Thailand: Koh Tao

We've changed to a different dive center, it's time dive again and it's an early one (7:00 and I thought I was having a vacation). We picked up our breackfast and waited for a ride to the dive shop and waited and waited and no one showed up. With all our dive gear in hand we set off at fast pace and arrived a few minutes later a bit out of breath but ready to dive.



We are going to Southwest Pinnacle to see lot's of fish but as we decend I got sharp pains in my ear so I had to abandon the dive and let Jorunn have all the fun. The visibility is much better now, and Southwest Pinnacle probably had more anemones than I've ever seen on a dive site. There were lot's of schools of fish, a hermit crab, cleaner shrimps. The next dive site was Shark Island, and once again Christer was left on the boat. This dive site was good, some friendly batfish and a not so friendly triggerfish attacking one of the instructors (He was ok). There was also a Jorunna Funebris (nudibranch) laying eggs, and a couple of baby blue-spotted stingrays. Back on shore I headed for the local clinic and promply found out that I had a large build up of ear wax and that evening got it all sorted out. That night we sat by the water side eating dinner and watching the lightning show in the distance.



Feeling refreshed and a little tired we head out on another morning dive, this time to Chumpong Pinnacle and this time things went well. As this was deep and 35 minutes from land there were lot's of fish; large schools of barraccuda, very large tuna, box jellyfish (we've never seen this before), a grouper that was maybe 1,5 meters long and clouds of fish. Sadly there was a fishing boat not too far from the dive site. Next stop was Green Rock which also had several free-swimming white-eyed moray eels, clouds of fishs, lot's of nudibranch a very cute juvenile yellow boxfish and a juvenile angelfish so we were kept very busy with things to see the whole dive. Interesting how a lot of types of fish look completely different from the adults when they are juveniles, and are also very cute. Video of the box jellyfish:



In the last few days we've also been on a snorkelling trip to the Japanese gardens, relaxed by the pool, walked around and just watched people. There has been rain and thunder almost every night, but mostly sunny during the day. There are a lot of backpackers here, generally younger than us (needless to say), the trends for guys seem to be wearing a hat, and quite a few have sixpacks and a perfect tan.



That's all for now, it's time to watch the sunset before we head to dinner and some wine. What a life.