Double Blog Blast: Eastern Thai Islands

Part One – Koh Phan “Yawn”

Part Two – The Dao of Koh Tao

 

Part One: Koh Phangan 8-21 – 8-24

First stop on our Thai island tour was Koh Phangan (Koh means island in Thai; and Phangnan is

Koh Phangan is pinned

pronounced pan-yawn), most commonly known for its wild drug-strewn full moon parties.  We made sure to plan our trip around the lunar craziness. Using a regional air carrier called Nok Airlines we took a plane, bus, and ferry package that was painless. It mostly consisted of us getting herded from one vehicle to the next acquiring stickers, ribbons, and more stickers proving our existence with every new leg. We arrived at the port on the Southwest side of the island and were greeted by a Thai woman associated with the Mai Pen Rai aka “no worries” Bungalows.

Joined by a few local children, we hopped into a 4 by 4 truck going to make the harrowing journey across the rocky interior of the island. After about 45 minutes of bouncing around inside the jeep we arrived at dusk to the hidden cove where our resort was located. We quickly checked in at the Rasta-inspired palm frond covered restaurant and then were lead to our personal “Bungalow on the Rocks”. This consisted of walking across the beach, over some rocks, under some rocks and then along a up and down a path along the rocky coastline. Our personal, although basic (fan, cold water) bungalow was set above the rocks looking out over both the turquoise bay that we had just come from, but also the deep blue ocean stretching on forever before us. Our front porch had a small table, chairs and the hammock necessary for snoozing a way the afternoons. Inside consisted of a four-postered bed with netting and an attached bathroom that had been built up around the surrounding rocks. It was by far the most beautiful place I had ever laid my head.

 Apparently we were not the only ones to be sleeping in the bungalow. When we walked in one evening Pearce yelled and claimed he saw something “very large” move on the wall. Well, many of you know Pearce is pretty much scared of any creepy crawly and known to exaggerate the actual size of said creature so I wasn’t expecting much. So I was very surprised when I looked up and saw the largest gecko I have ever seen. I am from Florida and not prone to being freaked out by lizards, but this thing was intimidating. Pearce uncharacteristically rose to the challenge and shooed the gecko out of the room first by shooting his flip flops at said gecko (we got him new ones) and then working up the nerve to bat a traditional straw broom in his general vicinity. Luckily it worked. At least for the short term. Apparently, the gecko really enjoyed the views as well and so joined us again later in the evening. We resigned ourselves to a roommate.

We were there for four days that pretty followed the same schedule: wake up in paradise, hangout in the bungalow reading and relaxing, grab a fresh *insert favorite fruit of choice* shake, take a dip in the bay, climb some rocks, relax on the beach, eat some Pad Thai/Massaman/Green curry/etc., watch the stars. We did break our routine on two occasions: once, we walked up the hill to a near by waterfall that really was just a small river with a series of steps down that a few kings liked to visit (I am not really sure why); we also attempted a day trip to see the more well known side of Koh Phagnan. In order to do this, we hopped a small ferry that came to our beach at 9:30am everyday and then hopped off again when it pulled up to Hat Rin beach, home to the full moon debauchery. Although midmorning by the time we arrived, the beach and the town only had a hand full of people wandering about. We grabbed breakfast from one of the many open cafes catering to tourists and then strolled around the few streets that connect Sunrise Beach with Sunset Beach. I don’t know what we saw more of emergency clinics, 80’s inspired clothing, or fire sticks (for those who want to take up a new deadly hobby). Pearce still regrets that we did not buy ourselves a full moon party getup, with requisite Native American head dress, and throw our own little party back in the Bungalow. I think you should always have something to look forward to going back to.

The evidence and results of Full Moon Madness we “missed”

It’s funny that doing nothing can go by so quickly, but this is just what happened to us. Before we knew it, our time was up and we were headed to the next island on our trip, Koh Tao, a favorite of mine as this is where I learned to dive.

 

Part Two: Koh Tao   8-25 – 8-29

Out of all of Thailand’s islands, the island of Koh Tao is known first and foremost for its SCUBA diving. In fact a staggering 1-2% of all SCUBA certifications worldwide take place here.  When you think about how many people this represents and the tiny size of the island, the density of shore-side dive shops is understandable.  Almost every third commercial venture is a dive shop or some combination i.e./ souvenir shop/ dive shop, restaurant/ dive shop, resort/ dive shop. Since Allyson had learned to dive here 8 years ago, she has inundated me with stories about how great the diving is in Thailand and that my experience in the Western Hemisphere, diving off Venezuela and the Caribbean, would be blown away.  It was with this high expectation that we went to Koh Tao in search of some great diving.

