Koh Tao

Saturday, April 9

The night bus stopped at about 3am for bathrooms and snacks. It stopped at the same place we had stopped at before, 10 years ago, but the place had gotten A LOT nicer since my memory and it seemed like a mall food court instead of a fish market by the side of the road.
Back in the bus. At about 5am we arrived to the ferry dock. They checked our COVID vaccination cards and we got some pretty good hot coffees while we waited for the ferry.

Finally the ferry came and we all boarded, taking off just as the sun was coming up. With all the hazy air it wasn’t so much a sunrise as a sun up, but it was so cool to see the bright red globe of the sun shining through the haze and reflecting off the water.

We were on the catamaran for about an hour before we saw a glimpse of the island. Even though I had only been to Koh Tao once before and for only a few days, I felt really nostalgic. The dense green jungle and huge smooth boulders crept right up to the water’s edge. The water was bright blue, and so clear in some places that we could see colorful tropical fish from the pier.

We disembarked and walked to our hotel, the Blue Diamond. They let us check in super early at about 7am. We dropped our stuff and got some breakfast before we started asking around dive shops about diving the next day. We started with the shop next door, Scuba Birds. When we walked in a very ugly shaven poodle-like dog greeted us. Despite its bad haircut it was very sweet.

A tall guy with bleached blonde hair came out from the back and stared at us. I asked him if they were going diving the next couple of days and in a very casual tone with a thick Russian accent he said ‘sure, sure, take a seat’. Eventually the owner, a shorter woman with blonde hair and also a casual tone and Russian accent, came out and gave us the spiel. They offered a two-tank reef dive the next day so we signed up. Then we decided to walk to the northern end of Sairee beach to get a lay of the the land. It was further than I had remembered and so SO hot. We were dripping with sweat when we got to the final dive shop. We asked everyone where they were going the next couple days and how much their dives cost. Scuba birds ended up being the cheapest at 700 baht/tank ($21 USD) or 1400/day ($42 USD) per person. On our walk back we got a mango and coconut pancake (crepe) from a street stand. It was really fried and really good. The guy who makes the pancakes always has music playing and he seems to be loving life. The stand has a sign that says ‘for sure you will come back’ and for sure we did, many times.

Back at our hotel we grabbed our swimsuits and newly purchased very cheap snorkels and went swimming in the beach in front of the hotel. There was a ton of trash in the water but also a surprising amount of fish! We saw parrot fish, sea cucumbers, needle nose fish, and a bunch of others that I don’t know their names!

Then we went back up to the hotel and read on the patio for a bit. Finally, when I went to take a shower, I was so exhausted I thought I was going to pass out. As a safety precaution we had to take a nap. Of course, taking a nap at 5pm was dangerous and when we woke up to an alarm at 6, we decided we needed just one more hour. Then at 7 the last thing I ever wanted to do was get out of that bed so we set our alarms for the next morning and slept another 12 hours.

Sunday, April 10

When our alarms went off at 7am we woke up easy and felt great! We wandered over to the main pier to look for the owner of Scuba Birds. Instead, the blonde guy from the day before showed up on a motor bike with the biggest smile and a couple of dive bags. He told us our boat was tethered the furthest from the dock so we had to walk across the other boats to get to it. We felt like pirates as we held onto wooden post piles and hopped from deck to deck, through hoards of people getting their scuba gear ready. Finally our boat was all aboard and ready and we took off toward the northern part of the island, Mango Bay.

Our guide that day was named Olga and she was very easy going and obviously had a huge passion for fish. The first dive was very shallow and went over a forest of different coral. Although there were tons of fish, we were actually more impressed and surprised with the different coral, sea cucumbers, clams, and nudibranchs that seemed like aliens trying to pretend they belonged on the sea floor. Toward the end of the dive we saw a hoard of parrot fish having a feeding frenzy and I was so happy because these are my favorite fish. We also saw a turtle hanging out just under a rock, scratching its back on the rock like it had an itch. There was one fish with beautiful yellow, ruffling back fins and a big yellow nose that I didn’t know what it was. Later we learned this was a titan trigger fish and they can actually be very aggressive and territorial so its good we didn’t go for a closer look!
We got back on the boat and had a little rest as we jetted over to the next spot, called Twins, named after the two massive rocks underwater that host a variety of coral. This site was a little more clear and had better visibility and we saw tons of different fish. In particular, the angelfish were stunning with vibrant purple, orange and yellow blocks interspersed with fluorescent blue stripes. Pictures of these guys do not convey how gorgeous they are.

After the dive we got lunch at a place just up the road called Bam Bam which is known for quality Thai food that tastes like your Thai grandma just made it. We had pad thai (again!) and a fried fish with garlic pepper sauce. It was really good but it was so hot and the flies wouldn’t leave us alone so the ambiance kinda lowered the score for me.

