We left Koh Phangan by boat, and a couple of very choppy hours later after quite a few people (not us luckily) had lost their lunches, we docked at Mae Haad in Koh Tao. Par for the course we had no idea where to go, so quickly picked up a map from a taxi man, wandered up the road to what looked like a busy convergence of streets, and had lunch while I studied the map for where to go. After we'd worn a bit more of our ever slimming flip-flops away, we had an air con room to chill out for the night and sort ourselves out. Jo was wiped, so we put the tv on and I researched on the phone who to do my diving with. When we went out to eat we realised that nothing really happens in Mae Haad, and decided to get up to Sairee Beach first thing in the morning. This we did, and after a taxi man wanting 200baht off us and not budging on the price, we told him where to go (bloody hate taxi drivers, all out to bloody con you) and walked instead. This was less strenuous than expected and took only 20 minutes dawdling. We ate brekkie at Bans, the biggest dive school in the world, and I wandered off to talk about diving to people. Finally I settled on Simple Life as they seemed friendliest, they weren't huge and impersonal, and they did all the specialist dives I wanted to do. The rest of the day was then spent exploring, relaxing in cafes, and eating.
Next morning, I was up early to meet at the dive shop at 7 for my first 2 of 5 dives for my Advanced Open Water. The previous day was wet and windy, and it had calmed a bit, but the sea was still bloody choppy which made the boat rides fun!
First up was a deep dive to 30m at a site called Chumpon. There were 4 of us on the course, and I was lucky to be buddied up to the only other decent diver who neither had no spacail awareness, nor dwelled on the seabed the whole dive. My buddy didn't however, pay enough attention to me, and because of this, only me and one guy doing his divemaster course saw the two bullsharks! Considering the dozen or so of us all over the dive site, I was very happy to have seen them! We saw lots of other wildlife including a shoal of chevron barracuda who engulfed us as soon as we descended.
Our second dive was a wreck dive on the Sattakut. As this ship was only sunk less than a year ago, it didn't have masses of life around it, but did have some cool swim throughs and some big guns to play around with. Somehow, one guy on the course burned through 180bar before we even got to the safety stop at 5m for 3mins, so had to use the octo of Ana, our Swedish instructor! God knows how, we were only down for 40mins!
We had tea and biscuits on the boat, then got back to the dive shop by 12, cleaned our kit, then Jo and I went off and rented a moped. Much against my better judgement I handed over my passport and signed an extortionate schedule of rates (think I was just tired), and we went off exploring and ended up playing crazy golf. By the 16th hole the clouds were gathering, so we rushed through the last two (I whipped Jos arse) and we got into the 19th hole bar for coffee just as the heavens opened. We waited for a gap in showers and headed back, and I dozed off. Jo was the kind and lovely girlfriend I've always wanted and took photos of me, though thankfully, didn't balance anything on me or write on me. We went out for dinner and had some drinks around the town as I wasn't diving til the afternoon the next day.
In the morning, we had a lie-in, breakfast, moved rooms to a cheaper one, and then I went off diving. It was now time for Peak Performance Buoyancy (ppb) and Navigation. First was ppb at a site called twins, where there was a kind of playground for us, with suspended hoops to swim through and other obstacles. Despite how it sounds, it was great fun, using our breathing to rise and fall over and under concrete octopus arms, and suspend ourselves upside-down in the water. We also had to do a somersault which I was the only one to complete successfully. We didn't see a lot, though there were a lot of curious groupers coming right up to us. After we were done, we had tea and biscuits as the boat swung around to the next dive site; Japanese Gardens. As some open water students were doing 2 dives, we had some time to kill, so my buddy and I went out snorkelling for an hour. A mass of curious little sergeant majors (little black and white striped fish) took a fancy to me and I was swarmed in them. We then followed a shoal of juvenile parrotfish for a bit, then swam back to the boat to kit up. We descended and swam up and down lines and into a shoal of yellow fin barracuda, in 20m squares and showed we could navigate properly. After this penultimate dive of the course, we motored back to shore. That night Jo and I had a few beers and found a place doing all you can eat pizza, so seemed rude not to.
The next day I wasn't diving, so we went looking for a bike to do some exploring. After a little walking around, it was apparent that bike rental on Koh Tao is a big con, with no insurance available, and ridiculous rates for damage (£11k for £5k scooter if stolen, £50 for headlight if damaged, £40 for small plastic panel if scratched) so we abandoned that plan and hit the beach instead. Jo was still a little burnt from the day before after using a local sun tan lotion (called Samui: avoid!) which I strongly suspect was actually mayonnaise, but we still got a bit of sun and showed off our blinding bat and ball skills to wowing admirers (well, one bloke sunbathing nearby who laughed at our longest rally of about 8). Before we knew it, the sun was starting to set, so we sat in the bar on the beach watching the sun go down then we met up with Nick at the Bans bar and went to the Cabaret. Although it had pretty pricey beer, the cabaret was free to watch. We sat and watched about 12 ladyboys of various stages dance and mime to all the big favourites like 'it's raining men', often with their boobs out. I found myself saying strange things like "for a bloke, she's got a cracking arse", and debating whether some of them actually were women. There was one person who looked like they were a boxer until a year ago, then suddenly decided on a change of career and had some really agressive and unnatural plastic surgery, but still had big muscles and was ripped. At the end, they asked for volunteers, and Jo doing her good girlfriend bit again, volunteered me. I was marched out back with 4 other guys, stripped to our boxers, given a big curly wig and a bikini top, then sent out on stage to ponce about with some ladyboys. Not exactly how I was expecting to spend my evening! We left at the end and went looking for another bar, but town was dead for some reason, so we went back to Nicks resort bar for a drink, then wandered home.