After learning our lesson in Cat Ba, we made great efforts to research our places of residence and since you often get a deal when you package diving with your hostel, we made sure to research both. We finally landed on dive shop that focused on marine conservation.  They are known to run several “clean-up” dives allowing their customers the chance to actively get involved by cleaning up trash off the reef and all free of charge.  We liked this and hoped we would get the opportunity to give back.  The added bonus was the owner of the dive shop was opening a beautiful new resort on a more secluded portion of the island and would could give us half-off the going rate if we dived with them.  So we booked a stay with New Heaven Dive Shop/ Resort/ Yoga Studio. 

Just before taking the water taxi from island to island, we received an e-mail from the owner of the dive-shop.  He said the occupants of our bungalow had decided to stay over an extra day and we no longer had accommodation for the first night at his resort. He mentioned a few other places near his dive shop that we may be able to stay. We were not happy about this because we didn’t have time to check in on the places he mentioned before we got there, let alone other dive shops where we might also get a deal.

Luckily, they still picked us up from the ferry stand like they had said, albeit 10 minutes late. Immediately after, we arrived at the dive shop and met the owner, Devrim who we had been exchanging emails with. Devrim was semi-apologetic about the room situation, but pretty much blew it off as “shi*t happens”.  He mentioned having called two of the resorts next to the dive shop as they were on friendly terms and could get us a room for the same amount he quoted us.  So we dropped off our bags and walked over over to the first place.  The people there treated us very rudely and quoted a price way higher than we wanted so we left in a hurry.  We didn’t have any luck at the second place, the Tropicana, either.  Although they were not rude, it did take a while to find someone who worked there and the room rate was also much higher than Devrim had said it would be.  Great. 

Fortunately we passed a similar looking resort that surprisingly was even closer to the dive shop that Devrim had not even mentioned to us, J.P.’s Resort.  Although it looked about the same quality of the others (crap), the people who greeted us were very friendly and straight forward in their dealings – refreshing.

The New Heaven Dive shop is not unlike many of the others on the island in appearance, but they are all different from the ones I know back home in the States.  This one was sturdily built and was was decorated as an open air thatched 2-story bungalow over looking the ocean.  So it was very beautiful to look at and to be in.  At the time, in the afternoon and after the day’s dives, the small area is what I call casual chaos: it is populated with a few customers at wooden benches reading PADI course books, some instructors and dive masters walking around cleaning equipment, smoking or just chatting with the other instructors.  There are several dogs padding in and out of the shop.  After finally getting our housing situated for the evening, we returned to the shop to find out more of the specifics. One of the dive instructors, Abel, gave us a 2 minute talk about the dive shop rushing through explanations of diving, glossing over the descriptions of the dive sites, the pricing and basic practicalities of diving with them. It did not help that French was his first language and his heavy accent mixed in with his poorly hidden apathy did nothing to make it more clear.

Allyson, very reasonably, was upset and felt this was not adequate. After having to unexpectedly track down a place to stay for the night and this hurried sales pitch, we both were more than a little annoyed about the way we had been treated. We had serious second thoughts, but finally decided that we should just go with the flow, or as Allyson learned in her book “The Tao of Pooh”, we had to harness our inner Pooh. So we decided we would start with a “refresher course” to go over skills for the first dive the next day.

It was then we met our dive instructor and guide for the next day and what would be the entire time, Sophie.  Like many of the dive instructors, Sophie was French but had the most wonderful accent.  It helped she was also extremely energetic, kind and thorough.  She was truly the highlight of the dive shop amidst an overall bad experience. Sophie walked us through the equipment and we loaded onto the truck.  We also then loaded ourselves onto the back of an uncovered pick-up truck, outfitted with seat benches and headed to the beach.  It was there that we took the equipment down some steep steps and loaded it onto a long boat.  Long boats are a common mode of aquatic transport in Thailand.  They are long wooden boats about 20+ feet long, painted aqua or blue with a engine on the upper stern and a long metal pole (~10-15 feet) ending in the uncovered propeller. YIKES! The captain propels and steers the boat simply by pivoting the long pole around.

The long boat then took us to the small, also colorful Thai dive boat docked in the bay.  We then set up our dive equipment and headed off to the first dive.  We both got reacquainted with the procedures and were dropped off in the shallows of a bay (near a proper dive site called Shark Island) to do some refresher skills with Sophie.  This took only 10 minutes of our dive as it all came back very quickly.  We finished the dive by swimming underwater to a nearby reef.  We finished our first dive and waited about an hour for the second one.  (All the dive days are two dive sets.)  After we went to a site called Aow Luck and completed our second dive.  In each dive, even despite the state of some of the coral, we saw amazing biodiversity.  I am not sure if it was simply the joy of being back underwater after a long hiatus of diving or the quality of the diving, but I was really impressed.  The pure density of fish was much more than I remember of the Caribbean.  I mention this because Allyson was less impressed than I was.  She remembered the diving in Thailand to be much better including not only the variety of sea life, but also the visibility.  One of the things she specifically remembered seeing were purple starfish, but when she asked about it all the instructors looked at her like she was crazy and made several jokes about not diving under the influence of things you might find at a “Full Moon” party.  We chalked it up to global warming.

After a full day of diving, Devrim told us that the bungalow had opened up and we could move to his resort.  There is a free “shuttle” (the same pickup truck for the dive shop) that goes from the resort to the dive shop and back at prescribed, if not precise, times during the day.  We got in the back of the truck and headed to the resort.  It was on the other side of the Southern tip of island and in a very secluded and elevated portion over looking the ocean.  The resort was in a state of development but the bungalows were beautiful.  They were immaculately clean and well decorated.  We did feel we were getting a good deal and value as it was very romantic and quiet – there were only 4-6 other people staying on the resort at any given time.  There was a small restaurant or kitchen rather run by Devrim’s wife and it was good.

After a very restful sleep we woke up for our second day of diving.  We arrived at the dive shop and it was never clear about which dives we would do.  The day before there was mention of a “special” dive occurring in conjunction with executives from the Cooper automotive company – they were going to dump a replica of a Mini Cooper in the ocean for the formation of an artificial reef.  I thought that was amazingly cool and would be excited to be a part of it.  I guess this led to some confusion on their part and this is the reason they claimed that we could not dive with Sophie.  She was taking another group out.  This was further complicated because one of the instructors has gotten injured on his motorbike the night before and another had sinus issues.  So they were two instructors/guides short that day.  Because of this they recruited two fellow guests, who like us arrived a few days before, and asked them to act as our dive masters for the day.  We were reasonably wary of this development and made it known we may not dive that day.

It was then that the instructor with the sinus issues, Adnan came over to us.  He then proceeded to try and convince us this was common practice among dive shops around the world to use any and all dive masters no matter who they are and where they come from.  He acted incredulous about our hesitation and even at some point called the two of us “irrational.”  In retrospect we recognize this behavior as completely unprofessional but at the time we were surrounded by this bizarre micro-culture of a slacker, hippy-dippy dive shop allowed to run amok in a foreign country and for a brief time we wondered in we were “in the wrong.”  We both believe we are culturally sensitive and I think this put us on the defensive with misplaced worry about how we were perceived and how we behaved.  Back home we were used to many things that are different in Asia and we wondered if our Western demand for high-quality customer service was out of place here.  In the blog to come there is stark evidence to the contrary and that this dive shop is simply poorly run and it didn’t help that on occasions where they could show some sort of compassion (Pearce’s big toenail was ripped off while traveling in the truck because it has been loaded up with food supplies and Allyson was accidentally burnt by ash from one of the instructor’s cigarettes) there was none.

We learned or relearned a lesson here: never be coerced into doing anything you are uncomfortable with, especially when it involves a potentially dangerous activity like diving.  In the end we made the correct decision and did not dive that day.  We instead caught a cab and spent the day exploring other portions of the island.  Unfortunately it rained, but we made the most of it holing up in a beachside coffee joint. We spent some time weighing the costs and benefits of sticking with them and decided to cautiously try diving with the shop again.  We agreed we would only dive if we felt comfortable. 

The next day we were greeted pretty coolly by the staff, with the aggressor not even addressing us. On the bright side, we were happy to find out we would again be paired with Sophie.  This was a relief because we were at ease with her and she knew our skill level, not to mention she actually knew the dive sites and could point things out to us (this would not be the case with any impromptu, deputized dive masters).  We went on the dives and they were as good as before, with me being quite enamored to be diving again and with Allyson having fun, but still a little disappointed.  This is the way this portion of the trip on Koh Tao went for the duration.  We had another day of dives with Sophie and we saw much of the same things mainly because we went to the same dive sites multiple times.  This seemed to be due to the “price of gas” according to the dive shop and so we were unable to go to the more impressive or famous sites I had read about.

So in the end the Dao of Koh Tao was in a word, disappointing.  We went there for the diving and save for a few bright spots (i.e. Sophie, the bungalows) there was a negative vibe centered around a bad dive shop.  Fortunately this travel blip does not continue to our next destination…