Well after a four day course of scuba diving I am now an officially PADI certified diver!!! Was totally addicted after the first dive and once we had done all the skills and stuff we did four dives over two days and it was amazing! We went to a few different dive sites around the island, the visibility was better in some than others but what we did see was unbelieveable! Stingray, pufferfish, eel, banner fish, scorpion fish (yes they can sting you!) butterfly fis...

Woke up this morning to beautiful blue skies with hot hot sunshine! But sadly couldn't stop to enjoy it as we were off to our first scuba diving session, which as it turns out is just like being back at school!! We are doing a 4 day PADI Scuba Dive Training course and we have to take exams and everything! So we started this morning with our instructor and began with the basics in the classroom and then after a lunch break we got to get set up with our diving gear...

After leaving Tokyo we landed in Bangkok on Halloween, which was a serious assault to the senses... once we got used to it and found our bearings we made the most of it, did a bit of shopping before heading south for the islands - koh tao first stop. Took the night train from Bangkok to Chumphon, about 458km south of Bangkok where we took the catamaran the following morning to Koh Tao... (where we'd been told it had been raining heavily for the last week!) Than...