Thailand, Koh Tao

If we thought Koh Tao was busy almost ten years ago, than it is bursting at the seams now. There is even more people flocking to this little island. You end up with a crazy mix of youngsters on their gap years (as always), young families on their holidays (parents are our generation trying to recapture their youth) and hippy geriatric crowd (usually visiting second or third generation now living on the island). And all of them on scooters. You can judge the age of a driver from afar just by checking if they have their helmets on (or not) and Koh Tao tattoo. Wondering what that is? Crashing the scooter and ending up with a pattern of scabs and scars for life. Helps that every fifth house is a clinic and every shop sells first aid kits. But in the end, it all works! It is still place with amazing feel to it, relaxed atmosphere and beautiful sunsets (fuelled by numerous beach bars). We were immediately captured by the spirit of the place. Again. No wonder we are back!

And then diving. Koh Tao is a dive mega-factory. All is about dive courses, you could call it dive nursery and hit the post. But they still have a few nice dive sites. One of them we missed the last time and had to come back for it: Sail Rock. And it was worth the trip. Probably one of the best in the whole of Thailand, if not the best. The rest are really overcrowded. All larger marine life is gone at this stage, replaced by eager new divers. But hey, everyone has to learn somehow. And as we said, this is the dive nursery.

With diving taking less time than we thought, we managed to immerse ourselves into religious side of Thailand. Not talking about elephant rides and touristy temples. We actually observed a Buddha day and abstained from drinking beer. Fine, it was mandatory for everybody, but nevertheless we have been caught out without a secret booze stash in the room. One more thing to check for future travels…

After of week of a little bit of diving and a lot of eating and partying – possibly not in that order – we took a taxi, ferry, bus and another taxi to the other side of Thailand. And all the way we were wondering why didn’t we stayed longer in Koh Tao. But, on the other side, time to dive the Similans!

As always some more pictures just a click away.