Archive for the 'Koh Tao' Category

Koh Tao to Kuala Lumpur to Singapore.

Published on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 in Koh Tao and Kuala Lumpur. 0 Comments

After a few more days on Koh Tao, with no diving on the last few, we boarded a ferry to take us to Koh Samui, where we were to transfer to the airport and be whisked to Kuala Lumpur. Life’s easy for the modern traveller. Our flight was slightly delayed, and about fifteen people boarded the rickety forty seat aircraft for the hour and a half flight.

Our flight was aboard a Dash 7, operated by Berjaya Air, flying from Koh Samui Airport to Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport. It wasn’t as dodgy as it sounds, and we arrived safely in Kuala Lumpur and after painless immigration and customs formalities we were in two taxis to down town Kuala Lumpur.

I’d booked a few rooms at the Classic Inn, and was pleasantly surprised. It’s a very clean, friendly, well priced, and well located place. That night we had a curry from nearby, watched the end of the Singapore Formula 1 race, and got to bed quite late.

The morning brought a catastrophe: I was sick. Really, really, really sick. Think running to the bathroom every five minutes sick. So sick that I stayed in bed for three days feeling miserable. I’m not sure what caused it. We’d all eaten the same food at Koh Samui airport, the same curry in KL, and the same samosas that morning on Koh Tao. The only thing I did differently was drink a glass of lemon juice in the departure lounge. Anyway, everyone else met up with Kelvin and Abu and much merriment was had. Our Irish friend Brian even joined us after a day or two.

Kuala Lumpur is a bit of a blur, but after a few days I’d recovered and was ravenous. I found my way to KLCC, and to a food court contained within, and then found myself ordering two serves of nasi lemak in near perfect Malaysian. I’m more than just a pretty face!

Kelvin took us to the Batu Caves, and wisely waited down the bottom smoking cigarettes whilst we trudged to the top, dodging evil monkeys and runaway children charging down the stairs. It was hot, but well worthwhile. It’s a very spectacular place.

Finally, we were due to depart Kuala Lumpur and travel to Singapore by bus. We could have flown, but it costs the same and takes the same amount of time and is far less convenient. So, we booked a five hour passage with Transtar and left early in the morning. It was a nice bus – Wifi on board, computer games, TV, reclining seats, and so on. We even had a somewhat edible food service!

Underwater Life.

Published on Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009 in Koh Tao. 0 Comments

I love this place.

We’ve all quickly taken to our various dive courses, spending the days learning and diving and talking and eating and enjoying the beautiful scenery, both above and below the surface. Nights have been spent at a variety of beach bars and restaurants, with an eclectic group of people of all ages, backgrounds, and origins. It’s a lot of fun. The big group of us doesn’t scare people away, and in fact it seems to attract a lot of people traveling by themselves.

Yesterday was the final day of my SSI Advanced Adventurer course. I can now dive to 30m, at night, and use a dive computer to help me plan the dive… it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a lot of fun and well worth the effort. We haven’t seen a whale shark, which isn’t so awesome, but I have swum with barracudas and giant groupers and a myriad of other sea dwelling creatures. It’s strange how much I like diving: I hate the beach, I’m not a fan of swimming in the ocean, and the sand shits me to tears. Somehow, this is different.

Last night we celebrated our various levels of qualification certification with a few drinks… this got a little messy and I suspect there were a few sore heads around today!

Koh Tao.

Published on Sunday, September 20th, 2009 in Koh Tao. 0 Comments

It’s been a fun filled few days… apologies for the bad typing: I’m using a Thai keyboard and the keys are half broken.

After emerging from three hours of sleep on Friday night, we left our hostel for the bus to Chumporn and the ferry from Chumporn to Koh Tao. The bus was intolerably hot and I wasn’t sure if I was dying or falling asleep. The air conditioner had broken and even the Thai dudes on the bus were hating life nearly as much as we were. It was six hours of absolute misery, and disembarking from the bus to the sweltering heat of a Thai noon was a welcome relief from the glasshouse.

We met a few cool people on the fery and we’ve been hanging out ever since, along with a few cool people spread between the various dive courses and refresher courses we’re doing. Our group of eight has swollen to a group of between five and fifteen. Last night we spent the evening eating on the beach, watching fireworks and getting to know our new German, Canadian, Dutch, American, English, and Kiwi friends. Good times… though better for others. Filer and Mark showed up at the hotel at 4am. I was home by 1, and up at 8… those guys haven’t emerged. Yet.

It’s hot. Really hot. The weather has been perfect: warm sunny days, and slightly cooler evenings with a nice breeze and thunderstorms on the horizon. Evenings are beer and food filled, with tales of the day spent diving. It’s awesome. Photos to come when I can be bothered… life here is all about maximum relax, minimum stress. Life is good.

Koh Tao.

