Getting down to some diving on Koh Tao

| June 2nd, 2009 | Koh Tao

So we were rudely woken up at around 4 am on Saturday morning and ushered out of the super comfortable bus cabin and dropped in slight rain at a shit-hole bus stop somewhere near the small port town of Chumpon, ordinarily after that journey we would have been tired and stressed but to be honest we all slept as well on that bus as we did in our room in Bangkok. Unusually perky and well rested we had a laugh and a chat at the bus stop while all the other passengers sat in silence trying to hold it together until the bus arrives… By 6:00 am we were at the ferry port winding the coffee’s in and trying to top up our sleep on the soft benches in the waiting room.

6:30 am and we were all ushered on board the Seatran ferry, Sarah by this point was starting to get proper excited and Georgie had got enough sleep under her belt to also be enjoying it, with that I curled up on our bags and got on the zzz train too.

At the pier in Koh Tao we got chatting to a tout who was offering some pretty fairly priced scuba dives that came with discount accommodation and free taxi rides… Seeing as we had planned to have a pop at diving anyway the words free and discount spoke out to us so we hopped in his pick-up to Hat Sai Ri, enjoyed his free coffee’s and then signed up for a dive the next day.

The last time we were in Koh Tao we didn’t really get on with it, everything is overpriced and to be honest not really worth the extra dosh, but this time we had a dive planned and all of a sudden Koh Tao started to open up. Our accommodation was infinitely better than the dingy hut we stayed in the last time and at the same price, of course because of its affiliation with our dive operator but nonetheless it was a lot more like it… We threw our bags down, got some grub and let Sarah get her first look at a Thailand beach – white sand, glorious sunshine, emerald water gently lapping the sand, palm fringed, colourful longtail boats gently swaying in the wind… Needless to say she loved it!

Despite having a super fun/comfortable journey down from Bangers and getting plenty of kip at various points of the journey we were still feeling the miles a bit so we got our stuff together and flopped out on the beach, Sarah started work on the tan and Georgie and I got to work on topping ours up fuelled with a Chang or two… Another hard day at the office!

By late afternoon we had wilted once again (probably more to do with the sunshine and Chang) so we had a little nap at our room that actually turned out to be more of a mammoth kip and didn’t wake up again until 9 pm… Still what does it matter what time we sleep until, we got ourselves up and wandered along the beach to a lively bar with a fire show going full swing, ordered a few more Chang’s and saw the night out.

Yesterday or scuba day as we now call it came around to the sound of the alarm, having had plenty of rest we were keen as mustard to get geared up and make a splash… Literally.

Breakfast dealt with we strolled up to our dive shop excited and a little anxious, our instructor was called Graham and he put us straight at ease with a short safety talk and a brief chat about what we would be ding and seeing. They fitted us up for our gear without any problems and then whisked us off in a pick-up down to the pier where their boat was waiting. Apparently it’s unlucky to have shoes on a boat – just a little something we learned that day.

The dive guys are a bunch of quality people and everyone aboard felt right at home and they gave us free reign while they prepared and checked our equipment (being absolute novices they did it all for us while we ate all their biscuits and drank all their tea). Chugging slowly along the coast of Koh Tao it soon became obvious that we had in fact missed the point of the place last time we were here but at least we had the chance to realise that and it couldn’t have been more idyllic to be honest. They kept us separate from the other divers so we had our own little group and our own instructor then we dropped anchor just off the northern tip of the Island at a small sand bar where the drop was slow and perfect for us beginners.

Getting into the wetsuit was by far the hardest work I’ve had to do since leaving England and by the look of the girls struggling into them they felt the same. We had a quick talk about all our gear and what it all does, try all the buttons and tap all the dials then one by one stride off the side of the boat into the water.

We swam across the surface to the shallow water just to get used to breathing through the mouth thing (I’ve forgot the name already) and it was just like snorkelling, then once in shallow water we went through a few exercises to make sure if we got in trouble we would be OK all the time surrounded by hundreds of colourful curious little fish, all went well apart from Sarah faffing about with her mask but once that was sorted we set off following the sea bed towards the briny deep… To be honest it’s nothing special until you look up and realise you a couple of metres deep already, once past about two metres it starts to get really fun. Sarah kept having trouble with her mask and Georgie had a spot of bother with her uncanny buoyancy and the pressure in her ears but once that was sorted we were away – like a bunch of mermaids we gracefully swam through the water taking in all the beautiful corals and many fish around Koh Tao. 

The hardest part really was keeping at a particular depth because every time I inhaled I started to rise and vise versa but I’m sure its one of those things that is easy to pick up the more you do it. I was always worried that being that deep would make you panic about panicking and fuck right up but it’s just not like that at all, there is so much going on that loosing it and freaking out just doesn’t even cross your mind.

Being total beginners we sucked the air out of the tanks in a half hour flat and as we started to return to the surface we were completely surrounded by a huge school of Barracuda, I’m not sure who was more interested in who to be honest but it was fucking cool to see!

We got back aboard the boat and got used to gravity again, ate more of their biscuits and sank a few more cups of their tea then while the others were still out on their dives we had a chance to mess about jumping off the top of the boat… All in all it was a perfect day and any previous reservations of Koh Tao are out the window really, it’s still over priced for what it is but to be fair we couldn’t have had a more perfect day and the next chance I get I’ll definitely be giving diving another go!