Koh Tao (Turtle island)
23 October - 7 november ... yeah, we got stuck here
post by allana
Koh Tao is a tiny island very close to Koh Samui. All it takes is an hour wandering along the palm fringed beaches to realise you have arrived in paradise. And apparently the ‘Paradise’ status is official, which means no chains like maccas or starbucks are allowed and no large resorts.
Both of us are keen as mustard to do more diving, so we signed up to this unbelievable deal where you get 8 dives and 3 nights accommodation for just over $200. I was a bit dubious with it being so cheap but the hotel was brand new and the dive company excellent! We got straight into it and would you believe on our very first dive one of my life dreams came true… we got to dive with a whale shark!!! This excerpt from my dive log describes the experience:
Both of us are keen as mustard to do more diving, so we signed up to this unbelievable deal where you get 8 dives and 3 nights accommodation for just over $200. I was a bit dubious with it being so cheap but the hotel was brand new and the dive company excellent! We got straight into it and would you believe on our very first dive one of my life dreams came true… we got to dive with a whale shark!!! This excerpt from my dive log describes the experience:
24/10/13 Dive Site: South West Pinnacle, dive time 41mins, depth 19.8m, visibility 3 – 15m depending on thermocline.
“BEST DIVE EVER!!!!” First impressions were good- we pulled up and already a large school of fish were swimming on the surface. Descended straight into the thermocline and vis went from awesome to less than 3m in an instant! Didn’t notice much of a temperature change tho. Ascended above thermocline into good vis at around 15m depth and swam around the rock formation. Completely covered in large blue and purple anemones, never seen so many, and each had its own pair of pink anemone fish looking cute in the middle. We were heading over to second rock pinnacle when Jan excitedly pointed upwards—directly above us was the unmistakeable shape of whale shark!!! Huge life moment to see this breathtakingly beautiful creature. It was a juvenile, about 8m long. It swam in slow lazy circles above us and we got an awesome view. The dive plan was scrapped of course and we just followed this stunning animal around. It had a 2m long cobia under its belly, which would have been impressive to see on its own anyway. SO BEAUTIFUL! The gorgeous pattern of white spots and extra long swishy tail that moved so effortlessly. The thoughts running through my head were ‘my god THIS is the world we have been blessed with, we get to share the planet with such amazing creatures to love and appreciate why are we fucking it all up so badly?!’ Every world leader should be made to swim with a whale shark. We were privileged to spend 10- 15 mins in the company of this graceful animal before it eventually moved off into the distance. But the dive wasn’t over yet… next we came across a huge giant grouper, about 3m. The thermocline had receded a bit by then so the vis was good everywhere and so we went deeper around one of the pinnacles and came across a huge school of pickhandle barracuda! We swam into them and they circled around us- like a bloody Nat Geo photo! Just awesome. We swam back over the beautiful anemone garden for our safety stop and finally the best dive ever was over.
“BEST DIVE EVER!!!!” First impressions were good- we pulled up and already a large school of fish were swimming on the surface. Descended straight into the thermocline and vis went from awesome to less than 3m in an instant! Didn’t notice much of a temperature change tho. Ascended above thermocline into good vis at around 15m depth and swam around the rock formation. Completely covered in large blue and purple anemones, never seen so many, and each had its own pair of pink anemone fish looking cute in the middle. We were heading over to second rock pinnacle when Jan excitedly pointed upwards—directly above us was the unmistakeable shape of whale shark!!! Huge life moment to see this breathtakingly beautiful creature. It was a juvenile, about 8m long. It swam in slow lazy circles above us and we got an awesome view. The dive plan was scrapped of course and we just followed this stunning animal around. It had a 2m long cobia under its belly, which would have been impressive to see on its own anyway. SO BEAUTIFUL! The gorgeous pattern of white spots and extra long swishy tail that moved so effortlessly. The thoughts running through my head were ‘my god THIS is the world we have been blessed with, we get to share the planet with such amazing creatures to love and appreciate why are we fucking it all up so badly?!’ Every world leader should be made to swim with a whale shark. We were privileged to spend 10- 15 mins in the company of this graceful animal before it eventually moved off into the distance. But the dive wasn’t over yet… next we came across a huge giant grouper, about 3m. The thermocline had receded a bit by then so the vis was good everywhere and so we went deeper around one of the pinnacles and came across a huge school of pickhandle barracuda! We swam into them and they circled around us- like a bloody Nat Geo photo! Just awesome. We swam back over the beautiful anemone garden for our safety stop and finally the best dive ever was over.
