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Claire & Steve's Excellent Adventure
Well, the day dawned much the same as all the others - bright, sunny and very hot even at 7am. We headed out on the boat for our deep diving adventure; I was still apprehensive but fortunately almost everybody else had not gone down to 30 metres either so we were all in the same boat (ha ha). After quite a lengthy briefing we got geared up and jumped into the blue. It felt like we were descending on the mooring line forever but finally after a short swim we had made it to 30m....hoorah! The trickiest part of the dive were the exercises we had to do to show that we were not suffering from the effects of nitrogen narcosis due to the depth. I could manage writing my name backwards on the slate but when it came to the maths test, well my brain just failed me. Basically whatever number of fingers the instructor held up you had to make up the total to equal 11. Now...as maths is not my strongest subject I did have to take a little longer to add up than Steve and was mortified when I failed to add 4 onto 7!!!! I think the instructor understood that nitrogen narcosis had nothing to do with my inability to add up! Anyway on finishing the dive and completing some essential homework, Steve became an Advanced Open Water Diver and I got my Adventure Deep Dive certification ready to do it all again in the Surin and Similan Islands.
The following day was Steve's birthday (he hadn't even remembered himself!) and with no diving to do we hired a motorbike to explore Koh Tao. Once we left the main town we found the island to be really beautiful and peaceful. Much of it remains undeveloped so it is still possible to find the deserted beaches, coves and quiet lagoons. It has a very nice charm to it and the scenery is just what you expect of Thailand's beaches and islands. The only problem was that the roads down to the beaches were more suited to off roading vehicles than a little motorbike. This resulted in me getting off to walk down and back up the hills from the beaches whilst Steve sweated it out trying to manouvere between rocks and potholes....not easy when it is 35 degrees!
To add to this Steve fell over whilst pushing the bike, as the engine had given up on a dirt track, and cut his elbow and arm....not good any day let alone your birthday. After a lot of swearing and more pushing we finally made it back to the main road and got the bike going again with the help of a very nice Thai guy. Back at the guest house, I did my best nurse impression (Ceri, you would have been so impressed) to bathe and dress my lovely husband's wounds...I think I caused him more pain than the actual wound when I put iodine onto it - more swearing ensued!!!!
We headed to a beachfront restaurant for dinner and watched the sunset with a couple of beers in hand which helped ease the pain of a bloody arm for Steve. Later, with backpacks on we made our way to the harbour to get the overnight boat to Khao Lak. We hadn't realised that slave ships were still used but evidently so if the boat we were on was anything to go by! There were basically around 50 tiny mattresses lined up on the upper deck of the boat. You were given a number and that corresponded to your bed for the night. When everyone was on board and lying down that was it....off we went to sea. It was definitely a cosy night lying next to complete strangers - absolutelty no gap between you so any movement was nigh on impossible. At least everyone could laught about it and at least we had a piece of mattress unlike the Thai passengers who had to sleep on the scummy, noisy lower deck; although like most people in Asia they do have the ability to sleep soundly anywhere at anytime!
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