Time for some diving, screw the weather!

Hello from almost sunny Koh Tao. Actually, just as I say that I can see the sun popping out from behind a cloud. Our travel from one side of the southern tip of Thailand to the other was actually remarkably easy. We caught a bus from Krabi to Surat Thani and then jumped a 1.5 hour ferry to Ko Samui where we spent a night. Then we took another ferry from Ko Samui to Ko Tao which is where we are now.

Ko Samui was probably the busiest town we’ve seen since Bangkok. The one main strip on Ko Samui, Haad Chaweng beach, puts Koh San Road to shame: it is way longer with more shops and people. Basically it is what I expected Ko San Road to be. Haad Chaweng also gave us our first dining on the beach experience. Sadly we got into town a bit late so we wound up hiking around with our full backpacks for well over an hour before we could find a place to say. In the end it was a little more than we wanted to pay but our spirits slightly broken after traveling all day and not having eaten made us acquiesce.

The bus ride from Krabi was about 3 and a half hours long, which isn’t that bad at all, except for the small detail that it didn’t have any toilet on it. I know some people are going to start accusing me of stooping purely to bathroom humour sooner or later, but these things are rather important while traveling. It seems that while on a normal bus ride 3 hours isn’t a horrible amount of time to hold your blatted, the bumpy roads jostle things around a bit more. It made the ending of the trip an interesting little dash.

As for the island of Ko Tao itself, it is one of the smaller islands in the area and it is amazing. We are all super stoked to be doing our diving courses here. The beach is great, the bars are right on the beach, it’s pretty quiet, the only downside is that being an island things are a little more expensive but we’ve been making do. Our accommodation on the other hand is defiantly the most spare we’ve had thus far. With the diving course we are taking it’s free so I suppose we can’t complain too much, but the mattresses feel like they are made of sand and lack of sheets on the beds. Still, we wanted to dive here because the instructors are meant to be good, and have English as a first language, so that clearly is the most important thing. We are all reeling a little bit of the moment though as we got in last night and they gave us a big text book and said have the first 3 chapters (178 pages) read by 2pm today. School work, on vacation? Boo! I suppose it does have the advantage of actually teaching you how to dive though.

Another little interesting thing that deserves mention (and I will try and show via pictures if the computer will behave properly) is that Anthony has an odd habit of picking up insects to show the rest of us. It started with a rather large cockroach in Bangkok, moved on to an even larger beetle in Krabi and has made it up to a huge snail in Ko Samui. I’m really not sure what to make of this, but mike slammed the door on Anthony the last time he tried to present one of his finds.

I think that’s all I’ve got for now. It’s time to get ready for our first class room sessions. Hopefully we’ll get some sun soon. Heck I’d take even two hours at this point. Really it’s what I get for wanting some rain in Bangkok.