Well, as promised, this story comes from a beautiful island in the Gulf of Thailand - Ko Tao, very much a diving island so, once again I have been challenging myself with the art of breathing through my mouth, underwater !
I got the train from Bangkok main train station, bought myself a Sleeper ticket as the train was supposed to leave at 7:30pm and arrive at Chumphon at about 4am. Now, whenever I am on the move, so to speak, I have got into the habit of wearing my "heavy"clothes - i.e. jeans, walking boots etc as they don't all fit into my backpack, however it was so hot when I left that I opted to wear the sandals and tie my boots to my backpack. Let's just say, that by the time I boarded the train there was one solitary Timberland Boot hanging from my backpack. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr !!!!!!! I should have kept to my system ! So, a shopping trip for more walking boots is now required on my return to Bangkok as I need boots for Rwanda. They were bloody good boots too, stupid thing is I still have the one - maybe I should do a ceremonial burning of the thing on the beach !!
So, I have never done a sleeper on a train - very strange ! I was in the top bunk so couldn't see a damn thing, no window or anything and due to the fact that the train departed Bangkok at about 8pm .... rolled out of the station ..... rolled back in again .....rolled back out again ...... rolled back in again .... approximately 7 times, I kid you not - I wasn't exactly sure when we eventually left Bangkok. Had no idea what sort of time we were likely to arrive in Chumphon after all the faffing about and wasn't sure whether we would get woken up by the guard - so I didn't get much sleep, jumping up every time I felt the train slowing to get down see where we were.
Eventually we got to Chumphon, the town where we can get a boat over to Ko Tao. It takes about 2 hours to get to the island.
I had already decided to give the old diving thing another chance and most of the accommodation here is affiliated to one diving school or another. I'm staying at Crystal Dive Resort - quite a large operation but I get a great deal on my room if I'm diving with them.
So, I booked myself in for a refresher dive which I was very pleased to hear takes place in the pool - they go over all the relevant skills from the PADI Open Water - I had no problems with it so I booked myself on a Fun Dive (well, 2 actually) later that day ..... the good news is, all went well - I'm still grasping the respirator with my hand throughout the dive which everyone thinks is very funny but it works for me !! The first dive we did was Mango Bay which is in the north of the island then we went over to the dive site called Japanese Garden, where we swam through a cave and saw lots of fishies.
The following day me and Oscar (from the refresher course, he's Spanish, from Barcelona so I could practice my Spanish !) took a scooter up to Sairee Beach - the water is beautiful, shallow, fantastic colours etc .... and just chilled out then watched the sunset.
Yesterday I did a couple more fun dives, saw loads more fish - a yellow box fish, a couple of blue spotted Rays - had a slight moment of breathing problems but managed to overcome it so I've booked 2 more for tomorrow !
I'm reading on BBC that the weather at home is pretty cold (!!) - well, it's a lovely 28-33 degrees here - just thought I'd let you all know !
Until next time ....
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