Set off for Koh Phangan at about 6pm for my night train to Surat Thani.
I was looking forward to my journey on the night train, as I had good memories of the Thai night trains (having taken quite a few, when we lived here 18 years ago). I was so excited when I got on and it was exactly the same (if not a little smaller - obviously they have not shrunk the trains - I have grown a little) and we had set off and there was no one sitting opposite me. Yay I could put my feet up and relax. It would have been a little awkward and cramped with someone sitting opposite, so this was great. I ordered food - which came with a Thai spicy soup, green curry (my favourite), rice and a drink – and sat back and relaxed with my book.
Then the train stopped and people got on. But I was ok because no one came to sit in my other seat. It then stopped another 4 times and I was willing it to stay empty. I was ok until the last stop, when a giggly teenage boy came to sit there. He clearly didn't know what to do with himself and the awkwardness was made worse by comments from his father, who was clearly winding him up. Then my food arrived and I had to eat it all with him sitting there, watching my eyes water, with the very spicy soup. Oh well. It didn't last long, as when I was eating the curry they started making up the beds. I bolted it and don't really remember eating it.
Anyone who has ever been on a Thai sleeper train will know what they are like but I will explain how cool they are, for those who don't know.
There is a walk way down the centre of the train with seats wide enough for one person down the side sitting opposite each other. A small table attaches to the wall between the seats for dinner time and the bottom bunk is made out of the seats (pull the backs down and the seat slides into place as a flat bed - very clever). The top bunk is contained in what looks like the ceiling of the train. Like a luggage compartment on a plane, it pulled down and has a bed in it. All new clean sheets and blankets, curtains to make it all very private. It was just as I remembered, great fun, if not a little smaller – laying flat, my head and feet touched the walls (remember the Thai's are all quite short). 
I woke myself up at 6:00 for our arrival at 6:30, skipped the breakfast and waited, and waited, and waited...I was woken up at 8:30 when we finally arrived at our destination. In the rain!
I arrived at the hotel after an hour coach ride and a 3 hour boat ride through choppy seas. I was not in the best of moods and the grey sky and muddy roads didn’t help lift my spirits. There had been a lot of rain and the road outside had flooded badly.
Luckily I haven’t seen any snakes swimming in it yet. I did however see a water buffalo and a goose just by the main road! 
I was meant to start my EFR (Emergency First aid Response) Course the next day but it worked out that Simon - who would be my instructor, had to go on a visa run to Cambodia and would be away for 3 days. This meant that I would start after I had done my own visa run to the Malaysian border. In the mean time I paid to go on 2 fun dives to Sail Rock (where you may see the Whale Sharks). We were going to use this great new catamaran that they had the use of, which would get us there in super quick time. I’d love to tell you how that went, but I haven’t been there yet – no one has! The weather has been sooooo bad, that there have been no boats running at all. The only one that has been going is the large car ferry (which is lucky because that’s the one I needed for my visa trip). I got my money back and just relaxed. In the rain.
I went on a day out on mopeds with Lisa and Tom, round the Island. I have never driven a moped or motorbike before and I was a little worried about if I would be able to control it. We rented 2 – they would share and Tom would drive. He had gone off down the road to practice and I, while being watched by Michael (the hotel owner) and Hans (one of the dive crew), started mine up and kangaroo hopped it down the drive, wobbling it all over the place. I hadn't realised (because I was concentrating so hard on not crashing) that they were both chasing me down the drive shouting to stop!
I managed to persuade then to let me try going up and down the empty road before I threw in the towel. In the end I was fine, it was just a matter of getting used to it as it is with anything new.
We visited a waterfall and I almost had a heart attack walking up the side of the giant mountain!!! We weren't very impressed especially as there seemed to be a pipe feeding the water flow. (We later learned that we hadn't gone up the right part and we missed the best bit.) 
We had a great day out and took snorkels so we could check out the fish in the north of the Island and then drove back down the coast road. What lovely weather! 
Oh by the way - I didn't crash it. I was the picture of control and elegance.
On the way back however, Tom just missed the curb in a sharp turn, hit a storm drain (which had a big dent in the middle) and actually made it fly with both of them on there. Amazing.