And that was our very first dive! The next day was equally awesome, we went to a site called Chumpon and the sheer number of fish was unbelievable. There was a large group of yellow-banded fusiliers riding the thermocline and making shapes just like out of finding Nemo!!! I half expected them to make a big finger shape to point me in the right direction. A huge school of jacks formed a tunnel that we swam through and in the middle I turned onto my back to gaze up at the slivery moving ceiling above me. There were so many fish around us that one poor bugger, a little snapper or something, swam straight into my mask and I got a close up view of the big scared eye before he darted off. The next day we paid extra to go to one of the far off sites called Sail Rock. Unfortunately the vis wasn’t the best due to a big thermocline, BUT we still got to swim with a school of GIANT BARRACUDA (fatter and longer than Scotts arm, scary as hell teeth) saw the brightest fluoro purple anemones and in a brief incredible moment I spotted a sail fish hunting a school of bait fish. A sail fish!!! Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would see one of those. The fact is, Koh Tao is even more of a paradise underwater. Diving here is like a dream.
snap shots of every day life in koh tao
1) Almost every shop has a bamboo cage with a native songbird in it. On Sundays the men take these cages to a field where they hang them up in a line and listen to the birds singing. It is a competition of sorts, the most beautiful songs win. This activity is popular all over SE Asia.
2) Lily is queen of the beach (or at least ruler of the 50m stretch of sand in front of the freediving school). She loves to dig a big hole then just sit there with her head in it. Makes all the passers-by wonder what she’s doing. 3) Sunset beers & beach. This is where I will return to in my mind when life gets stressful again next year! 4) The iconic Koh Tao shot, bent over palm tree out the front of Lotus Bar 5) Motorbikes are a constant nuisance along the islands single small path. Usually it’s sunburnt tourists or moto-taxis, but you will also see 4 kids all under 12 yrs old driving themselves to school on one bike, or a woman with her beloved dog balanced on the handlebars, ears flapping. |
So our time here just keeps stretching on and on… we’ve run into a few travellers who similarly had plans to leave after a week but found themselves doing the old, “just one more night, just one more night…” and before you know it you’ve missed check out again so what the hell we’ll just stay one more night! Diving, eating, yoga, sunset beers on the beach, the odd Thai massage, day in day out… this is our life right now and we are loving every moment.
freediving!
We signed up for a freediving course to give something new a go. Freediving is basically where you take a deep breath, hold it and see how far down you can dive before having to come back up again. You train up and down a line that extends down to 30 or so meters, with markings so you know how far you’re going. There seems to be a fair bit of teasing and competitiveness between scuba divers and freedivers, so I felt like a bit of an infiltrator… freediving is fun but my loyalty is always with scuba! Our instructor Travis is a ridiculously hot Aussie from Perth who actually lived in Cairns for a few years. His students are me and Scott, Vic the Spaniard and Lee the cheeky Pom. All of us do pretty well if I say so myself, and improve our breath holds from a measly 1.5 minutes to 3.5 minutes. We also all make it down to 10m using the right techniques on the first day. The next day we made 20m! It comes down to the breathing technique, it really is a meditation rather than a sport, with the aim of slowing your heart rate down as much as possible to conserve every last skerrick of oxygen.
Turns out Scott has a real talent for freediving so he signed up for the level 2 course and continued to improve awesomely making it down to 30m and increasing his breath hold to 4.5 minutes!!! The special trick you learn in level 2 is the freefall, where after 10m you become negatively buoyant (i.e. you sink) so you streamline your body and sink faster and faster down the line until you reach 30m. That way you don’t use as much oxygen and it is an amazing feeling, like being free, just you and the deep blue.
Turns out Scott has a real talent for freediving so he signed up for the level 2 course and continued to improve awesomely making it down to 30m and increasing his breath hold to 4.5 minutes!!! The special trick you learn in level 2 is the freefall, where after 10m you become negatively buoyant (i.e. you sink) so you streamline your body and sink faster and faster down the line until you reach 30m. That way you don’t use as much oxygen and it is an amazing feeling, like being free, just you and the deep blue.
HALLOWEEN october 31
Koh Tao takes Halloween very seriously… or at least they take the last opportunity before the low season to have huge beach parties for tourists to spend all their money on buckets of booze and laughing gas balloons, very seriously. Preparations were going on all day, pumpkin heads sprung up from nowhere, fake spiderwebs adorned the bars, ghoulish creatures handed out pamphlets advertising drinks specials and the nights entertainment. The local ladyboys had prepared a special Halloween show, they were walking around in their long cocktail dresses with half their faces painted like acid-attack victims which was very disturbing. Everyone was putting in so much effort we thought we owed it to them to go out and enjoy their hard work.
