I Love Koh Tao

Koh Tao was so fun!  It is a tiny diving island, and it is layed back and amazing.  We got a new favorite resturant that had Wi-Fi because our bungalow did not, so we went their for breakfast and dinner everynight till they got to know us.  It was called Bingo and it’s super laid back with lots of hippies.  You go in, take your shoes off and grab some pillows and make up a seat on the ground.  Everynight at 8:00pm they would play a movie on a projector, and the waiters never bother you, you can stay for hours and just sip your drink and surf the net or watching the movie, and if you need something you can call them over.  One night Dustin and Kevin got “Buckets” for only $8 Canadian.  A Bucket consists of a mickey of whisky, a can of red bull, and a coke, and it is litterly served in a bucket, sorta like a ice cream bucket but smaller.  I stuck with the local Chang beer, because I already know whisky makes me angry.

One of the best days yet was doing something a million people told me not to do….. But I only did it because I it was going to be okay and I felt safe.  We rented scooters.  Sorry Mom.  But we would never do it where it was busy, and Koh Tao was so small and slow that it was the best way to see the island.  You could rent them at any corner and they were only $5 for 24 hours.  I don’t trust my own driving or bike skills, so I doubled up with Dustin and made him ride around the block a few times without me to get comfortable with the bike.  I also requested a helmet from the shop, as the renter didn’t even mention them, as know one seems to wear them, but I did mine up as tight and snug as I could.  Then we were off! We grabbed a map and toured the island all in one day.  We were mostly the only people on the dirt roads, so steep that sometimes Dustin and I couldn’t make it up the hill and I had to hike and meet him because we weighed the bike down to much, but going down them was fun.  Their were so many stumps and holes in the dirt road so it made for a bumpy ride, but a blast, and got to some amazing beaches and view points, including Mango Bay.  We found a beach at the south end of the island that had a huge rock Kevin recognized from YouTube days before, when he searched cliff jumping.  So of course, Dustin and Kevin ventured out into the rough sea to get to the huge rock that you had to climb a rope to the top.  I took videos from the beach, and they GoPro’ed awesome videos while jumping.

Koh Tao is famous for it’s diving.  We are all PADI open water certified so we booked a charter for the AM that included 2 dive sites, Chumpion Pinacle and White Rock.  Cumpion Pinacle often has sightings of whale sharks, so we were really hoping to see one, but didn’t get lucky.  But their were lots of amazing fish and the water was unbeleivably warm!  It was 27 degrees celsius at the deepest point, 60 ft.  We did not need a wet suit, but they gave us 3 mil shorties so we wore them, but wish we hadn’t once we got in.  It was funny, all the instructors were cold, and one girl wore a full length 5 mil with a hood and booties!   White Rock was amazing, we saw the most beautiful Spotted Ray, it was just sitting there and we could go really close.  We also dove through a tunnel which was really fun!

After 12 hours of long traveling on 2 ferrys and a bus, we are back in Phuket, and ready to leave Thailand and fly out to Bali at 6:30am tomorrow morning!

xo

Jade