It is weird to remember back to the time I spent in Thailand while I am currently on the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Kobe to Tokyo in Japan. At this rate, I probably won’t even be writing about Japan until after I get home, but I will not leave anything out, don’t worry!
To pick up where I left off though in Thailand... we had spend our first day on Koh Tao at the police station filing our police reports so that we could get some money for our stolen belongings from our travel insurance companies. We decided to go to bed early that first night, because not only had we only had a couple hours of sleep in the last few nights combined, but we had to start scuba diving classes the next day.
As anyone who has been certified in scuba diving knows, the first couple of days are usually spent in the classroom. You have to watch videos and take quizzes to prove that you are actually listening to the material being taught. We were introduced to the others who would be in our group for the open water certification class, and we all struggled to stay awake for all of the lessons.
After we all passed our final exams (although we were allowed to talk to each other during it), we finally moved from the classroom to the swimming pool. Donned with all of our scuba gear, we spent hours freezing in the swimming pool showing that we could not only do well on tests, but we could also demonstrate some of the skills we had learned. Before we could actually go anywhere near the ocean though, we all had to do a swimming test to show that we could actually swim. It was actually pretty difficult! We had to swim out about 300m and then float for ten minutes before we all passed. By the way, we were starting to become close with the rest of the people in our group since we spent so much time together. There was Nashy and I, a French girl (Laure), a Swiss guy although he sounds like a Kiwi (Dom), and five Israeli guys (Scheidy, Omer, Stav, Tsvika, and Nathanel). The Israeli guys were hilarious with their jokes and accents, but Dom, Laure, Nashy, and I became really close - they would become our Koh Tao family!
January 4th was the first day that we would actually go scuba diving in the ocean, and it was also Nashy’s birthday. Aude also came to meet us from Koh Phangan, even though she never got the approval from her doctor so she wouldn’t be able to scuba dive with us. Our first couple of dives were a little rough. Rather than really being able to enjoy our surroundings and the marine life, we had to demonstrate our skills again (the same ones from the pool) and show that we could control our breathing and buoyancy. We did get to see a few things though, and it was really exciting to be spending so much time underwater. And to end the first day, the entire boat sang happy birthday to Nashy, and I think he must have heard it in about 5 languages!
I quickly became obsessed with scuba diving, and when some of the others said they might stay on a few extra days and do the advanced course, I knew that I wanted to as well. It was a little tricky though, because we had planned to meet both Nashy’s dad and some of his friends (who we would be going to Burma with) on the east coast of Thailand. In the end, we both decided that we should stay though, so we put off going to the east coast for a few more days.
Besides our amazing group that we were in, we also had a great instructor, Nathan, and some dive masters to help us, Mitch and Andrew. Mitch and I pretty much bonded instantly when I learned that he was 25 and he had plans to travel until he was 30. He was from England, and he was also doing a working holiday visa in Australia after he finished his dive master training in Koh Tao. It was really inspiring to meet so many other people who had the same interest in traveling that I did. And it was nice to know that I was not the only crazy one leaving family and friends behind to do a little bit of selfish traveling!
To celebrate completing our open water certification course, a group of us bought tickets to go see a muay thai boxing match. It was quite entertaining watching that style of fighting for a few rounds (we saw many a knockout!), but it was starting to get a little old and we wanted to go out after. However, one of the guys from the dive center had told us that his Swedish friend would be in the final fight, so we wanted to stay until the end and see. It was really weird to watch the first couple of rounds - it seemed to us that the first fighters were really young (maybe even 12?) and then they progressively got older as the rounds continued. You could tell that they were all very well trained, and they were all Thai. When it was the Swedish guy’s turn to fight, he definitely stood out since he was the only non-Thai competitor. I do not think anyone even thought he stood a chance, but in the end, he was the champion! It was exciting (and a surprise) to see him win, because we had been told that he had only been training for a couple of weeks. It was a good end to the fight though, and we were glad that we stayed.
A bunch of people from the dive center were going out down by the beach, so we all joined them after the fight. It was so much fun dancing and just letting loose, that none of us wanted to think about how we had to be down at the dive center at 10AM the next morning. It seemed like the only nights that we actually went out were the ones when we had to be there semi-early the next morning to prepare for a day of diving. Well, it turns out that Nashy and I both thought it would be a good idea to party all throughout the night (with others of course) and neither of us made it home or got any sleep that night. Aude actually went to Nathan, our instructor, and told him she was worried when neither of us came home! But both of us showed up on time to scuba diving, and he just laughed when he saw us.
Needless to say, the next day was a rough one for all of us. None of us had gotten enough sleep, some people were hungover, and the water was really rough on our way out to the deep dive site we would be going that day. I do not normally get seasick, but I gladly accepted a tablet from our instructor as did many of the others. The deep dive was one of my favorites thus far, and even though we did not get to see whale sharks (a lot of the other groups had been seeing them!), we did see a lot of things we had not seen before.
That day would also continue to be rough, because not only were we doing two day dives (as usual), but we would also be doing a night dive that evening. The night dive was really cool and different from the others. We each had a flashlight that we carried with us, and sometimes you could not even see that things were right in front of you until you shone some light on them! Everything looked completely different in the dark, and if Nashy was not my buddy and next to me the entire time, I might have been a little bit scared.
