Next Stop: Unknown

Koh Tao has changed quite a bit since I was there in 2005.  The sleepy little beach with 5 or 6 dive shops is now a full fledged tourist trap!  Jenn and I decided to stay at Ban’s Dive Resort, which is the same place I went last time.  At least it was familiar and easy.  During the time we were checking in, I found out that as an ex-student, I get a 10% discount.  Sweet!  We opted for a room with AC, even though it costs us an extra 500 baht per day ($14USD).  We just hadn’t been sleeping well the previous nights due to the heat and humidity.  Ahhhhh, thank good for modern conveniences… AC was so freaking nice! 

The dive shop receptionist wanted us to take an expensive refresher course since it had been so long since our last dive… but I contested, as it seemed a bit ridiculous to spend a bunch of money to study given the fact we were enrolling in our advanced dive course and would be getting the refresher anyway.  To compromise, we signed up for 2 fun dives before starting our advanced course.  This would give us a chance to have a little fun and get back into the groove before the real work began.  The fun dive boat was to leave at 7:30 the next morning, so we grabbed some food and went pretty much straight to bed….

However, we didn’t sleep too well!  It was super windy from a storm, and around 1 am, Jenn and I both woke up to some insanely loud banging noise.  I’ve no idea what it was, but it finally stopped after what seemed several hours.  I think a window shutter was open somewhere and the wind was whipping continuously into the side of the wall, smack, smack, smack, smack….  7:30 came way too quickly and we got up groggy and made our way to a quick breakfast and then to the dive shop to try on our gear.  That went smoothly, and onto the boat we go, headed out for our first dive since our honeymoon in Honduras.

I felt a bit like a moron trying to remember how to put all the gear together, but soon we had the kinks worked out and were suited up and waiting our turn to jump in.  We had a dive master with us, Daphne, who would be leading us through the two dives.  She went over all the communication/hand signals, and walked us through how the dive would go, and in the water we went.  It was so nice to be back underwater… and the water was incredibly warm… 31C, about 88F.  We saw a ton of fish, and it went by quickly.  Back on to the boat, we switched our gear over to fresh tanks as the boat motored to our next dive.  The second one went much better than the first… Jenn is a natural fish in the water, and consumes so little air… I did much better with my buoyancy, but was still a bit rusty.  Thankfully, I did well on air too, so we were able to stay down for around 56 minutes at a shallower depth, lots of time to see stingrays, moray eels, anemone fish, grouper, a sea snake, and tons more cool stuff.  By the time we finished our second dive, we were pretty hungry, but ready to begin our Advanced Open Water course the next day.

We took the evening to have a relaxed dinner, and walk around the beach a bit.  The last time I was here, the beach pretty much ended at a place called Lotus Bar, where I learned to swing the fire poi.  As we walked there this time however, it was only about halfway down the beach, with a TON more bars, restaurants, and dive shops built up.  I couldn’t quite believe the rapid growth Koh Tao had seen.  Even with the drop in tourism, the small little island was still hopping.  It seemed busy most everywhere we went.  Of course, it’s the smallest island Jenn has ever been on (probably me too), so people were pretty concentrated into one area. 

The next morning, we got to sleep in, until 8:30, and started our course at 9:30.  By some stroke of luck or misfortune, I’m still not sure… I managed to get the same instructor who taught me to dive the last time I was here.  I remembered him being pretty animated and crazy, and I could swear he was on speed or something all the time.  This time round proved no different, but he is an excellent instructor, and has some great stories.  The AOW course seemed like it would be a breeze.  5 dives… 3 the first day, 2 the second day.  Day 1: Deep Dive, Navigation Dive, and then Night Dive.  Day 2: Self navigation and then Naturalist fish identification.  To go along with that, some simple homework. 

