Thailand: Koh Tao 20-29 Mar 12

I finally boarded the flight to Thailand at around 8am after sleeping in Taipei airport the night before. I flew with Thai Airways and it was around a three hour flight. The queue for the plane consisted of some very colourful people, including some orange robed Buddhists. A taste of things to come for Thailand, lots of the colour and variety I was hoping for.

I landed in Bangkok on Monday morning the 19^th March. I had heard so much about Thailand, South East Asia’s destination for travellers and holidaymakers looking for cheap, safe, hot and flavoursome lifestyles from the seedy to the spiritual, from laid back to hyped up. Bangkok airport already had some flavours of this; plants and colourful murals with a Thai flavour. The queue to get my passport stamp cast an even wider net. Swedish families on package holidays, really tanned and leathery retired couples, dreaded and beaded hippies, Russian blondes in high heels, business men, rich and privileged school leavers on their gap year yar, you name it! I got my month long visa stamp and wandered around the airport trying to get my head around the new sounds, smells and people of this erratic place.

The train to the city is really cheap and easy to use at 35 Baht. (100 Baht is £2). It takes you to an underground station, where I took the line to Bangkok main train station. It was all air conditioned up to this point and I hadn’t been outside or above ground since the airport, so coming out of that underground station I was greeted by the bellow of the sticky sweat monster. It was HOT, to say the least. April is Thailand’s hottest month, and I was just in time to see it gain full momentum. The train station was air conditioned a bit, but as soon as I stepped outside it I had to make sure I wasn’t walking into mirages of people and cars. My plan was to drop my bags at the station for the day and explore Bangkok on foot until my train to Chumphon that night at 10pm. But there was no way I could make 10min in the heat after no sleep, let alone an entire day. I ended up hanging out in the train station which was interesting. People were sleeping and sitting on every available surface including the floor. There were some restaurants on the upper floors looking into the open main space of the station, and various stalls, internet and food places. I went to the mezzanine level and ordered some green curry, looking forward to my first taste of Thai food. But I forgot what I had heard about how incredibly spicy the curries are here and that you have to ask for it to be mild. It was delicious and I was starved, so I wolfed it down and my head promptly exploded and steam blasted through every last pore over the crowds in the station. So I downed my iced coffee with tons of ice cubes, and forgot about the advice about ice cubes, as in they make your tum bad. Or is that India? Anyway, this was too much for my tired, over stimulated brain to process and I put my head down on my hands on the table and passed out for what I was thought was about 10min, but turned out to be over an hour. I woke up in a massive sweaty daze and unable to move my hands from pins and needles. Overcoming these small and insignificant but at the time intense dramas I passed the day and found that I could take an earlier train to Chumphon at 7.30pm. Brilliant, I’ll take that thanks.

The train was great. It looked like it was built in the 70’s, and was a sleeper train that had bottom and top berths. I had booked the bottom in the small hope I could catch some glimpses of the landscape out the window, and so I did while the train crawled and winded through Bangkok and out into the countryside. They had food on the train but my stomach still wasn’t happy and I was so exhausted I just wanted to sleep. The train was packed with western backpackers, all chatting and happy. I was sitting in a very normal looking seat and couldn’t figure out how they turned into beds, when a man came over and in about 10 seconds did a flick flack and turned the seats transformer style into a set of bunk beds that you drew a curtain around so it was your own private bed-pod. After sleeping in the airport the night before I thought I’d crash right out, but the mad old train rattling through this strange countryside and clunking over the tracks, as well as the fear I wouldn’t wake up for my stop at which we were supposed to be at 4am, meant that I was owl eyed for most of the trip. But as always when en route to a new place, happy.

The sleeper train corridor, check the foot in the top left corner

We arrived in Chumphon at 4am, where I’d get the ferry at 7am to Koh Tao. The train pulls up at the station and a conductor comes to poke all the backpackers awake and a stream of them pour over the tracks. This is the gateway to Koh Sumui, Koh Penang and Koh Tao and so most travellers got out and sat on the platform blinking and trying to wade through to people trying to sell boat and bus tickets. I had mine already so just sat and chatted to two wholesome Canadian guys, until it was time to get my bus to the ferry. I eventually made it onto the ferry and was getting hot, bothered and knackered and very ready to reach my destination after thirty six of travelling. The ferry to Koh Tao was around three hours, and I stepped off into the already hot early morning air to see Nick waving to me from the ferry. Happy girl! 

