Again, the small islands prove to be my favorite. Koh Tao lived up to the hype with its friendly locals, great rock outcroppings, numerous dive sites, and plastic bottle recycling!!! We even managed to squeeze in some bad movies (Sex in the City and Pineapple Express) while eating western food. Not exactely the authentic Thai experience we were looking for, but a nice change of pace nonetheless.
Our hotel here (Beach Bay Villas) was clean and low key, but almost too centrally located. I think the next time I visit this beautiful island, I'll try one of the smaller, more remote bays like Aow Jan Som.
Koh Tao is the largest dive center in SE Asia. Every other business on the island seems to be dive related. We weren't planning on diving here, but got sweet-talked by a friendly dive master. Instead of just doing fun dives again, we decided to try out some of the adventure dives that count towards our advanced open water certification. Our first dive was a deep dive, taking us down to 100 ft off of Green Rock. We were hoping to see some of the bigger marine creatures at that depth, but no such luck. The thrill of being that deep made the dive worthwhile though.
Our second dive was at night with torches at Sairee reef. I wasn't keen on being underwater in the dark, but it was an incredible experience. We didn't see much for marine life, but we did get a chance to turn off all of our lights and play in the bio-luminesence. It felt like being in space and having the stars move around with your every motion. I'll definitely night dive again, only next time I'll try not to lose the dive master. :-S
Today we took a taxi down to Chalok Baan Kao. We hoped to follow the trekking trail shown on our map back into Mae Haad, but we ended up doing some accidental rock climbing instead. Luckily there were some nice experienced climbers to help us get through the tricky parts.
This evening we start our long trek north. 2 hours on a boat and then a night bus back to Bangkok. From there, we'll grab a local train to Ayutthaya for a day of exploring ruins.
I hope everyone back home is doing well in the snow. I miss you all.
