March 01, 2008

Koh Tao (THAILAND)

Welcoming Friends to Koh Tao, and Rediscovering the Joys of Diving

Taking it easy yesterday went a long way toward aiding my 'recovery', and I am finally feeling my strength return. Also, between the injections, pills, and fresh air, my bites have gone down in size, and are nowhere near as itchy or troublesome. Sp, with a new lease on life, I rode down to Mae Head beach early this morning to grab a good seat at the ever-popular Cafe del Sol, which has a wireless router (password: vegetarian.) I spent several hours writing emails, uploading journal posts on the webpage (where there have been roughly 43,000 homepage 'hits' over the past year), and waiting for David and Neil to arrive on one of the morning ferries.

At around 10:30 am, some time between a sip of Americano coffee and reading a message on the networking tool Facebook, I looked out onto the street to see two of the most awkwardly out of place people ever to stumble onto Koh Tao's shores: David and Neil, my buddies from Tokyo.

Granted, they are engineering students, and damn smart ones at that, but they are so painfully clueless when it comes to traveling that I couldn't help but laugh when I saw them dazed and confused near the docks.Granted, they just completed one hell of a journey from Tokyo, including a two hour train to Narita Airport, three hours of waiting around at the airport, a nine hour flight to Bangkok, a one hour bus to the Khao San Road, a nine hour over-night sleeper bus to Chumphon, and a three hour ferry to the island - totaling 27 hours if my education counts for anything - but based on the picture to either side they clearly don't get the whole "beach backpacker" concept. It is something I will work with them on, but the first thing on the agenda was getting rid of the high-socks and sneakers.

I had them join me for breakfast so they could take some time to collect themselves. While we were eating I explained the basics of the island (great food, plenty of places to relax, and a lively bar scene along the beach at night) and the main activities (diving, snorkeling, tanning, and more diving.) It wasn't hard to convince them on the merits of earning an PADI Open-Water diving certification for the 3-4 day stay, so after lunch I took them one-at-a-time on the back of my motor-bike to the New Way dive shop in Sairee. Ms. Jai hooked them up with a full package, room included, which works out great for me because I will get a number of free dives for bringing in business.

Free dives that started today!

By 12:20 pm I was fitted out with my medium BCD, large wetsuit, a pair of 43-44 fins, and the other essentials like a regulator and mask stuffed in a large dive-bag. All that remained was filling up the shabby red truck with the other afternoon divers, numbering ten in all, and off we went for a day of diving in perfect Thailand weather. This was to be my first dive since last September, when I earned my PADI Advanced Diving Certification, so I wanted to start off with an easy dive to get back into the swing of things, and then tomorrow morning I would tackle the showcase dive site, the Chumphon Pinnacle.

Along with a Canadian dive master named Ian and a Swiss fun diver named Chris, we dove on a 50 minute swim-around from Red Rock to Japanese Gardens, which is near Nganyan Island (shown in the surrounding pictures.) It is impossible to fully capture the wonders of diving underwater, so I will not try, but it did feel great to be back in the water exploring little nooks and crannies, spotting the myriad of fish I can now recognize, and toying with the ever-uptight Trigger Fish that infest the waters off Koh Tao.

And yes, despite a week spent on islands in Southeast Asia, I still haven't shed the pale zombie-look.