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Overnight trip to Ko Tao
Waiting at the port in Chumpon for the ferry - it's about 5 am right now. Greetings again from Ko Tao, the coolest island in the world!
It's another beautiful day out, sun is setting soon and we're taking a break from our strenuous daily routine to catch up on emails and do a little blog writing. We've only been here a few days but have already decided to extend our stay here until the 7th. I think it's probably the best decision we've made next to deciding to come here in the first place!
Actually I think we're pretty lucky to have found this place. The original plan was to go straight to Ko Samui and do the scuba diving lessons there, but as soon as we heard that Ko Tao was ten times better for diving and tons cheaper, we juts had to give this a shot instead. We actually thought it was going to be dull here besides the diving, but good gravy were we ever wrong! After an overnight trip on a double decker bus and high speed boat, we checked in to Crystal Dive Resort and then I immediately got right into the open water lessons that afternoon. At the academic classes we met Sean from Manchester, England, who I've
Ko Tao at night
Hey, we're silhouettes! been buddying up with on our dives, and of course awesome Angie, our awesome dive instructor (I know said awesome twice) from Australia. She was a blast to learn from... practically everything she says or does is followed with a surfer-like cheer going "yeaaaaahhh!!!" and a thumb-and-pinky shaka sign double fist pump... it's so hilarious! A totally relaxed teacher but really knows her stuff, and you can clearly see that she loves diving. A few days ago she even postponed our written final exam so we could go on our first dive instead... how cool is that!? So the last entry I made was from the day of that dive, which was closed water meaning we were only in shallow depths where we had no currents to deal with. It was fun, but naturally it was just experiencing the tip of the iceberg, and it just kept getting better from there. Yesterday we had our final exam, which we all aced, followed by our first two real open water dives in the afternoon, which we were all super stoked for. We went down to a depth of 11 meters, where we got a little introduction to the underwater life here...
Overnight trip to Ko Tao
Ahh the sunrise... welcome to the Gulf of Thailand! we saw a school of yellowtail barracuda, angelfish, giant pufferfish, a king mackerel mating threesome (yeah, it was incredible, these things were huge!), scorpion fish, boxfish, and the apparently infamous triggerfish. Not a bad start! The triggerfish is particularly well known here for the way it defends it's cone-shaped territory in the water - it seems everyone here has experienced a few encounters with these happy creatures. If you get triggered, as they say, you're told to just try to appear large, put your fins in the way (they like to go for those) and try to swim straight across, and not up, as you stay in the cone that way, and just continue on until he leaves you alone. If he has a wifey nearby, be prepared for an extra ornery trigger fish! Angie was pretty good about spotting these guys for us though, so we never got triggered, but everyone who works here seems to have stories about these fish that sound pretty funny actually!
Our group is made up of 5 people - Sean from England, Bono (yes, like the U2 singer!) from the Netherlands, and Erin and Alex from North Carolina. The greater extended group
Ko Tao
First sight of Ko Tao includes people taking classes with Yuki, which include three guys from the Netherlands and, randomly enough, the same two Danish guys we met in our first night on Kao Sahn in Bangkok. Normally we mainly mingle amongst ourselves in our spare time, but the instructors and dive masters here are all so cool and friendly that we're getting to know a lot of them as well. Lots of interesting stories about how people got to work here. The sense I'm getting here is that since this is a no-package-tourist type of island, it's a really appealing place for escapist divers, and many of these people were originally just visitors who ended up deciding to live here a little (or a lot) more long term. It's easy to see how this place can be so tempting. The beaches are white and beautiful, the water is like being in a bathtub, there's surprisingly little noise here besides the annoying roosters outside our room every morning (and night sometimes.. these things seem to get confused easily!) and the night life in Sairee, the main town next door, is entirely based around the beach bar/lounge scene, so it's totally relaxed, nothing too wild but
Closed Water Dive
On our way to our closed water dive - that freaking tan needs some work! always a blast! This bar called Lotus is where you go for the after hours party here, which is basically a huge beach party complete with pillows in the sand to kick back in, tiki torches, and of course all the corniest pop singles from the 70's and 80's you can imagine! It's almost like you're frozen in time here, every day is taken at the same pace, so there's no difference between Sunday Monday. The dive masters and diving instructors here still work 12 hour days, 6 days a week here, but I'd be shocked if there was an ounce of stress between any of them. It's a great time here, but I've not really been going out too much because we have to wake up early every day for our dives, which I'm not complaining about at all. Being underwater and chilling with the fishes is way too much fun!
Okay on to today - so I'm now a certified open water diver! Sweet!! We had our 3rd and 4th open water dives this morning, and then a little celebratory lunch where we got our temporary certification cards. Angie especially was super stoked, dude! Our first dive
Japanese Gardens
Nearby the site of our closed water dive was at White Rock, where we saw more triggerfish, angelfish, and a blue spotted stingray chilling underneath a rock. We also saw a harlequin sweetlips, which is kind of a darker colored Nemo (like the clown fish from the cartoon movie), which was such a cool sight to see. Some time ago some divers discovered this guy's home on the sea floor, a little patch of anemone completely alone in the sand like an oasis in the desert, which they then marked off by creating a circle of rocks around it to prevent any accidental damaging. Now the guy chills out there undisturbed, and we just hovered outside the circle checking him out as he just bobbed around above the anemone, sinking into it every so often for a little privacy. Next dive was at a site nearby called Twins (named after the two small islands nearby) where we saw more anemone fish in the corals, another blue spotted stingray, and a morey eel also chilling in the rocks. Altogether a cool day!
After lunch we went on to the beach where we caught up on our sun (diving doesn't give us good tans, sadly). Sean decided he's going
Rescue Diver Training
Advanced training course in rescue diving. The act the assistants make when pretending to be drowning is absolutely hysterical! on for his advanced certification starting tomorrow, which I probably won't do because it's hard to tell when I'll have the next opportunity to dive. I will however get my deep dive specialization tomorrow, which allows me to go down to 30 meters instead of just 18. I think that's worthwhile at least, so whenever next time comes around I can do that. Other advanced courses include wreck diving, cave diving, ice diving, night diving, all of which sound spectacular.
So today before dinner we all gathered around in Crystal's bar area (picture beanbags and reggae music by the beach, and that's pretty much what it is!) and watched videos that were taken of our groups during our final two dives today. There were shots of us scoping out Nemo, practicing our underwater drills (like clearing water out of our masks, switching between regulators, assuming the floating buddha position) and swimming around the corals. The video was pretty expensive, so we decided to split the cost evenly and in a few months Alex from our group will send us burnt copies when she gets back home. It was actually a great video, I can't wait to show it to
Sean & us
Sean from Manchester on the left all of you!
So anyway, signing off now. Miss you all and hope everything's going well back at home. I hear it's still raining up in the Northeast - sorry to hear that you're getting such ridiculous weather! Hopefully it'll clear up soon, it can't just continue on! This isn't England!
Sawatdee Khrap
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Jennefer Hirshberg
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It would be hard to beat such a fabulous trip! I learned to dive back in my twenties and made dives in Hawaii, Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, as well as the cold, dark, Pacific Ocean. This place sounds spectacular. I so enjoyed reading your tale of adventure, Farid. Jennefer