Trigger Fish are Evil

After a long journey, we finally made it to the small island of Koh Tao!

As we got off the boat, we were in search of a nice quiet beach where we could read, relax and swim. Following our lessons learned in travel, we bypassed all of the first offers for a taxi at the pier and ventured into the town to find a cheaper deal. We start asking around for a taxi in town only to discover that they all have a set rate (no metered taxis here) to take you anywhere on the island and they would not budge! I guess because it's such a small island, it's easier to make sure everyone follows the set prices, but it was such a rip off! We ended up paying a crazy price to go the the south side of the island in hopes that it may be a little less crowded than the more popular west coast. Our new home was found at Big Fish "Resort," and while it was less crowded, the beach was not what we expected. Although attractive, during high tide the beach is basically non-existent and at low tide the water recedes so much that all that's left is a muddy bottom.

Since we arrived in the morning we had plenty of time to explore the south side of the island. We thought it would be a good idea to look for another place to stay since our place used every possible opportunity to squeeze every last penny out of us. Our short walk to what looked to be a nearby lodging turned into a little adventure hiking up and over a mountain! The map we had was completely misleading and incorrect. One plus to this is that we got to see a really pretty sunset, and we got to take a water taxi back to our bay since it was now too dark to return by land.

The water taxi ride ended with us having to wade through the muddy bottom that I previously mentioned, since the water was too low for the boat.

As we walked along the beach back to our hotel, we stopped at a popular looking restaurant that had amazing chicken skewers that they cooked right in front of you. So good and so cheap!

The next day, we refused to give into the rip off taxi ride and decided to walk the less than 2km back to the west coast in search of a better beach and better accommodations. We struck gold with Ban's Diving Resort where we also decided to get our Advanced Open Water diving certification! We even got our air con room for free for the two nights we stayed there during our course!
View from our room

Breakfast on the beach

View of Bans Dive Resort from the water

Down the beach

After we got settled in our room, we went down stairs to start our course. Our instructors' sanity/sobriety was questionable, but that just made things more interesting. Here he is.

After class, we took the boat out to our first dive site.

Our very first dive was at Chumphon Pinnacle. It's known to be one of the best dive sites in the Gulf of Thailand. Since neither of us had dove in awhile, we were a little worried about diving all the way down to a depth of 30 meters, but we did great and it went off without a hitch.

Our next dive that same day was at Twin Peaks. Both sites were great with lots of cool fish and scary sea urchins with super pointy spikes!

Here's Julian messing with peoples tanks

And here he is 'studying' - see anything wrong with this picture?

The next day we had "class" in the morning followed by two more dives to Shark Island (named for the shape of the rock - like a shark's fin sticking out of the water)

and Aow Leuk. Shark Island was our first non-instructor led dive and it went very smoothly. This time we rented a camera to snap some photos of the under water world. We got some nice ones, but it wasn't easy... for some reason those silly fish kept swimming away!

We were also worried about the state of the corals, as we had read that this area was being severely affected by bleaching. We are happy to report that, in this area anyway, the corals are not only healthy but flourishing.

On our way over to the dive site from the boat on the second dive, we were attacked by a trigger fish! This is a decent sized fish with some pretty menacing teeth(at least they look that way when he's chasing you!). He followed us for about 30 meters along the ocean floor, constantly charging at our flippers. We were afraid to take our eyes off him in case he came in for some skin! His friend even came over to join him, but they eventually left us alone after we swam away a bit. I guess they're territorial or something.

We were also graced by the presence of a friendly turtle that we got to swim next to. He seemed to enjoy his photo shoot as well.

That night, to finish off our certification, we went on a night dive to White Rock. It was really dark and Mattie's flashlight kept going out, but besides that it was really cool. The best part was when we all(6) gathered in a semi-circle around our instructor on the ocean floor and turned off our lights. It was so dark that we were basically blind, except when you move it caused the bio luminescence in the water to light up like sparks around you. So, of course, we all started waving our arms around wildly and had a mini underwater rave. It was like magic pixie dust all around us. :)

The following morning we jumped on the first boat to Koh Pha Ngan, home of the infamous Full Moon Parties! Details to come...

- Mattie and Julian

Location:Koh Tao, Thailand