The Deep dive was down to 30 meters… We were to do a test to see if we were getting nitrogen narcosis, and everyone was a bit anxious, but Jenn and I had been down to 40m before, and knew it wouldn’t be a problem.  However, we got some extremely exciting news as we were getting on the boat to head out for the dive.  Two whale sharks had been spotted where we were going, so there was a high likelihood we’d get to see one.  Our instructor hadn’t seen one in over a year, so he was running around excited talking about a million miles a minute.  Sure enough, as soon as we pulled up to Chumphon Pinnacle, the whale shark surfaced and went back down.  We put on our gear and moved to the descent line, where 3 minutes later, the whale shark came back for a little swim.  He came within 5 meters of Jenn and I while we were still floating at the surface.  Sweet!  Talk about good luck!  Everyone dreams for the chance to see a whale shark, and we get one on our second day!  The dive down to 30m goes easy, and we swim around the coral, level up at 15m for the rest of our dive, then return to the boat.

The next dive (Twin Rock) we are to navigate a straight line for 25 kick cycles and return path, then navigate a square.  Jenn and I seem to do this no problem.  I felt our square was way off because the current was carrying us away, but we ended back up at the same spot we left, so Antony applauded us and we took off exploring the rest of the reef on our own.  No more dive master babysitting us, it was great!  Of course, it was a little nervous too, not knowing if we’d make it back to the same ascent/descent line, and thus back to the right boat at the end of the dive!  There were about 6 boats in the water near us, so hopefully we’d find the right one.  We did, of course, and we were excited to get back, have some dinner and prepare for the night dive.

We were late getting back, so we had to rush our food, then get back on the boat to head out for the night dive.  Antony had prepped us on it, and given us these military like red glasses which we put on before the dive.  Supposedly, wearing them an hour before the night dive was going to give us super night vision, and make the experience more intense.  I’m not sure it helped much, but it sure did make putting our gear together nearly impossible, as it was already dark out, and adding another layer pretty much reduced our vision to about 2 inches from our face.  We managed it anyway, switched out the night vision enhancers for our normal goggles, and big stepped it off the boat into the water and to the descent line.  It took an extra 15 minutes to get everyone together, pass around our torches, and meet at the line for our descent.  We were shown how to “charge” up our instruments with the torch so they could be read at night without any light, and then down we went.  It was a bit disorientating, going down with no lights on.  I couldn’t see anything at all, and had a difficult time trying to get down and keep tabs on Jenn, who was my dive buddy.  I’m sure she felt the same way, as we neared the bottom we both had a, “WFT?!?!?” expression.  It was completely dark, and we couldn’t see anything.  How the hell were we going to navigate a straight line and back in this!  Fortunately, our dive master realized that there were just too many people confused so we abandoned the navigation and took off through the water.  At first, we used our torches to light up the coral, and it was beautiful.  Everything shone bright when lit up, and there were different fish out hunting the reef… spots reflecting light everywhere.  About halfway into the dive, we got into a small circle and turned off our torches.  Then, as our eyes adjusted to complete darkness, we started waving our hands in the water.  Everywhere the water lit up with little shooting phosphorous lights.  It was like a million shooting stars, coming off your hands in little waves as we’d move around.  The faster and more violently you’d move your hands around, the more little lights would shoot out from the water.  And then, our dive master took off into the deep darkness, and a wave of specks of light, like an aura would surround him as he swam.  We followed him, or at least the glow he emitted, around the coral for about 15 minutes, amazed at how freaking cool it was to just watch tiny sparks of life emit light around us continuously.  So this is why people love the night dive… it’s such a trip floating nearly weightless in the middle of the water surrounded by complete darkness, but having tiny glowing particles shooting from your hands and fins whenever you move.  The time went by incredibly fast, and before I knew it, we were back on the boat… and shortly after, passed out in bed.

