I had a rough introduction to Asia in Bangkok so I left early and made my way to the island of Ko Tao. The island was everything that I had hoped for. It was the complete opposite of Bangkok in the most important ways. Quiet, beautiful, and relaxing. The journey to the island was a long and uncomfortable one, but it was so worth it.
I took a sleeper train south, then hopped onto a boat to Ko Tao. The beds on the train were not made for tall people, but they were much more comfortable than a cramped airplane seat.
Early in the morning we waited for our ferry to the island. I hadn't booked anything on the island yet. There were a few scuba schools that had good reviews and I was going to try to get signed up with one of them.
On the boat, someone was offering a deal on one of the schools that I was interested in. I ended up at Ban's Diving School. When I went to reception, I told them that the guy on the boat offered me a deal and I got a slight price reduction. The price included my room for about 5 nights and all of the classes required for scuba certification. Later, some of my classmates told me that they had meals included in their price. Apparently I didn't get the best deal possible, but I was still very happy with the price that I paid.
I told reception that I wasn't ready to start classes right away. I was a little bit sick from the journey to the island. The diesel exhaust from the train had messed up my lungs a little bit. I had a day to myself to enjoy some healing beverages on the beach.
The facilities at Ban's were great. It was a nice resort atmosphere. The rooms were more backpacker quality than resort quality, but I was backpacking and didn't mind as long as the price was right. We were on a quieter part of the island which was perfect for me. I wasn't looking to do a lot of partying.
We had one day of all classroom work. There was a lot to learn about scuba diving. Then our first dive was in the swimming pool. Our instructor had to make sure we wouldn't panic when we tried to breathe under water.
Evenings were awesome, relaxing, and beautiful. This was the perfect place for me to get my mind and body acclimated to this part of the world. Bangkok had just been too much all at once.
Our first ocean dive was great! The first time we all went down, the whole class met up at the ocean floor. When I was down there for the first time, there was an instant of panic! I was thinking that a million different things could kill me in an instant down there (not animals but equipment failures, etc). Then the moment passed and I really started to enjoy my time down there.
Because we were being certified, each dive had a different objective. We learned different things like buddy breathing (not sure if that's what it's called) where you share your regulator with your buddy in case of equipment failure.
I loved being under the water. It was so cool to see all of the fish and be weightless in an alien environment. It was something that I had dreamed of for years and it was one of the few things where reality was better than the fantasy that I had in mind.
I had taken Spanish classes in Spain and I highly recommend signing up for a class or group activity when traveling. It's an easy way to make instant friends. I added most of my scuba classmates on Facebook and would end up meeting up with one of them later in my trip.
I didn't do a whole lot during the evenings. I didn't want to be hungover for a dive.
I did try a lot of local snacks. There are some good ones in Thailand. Some are similar to the Mexican snacks that I grew up on in California. The salted papaya was especially good. One thing that I discovered was that I will never ever ever like a snack made of seaweed, dried fish, or dried sea animals. Basically anything from the sea is not something I want to snack on.
Near the end of classes, our instructor had posted on Facebook about a "live aboard" trip that his friend was running. The pictures looked cool and I asked him about it. The trip was for 7 days, traveling through the Similan Islands. We would live on an old Chinese Junk and all meals and equipment rentals, etc were included. We would be diving 5 times a day! It was expensive, but I had to do it. I signed up!
After we were certified, some of our class went out to check out more of the island.
We went to another part of the island and I was glad that I had stayed at Ban's. This part just had way too many drunk tourists for my taste. It was fun for a short time, but I was glad that I had the option to go to a quieter area when I wanted to.
Travel tip: If you ever see a flaming jump rope, don't jump it! This has got to be one of the stupidest thing that westerners ever do in foreign countries. Let's say you try jumping the flaming rope. In the best case, you jump over the rope. Woopty doo! Who freakin' cares, you jumped over a rope. Now let's imagine a worse case scenario, you mess up your jump and now you're burned and your trip is ruined because your leg is too burned up to walk on. This isn't like jumping off a cliff where you can at least say you injured yourself doing something cool. This is jumping over a rope. Just don't do it, no matter how drunk you get, don't do it. It's dumb.
This is my last photo on the island. It was my favorite restaurant. It was open to the ocean (behind the camera) and the food was awesome and super cheap.
After getting certified, I hopped onto a boat and made my way to Phuket where I would meet up with the live-aboard. The journey to get there was brutal, but I'll talk about that tomorrow. I hope you'll join me then!