Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Our favourite island so far!!! We loved it as soon as we arrived here (despite the hangover after the FMP!). Koh Tao is the dive hub of Thailand and one of the cheapest places in the world to do your PADI Scuba course, so that's the main reason we're here. After shopping around we came across New Way Diving who our SA friend Paul did his course with when his was here a few weeks back, they're also one of the LP's favorite's because they're a small school and the only one to go out for dives at 6am before any other schools so there are no other divers around and you have more chance of seeing paraplegics (i.e. WHALE SHARKS!). The course cost 9,000 Bhat (about £180) and included 5 nights accomodation in a little bunglow called p****Tai just off the beach, which was the nicest place we've stayed but still just a fan room so nothing fancy. But it was the people that sold it to us here - the manager, Will (a South African guy), was so friendly and casual, completely open and not at all pushy. And a maximum of only 6 people to a group compared to 12 at some others. We both felt comfortable so booked with him... our couse started the following day, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhh!
On checking in to our gorgeous little bungalow, I noticed it was number 13, and then a little black cat appeared on our porch!!! Not exactly good luck signs... good job we're not superticious! The moggy actually let herself into our room whilst we were offloading our backpacks, jumped on the bed and made herself comfy! We had a pet with our bungalow! I named her Moggy! The rest of that day and was spent lazing on the beach for the rest of the afternoon sobering up/nursing a hangover. That evening we found a little local place to eat behind our dive school called Pee Pan's which was owned by the same Thai lady who owned the dive shop and beyond the plastic tables and chairs was all the dive equipment and cleaning staions for the equipement! The food was AMAZING and almost everything on the menu was only 50 Bhat (about a quid!) - so, so cheap compared to everywhere else in Koh Tao (which is quite expensive... even the 7Eleven was more expensive here!). This turned out to be our main eatery - the staff even got familiar with us and gave us free specials like spring rolls and shrimp cakes, mmmmmm!!!!!!!
After a blissful nights sleep we awoke, opened our bungalow and in came Moggy! Rich nipped to 7Eleven to get us some cereal and milk so we could have breakfast in bed and we shared this with Moggy... she really was our little pet! She was only a kitten and we played with her with some string and she was pouncing all over the place! She was jet plack with big yellow eye's - we loved her! We spent the day relaxing and snorkling on the gorgeous palm fringed, white sand beach, which had a coral reef just a few metres out, little longtail boats to taxi you around the island should you wish, and a couple of dive boats in the distance. Our dive course started at 3pm... we met our instructor, Niki, a really cool guy our age from Birmingham who we instantly felt comfortable with, and we met our fellow students - 2 sisters from Sweden and a guy from Denmark, so only 5 of us in our group. Nothing hectic today, just filling out all the relevent paperwork signing your life away and a 2 hour video to watch, after which we were told we had to read the first 3 chapters of our dive coursebook for homework that night! Homework? On holiday?! After doing nothing for 4 months you have no idea how hard that is let me tell you!!!
The following day the course really got started! We had to be at the dive shop for 9am for theory work until midday, then we got fitted for our equiptment (at the back of Pee Pan's restaurant!), had an hour for lunch before our first confined water session in the sea! Eeeh! We went to a dive site known as Japenese Gardens which was only a 15 minute boat ride away and just off the Ko Nang Yuan island just off Koh Tao (it's 2 small forest covered hills joined only by a sandbar with the sea either side). We met a guy called Jo on the boat who was training to be a divemaster and he would be joining us on our dives too to watch and asssist Niki with our training. We were shown how to set up our equipment and were told we had to do this automatically everytime we got on the boat from now on. We had a swim test to make sure we were all fit enough - 2 laps around the boat and then float for 10 minutes - then donned our dive equipment, were shown how to jump off the boat, and off we went! The confined water test is just to learn the basic skills so no diving as such at this point. We sat on the sea bed only a couple of metres under and practised things like taking of our masks underwater, putting htem back on and then clearing them of water, taking our regulators out (our air supply), fin pivots (buoyance control), hand signals, etc. At first it was a bit strange breathing underwater and I was very concious of my breathing, but before long you orget about it cuz you're concentrating on other things like watching each other and the fish and you suddenly relise you're breathing normally without realising it! It's so calm and relaxing don there it's difficult to feel panicked, and NIki was such a calm, collected instructor we just felt completely at ease. After about and hour we surfaced and swam back to the boat. On getting back to the dive shope we were shown how to wash our dive equipment properly (in Pee Pan's!). We loved it already and couldn't wait to get back in the following day! Although first we had more homework for the following morings theroy session (and exam!). Problem... Liam and Harriet were arriving from Koh PhaNgan and we arranged to meet them that night for a few drinks!!! As you can imagine we weren't very good pupils that night and didn't complete our homework!!! Oops! Instead we had great fun at a pool party and stuffed ourselves with free hotdogs, mmmmmmmm!