Day two was to be 2 dives, both self navigated.  This means Jenn and I get to buddy up and go pretty much wherever we wanted on the dive site.  Diving without a dive master reminded me of the first time I flew solo in an airplane.  It was exciting and scary at the same time.  Jenn and I dive awesome together… I’m jealous at how well she swims.  Her buoyancy control is perfect, while I always seem to have to adjust my BCD all the time.  Today, I decided to swim without a wetsuit, and now I’m hooked.  The water was warm, and it felt so nice not having the extra layer on… and now my buoyancy was much more controlled.  I didn’t have to wear as much weight with the wetsuit off, and I felt I had a much easier time controlling my ascent/descent using only my breathing.  The second dive of the day we did our best to ID fish… I think we managed to get around 20 different varieties.  Before we knew it, we were back on solid ground, newly certified Advanced Open Water divers!

 

Here’s two diving pictures to wet your palette. For more, go to our flickr website

 

 

 

 

 

Whale sharks rock!

Right now I’m sitting on a beach on the island of Koh Phangnan, Thailand.  The beach is called Bottle Beach… I’ve no idea why, and no one seems to really know.  Other than it’s pretty much perfect.  It’s located on the northern coast of the island, and it’s a crescent shaped beach, with pretty clear water, and fine sand.  The water is shallow, and doesn’t get deep until you walk about about 200 meters or so.  There are three boats buoyed up out in the deeper water, and about half a dozen long-tailed taxi boats up on the shore…  The taxi boats all have colorful ribbons tied to their bows, and they blow lazily in the breeze coming in off the water.  This beach has exactly four resorts… Bottle Beach I, II, III, and Smile Bungalows.  We are staying in Smile, and the food is incredible.  Last night we ordered something called “no name vegetables” as an appetizer… mostly just as an experiment, as we had no idea what would come out.  Next to French fries, it may be my new favorite fast food.  I still couldn’t tell you what was in it, just deep fried crispy goodness.  It would be hard to top that snack, except our fish that came out next did and then some.  I ordered something in Thai, which was translated as “fish in red curry sauce”, and Jenn ordered some kind of fish wrapped in banana leaves.  Not shortly after we ordered, we saw the chef walking back out of the jungle with the banana leaves for her dish.  Nice and fresh off the tree…

I’ve been trying to stay out of the midday sun, as I can feel my skin burning in the heat, but Jenn is itching to get a suntan.  I layer on the SPF 50 and make do, fortunately so far I’ve been pretty lucky.  I’ve no idea how long we’ll stay here… it’s quieter than the other beaches we’ve been, which is a nice change.  There are a few boat trips that stop here for a couple hours each day and unload sun and sand worshipers.  So, we get a little people watching here and there… it’s fun trying to identify all the foreign accents that the tide brings in.

Overall, I can’t see any reason to leave in the near future!

Our beach view cabana at Smile Bungalows in Bottle Beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty hard to get tired of this view!

 

 

 

 

 

The resort sign, nestled amongst flowers in the restaurant/garden area.

The flight from Nepal to Bangkok wasn’t too bad. Lucas and I were both still pretty miserable, and neither of us felt like eating, though Lucas of course started to perk up as soon as he smelt the many varieties of Bangkok street meat! I thought the smells were horrible enough to send me into hiding indoors – but my stomach was in a state of stress. We checked into Lucas’ old haunt “Suk11” for our first night, went downstairs to try some safe pad thai and watched an elephant waltz down the block as we ate our meal.

Bangkok was nothing like I expected – modern highways, lots of technology, subways and skytrams, and shopping malls everywhere. It has kind of a Vegas meets Honolulu meets NYC sort of vibe – needless to say, I loved it.

