Koh Tao

Koh Tao - Sunset

After Koh Chang, I had to head back to Bangkok for one night before moving on to Southern Thailand. If all went according to the rough plan that resided somewhere in my brain, this would be my fourth and last time in the countries capital. Actually, despite the crowds and the smog and the chaos, I had grown to really love Bangkok. Of course you can't stay here for more than a few days without going temporarily insane, but when you leave you really miss the buzz, the nightlife atmosphere and the amazing street food (Pad Thai - ummm). The next day I left for Koh Tao, an island on Thailand's Gulf Coast (South East).

A bus to Chumphon, a four hour wait at the pier and a 2 hour boat was all that it took to reach the small Island of Koh Tao, well that and a crazy 31 year old (Gina), who born in Pakistan but now living in London and unknown to me at the time, would be part of my life for the next two weeks. Gina, I and a girl from Isreal, Noa all headed to Sairee Beach for an eventful few days.....

On our first day on Turtle Island (Koh Tao) we headed to Shark Bay. It gets it's name for one reason and one reason only - it's full of sharks. Unknown to me which sharks they were, how big, or if they were dangerous, I grabbed my snorkel and naively went swimming. You have to get past some serious amounts of coral, with poisonous sea urchins and fish of every colour, but then the water gets colder, darker and just a bit deeper. Within seconds your snorkelling with sharks. They were about 1 - 1.5m in length, light grey and mean looking. It was amazing - perhaps one of the most incredible things I have done so far. I was swimming with sharks!!! On two occassions one of the sharks came hurtling towards me, I just froze, but each time they darted away when they realised what I was. Together there were about 5 sharks swimming around me. I believe they were harmless reef sharks but I still don't actually know for sure. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures due to my camera being unable to operate unless completely dry and in a normal breathing atmosphere.

On our second day, it was another watery afair. It was the Thai New Year known as Songkram. For reasons that the Thai's don't even know - it is basically one giant water fight. You step outside and at every corner someone is waiting to pour a bucket of cold water over you and smudge some sort of perfumed clay in your face. Water pistols, buckets or simply bottles are the weapons of choice, and in getting wet - you have no choice. You can't stay dry, if you wanted to or not and no-one is excused, from little kids to the elderly. In Bangkok it lasts for 3 days and in Chiang Mai for 5. Here it was just the one, but a fun one, with everyone heading for a huge watery beach party where most people ended up in the sea. For similar reasons to the day before - there are unfortunately no photos of this great event.

Within the watery fiasco, I was however reunited with an old friend, Heather, who I had met in Vietnam, in the beautifully old town of Hoi An. Noa though, was leaving for different shores and thus departed, and Gina and I headed on out too, to a much larger island just to the south - known as Koh Phangan. We needed to get there quickly because there was an even bigger party coming up - although thankfully as we understood it, it would be a lot drier there.