Sunday sesion on Koh Tao

Day 7: Koh Tao, Thailand

So Sunday finally came, a well deserved day off after a gruelling week at Chorenrit Muay Thai school. Have dropped almostr 5kg in the time I have been training there, can't recommend this place enough for anyone who wants a crash course in improving their fitness and dropping a few kgs, Rocky 4 style.


Got up bright and early on Sunday morning, took it pretty easy with just a couple of beers with a few Dutch tourists I met in Haad Rin on Tuesday night.

The taxi (pickup truck) was due to pick me up at 7:20am from Chorenrit school, the bungalow which I am staying in would be too hard for them to find so took the bike down and waited at the table and chairs out the front for it to arrive.

At exactly 7:20am, a van came rolling past, I made eye contact with the driver but he kept on driving when he saw me. The truck was marked 'Haad Yao Diving' so given the timing off it's appearance I thought that I had well and truly missed the bus to my diving utopia which I had been looking forward to all week.

After about an hour of muttering and cursing my bad fortune, another truck appeared, this was the one to the right place so I breathed a sigh of relief and got onboard.

There were about 20 people on the trip, Dutch, American, Australian, Israeli and Fench, some there for snorkelling, othes doing their Open Water certification and some (like myself) out for a couple of nice dives for the day. We got on the boat and headed out to our first dive, Sail Rock, which was about an hour out to see towards Koh Tao from Koh Phagnan. I had some massive problems equalising on decent when I was in Indonesia, it took me 10 minutes to get to the 20m depth because of the slow rate at which the air was being released from my sinuses, creating uncomfortable pressure in my ears. This time I poured some saline solution into my sinuses (a trick I got from a diving website) and guess what? No more problems descending! Pretty happy about that.

The dive was everything I expected, we did 45minutes at 25m depth. The visability was excellent (20m) and there were all sorts of fishes, massive groupers and even some eels along the way. I wont go into much more detail about the dives because writing about diving is a bit like dancing to architecture and I don't have a camera which can go that deep. Having said that there are some Sail Rock photos from the net here.

The next two dives were fantastic also, I was assigned a French apprentice divemaster (guide) who seemed a bit edgy and uncertain (he was affectionately known as Son of Clouseau), I think the reason he was a bit nervous was that there are all these acronyms for helping you remember what to check before you go down (eg. B.W.A.R.F.= Buoyancy, Weights, Air, Release, Final, or Bangkok Women Really Are Fellas as our divemaster Jeff (RIP) used to say). obviously he had learned to dive in France and had trouble remembering the safety check in English.

Bambi


Either way, a good time was had by all and every one was pretty sociable, had a good chat with most of the passengers and crew, including one of the divemasters called 'Bambi'.

Bambi has lived on Koh Phagnan for the last five years and has become a local institution, so much so he holds a position of responsibility on the island to help British Nationals who get into trouble when visiting, Bear in mind this is a party island, home of the Full Moon Party so you could imagine that he is kept fairly busy in this capacity. Bambi's other claim to fame is that he introduced Punk Rock to the Full Moon party many years ago, playing a spectacular set at the FMP which led to the venue changing the rules as to what could be played on the rotation at the party. He also set up the Backpacker's Information Centre (backpackersthailand.com) in Haad Rin as a means of stopping visitors from being ripped off by unscrupulous operators on the island, much to the displeasure of the island's heavies.

All in all a great day, had some great dives, met lots of new friends and got heaps of info on some of the places I am headed to in the next few weeks. Back to training tomorrow so will endevour to get an early night, but not before I head back to that awesome French restaurant from Saturday night to try the spaghetti bolognaise.

Yum!