The visa run was a fun day. NOT! I had decide to go to the hotels Halloween party, which was the night before. This then lead to us all going to the half moon party. Bearing in mind that I had to get up at 4:00 the next morning to catch the 5:00 ferry, I knew this was probably not a good idea. However, it would have been rude of me not to participate in one of Phangans greatest religious traditions! The Halloween party was fun and we all had our faces painted. The others of ghouls, skeletons or showing hideous injuries, where I, on the other hand chose to do flowers, much more me darling! We all got in a taxi and headed over to the half moon site, which was pretty cool. They had lots of drink places; a large place to dance and fire dancers. Good fun. I'm glad I went.
You can see all of the pictures in the Koh Phangan Photograph folder.
Anyway, back to the Visa run. I was feeling a little rough after the buckets and other various drinks that were consumed the night before, and as I had only got back at 2:30 my short sleep hadn't really helped. I was woken up at 4 by some very loud bangs on the door, I got ready and headed out front for the bus which had been booked for 4:30. At 4:40 some of my Halfmoon party friends returned in a taxi, which I considered taking but thought I should wait for the booked one.
At 4:50ish some more partiers returned and I took their taxi, as mine hadn't turned up - TIT (This Is Thailand - not anything rude!!!) I got to the pier and got my ticket. She told me I had to go to the other pier??? what other pier?? Some nice Thai lady with a young child and a moped gave me a lift round there, just in time for the 5:00 ferry. I managed to grab 2 1/2 hours sleep on the boat back to mainland, to be met by about 30 screaming taxi drivers, all trying to get our attention. One of whom was a rather scary looking Katoy (I'm not sure how to spell this, but basically it is a boy girl) with a 12 o'clock shadow! We all barged through them and found our way to the waiting mini bus (which was really posh) and I went to sleep on the 3 back seats. A couple of hours later we had a toilet break (all squats) and then carried on through the rain and flooded villages until we got to the Malay boarder at about 2pm. It was really raining - not like British really raining, but like standing under a power shower on full blast, really raining - and we had to walk to one of the offices to fill out our departure card, to leaver Thailand, then walk to another office in Malaysia (about 200 meters away) to fill out an arrivals and visa card then walk to another office to fill out another departure (from Malaysia) card and finally another office to fill out our final arrivals and Visa card for Thailand. Then back to the bus, by which time I was drowned and rather cold. Another hour drive back to the toilet stop place, where we grabbed some lunch (strange cooked Thai vegetable leaves with an unknown variety of fish stuff) and the return bus and boat journey. I got back at about 9:30. What a rubbish day - I have to do it gain on the 15th Nov. All of that for a 15 day visa!!!!
I started my EFR and Rescue diver course, which was great fun. All of the First Aid was relitivly easy and I got 94% in my test and passed all of the practicals! The Resuce course, involved much more reading and a number of knowledge reviews, as well as about 9 practical tasks, in the pool and/or the sea. I had to do things like rescuing tired divers, pulling them back to shore. Or approaching pannicked and irrational (my instructor acted this VERY well) divers, grabbing them, without them drowning you, claming them down so you can tow them to shore. I also had to practice the most demanding part, which you have to do again in the Dive Master course - rescue of an unresponsive diver. You have to swim to them, remove mask and weight belt, test to see if they are breathing, call for help, give 2 rescue breaths then 1 breath every 5 seconds while you take off their kit and yours so you can drag them on the the beach to give CPR. If you don't give a breath every 5 seconds, you fail; if you don't flick your hand and say prepare before you hold their nose and breath, you fail; if you don't count out loud, you fail. Without blowing my own trumpet, I did it perfectly first time - the best he had ever seen!!! On one practice in the pool - when he had decided that I was doing it all rather well - he decided to make it harder for me and when he was panicking, he grabbed my regulator (the thing you breath through) out of my mouth and stuck it in his own. In all of the tangles and thrashing arms, I couldn't find my spare reg (or alternate air source) and was starting to panic myself, especially as I had realised that we were wedged under the concerte bar stools. I managed to clam him down - without punching him in the face and knocking him out (a tried and tested method for rescuing panicked divers), swap back regulators, return to the surface and I take him back to the edge. I thought that was going to be the scaryest thing I had to do, but actually that was to come the next day.
This was to be the final day of my training - out in the sea. When we arrived at the beach I knew it was going to be hard work. It was very windy, creating large swells and a strong current pulling everything along the beach to the right, towards the rocks. There was also a long thin reef wall about 15 meters off the shore, which came up near the surface and meant the waves were breaking over it. It took us about 20 minutes to swim out past this wall and about 6 meters beyond, to where we would do our first activity. I had to conduct a search and recovery of a person (Don, from Texas) under the water by swimming through a certain pattern, covering a large area. (15 kicks, turn 90deg to the right, 2 kicks, 90deg to the right, 15 kicks 90deg to the left, 2 kicks, 90deg to the left, etc). He was on the bottom (about 6 meters down) attached to a rope with an orange beacon on it - so we didn't loose him forever. He was to come up after 25 minutes if we hadn't already found him and I was to use my compass to ensure that I was covering the whole area.
