Hello! I am sorry it has taken me so long to write this post but my schedule has been absolutely chocka. When I last wrote for the blog I had just got through a very stressful period of the trip bit now, thankfully, I am completely relaxed and really able to enjoy Thailand in all its beauty. Bangkok seems like a million miles away.
After surviving a minibus ride from Bangkok (a journey that I was assured would only take 4 hours but in fact took 7, classic Thai transport) I arrived in Koh Chang, an island in the east of Thailand which literally translates to Elephant Island, although I saw no elephants during my time there. This lack of elephants may be down to that fact that my time on Koh Chang was mainly made up of sitting/lying on the beach and eating food. I found Jolijn and Marilon on my second day and checked into their accomadation which was a resort (in the loosest sense of the word) made up of individual bungalows right next to the beach with a nice restauramt and bar area on the sand.
I really did just relax on the beach and in a restaurant slightly further down from our resort with the only main event being a beach party at the resort on the night of the 20th where we saw some amazing fire poi skills and danced to a lot of very loud dance music. On the 22nd I said goodbye to Jolijn and Marilon who were travelling to Bangkok for a few days before heading back to the Nederlands. I hope they enjoy being back home and wish them good luck with finishing their university degrees, hopefully one day I will be flying to Holland to meet them again :).
The following day I booked myself onto a snorkelling trip around the surrounding islands. I had found that lying on the beach, achieving nothing was lovely for a couple of days but made me feel unenergised and a little bit homesick after a while and the only remedy for it was to DO SOMETHING! I was picked up by a minibus from my hostel and met two British girls, Harriet and Alex who were living in Thailand teaching English and visiting Koh Chang for a holiday break. We got on instantly and it was great to hear some sarcasm and self-deprecating humour to make me feel sane again. We reached the port and boarded a large ferry which travelled to another island where we all jumped in the water and were met by huge numbers of fish. At first I found the numbers of fish absolutely incredible but soon realised that the men on the boats were throwing pieces of bread in for the fish, which I personally think counts as cheating!
We visited a few more spots, my favourite being the island of Koh Mai. The beach there was pure white sand with the misty mountains looming in the background and if you swam only a few metres from the busy beach you found a great little coral reef where Harriet and I were lucky enough to see two octopus (octopi?). There were also lots of parrot fish and beautiful black and white striped fish darting here and there.
That evening Harriet, Alex and I decided to meet for dinner and drinks and ended up dancing like idiots (seems to be a running theme) in a cheesey Thai club.
The next day I reverted back to beach bum mode and spent it reading my book with Harriet and Alex on the beach. Why not, one day of activity a week seems fair enough!
On the 25th I embarked on the horribly long journey from Koh Chang to my next destination, Koh Tao. During the night there was a huge storm and the downpour continued into the morning which, in a way was quite beautiful to see over the ocean. The first portion of my journey was the minibus ride from my hostel to the ferry port via other hotels picking various hokidaymakers up along the way. The minibus driver was absolutely hilarious speaking a mixture of Thai and broken English constantly which lead all the passengers in the back seats to sit and nod politely. Luckily one woman seemed to understand what he said and duely translated for the rest of us. We all got onto the ferry and travelled to Trat where I waited for the coach to Bangkok to arrive. I managed to swipe one of the 'V.I.P' seats downstairs and tried to catched a few zzz's before we arrived in Bangkok that evening. When we arrived there a couple of us were sheparded from that coach to a travel agents where we were told to wait until someone came to get us. After worrying that no one was even going to come a small smiling Thai woman turned up and lead us to another coach where, once again I was lucky enough to get a sofa on the ground floor of the coach where I could lie in the foetal position quite comfortably. While we were waiting to leave Bangkok a guy got on and sat in the seat opposite me. We got talking and I soon found out that he had known my university flatmate as a kid which was absolutely crazy! After trying to sleep we arrived at the ferry port for Koh Tao, however, we arrived at 3:30am and the ferry wasn't until 7:00am. This was something that none of us were warned about and none of us were happy about. I slept a bit on a hard wooden bench before a stranger woke me up to say the ferry was ready for boarding. When we arrived in Koh Tao we sailed right into an absolutely gorgeous port with crystal clear water and blue skies and I instantly fell in love with the island. A man from the dive company lead me and a number of other people to a taxi and drove us to the dive centre where we checked in. I dumped my stuff in my room and went to... you guessed it... lie on the beach. The beach in Koh Tao, Sairee Beach, was a step up from the beach in Koh Chang with a long white beach which really gently sunk into a bright turquoise, bath temperatured sea.
