Koh Tao

after an all night bus ride and an hour and a half on a boat, we finally made it to koh tao.  koh tao is an island about 70km off the eastern coast of thailand in the gulf.  we were turned on to koh tao over all the other islands after my good pal jason visited it last november and came back raving.  like i said in my previous post, we owe jason a huge ‘thank you’ for scouting out this location prior to going.  southern thailand is full of so many different islands on both the east and west coast so it’s easy to get bad information.  trust me when i say that koh tao could never be a let down (unless of course you’re looking to get drunk at the full moon party, fall down, and hurt yourself.  then you should stay far away and leave koh tao alone).  on our boat ride to the island drew and i saw a bunch of flying fish.  this was my first time seeing them and definitely wasn’t the last. 

like every other place we’ve visited, we spent no time getting right down to it, figuring out what’s good and where to go.  we knew we wanted to stay on the side of the island that jason suggested so we headed there and immediately found a dive resort that we thought suited us.  This was the first time too, that the cold shower only guesthouses were more of a benefit then not…  It was HOT… 

Up until this point i didn’t think there was a chance in hell that i’d go scuba diving with drew because i’m so scared of the ocean, however on the ride to koh tao something changed in me and i grew some guts. 

we spent the next four days, 8 to 9 hours a day getting our open water scuba diving certification from the Buddha View Dive Resort in Chalok Baan Kao Bay.  there were two other people in our class, brian and esmee.  brian is from england and esmee from ireland and they had been friends since birth so naturally they acted more like brother and sister than anything.  our dive master was a guy named Jesper (pronounced Yespa) from Denmark.  he had bright red hair, blue eyes, and a very dry, clever sense of humor.  we loved him!  our first day centered around the classroom and the swimming pool, while our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th days were in the ocean.  oh! i forgot to mention, drew was certified years ago in Belize but apparently his training was pretty crappy and he didn’t feel he knew what he should, so he did it again.  he also had a different certification, while the one we got in koh tao is a PADI certification which is now the most widely recognized and some say best!  scuba diving is so much more complicated than i ever would’ve imagined.  it’s not hard, there’s just a lot to it.  with a little bit of practice though and some repitition you get it pretty quick. 

esmee and brian have a good friend named mick (a true old salty brit) that’s living in koh tao becoming a dive master.  he buddied up on our course to get some more dives under his belt and watch jesper as an instructor.  mick is renting out this crazy mountain bungalow for the duration of his stay.  when i say ‘renting out a bungalow’ i mean, he is renting the whole place and managing it with his ladyfriend.  the view is absolutely spectactular from there! the place looks like a giant treefort that lover looks mountains and ocean.  doesn’t get much better than that! 

after we were officially open water divers we spent the rest of our time cruising the island on our motorbike.  every evening we set up shop at this bar that sits right on the beach.  it’s got a deck with bean bags and low tables, a bar, and a killer buffet so we’d go and relax there.  the bar is actually associated with buddha view so we managed to see a lot of familiar faces there, which is always comforting as well.  just thinking about that buffet, i really miss the potatoes smothered in cheese and sour creme they had. oh man…

one of our last days there we managed to rent some snorkel gear and go to shark bay.  a few days before we went to this bar that overlooks shark bay and from the bar you can sit there and actually see the sharks swimming around.  they don’t come in close to shore but the whole bay is so shallow they’re still in only knee deep water.  this freaked me out.  again though, i wanted to be brave and try snorkeling there.  we got into the water, swam out a bit, and i immediately freaked out.  i stood up and told drew i couldn’t do it and started walking back to shore practically in tears.  had i not gone to that bar to actually see the sharks, i think i would’ve gone in but once i knew they were there and in really shallow waters, i spazzed.  drew did the snorkel by himself (sorry!) and i laid on shore waiting for him.  he came back and said that he was scared too but held it in because he knew i was far worse than him.  he was swimming around and hadn’t seen anything when a shark came bolting past (4 or 5 feet) him from behind!!  i know had i been in the water my heart would’ve stopped at that very moment.  he kept going though and eventually had five reef sharks swimming around with him!  the sharks are black fin reef sharks that wouldn’t harm anyone but those beedy eyes and sleek bodies are enough to keep me out of those waters.

after 10 luxurious days on koh tao we decided it was time to move on and head south to bali.  it was a bit of a struggle getting us to figure out how we were going to get there because at this point we’d started to give up a little and slow down.  we were fighting ourselves to get all the logistics squared away because our brains were so tired of doing the math.  i gotta say though, we had faith that bali would be far worth the energy…