After spending an uneventful, but hot night in Chumphon, Harriet and I took the ferry to Koh Tao on a beautiful day, sailing past small tropical islands such as this one!
Koh Tao is an island in the east of Thailand- perfect for anyone who likes diving or lying on the beach. Due to my PADI certificates being in a container ship en route to Melbourne rather than in my holiday gear, it took a few days for us to sort out our diving trips.
While we were waiting, we hired a long tail boat to take us on a lap of the island to some of the best snorkelling spots. Snorkelling does have its advantages over diving- the main one being that you don't lose colour when you are on the surface; when you dive even 2 metres beneath the surface, reds and oranges start to disappear. The fish seemed to know that we were coming, and as soon as we got in the water, we were surrounded by a school of tropical fish! It was great fun.
Wandering around the island, we met a few of the locals, whose interesting names deserve mention- Church and Nacho (divemasters), and Kester the Scottish yoga teacher.
Kester deserves a special mention as he actually got me interested in doing Yoga! He was a 6ft 4” Scotsman with big blonde dreadlocks, who radiated contentment. His classes put a focus on the spiritual side of the yogic practice, and after each of the two sessions that I did, Harriet and I walked out feeling very centred and relaxed. For the first time in months, I felt like I had a clear head- like I could actually listen to someone when they were talking to me rather than my mind just racing with other matters that I considered more important. The lead up to the wedding had been a logistical whirlwind which had enveloped all in its path, so it was so therapeutic to be able to get our brains to slow down again.
Kester deserves a special mention as he actually got me interested in doing Yoga! He was a 6ft 4” Scotsman with big blonde dreadlocks, who radiated contentment. His classes put a focus on the spiritual side of the yogic practice, and after each of the two sessions that I did, Harriet and I walked out feeling very centred and relaxed. For the first time in months, I felt like I had a clear head- like I could actually listen to someone when they were talking to me rather than my mind just racing with other matters that I considered more important. The lead up to the wedding had been a logistical whirlwind which had enveloped all in its path, so it was so therapeutic to be able to get our brains to slow down again.
We stayed at the Koh Tao Cabanas, a secluded resort at the far end of Sairee beach. Our cabana was a beautiful but rustic hut positioned at the top of a hill. It had an outdoor bathroom and a balcony with a hammock that I made good use of. It wasn't all bliss though: to get to the hut required a good 4 minutes of climbing up the hillside stairs, which was exhausting given that it was extremely humid, but the major problem was the noise.
There was a nightclub on the beach. It was a long way from our hut, but it would play music that would sail out onto the bay, drift across with the wind and move straight up the hill to our huts, causing the noise to sound like it was coming from three doors down…. So the location of our hut wasn’t ideal, but we did get a visit from a gecko or two.
The diving made up for any complaints. Harriet wasn’t feeling well the day that we finally went diving, so I went out to the Japanese gardens the first day, Chumphong Pinnacle the next (which was apparently one of the best dive sites in SE Asia) and joined Harriet at the Japanese gardens in the afternoon.
This was the first time that I had dived outside of the murky depths of Wraysbury (a filled in quarry near Heathrow where I did my dive training), and I was to be treated to the wonders of the warm shallows of Thailand.
If nature were a company, its creative department would be the coral reefs. Gliding above and around cliffs covered in forests of aquatic plant life, you see creatures that look like they belong in a Lucasfilm production rather than in nature. The weird, the wonderful, the truly hideous and extremely dangerous all co-exist down here in the photosynthetic jungle of the reefs.
The experience of diving was amazing. Following the divemaster, we floated effortlessly through the water, hearing nothing but the sound of our own breathing and the faint whistling sounds that your eardrums create, like having a shell to your ear. Above, below, and all around you are tropical fish swimming by- neon-coloured and fluorescent, some in schools, others even come up and clean you (oddly enough, these are called cleaner fish). We saw triggerfish, angel fish, batfish, a couple of Stingrays hidden underneath rocks (yay!) little cleaner fish that cleaned my ears, giant grouper fish- (that were truly giant), and thousands of others. One of the highlights of the trip was a 20 metre-high swirling school of barramundi, like an under water twister. I even got to do a little cave dive… we swam through a cave and saw a lot of nothing, but I would s
till go through again.
As we departed the dive site at the end of the day, there was a storm on its way in, which threw the dive boat around violently. The long-tail (a boat that took us from the shallows to the dive boat) was thrown up and down so much that the dive masters had to be abandoned, and the long tail took off, leaving the poor dive masters stranded on the boat. How we laughed as we sailed to safety.
There was a nightclub on the beach. It was a long way from our hut, but it would play music that would sail out onto the bay, drift across with the wind and move straight up the hill to our huts, causing the noise to sound like it was coming from three doors down…. So the location of our hut wasn’t ideal, but we did get a visit from a gecko or two.
The diving made up for any complaints. Harriet wasn’t feeling well the day that we finally went diving, so I went out to the Japanese gardens the first day, Chumphong Pinnacle the next (which was apparently one of the best dive sites in SE Asia) and joined Harriet at the Japanese gardens in the afternoon.
This was the first time that I had dived outside of the murky depths of Wraysbury (a filled in quarry near Heathrow where I did my dive training), and I was to be treated to the wonders of the warm shallows of Thailand.
If nature were a company, its creative department would be the coral reefs. Gliding above and around cliffs covered in forests of aquatic plant life, you see creatures that look like they belong in a Lucasfilm production rather than in nature. The weird, the wonderful, the truly hideous and extremely dangerous all co-exist down here in the photosynthetic jungle of the reefs.
The experience of diving was amazing. Following the divemaster, we floated effortlessly through the water, hearing nothing but the sound of our own breathing and the faint whistling sounds that your eardrums create, like having a shell to your ear. Above, below, and all around you are tropical fish swimming by- neon-coloured and fluorescent, some in schools, others even come up and clean you (oddly enough, these are called cleaner fish). We saw triggerfish, angel fish, batfish, a couple of Stingrays hidden underneath rocks (yay!) little cleaner fish that cleaned my ears, giant grouper fish- (that were truly giant), and thousands of others. One of the highlights of the trip was a 20 metre-high swirling school of barramundi, like an under water twister. I even got to do a little cave dive… we swam through a cave and saw a lot of nothing, but I would s
till go through again.As we departed the dive site at the end of the day, there was a storm on its way in, which threw the dive boat around violently. The long-tail (a boat that took us from the shallows to the dive boat) was thrown up and down so much that the dive masters had to be abandoned, and the long tail took off, leaving the poor dive masters stranded on the boat. How we laughed as we sailed to safety.
My 30th birthday occurred on Koh Tao- not a bad place to spend it! A nice red snapper dinner, followed by a dessert of banana fritters, lit by candles provided by a loving wife was a wonderful way to spend my 30th!
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