I sat on the sand and soon experienced every solo travellers nightmare.... having to ask a stranger to put sun cream on your back. I asked a girl next to me whether she could help me out and she hesitantly accepted. She soon headed out into the sea to join her friend, and, I assumed, run away from the crazy suncream lady, but they soon returned to the beach and started talking to me. They introduced themselves as Mette and Kristin from Norway and when I decided to leave the beach and grab a shower they invited me to have some drinks with them at their bungalow that evening which I was really happy about, as it meant I didn't have to spend the evening doing nothing. I went back to my room to freshen up and met Vashti, an Irish musical theatre actor who was staying in my dorm room with her boyfriend who was doing his open water course. I met the Norwegian girls at their place and we went to a big beach bar called Lotus bar where we met loads of people including a guy from New Zealand who I made sure knew that he was from the best country in the world, a group of people from Holland who joined in when we initiated a limbo competition, Markus, an Austrian (not Australian) dive instructor who was working at a dive centre down the beach and Jack and Adam two British boys who were doing their dive course with Markus. The music was turned down really early so we ventured down the beach to another bar that Markus knew but that seemed to be really quiet too. We ended up sitting on the beach and the tide was all the way in so I could sit on one of the 90' angled palm trees over the water, you can't do that in Brighton!
The next day... another beach day. I bought a new book at a book store, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, and was instantly hooked (recommended read for anyone). I bumped into Markus on the beach and planned to go up to a bar near his dive centre that evening. The bar was called The Rocks nd the best bar I have been to so far. It was quite small and situated between to two huge rocks on the beach (hence the name). The staff there put in the most impressive fire show I have seen so far throwing the poi from the ground up to a man standing on top of one of the rocks and doing some really impressive tricks. Adam and Jack, the two British guys were also there along with lots of people who had finished their dive course at Markus' dive centre. There was a video, filmed at that days dive, and I got a chance to see the type of thing I would be doing during the course I had booked myself onto at another dive centre. That group were lucky enough to see a whale shark, the biggest fish in the world, and the footage was absolutely magical.
The next day, it's getting a bit embarassing to admit, I spent sleeping or on the beach. In the evening Vashti and her boyfriend Dave suggested I should join them for dinner in town. I met their friend Cathal, also from Ireland, the guy who Dave was doing his course with. We went to a beach front restaurant and I splashed out a bought a vegetarian pizza! 
The 29th was an exciting day because I had my dive introduction that afternoon at the dive centre, Big Blue Diving. We sat in one of the dive schools classrooms and met Ant, our instructor who talked us through the coyrse and then made us sit through some incredibly dull diving instructional videos. However, no matter how dull they were, I still left feeling extremely excited for the days to come.
The following day was the first dive day. My group consisted of me, a group of British guys on a short boys holiday and another British woman called Rebecca who was doing a trip around South-East Asia and would be my dive buddy during the course. We spent the morning in the pool getting used to the equipment, breathing under water and becoming familiar with the skills we would be asked to complete on one of the dives in order to pass the course. The skills included, removing and replacing the regulator (breathing thing), removing and retrieving the regulator from behind our backs, and clearing our regulator of air, clearing our mask of a bit of water, completely flooding our mask and clearing it and removing and replacing our mask then clearing it, we also had to learn some buoyancy skills including hovering and the fin pivot. The afternoon was spent in a ridiculously hot room watching more dull instructional videos. That evening was the Koh Tao bar crawl which lead us around the Sairee Beach bars including a pool party, where the group I was with were the only ones cool enough/stupid enough to jump in the pool and a lady boy show, which was brilliant!
