We're now in Thailand (blogging live from a trip for the first time). The weather is fine and sunny, but we've also had some overcast and rain. We've been swimming and diving, snorkelling and walking. And of course eaten lot's of great food & had plenty of fresh fruit juices.
We departed from Oslo in the evening on a SAS flight (not so good food and entertainment anymore) that took us to Bangkok and two hours later on to Koh Samui. We arrived in the late afternoon and then headed off to our hotel, we had thought of staying a couple days but saw that this was not what we liked, so we booked a ferry for the next day for a 1 hour 45 minute ride to Koh Tao. Just a lttle bit about Koh Samui: The Island is fairly big and there are probably a lot of really nice places to stay with nice beaches but this was a place where you would need to rent a scooter to get around and things were much more spread out. The place we stayed did not have a good beach either.
The ferry ride was very pleasant with a short stop in Koh Phangan and the on to Koh Tao where we were picked up by the hotel driver and delivered at the Simle Life Hotel. We had a really nice room the first day that was very roomy and as soon as we unpacked we headed to the beach for a swim. There are two bigger villages on Koh Tao, Mae Head where the ferry arrives at and Sairee Beach where we are staying. There are plenty of good places to eat and lot's of places to chillout and watch the sunset (yes there are lot's mosquitos and Jorunn later found out that there are sand flies).
After a long sleep (jet lag) and a nice breakfast we headed out for our first dive at 12 PM. The boat ride was about 25 minutes to the east side of the island to Laem Thian Bay, this was a very pretty place with a sandy beach and blue green water. It was nice to get back in the water but the visibility was rather poor and there was not a lot to see (Tarpoon, titan triggerfish, anemonefish and lot's of sea slugs). After the dive we moved to Ao Leuk which was even worse, if it can get worse, very shallow, bad visibility and not a lot see (titan trigger fish, snapper, angle fish and a large Jorunna Funebris (nudibranch).
Video of a banded sea snake:
Next day we started diving bright and early, leaving at 7 AM as we were supposed to go to Chumphon Pinnacle where we could be extremely lucky and find whale sharks and much much more. To our disappointment we were told that we would be going t a local site as they had open water dive course people on board and found out that it was common that they would change the without notice. The first dive site we went to was No Name, the visibility was still bad but it was an interesting and we saw: titan trigger fish, banded angel fish, juvenile emporor angelfish, batfish and lot's of sea slugs. The next dive to White Rock was much better even if the visibility was still only ten meters, here we saw: a large banded sea snake hunting, very friendly batfish, several blue spotted sting rays, porcupine boxfish, banded angelfish, titan triggerfish, hermit crab, snappers, groupers and lot's of sea slugs. This was a very nice dive site and we hope that the next time the visibility will be better.
Jorunn's regulator was leaking so we took a wild ride in a taxi to Mae Head and a scubapro service shop where we first got in a small accident, then we got dropped off at the wrong place and had to walk for 10 minutes in the heat and humidity to get to the right place. After we got there we found out that the guy who serviced Jorunn's regulator in Oslo did a bad job and did not put in the proper parts (could have been very dangerous if this happened underwater). So we had to take in Christer's regulator for service also and it had the same problems. But we got some nice walks along the beach to get to the service shop, and we know our way around Sairee beach pretty well now.
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