Chilling in Koh Tao

So, when finished in Chiang Mai, we headed down to the south of the country, keen to see what island life might be like. We started with a flight down to Bangkok, then a train to Chumphon, and finally a catamaran to Koh Tao, a little slice of island life, famous for the diving and snorkelling opportunities available.

As soon as we arrived at our hotel, we realised that there were very few taxis on the island, and no tuk-tuks, so we followed the crowd and rented another motorbike for pootling around the island. We celebrated Zoe’s birthday, and our arrival, at a fantastic Italian place (called Thalia, if you’re interested), ran by a charming and eccentric chap, who seemed to us to be a mixture of Basil and Manuel, from Fawlty Towers. His whole menu was hand-written in Italian, and though he could have saved himself some work and written translations next to each, he seemed to prefer talking each table through the options, and we were very happy with the results.

It’s fair to say that we fell in love with Koh Tao - we originally meant to stay for 3 days, but ended up extending and extending our stay, until we had been there for 11. I count us as lucky to have managed to pull ourselves away - we met lots of people (mostly divers) who had only meant to stay for a few weeks, and had found themselves in the same place years later

I think one of the big reasons we liked it so much was the size of the island, how much quieter it was than so many of the places we’ve been, and how liberating it was to be able to get around under our own steam - there was one main road around the island, and it took only about 15 minutes to get from one side to the other. In fact, we agree that every place we’ve rented bicycles or motorbikes has held a special place in our regard, and think that is very likely because of how fun it is to travel independently - to not need to look for bus stops, or haggle with a taxi driver, or walk amongst traffic, but to have the power to go where you like, when you like.

Don’t worry, I won’t bore you with a day-by-day account of what we did on the island, because we spent a lot of time enjoying being very lazy. On day two, we found a beautiful beach (one of many), and dared to go snorkelling in the crystal blue waters, after a little while shadebathing in factor 30 suncream. It was beautiful, and in half an hour we saw scores of pretty fish, of all shapes and sizes - it made me wish, not for the first time, for a waterproof camera!

Note the smiles - this was clearly BEFORE suffering a scalding

However, our milky-white complexions rebelled against this prolonged exposure, and we both got pretty badly sunburnt on our backs, boo! We think this was worse than usual because of the antimalarial medication we’ve been taking (doxycycline), which increases photosensitivity, boo.

So! We spend a few days hiding from the sun, scuttling from shadow to shadow. In the evenings, we had fun going on drives to different viewpoints overlooking the island to watch the sun set, and going to a range of tasty restaurants for yummy food. I can imagine worse places to be stuck whilst recuperating.

Once our backs were slightly less lobster-like, and we had kitted ourselves out with some long-sleeved tops and waterproof factor 50 suncream, we were ready for the water again! This time, we jumped onto a big boat with a load of other tourists, and were taken around the island, stopping at five different spots for some more snorkelling. This was great fun, and we saw all sorts of fish again, often ending up right in the middle of a school. As an added bonus, we had clearly learned from our last experience, and our sensitive skin survived the day of blazing sunshine - feeling more than a little schadenfreude for those in our group who had started the day sunbathing, and ended it looking like tomatoes! I’m a bad person.

Next day we went for our first experience of scuba diving, after getting a taste for the water, and hearing that we were in one of the best places in the world to try it. This was an experience that was obviously very exciting, but also quite nerve wracking - breathing underwater is in no way natural, and the animal part of your brain takes a lot of convincing otherwise!

Still, we felt that we were in good hands, with an instructor who had been teaching on the island for 8 years (another who had only meant to stay for a few weeks at the start!), Xavier. He talked us through the basic techniques we would need to be safe in the water, and sorted us out with our equipment. We were taken out on a boat with quite a few other divers, who would be doing their own thing, and meeting up with us at the end.

Our dive started in shallow water, where we gradually allowed ourselves to descend to the sea floor. Once here, on our knees and totally submerged, it took a few seconds for breathing to feel normal. After acclimatizing, we went through the techniques we’d been shown earlier to demonstrate to our instructor that we were going to be safe in the water - the most important skill here was how to find your mouthpiece in a cool and collected manner, in case it went missing. After this, we were off into the deep end!

It was great getting to explore the reefs from so close, and to see the hundreds and thousands of fish living happily below the surface. We were under for 45 minutes, but it felt like five. After a short while, I almost forgot that we were underwater, and instead felt like I was a hot air balloon flying over an alien landscape.I wish I could do justice to just how beautiful it was, but I’m not a poet, so you’ll have to make do with photos that I definitely took myself, honest.

Honestly

The rest of our time in Koh Tao was spent finding more ways to chill out - more tasty food, more unique sunsets, and more time enjoying the views. We went out snorkelling one more time around shark bay, and weren’t actually disappointed when we didn’t see a shark.

After what seemed like a lovely lifetime on the island, it was time to go - we jumped on the catamaran again, to a bigger island nearby (Koh Samui), from whose garden centre airport we were flying to Malaysia...