Nick

I aimed for Koh Tao because I wanted to get out of Bangkok asap to see some islands, and my old friend Nick from Bristol UK was living there so that was a very nice bonus for me, always love catching up after so many years. I got on the back of his scooter with my bags strapped on (ashamed to say this was the first time that I had carried my backpack on my back, it had wheels and I had easily wheeled it around until then). He lives on a steep hill with amazing views of beaches and island, trying to get up the hill with all my bags and me on the back of the scooter gave it a bit of a test.

Riding on the bike

Koh Tao is an island of divers, every man and his dog is an instructor or in the field. Nick has some friends there who are doing various exciting things under the ocean, like learning under water filming and documentary making. They met almost every day for dinner and I got into the swing of Koh Tao life without any effort; diving, driving the scooter around (well, actually on the back as a passenger), having a wee siesta when it gets too hot. Chilled out existence is an understatement. One of the funny things that stuck out to me straight away was the crazy set up of electricity wires running all over the place, haphazard and bunched together in webs that could not have been a good way to set them up, sometimes dangling right in the road and drooping under heavy vines.

Mental electric wires

Sairee Beach

Koh Tao is famous for being the cheapest place to get certified for diving, and also a beautiful place to do so. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do while in Koh Tao, but until Nick took me to Scuba Junction to sign up for the course I wasn’t even sure if it was something I’d be into. I’m claustrophobic and the idea of all that water on top of me with restricted breathing freaked me the hell out. But don’t EVER miss an opportunity through fear friends, please. I signed up and was starting the next day, how it would go I had no idea but was very excited.

My course was four days and I got up every morning to walk about 20 minutes to the dive shop on the beach and learn all about this diving lark. It’s so easy to learn about something that’s fun and interesting, I was absorbing so much information in those four days and I could have carried on for weeks. It helped that our instructors were two really nice guys and great teachers. Adrian is from Canada and is a natural born teacher, you can just listen for ages and he makes everything make sense and interesting. Davide is from Italy and was doing instructor training, and was thoroughly nice and patient with us. You could see that both of them loved the sea and diving, and it was infectious. There were only four people in the group plus our two instructors. A couple from Canada (lots of Canadians in Thailand, and they are all really nice I find) and an Irish girl called Mariaelena who was paired with me to be my dive ‘buddy’. You always have to dive in pairs.

Adrian and Davide, my artist impression

Adrian in teacher mode

The first day we just watched some videos and go through some basics, and I found it thoroughly interesting. The way your body works under water, how to set the equipment up, how to breathe and the chemical reactions that happen etc, so cool to be learning all this new stuff and be excited about gaining a new skill. We went into the sea to do some skills in shallower water on the second day, and then we went straight down to about 8m. The first time we had to go deeper I did actually feel panicked and claustrophobic, and couldn’t make myself sink because I was thinking about how scared I was, so I just floated right to the surface. The idea that I had to stay under water and couldn't rise to the top in a hurry made me feel a bit trapped. But after that initial fear, it became amazing, incredible, exhilarating. I was under water, breathing, weightless. WOW. The next three days were just fantastic, seeing this whole new world and learning all this seriously interesting stuff. Man I had the best time. Mariaelena was tons of fun and as excited as me, and our instructors were great guys and good fun too, life was good. On the last day of the course both Mariaelena and I were really sad we weren’t going diving the next day and this lovely little fiery Irish girl lit a fire under me to do the advanced adventurer course for another two days, five more dives. Without her l I would never have done it and had some of the best days of my life, so again, THANK YOU Mariaelena!!!

Mariaelena and I, with Farigo in the middle! He's in a plastic bag. 

We did a dive to 28m at a site called Chumphon, clear water and beautiful choral and lots of fish. That was incredible because I knew there was 28m of water above me but I didn’t care. The insane feeling of being down there wiped any fear out. We then made our way to the Sairee Beach site for some photography but just before we set off we were chilling up on the top deck of the boat for a while to wait for everyone to surface. We dived off the top of the boat into the sea and sat in the sun and ate pineapple, what a life. Just then some ominous dark grey clouds crept up over the horizon and some flashes of lighting warned us a storm was brewing. We set off to the next site as the storm came overhead, and absolutely drenched the boat and everything and everyone in it. We had to put our wetsuits back on to stay warmer, and the sea got choppy and it was wild and fun, I wanted the storm to really kick off but eventually it went away. 

