Category — Thailand

I’ll start this blog by expressing my love for Koh Tao. It’s such a beautiful, amazing and fun place that we originally planned to stay for 5 or 6 days to get our PADI certificates, but in the end, left after 12 days, completely abandoning Malaysia (so we can come back and do it another day), and going on to the Advanced diver course.

Part of our love for it was that the island wasn’t overly busy. Apparently this was due to the 2004 Tsunami, the recent problem on Koh Samui over Christmas and the full moon party taking place on neighbouring Koh Phangan. The atmosphere on the island was great, I think partly as you can’t drink and dive (no pun intended), which meant that a lot of nights out are sober affairs (and you get to see more of the day too!)

We arrived in Chumphon - the mainland station - at 4am on the overnight train from Bangkok, where we met Mike who runs a fantastic dive school on the island, for the Seashell resort. Getting to the island takes around 3 hours, with the a 15minute transfer on 2 of the most packed buses I’ve ever been on! We were actually surprised that they didn’t put anybody on the roof. It was quite an intimate experience with a couple of Swedish girls.

But when you first see the island, it just make your jaw drop. It really is a tropical paradise! I’ve never been to an island so beautiful and lush! Pulling into the harbour, you pass over coral and crystal clear water, surrounding by jungle and resorts crafted into the forest and hills.

Our resort was on the beach, with our accomodation being a bungalow set back about 300 yards from Sairee beach. As part of our PADI package, we also got a discount on our room for each night of the course, plus a discount on any fun dives. The restaurant - run by Michelle, Mike’s girfriend - has a fantastic view West for the evening sunsets, as well as serving delicious food.

Then there’s the tropics… The air was around 36 to 38 degrees C, and the water 28 to 29 degrees C! It felt so good jumping into the water, walking out for 200 metres (the water is that shallow), and then swimming amonst the coral - whilst dodging the Thai long tails, which are possibly the most dangerous boats ever built!

A great part of doing our PADI course on Koh Tao is that all the confined water training is actually done in one session in the sea - not 3 sessions in a swimming pool. On the downside, the water had a lot of Plankton in it making the visibility only upto 15m and not the usual 20 to 30m the island is known for. But, on the plus side - and this is a very, very big plus - we surfaced on our 3rd open water dive to be greeted by 3 to 4 Minke Whales! They were enormous, and dwarfed our boat (which was about 10m long in itself). Sadly, I’ve got no photos of it, but it’s something I’ll remember forever, and we were the envy of a lot of the professional Scuba divers as they’ve never seen one in their whole dive career!

And, being completely hooked on Scuba Diving at this point, we booked straight back in to do a few fun dives and to get our Advanced Open water certifcation. For this part of the course, we were joined by Raynard from Norway, and we all did the following dives:

• Buoyancy skills - working on Neutral buoyancy and inverted floating (that was good fun, and gave a new twist to diving so as to speak. Also useful for photos)
• Underwater navigation - using a compass, measuring distances and natural navigation
• Night Dive - Now this is good! It’s like another world down there, and we got to see some blue spotted Sting Rays gliding along the bottom
• 30m deep dive - checks if you’re susceptible to Nitrogen Narcosis (or being Narced as it’s known) Paul, our instructor told us some great stories about this. But we were all ok - although Dan needs to work on his long addition!
• Multi-level dives - a way of calculating dives to maximise your dive time, and minimise Nitrogen absorption
• Underwater photography - this was quite tough, but I did manage to get a few good shots in

Basically, we’re now hooked on diving and our instructor, Paul was such and enthusiastic, solid teacher - even going diving with a painful ear infection because he didn’t want to leave us halfway through our course - that we felt really helped to make even mopre enjoyable, and us better divers. But the whole staff of Seashell Divers were great, and really looked after us whenever we went out for lessons or fun dives.

On the rest of the island, we went snorkelling in Shark Bay - guess why they call it that - where we saw black tipped reef sharks (sorry, gave it away)! An awesome site! Oh, and there were some other fish and coral down there, but seeing sharks really pipped it for me! Although Dan claims to have been attacked by a foot long fish whilst swimming - we all think one the them fell for Dan’s number 2 haircut, and thought he looked like an easy meal. If only I’d had a camera!

Nightlife was great too - partying till the sun came up - and the people we met were all great, even running into Brendon and Kieran from Laos.

It really is a fantastic place to chill out in it’s own right. But for us the diving was the best part of the experience! I can’t recommend Koh Tao enough, and it was the highlight of Thailand for me!

Links

PADI
Seashell resort

We arrived in Bangkok at 6am on the overnight train, and made a dash across the city to catch the train to Kanchanaburi - still using cabs and not the suicidal tuk-tuks. I really enjoy train journeys, and the overnight train makes long overland journeys so much more comfortable. Then, moving onto the local train was also great - despite the wooden seat. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start writing down the numbers, but there is something very, well, pleasant about train journeys.

There was a rumour going round that all the guesthouses were full, but thankfully that turned out to be wrong, and we ended up staying in the C&C Guesthouse which is a collection of huts set around a garden next to the river Kwai, run by some very helpful people.

Kanchanaburi is most famous for the Bridge over the River Kwai. To be honest, it’s just a bridge to look at, but all the history surrounding it suddenly makes it all the more interesting. It also looks great done as a silhouette at sunset. You can walk across the bridge as there’s only 4 scheduled trains a day that use it, but the hoards of people make this frustrating. One thing that did detract from the visit though is the number of ‘tourist trap’ shops and stalls in the area. But that’s to be expected, and they did sell highly refreshing coconuts.