The next morning was an early start for the first ocean dives and I woke up with a smile on my face, which is rare when I am required to wake up before 10am. We boarded the boat and set up our equipment using what we had been taught the previous day. Our group spent the first dive just getting used to buoyancy, breathing and staying in formation. I was really thankful for the try dives I had done before with my family because I felt comfortable under the water and so found it easier to focus on technique. The second dive we were asked to repeat some of the skills we had learnt in the pool the day before and we all managed to do them without a problem. That evening I got back to the hostel and went to bed almost immediately, readying myself for the 5:30 alarm the next day.
What made this alarm even more painful was that it was my birthday! I woke up reluctantly before remembering that it was my birthday and I had a lot to look forward to. I found the cards that my family and uni flatmates had given me before I had left and opened them, it was really great to have the messages from home on a day when I am used to being surrounded by family and friends. My dive group met at 6:30 at the dive centre and had a briefing about the days dives before climbing aboard the boat and setting up the equipment again. As this was the last day of the course we had one of the employees of Big Blue filming our dives to make a souvenir video. We saw a blue spotted stingray and a porcupine fish during the dive as well as a Persian Carpet Worm, which was really cool. During the second dive we had to show some more of the skills we had learnt including the mask removal and replacement during which I got the mask dramatically caught in my ponytail and spent some time frantically tugging at my hair underwater without being able to see, which was great footage for the video! In between the two dives my instructor had arranged for a little cupcake with three candles to be brought out while the boat sang me happy birthday. Obviously this was a massive highlight of the trip so far as it involved cake and people singing for me. That afternoon I said goodbye to Markus before he had to get his flight back to Austria and met Vashti for lunch in a nice little cafe. I skyped home wishing dad a happy birthday and bragging about my dive course. At 7pm my dive group met to watch the film of that days dives and laugh at ourselves then Vashti and Dave came to the bar to start celebrating my birthday. We stayed at the dive bar for a while then moved on to go and watch the lady boy show, which was much better this time around than when I had watched it with the bar crawl, Vashti's jaw was on the floor for most of the show and we both had the songs going round in our head for the next few days. By the end of the night I was so tired from such a long day but it had been such a brilliant and memorable birthday!
On the second I enjoyed a lie in before Vashti and I head to the beach. That evening, when we were walking to get some dinner we bumped into Mette and Kristin, the Norweigian girls I had met when I first arrived in Koh Tao. We all planned to go to the Full Moon Party the following day on neighbouring island Koh Panghan so I went with Mette and Kristin to book them onto the same boat as me. We went for dinner and watched a brillaint fire show at Rocks bar where we were one of only a few groups of people there as the island was really quiet thanks to the party.
On the third I went with Vashti, Dave and Cathal to lunch then to a beautiful bay on another part of the island called Aout Leuk where the water was absolutely crystal clear and turquoise.
At 6pm I got a taxi to the ferry pier and met Mette and Kristin aboard the boat that was taking us to the party. The boat had large speakers and a 'fully stocked bar' which turned out to be some cans of beer in an ice cooler. We spent three hours getting to Koh Panghan (an hour more than they said it would take) and when we arrived we were met with how busy the island was going to be.
Hoards of people filled the streets, getting various patterns painted on them with the customary neon paint, buying street food and drinking from the brightly coloured buckets which were for sale everywhere you looked. We went for a quick dinner and made our way through the streets to the beach. The actual beach was really gorgeous, long, soft white sand and warm shallow water, however it was hard to see the natural beauty through the crowds of party-goers and flashing multi coloured lights blazing from the numerous bars located on the beach front. As we walked down the beach we went through the pockets of different music playing from each bar and saw just how diverse the population of the beach was. There were the typical young holiday makers who have flown to Thailand especially for the party, wearing their neon Full Moon Party t-shirts and not much else, you had stunned looking families who must have been caught up in the excitment of the event and groups of older partiers who seemed to have the best dance moves of all (I joined in on one of their conga lines of course). We bumped into Vashti and Dave, which was crazy as there were 50,000 people on the beach. The night was spent at one bar which played the cheesiest music we could find. It got to about 4am and we were all feeling fatigued but had to wait until our 9am ferry back to Koh Tao. On the ferry I managed to get some shut eye and when we got to Koh Tao I spent the day in a zombie like state until it was a reasonable time to go to sleep again. I can now tick Full Moon Party off the bucket list!