Published on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 in Koh Tao and Thailand. 0 Comments

So… the slow-ish boat to Koh Tao took several hours and stopped once, on Koh Phangan. More than half the people left the boat. I was glad I wasn’t going with them. Braving the intermittent showers, a large group of people hung out outside on the top deck of the boat and swapped stories. I’d lucked in to two fairly cool people, and we were soon fast friends.  One of the people who had joined us was a Thai girl who worked for a dive resort on Koh Tao as, effectively, a tout. Her name was Om (I think!) and despite trying to get us to dive at the resort she worked for, she was very cool. She spoke excellent English and had a lot of good stories. The two guys I was with had lots of questions about everything in Thailand and she was only too happy to talk with us about everything from religion to lady-boys.

Needless to say, the two hours between Koh Phangan and Koh Tao passed quickly. We decided to go with Om to the dive resort she worked for, because a) she was cool, b) it had a shiny new ute with rain protection to take us there, c) it was raining, and d) we knew the place by name and it had a good reputation.

Because I only had a short time on Koh Tao before heading to Singapore to watch the Singapore Open golf tournament, I was thrown right in the deep end: I was to start my open water course that evening. My group was a little large but that wasn’t a problem, and everyone was fairly cool. Most of them were Irish – there was only one other guy in the group of 9 and he was an English guy married to an Irish girl! The dive instructor was a former English primary school teacher who went to Thailand for three weeks, decided she liked it, and has been there for two years working as a dive instructor. We had a trainee dive master with us – also English and a radio DJ, who also went to Thailand for a few weeks one year ago.

The next four days passed in a blur of cheap beer, delicious food, rain, diving, rain, diving, rain, rain, rain, diving, and has the distinction of being one of the most memorably fun times I’ve ever had in my life. There’s something about sitting six meters from the water on a beach with cheap cold beer watching people twirl fire sticks, whilst with a group of twenty people with various colour skin, various accents, and various spoken languages, that makes for an incredibly enjoyable time. Sure, it’s not a particularly authentic travel experience when one realises that there’s nothing on Koh Tao that isn’t for tourists or for the people who support the tourist industry – that is, there’s no real Koh Tao. It’s a place for people to dive.

During the dive course I started to feel worse and worse, and I was actually glad when it was over. My whole body ached and I guess the cold came back to bite me. However, I am now qualified to dive! The course was completely awesome and I really can’t wait to get back…

The day after an enormous night out, including dinner at a fairly decent restaurant, to celebrate certification, I was due to leave Koh Tao for Koh Samui. The night was one of the wettest they had had for some time, and in the morning several long tail boats along the beach had flooded to such an extent that they had sunk. Whilst waiting for my ferry I watched locals trying to un-sink the boats, with varying degrees of success.

I arrived on Koh Samui late, stayed in another dodgy hotel, and awoke at about 4am to head to the airport. I was due in Singapore that night, via Bangkok.

Chiang Mai to Koh Samui.

Published on Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 in Koh Tao and Thailand. 0 Comments

To reach Koh Samui, I spent about 12 hours in transit: Air Asia from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, Bangkok Airways from Bangkok to Koh Samui, and a bus from the airport at Koh Samui to some crazy hotel in Lamai.

Flying from Bangkok to Koh Samui is an interesting experience. Bangkok Airways rate themselves as “Asia’s boutique airline” and they certainly are. Every ticket holder gets access to the Bangkok Airways lounge, with free wireless, food, drink, magazines, and so on. It’s like the Qantas Club, but for everyone. The short flight to Koh Samui shows off coastline and ocean, before several small islands appear. Then an enormous island appears, and the plane lands: welcome to Koh Samui. Bangkok Airways built the airport themselves, and it’s an intriguing place: open sides, luxurious, and compact.

I jumped aboard a minibus taking people to various hotels and decided to stay at some place that looked interesting. The driveway was enormous… lined with shops, and very new and modern. The hotel was interesting… I was fairly sure I was the only person staying there. It was very new and decked out in colonial style four star goodness, but was absolutely deserted.

After a wander to the beach area I quickly decided that I hated Koh Samui. It was full of stupid white tourists, overpriced crap for the stupid white tourists to buy, and underpriced Thai women for stupid white tourists to enjoy. The streets were lined with girlie bars and sports bars and massage places and cheap and nasty looking food places and 711’s and all sorts of other junk. It rained a lot. It wasn’t nice. I went to bed early, only to be women up throughout the night by lots of strange noises in the hotel… and then the power went out. Turns out there was so much rain that several rooms were flooded.

Koh Samui just pissed me off. I had to get out, but to where? I had a vague plan of meeting up with the English guy from the rafting trip on Koh Phangan for a full moon party, but I couldn’t get in touch with him. I figured I’d go there anyway.

The following morning the hotel driver took me to a boat dock on the other side of the island, where I waited for a ferry. While I was waiting I started talking to two guys who were travelling together – A Belgian guy who had been living in Australia, and an American guy who had been all over the place. They convinced me to go to Koh Tao to go diving with them… so I did.

A quick talk to the ferry ticket sales guy, and I had my ticket changed to Koh Tao. I knew nothing of the place, and I’m not a huge fan of the ocean.