Scuba Diving in Ko Tao

Where was I? I don't remember, so i'll just start anywhere.

The 10 of us (Eva, Fay, the 7 South African boys, and I) arrived at Ko Tao and let one of the hustlers on the ferry take us to his incredible so great just wonderful fantastic out of this world, shitbox of a hotel. It was free, and we needed a ride to town anyway. Of course the incredible room he promised us didn't exist, and the shit rooms they offered were gross. The South African boys were fine with them, so they stayed. Fay, Eva, and I set out on a mission to find a better room. After 3 long hours of going from hotel to hotel looking at one smelly broken down room after another, we realized this was mission impossible. I wanted to look at just one more hotel though. I had e-mailed them and they said they were all booked but I thought we may as well try.

It was just past the first hotel we went to, but to the left rather than to the right, where we had gone. As soon as we saw the waterfall and the big restaurant, we were in love. Tired and hungry, we begged the front desk lady to "Take us! Please take us!" She was like "Huh? What? Ok slow down." She did have a room, and the package deal with the scuba certification turned out to cost less than the other shit boxes, and we even got AC and hot water!! If I had been offered that room first I would have said, eh, well, maybe. But compared to everything else we saw, it was paradise. It didn't wreak of old moldy sponge, the floors were pretty stable, although there was a gigantic gap between the bathroom and the bedroom. Oh well. We were thrilled. Fay and I decided to room together, and Eva got her own little one person bungalow, as we would be getting up early and Eva would want to stay up late.

That night, the girls got all dressed up and we grabbed some dinner.

Eva and Fay

me wondering something at dinner

I just collapsed afterwards, I was beyond tired. We were relying on Fay's ipod to wake us up in the morning. It was set to start playing music at 8:00, that is, through the earphones. So she slept with them in. Every night...lol...what a trooper!

The first morning we watched a video that went through every chapter in the book we (thought) we had to memorize...all 5 of them. Then we met for a little bit with our instructor, Matee, whose English was passable, and another girl from Sweden and another boy from Italy. That was our class! Later we'd meet up on the pool for some beginning crap. Fay and I decided to explore the island in the boiling, wet heat. Here's what we saw:

Hat Sai Re

The water at Hat Sai Re

That night or maybe the next, we went out to dinner with Maria, followed by a romantic walk along the beach:

The lovely Maria and Fay, my diving buddies

Hat Sai Re at sunset

The next day we were ready for our first open water dive. Well, ready, I don't know about. But it was time. Here is out boat:

Our lovely dive boat

It was scary assembling all of our own scuba gear especially because we were supposed to know what to do, as were were supposed to have read the book the night before, but I was too tired. So I just kind of followed what the others did, and made the instructors check everything I was doing. Here is us all suited up and ready to go:

Team Scuba!

The first dive was amazing. We saw lots of fish, some I even have pictures of because I took one of those shitty underwater cameras with me. I'll try to upload the pictures later. We hung out on the roof of the boat while we sailed to another great scuba spot:

Maria and I on the dive boat

At this site, there were a few other boats around:

Beautiful boat

It was crazy running into other scuba divers in the water, as I was used to diving in the most remote part of the Great Barrier Reef, where another boat was miles and miles away. We saw more great fish, angel fish, a sting ray, and on the last day we saw a shark! Sorry, no picture of that. I was busy shitting myself.

As we motored back to Ko Tao, we passed this pretty island:

When we got back we grabbed something to eat. It was during the island dogs' nap time:

sleeping doggy

I shit you not they have nap time. In the afternoon all of the dogs just collapse. Usually to one side, with the arms and legs parallel, like you could grab legs in on hand and arms in the other and swing it around and around.

Speaking of food, Fay was on a much stricter budget than I was, as she was traveling around the world for a whole year. We decided to buy a box of Wheatbix and eat those before dinner and as snacks so that we would spend less money out. We'd just buy a little thinggy of milk from the 7-11 each time we wanted snack, and it would only cost 13 baht, which is less than 50 cents. In retrospect, we spent way too much time at that 7-11. We were always in there for something, like water, milk, yogurt, or crackers. It was one of the very few places on the island with air conditioning, so that might explain it. We shared dinner every night, and had breakfast for free as it was included in the package. Yay us! I did however manage to get massages most days, including one on the beach....yum....

I stayed an extra day with Maria when Fay left for Phi Phi. We had a great time lounging around and rented a quad bike to take around the island.

Maria and I on the quad

Getting my suit ready

One of the helpers (above) on our scuba certification course told us to go to a place called New Haven where we could get great smoothies. Maria caught him....uh...checking my suit out...

This was the view from our table: