Curse of Ko Tao

Ko Tao. One of three "Kos" east of the mainland in the Gulf of Thailand. Ko means "Island". Tao means "Turtle." We saw no turtles on or around the island. Our main reason for visiting Ko Tao was to meet up with our good friend Nat who lives and works as a Dive Instructor there. Luckily Nat was nice enough to put us up for a while. Our other good friends Adam and Alana were also visiting Thailand for a wedding on the next "Ko", so the timing was perfect. So a guy from Michigan, a guy from Minnesota, and a guy from Indiana, all met in Arizona, and now happen to be in the same part of Thailand at the same time...and more importantly, Sara and Alana were there too.

After 100 days on the road:100 days of night busses, sleeper trains, subways, minivans, trikes, tuk-tuks, ferries, taxis, cold showers, shared bathrooms, and dorm rooms, we were ready for a bit of a break. It was great to relax by the beach and/or pool and catch up with old friends. And that’s exactly what we did. To be fair, Nat did warn us. He laughed and asked how long we were staying. We explained we weren't sure, but not too long. He would laugh and tell us the island had a way off holding on to people. "No way", I thought. We've got places to be and things to see; a budget to stick to.

Now there are two main activities on the island of Ko Tao. One is scuba diving. For years Ko Tao has been a low cost diving mecca and is one of the most popular places to get PADI certified. The other activity is drinking. It's almost as expensive and much harder to do underwater. Frankly if you’re just visiting, and not diving, there isn’t much to do or see after a few days...we were there for a month. At the two-week mark, we were pretty ready to leave, but somehow we lost our debit card and had to wait another two weeks to get a new one sent out. Granted, not the worst place in the world to have to stay a little longer. I don't expect any sympthy from those reading this in the snow covered north.

We did go diving a few times, which is an absolutely amazing experience. Highly recommended.

However, on our first dive, one of the other people we were with; a nice girl from Liverpool, England (not a member of the Beatles) kind of panicked somewhere around 12 meters under water and tried to rip off all her gear and swim to the surface as fast as she could. Turns out this is frowned upon when scuba diving and is not recommended. 1.) Unless you are Aquaman, (she was not) you cannot breathe underwater without your scuba gear. 2.) There are some decompression issues when you swim up that fast, even from that depth. As a bystander, or byfloater, it was pretty terrifying to see the look of absolute horror in this girl as, after a 10 minute descent, she decided the seaweed is not always greener, and just had to get out of there. Our instructor handled it amazingly and calmly shoved her regulator back into her mouth and slowly took her to the surface and back on the boat. We then continued our dive. We were lucky enough to see some pretty cool stuff while diving. No turtles, or Whale Sharks…which I was ok with. But on a different day, we did see some sting rays, a big trigger fish, an even bigger Grouper eating a Baracuda, and Nemo.

Eventually (on the day our Visa ran out) we broke the curse and made it off the island on the 6:00am ferry to neighboring Ko Samui to get a 30 day Visa extension so we could see a little more of the country. I told Sara this was the first time I felt like we were leaving a place. Up until now I always felt like we were just going somewhere new. It was nice to stay put for a while, but for now it's on the road again.

From Ko Tao, with love.

-Will + Sara