Our night started with some bar hoping along the beach and a few quiet beers before we made our way up to our favourite beach bar (or one of the top three at least). Lotus Bar had some live music but then turned it up a notch with the most amazing fire twirlers ever! It was a mesmerising performance with the twirlers themselves disappearing as the eye just focussed on the circular shapes made by the fire. Best act of all was the young guy who stood on a table in the water and spun around ignited steel wool which sent sparks flying in all directions and looked amazing!
During a break in the act we headed into Saree village to lend our support to the ladyboys whose show was just about to begin. We got some good seats on the side and settled in with all the families and even toddlers who had turned out to watch. Who knew a Halloween ladyboy show was such fun family entertainment! The ladies started off with Thriller of course and did their best to mime the words of the songs in English, most of whom obviously had no idea what the words actually were. So between this and few horrendous nip-slips it wasn’t the most polished draghow I’ve ever seen but they sure put some heart into it. |
And after the party? Koh Tao on the 1st November became an entirely different place, well almost. Overnight it seems more than half the islands population has disappeared and all our favourite haunts have shut up shop. November is the monsoon season- but the weather continues to be perfect. You have to resign yourself to really bad service at all the restaurants and cafes. The usually friendly and pleasant Thais obviously want the island to themselves for a month and seem to resent the few remaining foreigners, so we have to enjoy whatever the sullen waiters bring from the kitchen, whether its what we ordered or not.
It was around this time we realised our visa waivers would expire in the next few weeks... the dream of Koh Tao was coming to an end! Turns out we have to go on a visa run to Singapore. This realisation jolted us out of our island bliss and we decided we'd better use up those last scuba dives and make our way back to the mainland (but not before a quick visit to Koh Samui, being so close how could we not?) We were stoked to discover that we would be heading back to Chumpon for our last dive! Because the diving had been so amazing through pure wishful thinking we urged our little go pro back into life and even forked out 50 bucks for a red lens to try and improve the quality of underwater footage. The stupid thing still failed us miserably, fogging up pretty much straight away. So the glorious Chumpon will have to live on in our memories. Here a few of the less-crappy shots:
(highlights from this dive, apart from the mind blowing numbers of fish everywhere, was seeing rainbow runners, pickhandle barracuda and tuna hunting schools of rabbitfish and fusilers, one massive queenfish, a striped ramora sticking onto our dive buddys tank, and gorgeous juvenile batfish. Plus Scott would want me to mention the flouro anemones.)
It was around this time we realised our visa waivers would expire in the next few weeks... the dream of Koh Tao was coming to an end! Turns out we have to go on a visa run to Singapore. This realisation jolted us out of our island bliss and we decided we'd better use up those last scuba dives and make our way back to the mainland (but not before a quick visit to Koh Samui, being so close how could we not?) We were stoked to discover that we would be heading back to Chumpon for our last dive! Because the diving had been so amazing through pure wishful thinking we urged our little go pro back into life and even forked out 50 bucks for a red lens to try and improve the quality of underwater footage. The stupid thing still failed us miserably, fogging up pretty much straight away. So the glorious Chumpon will have to live on in our memories. Here a few of the less-crappy shots:
(highlights from this dive, apart from the mind blowing numbers of fish everywhere, was seeing rainbow runners, pickhandle barracuda and tuna hunting schools of rabbitfish and fusilers, one massive queenfish, a striped ramora sticking onto our dive buddys tank, and gorgeous juvenile batfish. Plus Scott would want me to mention the flouro anemones.)
Saying goodbye...
On our last evening we wanted to do something special to say goodbye to this little paradise. So we got all dressed up and went bushwalking. It was just a 20 min hike up to this lovely lookout where we got to see the sun do down over the island. We then had a date planned at our favourite Lotus Bar. The only downer to this was that we had to acquiesce to the taxi cab mafia that run Koh Tao and pay an horrendous 600 baht for the 10 minute trip. "Tell him he's dreaming!" is what we would have said, but we couldnt as there are no other options. So we paid through the nose to get to our beloved lotus, where the beers, fading sunlight and live music helped to ease the rip-off pain as we reflected on our wonderful time in Koh Tao.
On our last evening we wanted to do something special to say goodbye to this little paradise. So we got all dressed up and went bushwalking. It was just a 20 min hike up to this lovely lookout where we got to see the sun do down over the island. We then had a date planned at our favourite Lotus Bar. The only downer to this was that we had to acquiesce to the taxi cab mafia that run Koh Tao and pay an horrendous 600 baht for the 10 minute trip. "Tell him he's dreaming!" is what we would have said, but we couldnt as there are no other options. So we paid through the nose to get to our beloved lotus, where the beers, fading sunlight and live music helped to ease the rip-off pain as we reflected on our wonderful time in Koh Tao.