Koh Tao - Islands of Thailand

We headed down to Koh Tao (Koh means island in Thai) for a relaxing few days before I start a job I lined up for my time here - took a lovely bus at 6 am down the coast and then a ferry over to the island. The bus stopped for some snacks and I had a field day perusing the various fruit and nut combinations. I settled for some guava which looked pretty interesting. Amusingly, Thai people are as obsessed with sugar as they are with spicy food: when you buy fruit here, they will frequently include a packet of powder to dip your fruit in. Often (as in the case of my guava) this will consist of super sweet flavored sugar. Sometimes, however, the packet will contain spices- or best of all- a combination of spice and sugar. I’ve taken to eating just the fruit and just sampling the powders...

Koh Tao is a smaller island north of the more famous Koh Samui and Koh Phaangna (where they have the ‘ full money parties’- let google fill you in on the details of that). Koh Tao consists of one long beach strip with a few discos, and a few other smaller beaches. We headed to a more remote beach and Buddha view divers (so named because of the view of a rock that looks like Buddha). I spent a few days with friends here learning how to scuba dive- initially in a pool, then near the shore, and ultimately out in the ocean where there are some pretty cool coral formations.
The highlight of the affair for me was the experience of getting comfortable breathing underwater and looking around (we saw a fabled trigger fish, which is super aggressive but won’t harm you as long as you keep your distance). The highlight of the course for the others was my “james bond” entry in the water. Rather than jumping in feet first, apparently you can (with some help) flip into the water- while everyone did this more or less properly I somehow managed to botch it and collected a considerable amount of water in my nasal cavaties that I think will take some time to drain…

[Credit to friends Greg and Louise for almost all the pictures (except the underwater images)- Thanks!]