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Published: January 9th 2013
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So, I've finally begun the travelling blog! We're 12 days in now, currently relaxing on Koh Tao, Thailand. Our first day was travelling in the literal sense. After 3 planes and one pretty interesting taxi ride (the first of many!) we arrived at our hotel in Koh Samui at midnight. We were only staying for one night and so exhausted, we set alarms and got straight into bed. I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of rain, almost convinced I was still in England. Fell back to sleep until we were rudely awoken by the cleaners trying to get into our room. Confused, we grabbed our phones, thought 'it's 5am, why are they waking us?' and then realisation dawned that we hadn't changed the timezone on our phones! Classic! Not the most relaxing start to the day! We grabbed our backpacks and headed to the main road, casually making way for a snake crossing our path! We then got another interesting taxi to the ferryport and headed to Koh Phangan. I say 'interesting' because the drivers here decide to overtake on bends, with cars coming, and don't pay much attention to the hundreds of mopeds and bikes
on the roads!
So we got a ferry over to Koh Phangan on the 30th, ready for the Full Moon NYE party the next day. It was a tiny bit concerning when the taxi driver clearly hadn't heard of our hotel. He took us halfway and then made us swap to a different taxi. Not the only time that happened on Koh Phangan, the second time there were no seats left on the new taxi so we were made to stand on the back and hold on! An experience I imagine we'll probably have to repeat! The Full Moon party was mental, I've never seen anything like it! Thousands of neon people partying on the beach. It was an epic New Years! We made friends with some Finnish people and Ecuadorians and partied til 7am. Not a bad start to 2013! We were staying in Chaloaklam Bay and spent the first 3 nights there. One night all of the power went out in the village for about 3 hours so we sat eating by candlelight! Delightful! It was a beautiful little village on the beach. There was a bay around the cape called 'Bottle Beach' which you could only
really reach by boat so we went there one afternoon. We arrived to an amazing white sand beach with the backdrop of an amazing mountain, lush green forrest and palm trees. We jumped off the boat and began swimming. Five minutes later it started to pour with rain so we had to run to the shelter of the beach resort bar. We grabbed a beer and waited for the rain to pass which it did in about 10 mins and the sun was back out. We threw down our towels, ready to sunbathe when our boat decided it was time to leave!! That was a fun half hour! We moved on to Than Sadet on the East side of the island for another couple of nights. We got a two storey hut in the trees and a beautiful secluded bay. The view from my hammock was incredible!
We moved on to Koh Tao on the 4th and started an Open Water Diving course for four days. We then started the advanced course which we finished today. Diving is amazing!! We can now dive anywhere in the world to 30m so will hopefully dive our way around South East Asia,
money permitting! We got to do loads of cool stuff like a wreck dive to an American WW2 ship and a night dive where all you have is a torch! Incredible! I'm loving Koh Tao. It's really social and we've met loads of cool people including one guy who used to get my bus to school (small world)! Most people seem to be finishing up their trip but I'm really glad we started here so that we can carry on diving! It's going to be hard to leave tomorrow. It's another beautiful beach resort where you dive all day and sit in the bar all night! Though of course there's no drinking and diving!
SO that's pretty much it so far! The food's been pretty good though I'm slightly embarrassed to say my favourite thing are the pancake carts - such a Westerner! It took me a few days to get used to the realisation that I've left home for quite a while and I've got about a million insect bites and now blisters from 5 days of wearing fins, BUT when you're sat in the sun, sipping a coconut shake and pouring over your travel guide trying to
work out where to go next (everyone has recommendations) - life seems pretty good!
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swampy
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nice tan
glad to see your having fun, a diving cecil? what ever next?! i see beths got herself one o them fashionable new red tans, im sure youl have one soon enough, love love!