10th October 2012
We get the high speed catamaran from Samui to smaller island of Ko Tao which is a 2 hour ride away. (600B each).
We have a room booked at the Sairee Sea View Hotel, which is a 10 minute walk to the main town. It's a really nice large room and as it's name suggests, if you go up on the roof area, it does have fantastic views! It is also very quiet. We share our balcony with 2 young girls from Wales, Harrie and Lucy, who we sort of adopt for the week! (Oh, how I miss my nephews and nieces!) They are very friendly and easy going and are traveling together for 3 months.
We know from the first day, that we are going to love this place, and we do. We end up staying for 11 nights! The snorkeling is on a par with the Barrier Reef, the beaches are small and uncrowded and there are lots of view points, which you can actually get to (with great care, I hasten to add!)
It is a very 'touristy' island, but it does have a good mix of people, all of which were friendly, including the numerous amounts of 'lady-boys' trying to encourage you to go to their cabaret, which we did, even dragging a young Austrian lad, Klaus, with us, whom we had only met at a bar minutes earlier. He never would have gone on his own and although he was 'scared' at times, I think he did enjoy it, it was a good laugh!
The island is very hilly and really only has one main road, which just goes along the part of coast. The other parts are only accessible on foot. There are a few roads that go to view points, that are really steep and in parts are dirt tracks, maybe going back to concrete tracks if you are lucky. I did a lot of getting of the bike and walking, in fact some of the roads were so bad, the scooter wouldn't go up them with me on as well. We did hire a bike with gears one day, but it was so old, even that didn't get us where we wanted to go, so I started walking and Matt took the bike back to the shop and swapped it for another scooter!
The only shops on Ko Tao are:- 7/11's, dive shops, restaurants and tattoo shops and we visited our far share of all of them!
Matt has had a map if the world, tattooed across his back, with red dots in the country's he has been to, (in hindsight, red probably wasn't the best colour, as they look like little spots!). It was done the traditional 'bamboo' way, they heal a lot quicker then the electric gun apparently. It's very good, apart from the fact the guy didn't get England quite right, (can you believe that?) he managed to miss Cornwall off!
We were walking past a dive shop one night called "Apnea Total' and stopped to look at the video playing in the window. It was some people 'free diving'. The girl come out of the shop and started chatting to us about it. Before we know it, we were signed up in a 2 day course to learn how to dive with no equipment! For anyone that doesn't know us, neither of us are really confident swimmers and I'm not even that keen on going under water! Camilla assures us that this will not be a problem.
Day 1 of the course. There are 5 of us in the course, 2 Australian lads and a German girl. Both the lads do spear fishing and the girl Laura, has done her PADI to rescue level! The first couple of hours we learn some breathing techniques and how to equalize, then it's out on the boat. They put Matt and I together with a Japanese instructor called Ai (I) and the other 3 were together.
They drop 2 ropes in the water vertically, then using the breathing techniques we have learned, you basically hold your breath and pull yourself down the rope, as far as you can go. At the end of the first day, they hope to have you down 12 metres. Matt managed 9 (1.10 secs) and I think I got to 7!
Neither of us slept very well with the apprehension of Day 2! There is a French lady who works at the drive shop who is lovely, and instantly picks up on the fact we were not overly happy. She tries to reassure us we are doing fine and not to concentrate on the depth that we are (or I should say 'they') are aiming for. "Just enjoy it"! Easier said than done, when you are metres under the sea and are wondering if you'll have enough breath left, to get you back to the surface!
We learn another couple of breathing exercises, then go back out to sea. I am trying really hard to think positive!
Ai, our instructor, turns out to be quite pushy, and while I can see her teaching techniques would work with most people, on Matt and I, they seemed to have the opposite effect! That said, Matt did manage to get down to 11 metres and I got to 9, so we were really pleased with ourselves. Ai on the other hand looked really disappointed, not so much in us, I don't think, but may be, in herself, for not getting us down as far as the course promised. We couldn't care less. Matt was really pissed off with her at one point though. On our last dive she was really trying to push us to go as far as we could, Matt said to her, 'Look, I'm paying for this, it's my last dive, so do me a favour, let me go down as far as I am comfortable with, let me have a look around, take it all in and I'll be happy', she said, 'No, we could do that later!'
We then moved onto a dive sight. Matt and I snorkeled watched the instructors free diving, they are amazing to watch.
When we got back to the shop we say our goodbyes and agreed to go back later to collect our certificates. Ai, cheeky mare, said to us as we were leaving, "Believe in yourselves more, not only in the water, but in life as well', I thought Matt might punch her!
The next day we returned to the shop and had a chat with the French lady (who's name I can't remember). We end up telling her all about Ai's teaching methods and what she had said to us when we left. She was horrified and really angry, she said she would definately have a word with Monica, the owner, which she did, she too, was also surprised to hear how patronizing a 30 year could be, (to us oldies!).
Overall, we were both very pleased with what we accomplished and it has definately given us more confidence the the water and would recommend doing it, if you ever get the chance. (It cost us 5500B each).
I will finish soon, but I must just tell you about the Animal Rescue Clinic we visited. They weren't overly busy (fofortunately so we had a great chat to the Thai vet running it. The stray dogs are basically free to come and go as they please. She takes them in, neuters them and then reintroduces to the community, all the local restaurants feed them the left over scraps. They re-home any cats they get in. One has even been adopted by a lady in England, so we be flying home after Christmas. Apparently the UK quarantine laws have been relaxed a little, so with the right paper work and blood tests its much easier to take animals in. (I bought a 250B tee-shirt but gave her a 100B for it!!)
To sum up Ko Tao.....We Loved It!
