Koh Toa

After the full moon I decided to head off on my own again and it was off to Koh Toa to take the Padi course. Because so many people had descended on to Koh Phangan for full moon there was no accommodation left on the island and I had a pretty tidy night sleeping on the beach with my rucksack and day pack chained to me, very relaxing and comfortable. I sort of woke up (if you could even describe what I had as sleep) and I had some horrendous bites on my ankles which spewed out pus for about a week. I headed into town and found Bans diving school and signed up for the padi that day. I was incrdibly lucky with the group that I'd been put with, and have spent the past week hanging out with all of them and we're now all in bangkok together.

There were 4 Israeli guys who have all just finished their national service in the army and are now off to see some of the world, one english guy called ollie who was just out to party and nail as many girls as he could (he was 18 and reminded me of a young me!). Also had a couple of dutch girls and a swedish guy who was another party animal, and an austrian guy who was really cool. Spent the first day in the swimming pool and then next day headed out to the ocean for our first two dives.





The dives were really good fun and the next day I enjoyed it even more and had by that point had decided that I wanted to do the advanced course, which involved diving to 30m instead of 18m and going off on our own without instructors. On the 30m dive I had one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I was swimming in a group of 6 and I was at the back with my buddy jonas, who couldn't get the hang of boyancy and kept floating off towards the surface. Suddenly our divemaster turned towards me and started swimming at me at an alarming rate. Before I knew it someone behind me had ripped off my mask and the air supply got pulled out of my mouth. I fucking shit my pants and I was fully on the verge of a panic attack 30m beneath the sea. The divemaster got my mask back on and shoved his emergency regulator in my mouth and tried to calm me down. He worte on his slate that we'll talk on the surface. We were only 10 minutes into a 40 minute dive so swam around for the next half an hour trying to work out why he'd tried to kill me! Turns out that there was a trigger fish that had been attacking my fins for the past few minutes and the second dive master was trying to spin me round and accidently ripped off my mask!

That evening we went on a night dive which was unreal. If was so eerie going down in pitch black, but you could wave your hand around and the plancton glows luminous green. It was like being on another planet. Saw some rays, a turtle, a sea snake and hundreds of other fish. Every night we were going out and getting smashed on buckets, which wasn't really advisable but whatever, we made it through and all qualified...

After finishing the course we all hired scooters and snorkels and went off to shark bay for the day. Right outside of the rental shop a Norwegian girl called Martina tried to pull away and turned the accelerator to full and crashed spectacularly into the rental shop, she ended up with a 10,000bt bill (about 2,500 pounds!). Spent the afternoon swimming around with loads of reef sharks swimming around us, was kinda scary but an awesome experience. I took a load of photos but it's a little hard to see them as it wasn't easy getting close to them and visibility wasn't great that shallow...



After the sharks we chilled out for a while and all decided that it was time to Bangkok, so we have all headed over here and now I'm trying to work out my next move.

I'm currently sat at the computer with explosive diarrhea trying to decide whether to go into Cambodia with two of the israeli's or maybe go up north to Chang Mai and Pai.... Decisions decisions