Sunrise from Chumphon

The bus to Koh Tao was a large double decker with excellent air con - almost cold enough to wear a hoody. The Lomprayah bus left Bangkok at 21.30 and arrived at Chumphon pier at 5am, so we then had to spend 2 hours waiting for the ferry, but there was a shop and a restaurant, so we weren't totally bored. I bought a pack of crisps and made a dog do tricks for them as entertainment. The ferry left at 7am and arrived at Koh Tao at about 09.30. In the pier the water was clear and you could see shoals of fish swimming in the shallows. We went over to a guy holding a Simple Life sign (the school we had booked with) and he gave us a lift over to the SL divers resort. We checked in, met our instructor, (a Londoner called Luke) paid for the course, then finally got a shower - we were feeling pretty grotty. We had just enough time to pop for lunch before the course started. 

The view from In Touch

There was a lovely bar on the beach called In Touch that ended up being one of our favourites on the island. We sat on the beach whilst local children played on the rope swing, with little care for their safety. One kid got his leg stuck I'm the swing, and was swinging around by his leg, upside down. His mother seemed uninterested and his friends made sure they had a good laugh before helping him down. That afternoon we started the academics side of our diving course. This was a gruelling 6 hours watching videos answering multiple choice questions. The questions weren't hard, but staying awake was. After the first day was finished, Dave and I crashed as we had an early start the next morning. By 9am we were in a freezing cold, but very refreshing swimming pool starting our first confined dive. We finished this about 13.00, grabbed some lunch, and then went back to the classroom for another 4 hours of videos. That night we decided to go out and see the fire shows on the beach as we weren't starting until 12.00 the next day. This probably wasn't the best idea, or maybe it's the buckets that were a bad idea...

Fire shows on the beach

Still, we managed to get up and out in time for our first open water dive.

Once the boat had moored up on the dive site, we were told the jump off the second storey of the boat and swim round the boat - just to make sure we could swim. On this swim we all kept feeling these little stings, and later found out we had swam through a swarm of small jellyfish. After this we got back on the boat, kitted up and got into the water. Seeing all of the tropical fish was awesome, and very distracting when Luke was still trying to teach us skills we needed to know. Our second dive was almost straight after this one, over a reef. We saw Groupers, eels, crabs and tonnes of really brightly coloured fish. If you turned over and swam on your back you could see the sun beating down, and hundreds of fishy shadows above you. The dives lasted 35 minutes each, and never seemed to be long enough. We were finished for the day by 5pm, but had to get an early night as the next days dives began at 7am. On this night Dave and I decided we needed another night on Koh Tao. After Bangkok it was so relaxing. On the last day we finished about 13.30, and were fully qualified open water divers. That means no more training, and taking out your regulator under water, just fun dives from now on. We decided to rent some mopeds and go to the post office to post a couple of postcards, and after we were to head up to a few viewpoints in the hills. Turning out from the post office however, I totally stacked it and took half the skin off my arm and gave my foot a good graze and bruise. 

My war wounds

After I was cleaned up, we headed for Mango Bay. This ride is not for the faint hearted. It is for experienced riders and idiots - Dave and I fall into the latter category. It was a steep ride up there, and took us almost an hour. About 40% of the road was tarmac, the rest was sand with huge ruts in it where it had rained. It was easy for your back tyre to skid out into the rut, and then you were in real trouble. This is where Dave had his crash, straight over the brow of a hill and into a bush. But luckily Dave was unscathed. 

Halfway up the hill

Eventually we got to the veiwpoint bar at Mango Bay just in time for sunset, which was simply spectacular, definitely the best one all week. 

Sunset from Mango Bay

Just before dark we began the ride down, which wasn't half as bad as the ride up, despite having to do half of it in the dark. We got back to the resort in one piece, showered and hit the beach. We met the Canadians from our course, had a few buckets an began the beach crawl. Everything's a bit of a blur, but I remember doing the limbo under fire, and failed to light my cigarette off the flaming bar. I then met some lovely Thai masseuses who were very chatty and friendly, sometimes a bit too friendly despite my protests (just kissing me on the cheek though). I lost them pretty speedily and found Dave who was barely managing to stay upright (not that I was any better) and we headed off to get rustlers style burgers for 50p from the 7/11. The next day, feeling pretty rough, we booked our tickets back to Bangkok on the night boat, sacked our plans of going over the sand bar (it was high tide anyway, we'll go when we come back around) and headed to the pier to find a taxi. On the way there was a small river running down the steer causing moss to grow. I slipped and fell flat on my ass and got moss all over the back. I emptied my pockets and washed off in the sea, then got into a taxi whilst soaking wet up the Natural High Bar. 

The view from Natural High Bar

This is a treehouse bar with free pool and wifi above the forest canopy on the side of the hill. The view from there was damn good. We met a guy from Dundee and chatted away for hours. We came up with an idea for a TV show where you get someone incredibly drunk, strap a go pro to them, and set them loose into a city's nightlife strip. This kept us entertained for quite a while. We headed back down after sunset to grab some dinner and head to the pier to catch our boat. The night boat had rows of bunk beds that were actually fairly comfy and I managed to get a decent nights sleep. The ferry reached Chumphon at 5am where our mini bus was waiting to take us on a hot and sweaty ride to Bangkok.