Koh Tao, Thailand - Blog by Beverly

It is no wonder that some people come to Koh Tao for a few days and stay for a few years. This island is the closest thing to paradise we have ever seen. We go back to Bangkok tomorrow after nine days on the island, far longer than anywhere else on this trip, and we are not ready to leave.

Koh Tao is an island in the Gulf of Thailand, north of the bigger and more well-known islands of Koh Samui and Koh Pha-Ngan. We had heard that Koh Tao was a really relaxing place with excellent snorkeling and a concentration of SCUBA diving certification operators. We decided to come to the island for four days to get our PADI Open Water SCUBA diving cert. After getting certified we would figure out how to split the rest of our time in Thailand between the other beach islands on the Andaman Sea side and a few national parks we had been eyeing. As it turns out, we never wanted to leave this place!

There are dozens of different dive operators here, but we chose one that was recommended to us by a fellow traveler earlier in the trip (back in January in Chiang Mai, Thailand). So we booked with Simple Life Diving and began our class the afternoon we arrived on Koh Tao. In addition to the two of us, there was one other student from Seattle and our instructor, Nick Leigh, from the UK. There were a few times along the way when we wondered why we were doing this, but we stuck it out and are now both certified divers!

The best part of the class was the last day. We were scheduled to do our final two dives with assorted underwater skills tests in order to complete the class. We were on a boat with other certified divers who were out for a "Fun Dive," one where they go diving just for fun at one of the great dive sites near the island.

After the first dive of the day, the boat captain got a message that the most coveted and rarely seen fish, the whale shark, was spotted at a dive site off the island. The decision was made to abort the original dive site plan and head out to the Chumphon Pinnacle dive site for the chance to see this whale shark, with the hope that it would still be there by the time our boat arrived. Apparently these creatures are very elusive. Some dive instructors have been teaching on the island for years, with thousands of dives under their belts, and have never seen a whale shark. (Moms, don't worry—it is more like a whale than a shark and only feeds on microscopic organisms in the water).

The mood on the boat was electric—everyone eagerly anticipated the sighting (see the Koh Tao photo album for a pic of Bev learning how to signal the sighting of a whale shark to other divers). We got there and went under for the dive. After about five minutes of watching the other fish and coral, the whale shark appeared! There was a big celebration underwater with hand signal cheering and jumping up and down (as much as one can jump up and down eighteen meters under water!) It was a beautiful purplish blue white polka-dotted creature about 5 meters/15 feet long. It gracefully swam around, cooperatively circling the site so everyone could watch. We could tell this was a really amazing thing to see, but I'm sure we couldn't fully appreciate the rarity and beauty of it—we were still getting used to breathing and making sure we surfaced in one piece, but we did thoroughly enjoy this unique sighting!

After the dive, we sat on the top deck of the boat with the rest of the divers, and we all laughed and recounted tales of the sighting. Since it was our last day of the class, the dive company sent a videographer with us to capture the final dive, so we are lucky enough not only to see a whale shark but to have a video of it. We'll show the DVD to anyone willing to sit through it when we get home.

After our class was over, we had five days left before heading back to Bangkok for our next flight. We stayed on Koh Tao and enjoyed our home away from home, the beautiful Sairee Beach.

This area of the island is really interesting in that there is a fairly narrow strip of land between the water and where the mountains start, so everything was concentrated along a compact swath along the water. The buildings were mostly one- or two-stories high and constructed to blend into the environment (mostly wood and bamboo), so the beach had a very natural look to it. Many places on the island do not have 24-hour electricity, although most of Sairee seemed to be powered all day.

One thing that struck me was one of the main roads between the port town of Mae Haad (the biggest town on the island) and Sairee (another good-sized town). Everyone coming to Koh Tao went through Mae Haad (there is no airport, so the only way to travel to or from the island is by boat). There were two roads between these towns, one paved and wide enough for a pickup truck and the other was dirt, but not even smoothly-laid dirt. It was little more than a 7-foot wide hiking path that many vehicles (mostly motorbikes) and pedestrians traveled to go between Mae Haad and Sairee (about a 30 minute walk) and to get to the guesthouses and shops between the two towns. The little shops along the way opened up right onto the dirt path. (See the picture album).

As the road got closer to Sairee town, it turned into a brick path that at first we thought was just a path through a resort. But, no, it was one of the main roads to town! The island is developing very quickly, though, and there was a construction site at almost every turn. It probably will be very different in a few years.

The accommodations and restaurants were almost all right on the beach. At night, the lounge chairs on the sand were either removed or converted to tables with cushions for the restaurants to serve dinner, and candles were used to light the tables. Barbequed fish and chicken kebabs were the main offerings along the beach—you choose the pieces of fresh fish you want out of a display canoe, mini-ship, or some other creative fish table, and you choose your Thai sauce. They cook it up right there, bring it to your table, and that's dinner! One night we chose a table closest to the water and we repeatedly had to move our table closer inland as the tide crept up and hit our feet!

We were lucky enough to be able to spend five more days on Koh Tao enjoying the beautiful sunsets, a bungalow right on the water, fabulous snorkeling in the cove right outside our front door, and one more dive with Simple Life before we left. We will certainly remember Koh Tao with the fondest of memories, but it is time to move on. We head to Bangkok and then to New Zealand for the next leg of the trip!