The rest of that afternoon was spent hanging out on the patio of the dive school. A group of us (Will, John, Tyler and Carol) were hanging out for a while playing cards. John and Will taught us a game called “Golf” and I also showed them “Up and Down”. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. Afterward we went and found a kickass mexican restaraunt just down the road from the dive school. It was an unexpected surprise as I have been craving mexican for a while. It is not quite El Tiempo in Houston, but it is for sure the best I will find in Thailand.
I decided to sign up for a fun dive the next morning. I may as well stay around and enjoy the cheap diving while I am there. It was another early morning, but it was fun to be out on the boat with everyone. Both of my previous instructors (Andreas and Ant) were on the boat diving with us. They both had the day off and of course they spend their days off going diving. The first site we went to was a 40 minute ride off the island. We were one of the first boats to be at the dive site. Right when we jumped in, we see another whale shark! We go on the dive and by the time we make it back up to the surface, there are 15 more boats there than when we started. Word must have gotten out that a whale shark was around. We escaped the madness and went to dive site number two. It was the shipwreck site which I had explored the previous day, but my dive leader said we will skip the wreck and go to the other part of the dive site. Again once we arrived on site, another whale shark! This one was swimming under and around the boat. We jumped in the water and dropped down below the beast. We watched it swim around for awhile then we went on our way further down into the dive site. As we made our way back to the surface, another whale shark appeared. This one was a bit smaller than the first, but it was still cool to be able to see multiple sharks at the same site.
Later that afternoon, Ash (one of my bunk mates) and I decided to finally go exploring a bit. We continued down the main road away from town and we had heard that there was a nice lookout point in that direction. We made it to the end of the road and it was another resort, that wouldnt let us past without paying 100 baht. We figured we were not in the right place. We turned around and found a side street that we somehow missed the first time. We started up this path and boy was this thing steep. We started walking up the hill along this road and our calves sure got a workout. There was a random processing plant along the way, it seemed a bit out of place. I figured it was a water facility, but I was not certain. We continued to climb this steep steep road and we came upon some downed trees across the path. The side of the hill had fallen into the road and along with it came the trees. We climbed over the fallen trees and kept on our hike. We continued increasing in elevation and I forgot to mention that we were completely out of water at this point. When we left, I planned to fill up my water bottle at the dive school, but they were all out of water at that point. So we kept on with things and we made it to the top of the path and as it kept going, it started to go down hill. We decided to take it a little further as we had not come across the lookout point yet. We kept hiking and came to a split in the road, we took the one that kept going up and eventually we decided to turn around and come back down. We checked the other split and finally found the lookout. A wonderful view of the islands and the beaches below. When we were hiking through the jungle all we heard were bugs that sounded like someone was using a buzz saw to cut boards of wood. The walk back down the hill was easier than coming up, but was by no means a simple feat. Walking down a hill that steep really gets to your quads. All in all it was a great hike and we were able to make it back in time for Ash to start his open water dive course. That evening was again spent playing cards and hanging out at the dive school bar.
The next morning I started my journey off the island to the northern part of Thailand. I took a taxi from the dive school to the pier, a boat from Koh Tao to Ko Phangan, switched boats and took a final one to the Surat Thani pier. I lunch with some Canadians when we were waiting for our boat on Ko Phangan. I then took a bus from the pier to the Surat Thani airport. My flight to Chiang mai had maybe 25 people on it. It was a super cheap flight, $29, and I booked it just the day before. The flight was super smooth and I took a cab to my hostel. The hostel is ok, a little warm in the rooms as the AC only runs when you keep your key in a slot next to your bed, It turns off once you take your key out. So during the day if nobody is in there, it gets pretty warm and takes a while to cool down. I did not feel the best when I got to my hostel, so I decided I would stay here 2 nights so that I had all day today to just do nothing. I went exploring for an hour in the afternoon and I went back out later in the evening to see the night market. I am off to bed soon as I want a full night of rest and I will be switching hostels tomorrow to find something a little better. I am missing the beaches already, but Hawaii is not too far away.
Off into the mountains we go...