Afterward we decided to walk to Shark Bay, located on the southern tip of the island. Google said it was a 6 minute drive and a 30 minute walk. Normally, Carl and I wouldn’t bat an eye at a walk of anything less than 2 hours but this was up and down hills and in tropical heat, so it was a bit rough. We noticed no one else chose to walk and everyone zipped by us on motorbikes. Even grandmas holding babies would zip by us as we walked like peasants along the road. We also noticed that all the tourists had skinned knees and elbows and I’ve heard stories about getting scammed on preexisting damages when you return the bike, so we stuck with the decision to be pedestrians. Finally we made it and found a steep staircase leading downhill to a resort located on the big rocks right next to the water. Even just sitting on the rocks I could see parrot fish in the water.

We took turns snorkeling and Carl saw a huge turtle the size of him! It was so shallow that Carl floated right above it, so close he probably could’ve touched it.
We walked back as the sun set. For dinner that night we walked along the beach to find Thai and seafood BBQ. We had Massaman curry and a barbecued tilapia that was in some kind of amazing sauce. We could hear people partying up and down the beach but we were proud enough just staying awake until 10pm so we went back to our cute hotel and got some more sleep before the next dive day.

Monday, April 11

We agreed to meet our Russian scuba friends of Scuba birds in their boat at about 7am. On the way to the pier the pancake stand was open so I opted for an egg and cheese pancake and it was just as good as the mango coconut one I had before. I could eat those pancakes for every meal.
At the pier we found Olga and she directed us to the boat. Our guide for that day was Nelly, another Russian woman with short blonde hair. Nelly seemed more frantic above water than Olga but she was so much calmer underwater. She’s obviously one of those people who was a fish in her former life. She was also very conscious of our safety.

The dive we did that morning was called Chumpon pinnacle and it is a big rock formation that you can swim around. The rock goes very deep, 30 meters (90 ft) so there were divers with advanced certification that were with us to dive that deep. Even though Carl and I have dove even deeper before (don’t ask me about Florida), Koh Tao is really strict on their rules and they wouldn’t let us go deep without being advanced certified, which is fair. Even circling the rock at slightly shallower depths (18m or 60ft) we saw SO much. Immediately as we came down the buoy line we were surrounded by a school of yellow and silver fish and saw a pair of purple Angelfish fighting (one of the women in our group asked why they were fighting and Carl replied, ‘maybe they are in love’). Almost immediately after, Carl spotted a Moray eel and pointed it out to everyone just before the eel slipped away into a rocky cave.

We swam around and over the tops of the rocks covered in coral and sea anemone. At one point I was in a big cleft of a rock that was covered in an anemone field. I was very tempted to roll around in the soft tentacles, but decided to save the hospital visit, for now.
Nelly had a go pro and a flashlight so she kindly took a ton of photos of us and used the light to show us creatures hiding in rocks. She pulled out teeny tiny shrimpies and held them in her hand to show us. As we moved from the rock we saw a massive school of barracuda. Olga motioned for me to swim through them (which seemed like a bad idea but I trusted her). Carl and I swam into the swirl and then found ourselves completely surrounded by a column of encircling barracuda. We also saw a huge white sea cucumber with little black feet. It was cute and disgusting at the same time. We also saw some varicose wart nudibranch which are prettier than their name suggests.

The next dive was to a wreck, which itself wasn’t that interesting except as a platform for taking photos. After we swam over to another rocky/coral area and continued to see a bunch of fish and weird sea creatures.

After the dive we got some lunch at a place near our hotel called Coconut Monkey. On the dive we met two girls that live and teach in Bangkok and they had recommended Coconut Monkey for lunch. When we walked in we saw them there with our dive guide Olga having lunch so we joined them. We ate and talked about diving, fish, and nudibranchs. The place was geared toward hippie vegan westerners but it was really good food. We had a grilled veggie wrap, fresh spring rolls, kombucha, and a smoothie! We like to eat Thai food in Thailand but this was the best hippie western food we’d had in a while.
Afterward we went back to our hotel and chilled on the balcony and explored the hotel pool which was soooo nice and not too cold.

With no plans to dive the next day we opted to ‘go out’ and get dinner and drinks and watch a fire dancing show. We walked about half an hour along Sairee beach down to a place called Lotus, where they have fire dancing every night. The sun was still up and festivities hadn’t started yet so we went one door down to a Thai restaurant and got a table on the beach. We got chicken cashew fried rice which was good, prawn crackers that were fine, and some spicy pork curry that was a little too spicy for me! Then we walked back to Lotus and got there just as things were heating up…
We ordered two mai tais and they tasted like they had Red Bull in them..too sweet and not good. So we switched back to Chang and got some loungey beach seats toward the back while we watched the guys dance with fire ropes and sticks. They were so good, that we sat enthralled watching them for 2 hours. At one point they pulled out the fire jump rope and some gringos were drunk enough to try. We watched mistakes but it seemed like no one was too badly burned, or maybe they didn’t feel it yet…

We decided to save the rest of our partying for the next island and walked back to our hotel for the night.