Storm on the boat

Next day we dived to a wreck which was an old Japanese war ship that was donated to Koh Toa to be sunk as a wreck for divers, and we got to check out the guns and swim around it. Awesome to see this great monster of a war ship under 25m of water, a huge eerie underwater ghost. Our last dive was a night dive at a site called Twins, and to say a night dive is intense just doesn’t do it justice. You’re dropped in the big black ocean and all you have is a torch and your mates. Once again thanks to Adrian who made me feel totally calm and love every second of it! The dive was so mad, total darkness under water so you had no idea which was up or down or sideways, I was practically glued to both Mariaelena and Adrian but even then a few times almost crashed into some choral. It was the most alien sensation I’d ever experienced, floating weightless, breathing underwater and not knowing what is in front or above you.

Adrian then did such a funny thing. He told us to look out for the ‘blue box fish’ which only came out once a month and was really rare, and that he had a good feeling we would see them that night. After a while we sat down on the sea floor to practice some compass navigation, when Adrian made the hand signal for box fish and pointed behind him. Mariaelena and I looked on in wonderment fully expecting to see this box fish. But instead he picked up from the sea floor a blue plastic folder. We were so confused, until he took out of the blue folder our two dive cards with our new certification on it! All this under meters of water on a night dive! How funny is that, we were so tickled by this and proud and had some good hugs under water with Mariaelena. Haha! After that we turned our torches off so we were in total darkness and waved our hands around to see the luminescent plankton in the water. Soooo coooool!

So I guess I could write for days about the dives, anyone who has ever done it will know what I mean and if you haven’t done it I would put it on your bucket list fast. Just being suspended in this beautiful, alien world, doing somersaults in the water and floating backwards and upside down, the beautiful sea creatures, choral and fish, just fills you with wonder such as I haven’t felt since I was a child.

Our last night was mad too. Mariaelena met this mad Canadian girl called Angelina who was doing some underwater filming. She was full on, covered in tattoos all the way up to her neck and hell-bent on taking us out and getting us ‘retarded’ as she called it. So I got on the back of Nick’s scooter and drove to the other part of the island, where he promptly got a flat tire and we drank a shot out of a bottle with a snake and a tarantula floating in the nondescript liquid. So the night continued on in this ­­random way with us taking a ‘taxi’ back to Sairee beach (back of a guy’s bakkie or pickup truck) and started the bar hopping, passing lady boys, Thai’s riding down tiny alleyways with five people on the back of their bikes and tons of Western tourists getting sozzled. We did some dancing, some beach stumbling, some pancake eating, and some minus flip flops dance floor moves. It was really fun and a great send off from the island, although the next day everything was very, very difficult.

Koh Tao is a great place, if you’re into diving. It’s the cheapest place in the world to get certified, plus it has awesome dive sites. There are so many dive shops and so much competition, so it keeps the prices down and the quality good. I am so, so glad Nick took me to Scuba Junction, I could not have asked for a better instructor. And plus, I got to meet the lovely Mariaelena, who I then went on to Koh Lanta and Phi Phi with (more of that to come).

To get to Koh Tao you can get a great little sleeper train to Chumphon for around Baht 700 (£14). Then you have to take a boat to Koh Tao, takes around 3 hours for around Baht 600. It’s all super easy and there are people at every point along the way telling you what to do and where to go, they are very much used to tourists in this part of the world. To get certified SSI to 18m it’s only Baht 9000 (£180) and then the advanced course is another Baht 7200 (£144) to get to 30m. Fun dives after that are only Baht 850 (£17). You can stay in your own really nice bungalow with own bathroom for around Baht 400 (£8) and hire a scooter for Baht 200 (£4) a day. So you can see why it’s the perfect place for backpacker diving missions. If you weren’t diving, it’s still fun and pretty and close to Koh Penang if you’re into full moon parties and that, and it’s got some great beaches so sure, go there even if you don’t dive. It does have that hastily thrown together, frantic built up feeling that the rest of Thailand’s more touristic places have, and it’s packed with Western foreigners so you don’t really get the full on Thai country flavour, but it is still a great little place to hang out for a few days.

Thanks again so much to Nick for hospitality in Koh Tao and leading me to diving, muchos gracias! Mariaelena and I got on the bus to the ferry terminal on the Thursday night, and on the sleeper boat to Chumphon and then bus to Krabi   , this was going to be a long journey to the South West...

Here are the pics.