Arrived into Ko Tao and got some average directions by a taxi driver. Walked for ages in the early morning heat and Claire felt a bit worse for wear so we ducked into a cheap guesthouse for a lie down.
Guesthouse was ok, nothing special. I was starving so headed off in search of breakfast and found a place that did a decent fry up and coffee.
Spent the day wandering around, found the nearest beach but it was no good for swimming as it was too shallow.
Asked at a few guesthouses for better accommodation and found a place that looked good. Haggled them down from 700 Baht to 400 Baht so was pleased by that effort. This hotel was in Mai Hat, the main town on the island.
Had some dinner and then went to bed again. In the morning I decided to get a scooter as every other Tom, Dick and Harry had one and the taxis were more than the rental. Picked up Claire and fled our now angry guesthouse owner as we had apparently overstayed. A real Jekyll and Hyde character.
Drove to our new guesthouse which was great, really posh and right on the beach. 400 Baht was a bargain. The owner even went into town to get us a hammock for our balcony. He was a bit gay.
Then we drove all the way to Tanote Bay and snorkelled for a while. The 'roads' near the bay were not good so had to walk the bike most of the way down (and back up).
When snorkeling we saw an Octopus having a scrap with some big parrot fish, lots of other tropical fish and some black tip reef sharks. Four of them in a row passed me by. They weren't big but you could tell they were sharks instantly.
Spent the next couple days eating decent Thai curries, drinking cocktails, swimming and playing mini golf - that sort of thing. Sairee to the north of Mai Hat was pretty nice, more lively. On one evening I played snooker with the owner of a snooker hall. Unfortunately I am slightly out of practice and narrowly got beaten. I did manage a break of eight though so not all bad ;-)
On the fourth day we decided to sign up for a PADI Open Water diving course - 8750 Baht each which included accommodation for four nights (albeit in a pretty crap beach shack), insurance and all the equipment hire. Basically everything was provided.
Day one was just a video in a classroom, day two was some classroom stuff, some underwater skills and a 12 metre dive, day three was our exam (48 out of 50, easy) and more underwater skills in the morning followed by another 12 metre dive in the afternoon and on day four we did two 18 metre dives. All the dives and skills were good fun and the instructors at Easy Divers were great.We had a Welsh guy called Johnny.
One evening we went to the Save Ko Tao festival which was huge. Claire's ears were hurting though so we didn't stay too long - just long enough for a hotter than hell Pad Thai.
On the last day of the course we had a videographer who filmed our dives so after the course we went and watched the DVD. It was cheesy but really funny so we bought it.
The next day we left Ko Tao for Ko Phanghan, the full moon party island.
Ko Tao was a nice island if not a bit tatty and dive shop focused. We stayed for eight nights in total - much longer than we had planned. The dive course was great - it was like discovering another world beneath the waves. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes fish and stuff.
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