Tuesday, April 12

We slept in and went back to the coconut monkey for breakfast. We got a mixed berry smoothie bowl that was so good it felt wrong. We also got a divers egg wrap that had some grilled veggies in it that was simple but good.

We meandered over to the taxi stand and got a water taxi out to the island Koh Nang Yuan, just off the coast of Sairee beach. The round trip taxi cost 400 baht per person ($11) and the entrance fee to the island was 250bht/person ($8) so more of an expensive day in Thailand than we expected, but it was worth it. The taxi boat man asked us to wait as he went and for two more passengers (a Thai couple there for the holiday week) and with his gout-ridden feet he hobbled toward his brightly colored long boat and motioned for us to follow.

When we got to the island we immediately went to hike the viewpoint. The hike is very short but it’s straight up the hill on a cement staircase (and remember, hot as hell). We got to the top and took some pictures just before a hoard of people arrived after us. We were lucky we got there when we did and then we had some trouble getting back down as we skirted around people on the one-way staircase.

From here we went to the beach next to an underwater area called Japanese Garden, which is a popular shallow diving site. We figured we would try to snorkel it and see if we could see the same things. We left some stuff on the beach and put our valuables in a dry sack to bring with us and we waded out into the clear water.
Immediately we saw a bunch of parrotfish, Angelfish, longfin banner fish, sergeant majors, groupers, wrasses, Christmas tree worms, and some sea anemones with clown fish hiding within. We floated around for a bit and I tried to take pictures with my phone but failed. I was able to take a surprisingly good video of parrotfish hanging out in the shallows.

As we turned back toward the shore we saw a big triggerfish that freaked us out, but it didn’t seem to notice us and swam away.
On shore there were ten sets of two chairs and an umbrella and otherwise no shade at all. I asked a couple how they rented their chairs and they said ‘sorry you should’ve come earlier, we took the last one’…
So we went over to the restaurant that had a big tree providing shade and some decaying wooden picnic tables and stools. We got some overpriced Changs and Pad Thai and enjoyed the views and a rare blow of ocean breeze.

As we sat, we noticed a family that was leaving their chairs so I ran over and asked if we could use them. The lady was so nice and said ‘of course! Stand closer so no one else steals them!’ So then we had some beach chairs and much needed shade.

We read on the beach for a bit and took turns snorkeling. On my turn I saw many more triggerfish and it freaked me out. On Carl’s turn he went to the other side of the beach (which was only about 10 feet wide). He also saw some triggerfish but then he saw three black finned reef sharks and decided to call it a day. At 4pm we had to leave the island and meet our taxi boat guy to take us back.

When we got back to the hotel we went to the pool to cool off for a bit longer before taking showers. As we got in, there was a British couple swimming that noticed our sunburned backs and they said ‘looks like someone went snorkeling today!’ We ended up talking with them for a while and they gave us some tips on the next island we’d be visiting (Koh Pha Ngan) and on Cambodia.
For dinner that night I wanted something quality so I did some research and found a place called The Gallery that had good reviews. On the map it looked like it was located a little inland and would be a 30 min walk walk to get to, but didn’t seem too bad. The walk ended up being along a major freeway for a bit, which was terrifying, and then up the steepest hill of my life. We should’ve known that inland on an island like this means upland!

We finally climbed our way up the steps to the restaurant. There were several couples having drinks on a balcony overlooking an amazing view of the jungle and the ocean. The guy told us the place was reservations only and fully booked and then gave us such a look of pity when we told him we had walked all the way there. To make the journey worth it we got a couple of beers and watched the sundown (not much for sunset) over the ocean.

Then we walked back down the hill and along the highway for a little bit down to Sairee Beach. The bartender at The Gallery had recommended a restaurant called Whitening so we headed toward it. The place was packed and a waiter rudely dismissed me when I asked for a table but eventually we were connected with the hostess and she said there may be hope. Finally one of the waiters said “just sit there” pointing to a 4 top, and we didn’t argue.
We ordered cocktails. I got the Tom Rum which was designed to taste like my favorite Tom Yum soup. It was close, but needed more coconut. Carl got the Sairee Sunset and it was like a fruity rum punch. For a starter we ordered prawn and avocado crostinis. They brought out sliced baguette pieces with cream cheese(?) spread on top with one shrimp and two small pieces of avocado on each bread. The ingredients were good but it seemed like something I would’ve made while standing in the kitchen wondering what to make for dinner. For mains we got a spicy salad and a seafood stew. The salad was amazing. It had some kind of shredded citrus fruit (orange?) with big shrimps, peanuts, basil, and all in a vinegary coconut sauce. The seafood stew had a garlicky black bean sauce that was nice but too spicy for me. For desert we had mango with coconut sticky rice and I vowed next time to order this desert at the same time as the rest of the food so I could have something besides a fancy cocktail to cool down my poor burning mouth.