Koh Tao

We are now on the island of Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand, lazing on the beach and getting scared by sharks. We arrived here after spending a couple of nights in a luxory hotel in Bangkok, although I think it must have been 4* as opposed to 5* due to the lack of a kettle and free coffee! Even so, it was nice to have a proper bath and I made sure i had two a day while we were there as who knows when the next one will be? We had a lovely nights lack of sleep on the overnight bus down the coast which got us to the ferry for 5am, only to find out we had to wait until 7am for the boat to leave, reminded us of how crap we used to feel after night shifts :(
Koh Tao is a tiny little island in a chain of three which include Koh Phangan, famous for the full moon parties and Koh Samui, famous for being a massive shitfight! Koh Tao is famous itself, for its scuba diving, but after my Sipidan dives, i'm restricting myself to just a couple, so that I can spend some quality time with the Samster. We found ourselves a little hotel pretty quickly in a quiet part of the island and although the staff are amongst the most miserable we've met, the room is nice. We've been hiring a little moped most days and been scooting about the place, apart from the main drag, its fairly quiet, everyone's off diving i suppose. We've been doing lots of lazing by the beach, drinking banana shakes and doing a bit of snorkling. The snorkling isn't particularly good here, we've been to about 3 places and theres lots of dead or boring coral with mainly annoying brown fish that try and have a go at you if you swim too near their patch. The only fish of interest we've seen was a really nice cowfish that was swimming right next to the beach and a decent sized (4-5ft) black tip reef shark that circled us while we were out about 100 meters from the beach, we decided to head back to the beach soon afterwards :)
That is as exciting as our time in Southern Thailand has got so far, just alot of reading and slagging off traveller types who we take a dislike to, there are a great many of them too.
I left Sam to laze on the beach the other day and went and did a couple of dives. You're probably all bored ridged by my tales of diving so I won't bang on too much, but it's such an incredible thing to do, I get sooooo excited every time I dive and basically want everyone I know to learn so they can experience it too. I'm not a massive fan of snorkling, which is probably a bit weird considering my love of the undersea world, but I just feel a bit vunerable floating around on the surface and scary thoughts go through my mind about sharks and all sorts. Put me in scuba gear and send me down 20 meters and its a completely different story, I feel part of the environment and when I see sharks or sea-snakes or or other potentially dangerous critters I want to get closer to them if anything, its like being part of a David Atenborough documentory. Its simply one of the best things i've ever done with my life and anyone that hasn't had a chance to try scuba should make it their mission in life to try it at least once, oh and don't think that snorkling's the same, with scuba you see wildlife you never or would very rarely see snorkling.
I have just banged on alot I know, but to continue to a bit more, the dives I did the other day were nice, but the first one was an underwater shitfight. Unbelievable! When we got to the dive site there were at least 7-8 big boats about and under the water there were sooooo many divers, more than fish it seemed, really annoying, that's not how diving should be experienced, but i've never had a shitfight dive before and hopefuly will avoid them in the future. What made that dive though, were two 5-6 ft grey reef sharks that swam around and around, just 2-3 meters below me, beautiful sharks, you could see their little beady eyes looking at you :) I was amazed they stuck around as long as they did with all the divers about.
Yesterday we jumped on a boat and headed over to Koh Phangan, not for the party you understand, there's not a full moon till about the 8th Sept anyway and we'll be in Oz by then. I sent Sam off to get us a nice cheap hotel and true to form she returned with a booking for a nice expensive one, but its great, really plush with a/c, cable tv and a balcony with a hammock. Its also got a fridge and we managed to find a stall selling chedder cheese and 'English' sausage, mmmmmmm. A few days lazing a bit more on the beach is in front of us before flying to Singapore on the 29th. Nice :)

Currently Reading: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell





Listening to: Interpol - Antics (Listen to Slow Hands)