Chumphon and Koh Tao

The morning we left Hua Hin our plan had been to check out and then take our bags into Hua Hin town, spend the day there and get a late train down to Chumphon.  When we arrived at the train station in the morning we were advised that the train we wanted was full and that we would need to get the next one which was leaving in about an hour. The train was extremely busy with Thais and other travellers heading south to the islands. It was so busy that we ended up not sitting together, in fact, Andy was about 5 carriages down.  We had booked a dorm room in Chumphon before we left and so when we arrived myself and Kay stayed with the bags and Andy went off in search of the hostel which wasn't meant to be far from the train station. The hostel was lovely and clean and we were told during check in that breakfast would be served from 5am which was ideal for us as we were being picked up 5.30am for our ferry to Koh Tao. We went out for dinner once we had dumped our bags in the room. We stumbled across a wee Thai place, one of the many in Thailand that we've seen since, that has no name. Plenty of locals eating inside and lovely food being cooked on the street side.  The menu was only available in Thai, but have no fear, we were asked to go to where the food was being prepared and just point at what we wanted.  We all asked for noodles and vegetables as we were still getting accustomed to Thai food and weren't sure what would be good. When our food arrived though I was sure we'd been given someone else's as there were noodles, vegetables and an abundance of sea food on our plates.  We realised that our request had been lost in translation but what we got instead was very tasty and extremely cheap. I think our dishes only cost around £1.20 each and had crab, prawns and squid in it. You'd pay a small fortune at home for a dish like that. An early night for us since we needed to be up at 4.30am. 

The breakfast put on for us was wonderful. Cereal, toast, fruit, fresh coffee and even brownies! We were collected at 5.30am and dropped off at the train station, which realistically we could have just walked to. From there we were given a sticker indicating which island we were going to and put on a coach to the pier.  After queuing for some time and having to pay extra as the weight limit for luggage was 20kg (ours weighed 30kg!), we were on the ferry and on our way to Koh Tao.  The journey across only takes 1hr 15 but I think we all slept for most of it.  When we arrived in Koh Tao we collected our bags and tried to make our way up the pier as quickly as possible because we hadn't booked any accommodation (everywhere online said it was full). We wanted to give ourselves the best possible change of finding somewhere decent.  When we disembarked the pontoon we were greeted by many taxi drivers trying to compete for our business.  We got ourselves in a taxi, which are just pickups that you sit in the back of, paid too much for it, and made our way to Sairee Beach area which is generally where everyone stays in when on Koh Tao. When we arrived it was Andy's turn to stay with the bags while Kay and I went in search of accommodation. The first place we tried, Lotus, could offer us a bungalow for B1200 which is about £24 a night and similar to what we've been paying elsewhere in Thailand. We checked out the bungalow but even though we were told it hadn't been cleaned yet it still seemed a bit grim so we headed off to see if there was anything better on offer. We checked a few other places but they were either full, couldn't accommodate 3 people or were out of our price range. We decided to book into the Lotus bungalow for just one night and see how it was and look for alternative accommodation that day while out and about. It wasn't all bad though, they did have two pools which we could have use off while staying there. Our room wasn't quite ready for us to move into and so we just dumped our bags at reception and went to one of the pools to have a swim and do some sun bathing. Our room seemed to take forever to get ready and so while we were waiting we went for lunch and had a walk around Sairee. Sairee in a tiny little place and you can walk from one end to the other in about 20minutes or so. While we were out we enquired about rooms in a couple of places but were told to come back in the morning to see if there was availability. We also saw many many places offering scuba diving which is something we all wanted to do. We'd been told that Koh Tao was the best place to do it in Thailand.  We finally managed to check in to our bungalow, which thankfully was a different one to the one we had been shown previously, it was clean and bright, and we were all more than happy to stay there for the duration of our time in Koh Tao. We had showers and then headed out to book some trips to do while there.  We decided to go with a snorkelling trip around the island for the next day and a discover scuba diving trip for the following day. With no real wifi to speak of at our accommodation we ate at the first place we saw offering wifi, a place called brothers which we ended up in quite a few times over our stay in Koh Tao. 