On the 5th I started the advanced dive course, something I had not planned to do when I first got to Koh Tao and had certainly not budgetted for, but I could not resist, diving is addictive. I met my group that morning including my instructor Tim (from Brighton), a young couple (from Kilburn!), an older American gay couple and a Brazilian guy who would be my buddy during the course. To my delight there were absolutely no instructional videos to watch and we were going to be doing three dives that day. We spoke through the dives and were taught about how to use a dive computer, an underwater watch that tells you details of the dive. The first two were brilliant 18m dives but the highlight of the day was the third dive which was our night dive. We left the shore in the evening and entered the water just after sunset. Descending through the water in the dark was like being in an alien movie, seeing the beams of light cast by other divers torches. We saw loads of fish I hadn't seen during the day time including a huge great barracuda. When we saw the barracuda the instructors torch also lit up a fish who was innocently swimming nearby. This resulted in the barracuda instantly pouncing on the unsuspecting fish leaving the decapitated fish head flapping around on the ocean floor, which was pretty amazing to see, if not a bit gory. At one point the instructor asked us all to stand on the ocean floor (something that requires a lot more skill than you expect) and hold our torches towards our chest. We then moved our hands around in front of us and were able to see the bioluminescent algae light up like glitter. It was a truely magical moment.
The next day we had two more dives, our deep dive and the shipwreck dive. We left really early for the first dive and spoke about the importance of staying at the right level and doing a safety stop when diving to 30m because the nitrogen levels in the blood can become dangerous. The deep dive was incredible. Being able to get deeper means you can see a lot more ocean life and when you are at depth the sight of the fish and coral reaching up to the surface above you is a truely beautiful sight. The dive sight was really interesting and when my group got to the surface we were all in awe. For the wreck dive, the visibility wasn't quite as good but I actually liked it that way, it gave the shipwreck a creepy almost ghostlike quality. We saw less fish at this site but the wreck made the dive seem much more adventurous.
After that dive we returned to the shore and were certified as advanced adventurers (which is definitely going on the CV).
I gave myself a break of one day before I went diving again. I signed up for two morning fun dives to Southwest Pinnacle (reknowned for being the best local dive site) and Shark Island (the last place a whaleshark had been spotted). Southwest Pinnacle offered the best site and visibility so far, the dive master I was diving with reckoned it was 25-30m visibility. As a certified advanced diver you get a lot of freedom to just enjoy the dive and explore the reef and we spent much more time inspecting the reef to find interesting animals rather than just focusing on technique. The second dive to Shark Island was the most amazing dive yet, the site was beautiful and absolutely FULL of life (maybe due to the choppy surface water), visibility was good and most of all I was comfortable enough to completely forget about buoyancy and breathing and really spent my time enjoying the dive, I was even the fist one to spot a blue spotted stingray!
I finished the dive feeling really happy with how far I had come since my first dive and just wanted to keep diving forever, if only!
The following three days I spent with Kristin and Mette. One day we decided to venture away from Sairee beach and visited a beautiful little bay called Freedom Beach. We walked up to a viewpoint and found an awesome view of two large bays, although we were stupidly sweaty by the time we got to the top!
Freedom beach was really chilled and we relaxed in the shade or played with the extremely cute dogs (every beach seems to have them) which we named Mozzy and Doctor Octopus.
The beach had lots of low trees with coral mobiles hanging from them so we found a couple of spare pieces of string and made our own to leave there.
The other two days were spent in Sairee beach relaxing (because I definitely needed to do more of that! Haha) but if that isn't what being on a tropical island is all about then what is the point?
I am now sitting on a ferry back to the mainland after more than two weeks on Koh Tao, and I absolutely loved every minute of it. I met some wicked people, including Mette and Kristin who were just brilliant to spend time with. I have to leave Koh Tao before I just just stay there forever but I don't think that will be the last time I see the island (did someone say Dive Master course?).
Thank you for reading xx
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