My instructor/observer and I went down, and about 20cm below the surface, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. This was all due to it still being rainy season and the extra bad weather from the typhoon that had hit the island, a couple of days before. I have no idea how far down we went, or what direction we were going in because I couldn't see my dive computer or compass! It was so bad that my instructor had to hold me the whole time as he would have lost me otherwise. We were swimming through areas of dark and light - which could have been anything, rocks, coral, people, nothing??? I couldn't see anything, the currant was so strong I couldn't count my kicks or stay in a straight line and I was starting to panic, so we came up. We had started about 3 meters away from him and ended up about 10 meters away. Constantly fighting against the current we tried another 2 times and then gave up. Don hadn't even come up after 25 minutes because he couldn't see his watch and it was all a bit of a disaster. We then had to swim back to the shore which took us about 45 minutes (most of which I don't think we were actually moving).
Just as we finally got back to shore, my instructor (Jeff) swam back out and I realised that I still had to rescue a panicked diver and then an unresponsive diver! I was stupid enough to think that he may actually cancel it for the day, after what we had been through. But NO!!!!! So I rescued him and pulled his huge and panicking body back to shore and then I saved him again when he wasn't breathing - took off his weights and mask, which Don then dropped and we had to abandon the whole thing again, to find his expensive weight belt. OMG!!!!
The next day we used the beach in front of the hotel (we didn't use this before because it is not deep enough to do search and recovery in). I had just found small things in the pool and I was waiting to do the next part when I noticed Mel, one of the other divemasters go out into the sea by herself all kited up. I was aware that Jeff had something in store for me so I was watching her very carefully. Everyone was looking very shifty so I asked for some help kiting up, just as I noticed Mel roll onto her front, not breathing!! I rushed down the stairs and into the sea trying to get my fins on and swam out to her, breathing for her, I took of her diving kit and pulled her up onto the beach, where I gave her CPR. Luckily she came round. Then I saw Don go out to sea without his SCUBA kit on! I put my tank back on (as I had had to take it off to rescue Mel) and swam around waiting for something to happen. Then Jeff came out as well and I had to watch both of them. Suddenly Don started to panic (do you like the drama of all of this???) so I rushed over and tried to catch him as he kept going under! He grabbed hold of me and tried to climb on top of me, but I kicked him in the face with my fins (also allowed) and grabbed him and on the way back to shore he stopped breathing. This meant that I now had to give him rescue breaths as well. I took off all my kit, again! and pulled him up onto the beach to give him CPR. It's hard work being a rescue diver!
I am glad to say that no divers were hurt in the telling of this story and that I passed my course. Jeff later said that he couldn't have found Don in the conditions we were in and that he thought that it showed how confident and strong I actually was. I didn't tell him that when I got back to the room I cried! Apparently most people do this in Florida Key conditions where it is calm and flat and you can see 20 meters under the water. Nothing like this had been done there before and he was very pleased with me!
I have now signed up to do my Master Diver course with them in January, which will last about 2 months.
One of my last nights on Phangan I went with a Lisa, Tom, Vinnie, Paudie, Gerard (last 3 are Irish) and another girl from Sweden? from the hotel, on a night out to Haad rin.
We started off in a very empty bar (it was only about 9:00) and worked our way through some beers and cocktails.
We then walked down to the Cactus Bar, where there were some more people, some more drinks, some more fire dancers and people selling lights and glowing headbands. Which we had to have – of course! 
Finally we decided to move on from there and found a free bus to a pool party. Most of our group managed to squeeze in to the bus, but I was left behind with Tom and Lisa. I am sorry to say that I deserted them, when an offer of a lift on the back of a motorbike was offered. He was French and not bad looking, he even had dreadlocks! They made it minutes later however in a buss all to themselves. Again there were more drinks.
There was also a strange group of Ozzies who had clearly come as a team of 80's keep fit people, or something. They all had on very short tight shorts, tight sleeveless tops, leg warmers, and sweat bands, in a variety of glow in the dark colours. I could tell they were Australian as soon as they walked in!
Needless to say we all ended up in the pool. 
A great night out.