Another 9am start and full morning of theory (where we went over what we should've read for homework so all turned out OK!), followed by our final exam! Me and Rich passed with 100%! Yeay! After a brief lunch we were back on the boat again for 2 more dives back at the same dive site. This time we went deep... about 12m! We had no problems descending whatsoever, which was a releif cuz I was worried about equaising my ears, and once down we went for our first swim! It's so hard to stay at one level... everytime you breathe in and your lungs fill with air you float up a bit, and when you breathe back out you sink! We'll learn with practise how to control this (our buoyancey), but at the minute we keep thinking we're gonna sink onto the corals! It was an amazing feeling being down there... it's like you're weighless! We saw so much aquatic life, but the best was an Eagle Ray (which I actually missed!)... Niki has been diving for about a year in Koh Tao and this was the first time he'd seen one! I can't remember what else we saw, we were so busy concentrating on how to dive we didn't take in as much of our surroundings as we could have, which is normal. After getting back onto the boat and changing our air tanks we were back in again! We stayed at the same dive site because everyone wanted to look for the Eagle Ray! This time we only went to 8m and just sat at the bottom practising the skills we leant yesterday. When it came to my turn I filled my mask up with water (as instructed!) and on clearing it I noticed everyone was looking behind me... I looked around and the divemaster, Jo, was just floating there waving at me... when we surfaced later I was told a Trigger Fish (big and aggressive, but can't do much damage!) had swam towards the back of my head whilst my mask was full of water and Jo had to intervene before it tried to nip me!!! Bloody thing! So I missed the Eagle Ray and the Trigger Fish!
The next morning Team Handsome (as Niki and Jo named us!) congregated at 6am at the dive shop for our last 2 dives, after which we would be qualified PADI Open Water Divers, eeeehh! It was sooo hard getting up so early (diving really takes it out of you, but don't suppose the drinking is helping!) but it was sooo worth it! We saw sunrise whilst out on the boat and we were the only dive school out on the water this early... it's be another hour before other dive schools came out by which time we'd done our first dive, so we had the sea to ourselves! We went to a dive site called South West Pinnacle which was 2 peaks of coral covered limestone underwater, which you swim around in a figure 8. We enoyed this dive so much... we saw so many fish and so much coral and our confidence was really growing. Our second dive was at a dive site called White Rock and this was our best dive yet, purely because we could actually dive now so more of our time was spent focusing on our surroundings rather than what we were doing... amazing! We also had a cameraman (a young Canadian guy called Eric) with us to film todays dives which was so much fun! We were doing various hand signals to him an Niki showed us how to blow bubble rings which we did into the camera! On surfacing we were qualified, yay! Just a few bits of paperwok to complete at the diveshop and then we were all off to Choppers Bar for a beer and to watch Erics video! Harriet and Liam met us for the big premier too! It was sooo good watching the video back... our little 'Team Handsome' had gelled so well, Niki and Jo were BRiLLIANT guys, we had such a laugh with them, and it all showed in the video. To celebrate we all got hammered that night at Lotus Bar which is right on the beach with cushions on the sand and fire throwers to watch! After several buckets we rolled in in the early hours!
Our 1st day of complete 'freedom' on Koh Tao was spent relaxing and nursing a hangover on the beach and arranging a fishing trip with Liam and Harriet for the following day! The fishing trip was AMAZING! On the way out we trawled for tuna... caught 2, but also caught 2 blue marlin!!! The first one got away just as the boatsmen were about to gaff it (which I was quietly pleased about!) but they landed the other. They were amazing fish to catch - they would breach out of the water as you were trying to land them from right out in the distance to right near the boat, which can be dangerous... a fisherman in Krabi was apparently speared though the head by one whilst trying to land it from his longtail boat. Rich and Liam were so chuffed, apparently it's a rare experience to catch a marlin and fisherman dream of it?!?! Once the boat stopped we all dropped our lines to about 40m (using live squid as bait!) and I go the first catch... it was a huge trivali, I thought I'd hooked a shark it fought so hard but I landed it all on my own! We caught loads of trivali... Rich caught the biggest one of the year so far the skipper told us! We also caught queenfish, a snapper, and I caught a little rock cod! Obviously all of my fish were released back to freedom (which the skipper said was fine before we caught, but didn't seem too pleased about when he saw the size of the first trivali I landed!). The rest of the catch was kept, and at the end of the day we were aloud to take as many as we liked home, we only took what we could eat so that there would be no waste (I didn't want the fish to have died in vain!), and we left the rest for the skipper to sell at market, so he was pleased! Oh and I almost forgot - Rich fell man over board in the middle of the ocean... the clumsey arse slipped off the edge when we were on our way back! Liam was laughing so much he couldn't let the driver know, it was only when I squeeled that he stopped, so by the time the boat had slowed down he was miles away... it was so funny! Best fishing trip we've ever been on! And to top it off, we took our catch to a beachfront restaurant who BBQ'd the huge trivali and 2 tuna for us for 100 Bhat each (£2), and gave us fries, jacket spuds, salad and a gorgeous lime and chilli dipping sauce... it was the best fish any of us had ever eaten, especially the trivali. Mmmmmmmmm!
The following day we decided to see a bit of the island. We went to the beach and haggled a good price with a lontail boat guy to take us out for the day. First we went to Shark Bay and snorkled with... SHARKS!!!!! They were bloody HUGE! About 3 m! They were only reef sharks so pretty harmless, but I saw 3 within 10 minutes and got out cuz I was scared! Rich. Harriet and Liam stayed in for abot 40 minutes and saw about 20 sharks! They were only a few feet away too, the water was only about 3m deep and they were just crusing along the coral at the bottom. Swimming with sharks was one of our lifelong ambitions so we were soooo pleased to have done it! Then it was off to Ko Nang Yuan. The island is just 2 small forest covered hills joined only by a sandbar and it's stunning. We snorkled for a while at Japenses Gardens (where we did our first dives) and later trecked up one of the hills to a view point for some gorgeous pics of the whole island. Another great day... oh how we love Koh Tao! We were so sad to be leaving the following night but had no choice... our visa expired so we were off to Burma to do a visa run and Liam and Harriet were off to Bangkok to meet Harriets parents. It was a sad farewell but at least we know we'll defo see them again cuz Liam only lives around the corner from me! But for now it's a night snoozing on a ferry crossing the sea... night, zzzzzzzzzzzz! x
- comments