We met up with Lucas’ first cousin, John Michael on our second morning for a fishing trip. I still couldn’t stomach much more than water and crackers so fishing didn’t sound like my cup of tea, I was envisioning lots of sun exposure, fish smells, physical activity and long spats of boredom.  I was blown away to discover that fishing Bangkok style is one highbrow affair! JM picked us up in a taxi with his Thai girlfriend “Oh” and took us out to an old quarry that had been converted into a sport fishing Mecca. The 40+ foot waters are stocked with several different variety of large to extra super large freshwater sport fish: Carp, Mekong Catfish, Araparna (Sp?) – they’ve got them all, plus a few others. JM rented us a little cabana with a fan, a local to bait our hooks, cast our lines and let us know when one was ready to be reeled in, and proceeded to have lunch delivered out our little piece of paradise.

Anyone who loves to fish has got to see this place. Within a few minutes, we were reeling in our first Mekong Catfish – a 35 pounder. And they just got bigger and bigger after that. Our largest whopper weighed in at slightly more than 80 pounds and according to the local was only a “middle sized” fish!?! The feisty sucker took 45 minutes to real in and wore out first my, then Lucas’ arms. Makes quite the picture though, don’t you think!

Reeling in those puppies put us in the mood for a shower and then we headed out to Bangkok’s night market. This huge open air bazaar has vendors selling just about anything you could desire, and is rivaled only by the ‘day market’ we visited the next morning. Between the two markets, we snagged a few t-shirts, new bathing suit, checkout the exotic (and likely illegal) pet store offerings and sampled several fabulous icee drinks here (a Thai staple on hot days).

We killed a few peak sun hours at a VIP movie theatre: Wolverine. The seats were lazy-boy style, included a welcome drink and blanket, the AC was cranked to the max and it was only 7USD. Pretty nice way to spend the afternoon if you ask me.

After a couple days of leisure both Lucas and myself were now fully recovered and ready for full on Thai cuisine! Unidentifiable fish, squid, extra spices – no problem! JM and Oh took us to their favorite restaurants and we ordered dish after dish; wracking up an unimaginable 60USD bill in one restaurant without consuming a drop of alcohol. We did load up on those dang delicious icee drinks – this time an iced tea icee. Love those things!

As a special treat, we spent our last day with JM and Oh at a small island two hours outside of Bangkok – Koh Si Chang. This island was used by King Rama V as a summer home, and is the birthplace of Rama VI. The island was absolutely beautiful – though wickedly hot – and we explored the gardens of the old summer palace, walked along an elegant flag strewn pier and lastly went swimming at a beach resort. Swimming was supposed to be a way to cool off, but little did I realize that the water in the Bay of Bangkok is literally one to two degrees cooler than bathwater. It was the most unexpected thing I have ever encountered at the beach! Dove right in anyway, swam out as far as I felt comfortable (until I was surrounded with brown jelly fish) then came back to shore and relaxed with the rest of the group in the shade. Everyone else opted out of a bath.

Then, even more surprising than the beach being bathwater, the Thailand National Army, decked out in full war regalia, rowed a series of 12 boats ashore right in the middle of the beach resort! They popped out of the boats in full camouflage, toting guns and ropes and other military paraphernalia and began doing drills on the shore. The contrast of this serious Thai soldiers and European vacationers in gold sequined banana hammocks was such a site! I wasn’t sure if I should take out our camera and laugh, solute he soldiers, or run and hide! as JM would say, it was “Thailand Gone Wild”.

 

The boys fishing for catfish outside Bangkok.

 

 

 

 

 

Fish #1 – Look at Lucas’ Big Grin!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fish #2 – After hauling this one in, Lucas’ looks a bit to bedraggled to really grin!

 

 

 

 

100B to have you feet cleaned by sucker fish – looks like fun, eh?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Michael decides he wants in on the action!

 

 

 

 

 

Look at them go to town.

 

 

 

 

 

Escaping from the heat at Koh SiChang.

 

 

 

 

 

John Michael in his natural environment.

 

 

 

 

 

Just another tree in King Rama’s garden at Koh SiChang.

 

 

 

 

Which sight do you find more frightening?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please notice that these soldiers are saluting behind a sign that indicates how much beach items rent for.

 

Koh SiChang Viewpoint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, isn’t that cute!