See What Tim Is Doing: January 2012

The second half of my time in Thailand went much the same way as my first half, so this entry will be short and sweet. The days went much the same as the first half, train in the morning, sit by the beach all day then if didn't train in the morning, I would train in the afternoon, then at night it would be a meal somewhere (which was always epic no matter where we went) and a sneaky beer or 12. There were some different events of the second half though.

One night we went to the Swedes house up not he hills looking over Coral View armed with 5 fish and 2kgs of prawns costing about 10 pound for the lot, and our bikes and some balls for the slightly challenging ride up to their house. If I was to design a house that looked over the Thai sea, this house is exactly what I would of designed it like, open area, balconies everywhere, eternity pool, big entertaining area on the backyard,it was stunning. So we chilled with the Swedes, Gary cooked a monster feed with all our fresh seafood, we drank and watched the sun set and had a merry old time.

Becky, Ky, James, Caroline and myself also decided to do our Advanced Diving as well which was amazing! It ran over two days and we did five dives in total, and each dive we had to learn a new skill. Our first dive was a deep dive where we dove to 30m, which was incredible! Our second was a wreck dive around 26m deep. The wreck was an old warship with guns still intact! I really enjoyed the wreck diving and would love to do more of these, and possibly train to be able to dive inside the wrecks. The third dive was multi level and navigation which sounds pretty dull, but was actually rather interesting and helpful! and then the last two were my favourites, under water photography. It was a very fun two days out on the boat, diving, sitting in the sun, hanging out, could definitely get used to diving a lot!
After we did this course, we also did a few fun dives as del which was good fun, we always had amazing conditions and saw tons of marine life, but the one i am gutted about was a turtle that i swam right over not even knowing. I took a picture of an angel fish i was chasing and only later (weeks later) when I was looking over my photos I saw in the background a massive turtle just chilling on the bottom!

I kept up my boxing which was good and was really enjoying it even though it was 38+ every day. One of the guys we were hanging with a bit o the island had a fight one night, in the stadium not in the street! It was a very short fight, the other fighter came all guns blazing at Ben swinging huge haymakers, but Ben was smart and kept his distance and avoided most of the swinging arms and managed to get in close and deliver a few knees to his opponents face which ended the fight in the first round.

What else what else...I hired a bike again for another couple days at the end of my time, thought would go try and check out some more of the island before my time was up. Wasn't the most successful of adventures as most of the road i hadn't been on either lead to nowhere or they had been washed away from storms. But was still nice cruising around and got to see some more of the island.

Becky and Ky got wicked tattoos by Phu or Poo or not sure how to write it but it sounds like poo. He is a true talent! He specialises in bamboo tattoo and after seeing his work, I am going there for my next tattoo. His detail is amazing, he is super chill and friendly, he is an amazing drawer and with bamboo there's no need to stay out of the sun or saltwater. As soon as its done you can go swimming. I will be seeing Phu again sometime in the near future!

The boys also ventured on a day fish in trip, with high expectations after seeing loads of people turn up at the docks with huge fish. A day on a rickety old fishing boat, a mix of sun and storm, beers and snacks and absolutely no fish at all. We were out there for hours and between the 6 of us, there were two fish caught, and they would've been lucky to reach 20cm each. Not overly successful day but was a fun day!

Also one of the major highlights of the week was a day out at Coral View where we went snorkelling with the black tip reef sharks. Once you spotted one, you could see them easily! They were still pretty big, around 4-5ft and were not scary at all. Once you got within a few metres of them, they would swim away. Pretty surreal feeling swimming with them!

In-between all these events we did have a good few days of rancid weather where it stormed and we were confined to our rooms. Which was not ideal but didn't hurt, we got into playing poker on the balcony and was probably good for our skin to get out of the sun for a while!.

Our last major event was Halloween, and it was a good, rather messy night and a fun night to go out on. We had to rustle up some makeshift costumes from what we had, Ky and I put on our fluro singlets, I borrowed a pair of Becky's very small shorts and some arm bands made from footy socks, was interesting to say the least. Ben painted himself green and went as Hulk and Becky and Gary borrowed some banana leaves and made very good Tarzan and Jane outfits. We did the normal rounds of the bars, drinking, playing pool and saying our goodbyes to some of the people we met as we were leaving in two days time. It was a really nice, fun last night out in Kho Tao, and kind of sad knowing that our time on the island was done.

A couple of days later, Becky, Ky and myself packed our bags and started on the journey to Kuala Lumpur. The original plan was to go to Bangkok and do some shopping and then fly from there, but due to the floods, we had to re-route our plans and head straight to KL. So ferry to Kho Samui, then a little plan to KL, a few days in KL and then board my flight back to Sydney, the home I haven't been to for over 2 and a half years!