This morning we dropped our UK stuff off to storage - saw our first scooter accident, the scooter went in front of a car and lost, its 2 occupants spastically fell from it and somehow were uninjured, and traffic carried on as per usual. We checked out of our hotel and headed to the train station - Hua Lumpong. We got a second class ticket to Chumphon, so we had berth seats facing each other, which converted into a bed, and also a fold down bed above the seats.
Had my first ewwy toilet experience in the train station, it was a squatter which I naively did not expect, and no loo paper, thank goodness I had baby wipes in my bag with me. Moving on, the train was great, comfy seats and we had a good view of the country side as we travelled south. Second creepy toilet moment, the train loo was just a hole that you squatted over again, but this time the contents just went straight onto the train tracks, so imagine a rocky train matched with squatting and holding onto a rail, that was indeed a challenge!
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| Ell kindly gave me the top bunk |
The man came along and made our seats into beds (no jokes it was so comfortable it still remains the most comfortable bed and pillow we have had since we have been here and its been 2 weeks).
We arrived in Chumphon 9 hours later, at around 10pm, checked into a hostel then headed to the food market. On the way the most lady looking lady boy who looked like he was going to the ball asked us " Hello where you go?", in answer to this we quickly crossed to the other side of the street.
3 - 9 June
This morning we got the early ferry to Koh Tao Island. It took about 2-3 hours to get there on the slow ferry, got on the back of a ute taxi when we got there and got a ride to Sairee Beach, and we booked in at Big Blue Diving Resort. A basic room, but is free every day that you dive. We just chilled out the rest of the day, and had dinner at the restaurant there and had a beer whilst sitting on the deck with the water lapping at your feet - pretty sweet.
There was also lizards in the bathroom, but they are too quick for me to get my camera out!
The next day ( 4 June) we booked in on the afternoon dives. There was 5 people in our group including our divemaster, a training diver master, Miki this chatty English man, ell and me. The first dive was at Laem Thein Caves, lots of swim throughs (holes in rocks you swim through) that the boys did but I was not having a bar of that so me and the training dive master swam around the rocks and waited for the rest of them on the other side. After that dive my eyes had funny red marks around them (my mask had bit of a squeeze going on) and I looked like a lizard for the next hours. The second dive of the afternoon was at Nang Yuan Cave. So many colourful fish, it was awesome, I also saw an unpuffed puffer fish! That was cool. Miki had an underwater camera and has promised to email us the photos from the dives so if we ever get them I will put them up too.
There is a man that makes pancakes up at the 7/11 at the top of our driveway. He is the man, watching him make them is like watching a mini show, hes so speedy, you can watch the video and think I’m a creep for thinking so. They were so delicious.
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| Yea thats right you put the loo paper in THE BIN! |
Ell signed up for his advanced diving course on the 6th, so that day I just chilled in the room and watched movies (inbetween bathroom stops – something had finally got to me – no it was not pancake man!) and it was raining so I did not feel bad about doing nothing. We went to a restaurant Su Chilli again for dinner its so good. At this stage I currently have 29 itchy itchy bites, they are chowing down on me here. On the second day of Ells diving course I did some window shopping, and got a massage, it was a health massage so only 70% relaxing, at times she was pressing my with her feet right near my bottom, and I was like oooh please don’t slip! We watched fire dancers and had a bucket – that shit is potent we couldn’t not finish them.
On Thursday (7th) we rented a scooter and tootled about the island. Did some 4 wheel scootering to go to a view point, its path had recently been flooded so it was pretty shit to scooter on. We got to a pretty beach and had a swim, saw a few fishies in the shallows (we had no money with us and couldn’t hire snorkels) plonkers. View point number 2, as labelled on the map was located by going through an amazing resort and walking out on some boards. Even in the bad weather it was amazing. And then it bucketed down. We had an English pub style meal for dinner at a bar where the only word you cant use is DIVE, so that was a nice change!
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| new favourite beer |
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| mmm delishimo pancake |
This guy is the man, watch his sweet skills when he makes them with his speedy speedy ways, ignore my batty conversation in the background
We did the morning dives on our last full day (the 8th) we got to go to the best dive site that Big Blue goes to, Chumphon. It was out of control how many fish were there, schools and schools of them, including baracudas. According to my divemaster he said that there was not many fish there compared to what there normally is, and I though holy crap if that’s not many fish you must normally have to push past them to swim!
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| Banzai - the boat we dived off |
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| ell during his course |
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