Another place I’d heard about was the Wat Pa Lungtu Bua Yamnasampano Forest monastry (ok, Tiger temple for short). Here, you get to stroke tigers. The place itself is nothing special, just a series of open areas with some rescued animals wandering around - the horses were quite friendly though. The tigers themselves appear to be dozing. There’s several schools of thought on this one, some saying they’re drugged, others that the monks have a calming effect on them, others point out that big cats sleep for 20hours a day anyway (I know a few people that do that too). Personally, I would have liked to see them more active, but stroking them felt slightly safer with them sleeping!

But, saving the best for last, the highlight was the Erawan falls! Apparently, if you see a photograph of a waterfall in Thailand, it’s probably these falls. They were breathtaking! The pools of water were so blue and clear, and the waterfalls couldn’t have been any prettier. We took some snaps, but to be honest, couldn’t wait to jump in. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but swimming in fresh water is one of the best, most refreshing experiences! We had 5 hours there, but it seemed to fly by! In the water, little fish swim around, and nip at your feet cleaning them, which is slightly disconcerting initially, but you soon grow to like it till a big one joins in. There’s 7 levels, and we made it up to the 7th which was worth the effort as there was hardly anyone there and it blew the other levels away.

As part of the tour we took to the falls, we also took a ride on the Death Railway, riding it along the Wang Po Viaduct. The viaduct itself was an impressive feet, built from wood, and rising high over the river. Our train rolled across it very slowly, which didn’t really fill us with much confidence in it’s strength. But it was an experience to see it!

Once again, we’d been lucky with the people on our tour, and met in the Jolly Frog backpacker’s guesthouse for dinner with everyone. Despite only in Kanchanaburi for 2 nights, it was more than enough to see everything in the area. Our next stop is a quick rest in Bangkok, before heading down to Koh Tao island on the sleeper train to get our PADI certification.

Links

Tiger Temple

Chiang Mai is Thailand’s second largest city, and we’d spoken to so many people recommending doing a trek there, that we just couldn’t refuse. On reflection, we’re glad we listened to them as it made the start of our second visit to Thailand so much more enjoyable than the first!

However, our arrival in Chiang Mai was slightly frustrating. The minibus dropped us off at 11.30pm, and it then took us another half an hour of wandering around with our packs on - incidentally, I could now travel a lot lighter - until we found a guesthose with space. It was a real beauty! Alright, it was ok, and the staff were quite pleasant as long as you didn’t wake them up in the middle of the night!

Chiang Mai itself is a great city. The place has a really nice, friendly atmosphere to it, with markets, book shops and coffee shops (sounds real sad, but I missed these at times). The streets are fairly open, and not too busy. And wandering round, you come across the occassional temple. In the evenings, the nightlife is not too manic, and we spent most evenings in a Reggae bar believe it or not! And a word of warning, Chang is cheap, but my god does it get you drunk and give you a hangover!

But, the main purpose of our trip was to go treking, and we decided to book ours through the Eagle guesthouse, which puts money back into the tribes they visit. Our trip was what’s known as ‘Off the beaten track’, which meant a lot more remote, and no other tourists, just the local villagers. Sounds like heaven! We were visiting one of the more remote tribes, known as the Karen tribe.

The journey to the trek area took us via a local market for our food supplies, and then onto a cave full of bats, where we stopped for lunch. It was so strange seeing and hearing the bats flying around inside the cave, especially after my experience in Laos.

Carrying on, the minivan dropped us in the jungle - I had a small dose of travel sickness on the way, for the first time in the all the time we’d been away - and we hiked for about 3 hours to the village for our first night. Chai, our guide, cooked a superb dinner, which we felt we’d earned - Hey! You don’t do that much exercise backpacking! That evening, we went to visit one of the locals for some tea and a chat. It was amazing sitting in his house, with the open fire in the floor for his kitchen, drinking from Bamboo cups, sampling Rice Whiskey.

The second day, we set out, going past a local school where all of the children came out to greet us and get their picture taken - they hadn’t seen digital cameras before. Carrying on, the views were amazing, and you really got a sense of how far away from everything you are, except for 2 things that ruined the illusion slightly:

1. The villagers all have scooters
2. Mobile phones work

To me, that seems wrong, but I suppose that’s a sign of the times. We did meet a few villagers who’d been out hunting, and showed us their catch.

Then, we moved onto to feeding and riding elephants. They were really friendly - especially when you had food - and you could see from the look in their eyes that they are peaceful animals. Feeding them was amazing, and was only beaten by riding them. For such large animals, they can really move around the jungle incredibly well! There were times when we had to hang on for dear life as they walked down steep slopes that we’d have struggled on on foot!

On the way to our base camp that evening, we stopped for a swim in a river. Mainly to cool down before the hardest part of our trek. They weren’t kidding, and several people stumbled on the steep climbs and ascents.

Our camp for the evening was next to the river, which also acted as the playground and shower area, with the nearest village being 30minutes away by scooter! Everyone sat around the fire singing and playing games. At one point, lights appeared on the river, and it was locals doing a spot of night fishing. Then there was the spiders in the toilet… They were big, and no-one knew if they were dangerous or not.

The final day, we started with bamboo rafting. The villagers assembled the rafts next to the river there and then. They were surprisingly strong and nimble on the way down the river, especially as it was dry season so the river was low. I was the aft oarsman on our boat, and I have to say, our boat took the least damage! It was great fun though, just a shame it didn’t last longer.

Returning to Chiang Mai, we stopped at two very grand Stupas - a present from the air force to the King and Queen - and a waterfall. In the evening, we all met up for some great food and drinks (once again in the reggae bar).