Following morning Jo was a bit hungover, and we were contemplating getting the stupidly priced cabs to take us to another beach. Instead, we just enjoyed the same beach again and this time wowed the crowds with our frisbee skills. I then buggered off to the dive shop to get kitted up ready for my last dive; the night dive. It had taken a couple of days to do it, but so worth it. We got the longtail from the beach to the dive boat as the sun was setting, and the wind was really picking up, making it a choppy ride. We got to the site and a few other big boats were already there from other dive shops. As I was the only Advance OW person who wanted to do the dive (madness of the other guys!) I was buddied up with my instructor Ana. She gave me a torch and said we'll just have a long dive until I hit 70bar. I was happy with this as I was getting pretty good on my air. We descended off the line as there was a queue, and then Ana took us around, somehow finding loads of places where there was no-one else which was great. We saw quite a few spotted rays, lots of big groupers trying to sleep, 2 kinds of pufferfish, and some great barracuda. One we saw just as he swam and caught a fish and killed and ate it. Very intimidating fish, and scarily quick swimmers. We headed around one point where there was no-one or any lights at all, and we turned off our torches for a minute and saw the effluorescent organisms in the water glow in clouds of dirty yellow/greenish hues all around us. Luckily I'd got pretty good at buoyancy as when we turned our torches back on I saw loads of huge sea urchins littering the seabed; just a touch overweighted and I wouldn't be sitting down for weeks! We swam around for about 40mins, then I hit 70bar, so we headed back towards the boat, en route seeing the a turtle someone pointed out to us that we didn't realise was a turtle until we got back on the boat. The sea had got worse, and thinking I had a foothold on the ladder turned sour and before I knew it the rear of the boat was leering 8ft about my head. I got clear before the ladder could smash into me and hauled myself up safely onto the rocky little vessel on second attempt.
We motored back to the harbour, all elated from a great dive, and my Advanced course complete. We got back to the dive shop, I said my farewells and thank-yous, then went back to the bar to meet Jo and Nick, and strangely Fern and Pauline, who we'd bumped into in Saigon and at Full Moon. We ate, chatted, drunk beer, then Jo and I retired to pack and get ready for our snorkelling trip early the next morning!
We were picked up at the bar whilst still waiting on our breakfast, then taken to a boat in the harbour. We hopped on and had tea and biscuits while we motored to the first dive site. We saw:
1st site (shark bay): sergeant majors, parrotfish, crocodile fish, angelfish, yellow butterfly fish.
2nd site: sgt majors, parrotfish, adolescent parrotfish, groupers, trumpetfish, crocodile fish, squid, jellyfish (with the flashing colourful lights).
3rd site (mango bay): sgt majors, parrotfish, groupers, wrasse, octopus.
We then had lunch on the boat and a load of fresh fruit before heading onto our 4th dive site which was more of the same, but nothing special like octopus or jellyfish, then onto our 5th site which is an island (strictly it's 3 islands joined by 2 big strips of sand (though seems to be mostly dead coral). One side of this was Japanese Gardens that I'd already snorkelled, so we sunbathed for most of the 2 hours, popping out by ourselves for a little snorkel. Neither of us saw much, though I did see a big colourful wrasse (I've got to learn more fish names) chomping away at the coral, trying to make a big hole for some reason. We wandered back to the boat, then were taken back to the harbour and to the bar, where we ate, played some cards, and waited for our taxi to take us to the nightboat onto Krabi!
We had every intention of going with locals up to the town of El Nido, but after 2 hours sat at the bus station, we found that the local bus wasn't running until much later, so we got onto an a/c minivan instead... well, three a/c minivans actually, as we kept getting moved, driven 50 yards and changing again. Bloody knew it was too good to be true the amount of leg room we got in the first van.
Early next morning, we moved guesthouse to somewhere a bit more secure, and met Pam and Alex for a familiar event; sitting waiting for Philippino guys to do their jobs. After over 2 hours we had our kayaks and were paddling happily towards an island in the bay. Alex, forever the Canadian prepared for anything, pulled out his rod (and no, that's not a euphamism) and caught a fish on the way over to the island. Later in the day he even started a fire and cooked the bloody thing!
The beach we landed on was deserted and had brilliant coral right off the beach. Pam, who had never been snorkelling before, was amazed by it all and loved it. To be honest, it was pretty incredible, saw plenty of wrasse, humbugs etc, plus some trumpetfish, and even a turtle I managed to follow around for a while. I went off for a paddle round the island by myself and somehow managed to come back with a blonde Norwegian girl. She had been out with two Aussie guys, when one of them flipped their kayak halfway across the open straight, and proceeded to all but sink it. In a bid to help out his mate, Aussie 1 had taken the girl to some rocks closest to where they were, and gone back to help his mate. I gave them a hand to get it out and empty the water out of it, and then give the girl a lift round to the beach. The look on Jo's face wasn't quite of the shock and annoyance I was hoping, but never mind.