It came time for our last day in Koh Tao, and Nashy and I were extremely sad to say goodbye to our new friends. We had spent a week with everyone, and so far in SEA, that was the longest we had stayed in any one place. We would be taking the night boat/bus across Thailand to catch another boat to Koh Phi Phi, where we would finally meet up with Victoire and Joss, who we would be going to Burma with in a few days.
The boat trip was really interesting, because when Nashy and I boarded, there were no more beds left inside as far as we could see. We decided to go up on deck and make the most out of the wooden ground that we could claim as our bed for the night. Neither of us got a lot of sleep that night, and we were woken in a few hours when we would move from the boat to the bus. However, as we were leaving the boat, we noticed a room downstairs that we had not seen on the way in. Completely filled with Thai people, there were a few beds that had not been used. We could not believe that we could have had beds instead of sleeping under the stars, but it was kind of nice...
Since a lot of people had come to Thailand for the Full Moon Party, there were still a lot of backpackers since they had not left yet. The bus across Thailand that we took was completely full, and when we boarded the boat across to Koh Phi Phi, everyone was crammed up on the top deck, with little room to even sit down. Once again, we had not booked accommodation ahead of time, and we were a little worried when we saw all of the people also going the same way. Vic and Joss were also on that boat with us, but they were on the other side of the deck, so it was difficult to make our way across to them. Of course it was a beautiful day, and the sun beat down on us as we sailed across to Koh Phi Phi.
One scary thing happened on our trip across from one side of Thailand to the other, but luckily it ended up alright. It is a law in Thailand that all foreigners must carry their passports on them at all times, but neither Nashy nor I knew this (obviously since we left our passports at the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok). Well, on this bus ride, we were stopped by a policeman at a checkpoint, and they opened the door to the bus and started randomly asking people for passports. I pretended to be sleeping, and I could hear my heart beating like crazy as they checked the guy next to mine. Luckily, they decided they had seen enough and let us continue on our way, phew!
We ended up finding a place to stay, although it was a dorm and not very nice, but we would only be staying for one night, so we didn’t mind. After eating lunch, we made our way directly to the beach and took a nap in the sun - it was glorious! Before sunset, we climbed our way up to a famous lookout and saw Koh Phi Phi in all of its glory. And later that night, we booked a snorkeling trip for the next day that would take us to Maya Bay, which is “the beach” from the movie, “The Beach.” We all went to dinner, and then went out for a couple of drinks, but none of us wanted to stay out too late since we would be waking up early for our trip the next morning. And I was a little bit over the Australian guy crowd that dominated Thailand’s bars and beaches...
Waking up the next morning was rough for a few of us, but we made it to the longtail boat that would be taking us around the islands. To start the morning, we would be snorkeling with sharks! They were only black-tip reef sharks, but it was my first time snorkeling with them, and it was exciting! It was a little sad though to see how badly they treat the coral in Koh Phi Phi. Even though the water and the scenery was beautiful, the coral underwater appeared to be mostly bleached and dead. At one point during the boat trip, Joss jumped over the side and we thought that maybe he had gotten sick. It turns out he had, but not in the way that we originally thought (and that is all I am going to say about that haha)!
We spent a few hours on Maya Bay, but it was really touristy even though it was beautiful. And they had given us tuna sandwiches for lunch (with mayonnaise when there was no refrigerator in sight!) and none of us felt well after that. On the way back to Koh Phi Phi, we stopped at a beach where monkeys come down from the trees. It was entertaining to see until we realized that the guys from the boat were feeding the monkeys whiskey and anything they could find on the boat! The poor little guys were probably wasted!
Later that day, we caught another boat to Phuket, and we all took a nap the entire journey. We would be flying that night to Bangkok and then to Yangon, Burma the next day, so we only had a few hours. We watched the sunset from one of the beaches then had some dinner before heading back to the airport. Since our flight was late that night (and it was delayed), Nashy and I planned to just sleep in the airport. Vic and Joss would be flying in the next morning, and we would all have just a few hours in Bangkok before we left for Burma. It was actually pretty nerve-wracking going to catch our flight, because I did not have any identification on me! Since my driver’s license had been stolen in my wallet, and my passport was still at the embassy in Bangkok, I had to convince them to let me board the flight with only a copy of my passport. And since Nashy is both a British and Australian citizen, he had his passport, which only made things more confusing haha.
Sleeping in the airport was terrible (as usual), and I do not even know what state Nashy and I were in when Vic and Joss arrived. I had a mission for our few hours in Bangkok - Nashy and I had to go pick up our passports from the Burmese embassy, and I wanted to buy a new camera. I found the better version of my same camera (this one could go underwater to 10m instead of 3m), and it was the same price that I had paid. I was just so excited to have my own camera instead of relying on others, and I vowed to take better care of this one than I had with the others...
We also decided to change money for Burma - we had heard that we needed to have crisp, new US dollars with us (since there are no ATM’s in Burma), so we tried to find some. It was a struggle! For some reason, all of the currency exchange places were out of US dollars, so we ended up cutting it a little close to catch our flight! We ran through the airport - well the others ran, and I half-hobbled haha - and ended up just making it!
This would not be the end for us and Thailand, because we knew that we wanted to see more. After Burma, we would be flying back to Bangkok and had plans to go to the north and visit Chiangmai, but we had not planned anything definitely yet. None of us had any idea what to expect in Burma, but I can honestly say, it was one of the most unique (if not the most!) places I have ever been. And even though it was a constant struggle and a question mark, I loved our experiences there. I cannot wait to start writing about the wonderfully weird place that is Burma, and I hope to post it soon.
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