I was woken in the morning by Kay and Andy saying in unison "we're leaving!". Apparently there had been a lot of noise during the night from the pool bar next to our bungalow. I'm a very deep sleeper and so I hadn't heard a thing but it had kept both Kay and Andy up all night. This meant we had a big rush in the morning.  We needed to find alternate accommodation before being picked up for our snorkelling trip at 9am. Andy showered quickly and then went in search of somewhere for us to stay that night while myself and Kay showered, packed and got some food for our breakfast.   Andy managed to find us another bungalow which was further away from the bar areas and was actually cheaper and nicer than the one we were in.  With no time to lug our belongings up to the new place, Blue Wind, we left our things at the Lotus reception and off we went on our snorkelling trip. The trip was amazing, I'm not a very confident swimmer but they gave me a life jacket. I had bought a waterproof camera for taking away and we managed to get quite a few cool shots of all the fish.  We stopped at three different places to do some snorkelling and then had some lunch. We were then taken to Koh Nang Yuan which is three beautiful islands joined together by a sand walkway. We walked to the top of one of the islands to get a view of them all. It was a lot of very steep steps to the top and then once there you needed to climb up some rocks to get the best view. We did some more snorkelling from the beach there and then it was time to head back to Koh Tao.  We went to a lovely Thai place for dinner and also went to the supermarket to buy more mosquito spray and tiger balm for our bites. We were all shattered after our day and so we had an early-ish night in preparation for our scuba diving in the morning. 

We woke early and went for a hearty breakfast as we would be out scuba diving all day. After arriving at the dive centre (Sairee Cottage - highly recommended) we were greeted by our trainer, André, who sat us down to fill in a short medical questionaire.  As I have type one diabetes I needed to go to the health centre to get them to do a medical and sign off that I was ok to dive. This was a bit annoying as all they did was take my blood pressure and ask if my control was ok and then rubber stamped my form and I was good to go. I was advised at the dive centre that in future I could either do this in advance so as not to waste time on the day or that I could possibly take a note from my GP at home to say I was fit and healthy to dive. André ran through all the safety information with me after I got back and then we were ready to get into our gear and do some training in the pool. Both Kay and Andy had been diving previously and so they were a dab hand. Me, on the other hand, not so good. We had to do 4 manoeuvres under the water. The first two were to remove the mouth piece and place it back in our mouths and then remove any water that was inside your mouth using two different methods.  First by blowing really hard and then secondly by using the air button on the front of the mouth piece.  This I managed ok. Then we had to remove the mouth piece, pretend like we had lost it, find it, place it back in our mouths and remove any water by either of the above two methods. Again, this was ok.  Finally we had to demonstrate that we could fill our masks with water and then remove that water. This is done by blowing out hard through your nose while lifting the mask, which forces the water out. This one I struggled with big time as every time I tried to blow out through my nose my mouth was filling with water. I was then inhaling water which made me panic and head to the surface. André was brilliant though and took the time to make sure I had mastered it. He eventually decided that my mouth piece was too big and said he would get me a smaller one for the actual dive. We then were allowed a little time to eat a light lunch before we collected our gear and headed for the long boat which would take us to the big boat which was moored out in the bay. Once at our dive location we all jumped in the water, deflated our BCDs and made our way below. For an intro dive you can go as far down as 12 meters. We all held onto a rope and one by one gradually went further and further down. You need to equalise your ears every meter or so otherwise your ears get very sore, like when you're on a plane. My ears were ok, Andy's hurt a lot and Kay's nose was bleeding as she has troubles with her sinuses. Once down we were able to swim about and see all the fish and other sea life. My mask filled up with water while we were down but using the smaller mouth piece I was able to successfully remove all the water. I really enjoyed the experience but it's a very unusual thing to breathe through your mouth and never your nose.  Poor André had to more or less hold my hand the whole time and make sure I was breathing slowing and not panicking. Luckily we had two others with us who were doing their dive masters and so they could go with the others so I wasn't holding anyone up.  We were down for about 30 minutes which just flew in and only felt like 5 or 10. Once we surfaced we got out of our gear and had some tea and fruit while the boat made its way to the second location for another dive.  The second dive was at an additional cost and on the way I decided that, although I really enjoyed the first dive, it was enough stress for one day and so decided to sit that one out. Kay and Andy were going down so this meant that I could take some photos of them in their gear and also jumping into the water.  We all really enjoyed our day scuba diving, so much so that Kay and Andy have vowed to go back next year and do their Padi course. We went to a nice Thai restaurant for dinner and then decided to go see a ladyboy cabaret show in the evening.  I ended up feeling a bit unwell though, maybe swallowing too much pool water, and so ended up staying at home and doing some reading and blog writing instead. Kay and Andy had a brilliant time though, Andy was dragged on stage and given a lap dance! Not an experience I think he wants to ever repeat.  

Hogmanay tomorrow.  Off to party island, Koh Phangan to celebrate New Years with 30,000 others on a beach.