and got told we had passed the course and can now dive anywhere in the world to 18 metres, although the 'Advanced Open Water' looks good. You get to ride on a James Bond style torpedo thing and do both underwater photography and underwater cinematography
Leanne had a change today- she stayed by the pool, then went snorkelling at the beach where she saw sea cucumbers, giant big sea urchins, catfish, leopard fish, admiral fish and several others. Afterwards she enjoyed having the 9800 Baht Matt spent on his course as shopping money (150 quid is a good shopping spree here in Thailand)
At night, we had the world's biggest Gecko in our room. Perhaps 12 or 13 inches and Leanne got Gecko-Phobia. Matt tried to shoo it away with a hat but it just kept going under the bed. She didn't sleep well.
Sun 8th: Matt and
Julie got up early to do their free 'Fun dive.', the morning we just sat about the boat (A 30 to 40 foot fishing trawler) whilst 2 guys starting their advanced open water did some tasks. In the afternoon we were taken to Japanese Gardens for our dive. It's only about 10 to 15 metres tops there, but as the name suggests it's full of coral (Some of which look like Bonsai trees) and a stupid amount of sea-life. Then we just sat round and waited for our sleeper ferry to Krabi.
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You make me sick
How dare you two swan about as brown as berries whilst the rest of us can only drool at the prospect? I think it's jolly unfair. The scuba sounds like great fun and it's nice to see that you do eat apart from western franchise rubbish. Leanne looks really glam in her black outfit - it really goes well with the tan. See you next blog