10 day break

In the western world we have spring break, but in Thailand they do not have spring break they just get a few days off for the Thai New Year, and instead have a 10 day “holiday games break” it’s pretty much kind of like a mini-Olympics betweens the universities in Thailand. All the exchange students wanted to take advantage of the long break so people broke up into groups to travel in and went to different places. Some went to Vietnam while others went to Cambodia, Malaysia, and even China I think. I went in a large group to three different Islands while it is still “winter” in Thailand because I figured it is going to get too hot to go later during the semester. The first chunk of the break was spent in Koh Tao, followed by a few nights in Koh Samui, and finally Koh Phangan…

Koh Tao is a pretty small island by the eastern part of the Gulf of Thailand it is fairly new and wasn’t easily accessible until the 1980’s. It was the first stop of the break and I spent the first 5 days there, a long time was spent their because a group of 16 of us went to Koh Tao to get PADI certified as open-water divers and the course was 4 days long. We left Bangkok on Thursday night around 10pm and took a bus to Chumporn which arrived there at 5 am,

we the waited at the pier for the first boat to Koh Tao which didn’t depart until 7 am and we reached our final destination Friday morning at 9 am. At the pier we met a driver from the dive resort we had booked at and we got in the back of two pickup truck taxis which took us up to the resort.

We then filled out some paper work and figured out what time we would meet to start the first class, we decided on 5pm of the same day, and spent the afternoon killing time on the beach playing volleyball, frisbee and eating. At 5 pm we went to the classroom and had to watch a couple of long videos about scuba diving and were assigned some homework, after class we walked the island and relaxed in the rooms.

The next morning we had to meet at the resorts pool at 8am where we put on scuba equipment for the first time and learned how to do safety checks and got used to breathing underwater by practicing in the pool. Later we met again in the classroom to go over the previous night’s homework and to get a couple of more worksheets. Sunday afternoon we went to the ocean and dove down to only about 4 meters to learn the rest of the skills we needed to know in order to get PADI certified, once again we went to a classroom later in the day to take a few quizzes. On Monday we got to do our first two real dives, they were at different sites the first was White Rock where we went down to 12 meters the point of the dive was to learn how to control our decent down to the floor of the ocean and how to ascend slowly at the end of a dive. The second training dive was on a site called “3 rocks,” we went down to about 10 meters and learned and practiced additional skills that would help in possible emergency scenarios.

After we finished the 2 dives for the day we had a few hours off and then had to take the final exam for the course. The next morning was our last day in Koh Tao; we left early in the morning for our last 2 dives. The first dive of the day was 20 meters (about 65 feet) at “Shark Island” and the second dive was at “Hin Ngam,” because all of the dives were training dives we had to learn additional underwater skills during each dive. After the dives were done we returned to the resort got lunch and packed up our stuff, while the instructors filled out paper work to get everyone officially certified. We then left for the next destination; Koh Samui.

Koh Samui was the most developed island I have been to in Thailand, and was also my favorite it’s unfortunately I only got to spend 2 nights there. We took a boat from Koh Tao to Samui; there were already people from our group in Samui when I arrived because they had left Koh Tao early because they didn’t want to go diving. So they had taken care of getting everyone rooms, the group was split into two different places. After putting away our bags everyone went walking around the island, everyone had different taste and I ended up at a Brazilian steak house with a few other guys. The meal was the priciest meal I have had in Thailand but it was worth every penny and it was still equivalent to only $25.00 =]. After eating we spent the night on the beach. The next morning we went looking for cheap motorbike rentals, we ended up finding a place that would give us 10 bikes for 1600 baht for 24 hours. So it ended up cost $5 US per person plus gas for 24 hours….not too shabby.

Around 13 of us headed out on bikes to go to a water fall, on the way up one of the guys slipped on some dirt and scratched up his foot. But if you ever come to Thailand you will realize that the sight of a little blood is a huge deal to many Thai people, a local person around where the guy fell called an ambulance up the mountain to take him to the hospital to get checked out. Everything ended up being ok the hospital just bandaged up his foot, and gave him drugs for pain, the grand total for an ambulance, bandaging up his foot, and drugs was about 450 baht ($14 US)……gotta love Thailand. Obviously the guy could not ride his bike back to our hotel so I parked my bike on the side of the rode and drove back his bike along with another guy and the rest of the group continued on to the waterfall. I then came back on the back of a bike and got my bike, so then me and Geoff (the other guy on the bike) were left without a phone or a camera but decided to ride around anyways.

 First we went to go to another waterfall and Geoff’s back tire went flat so we had to get it fixed and then it was starting to get dark so we were going to head back but kept riding around and then we stumbled across a awesome statue it was “Big Buddha” we looked at it and “Laughing Buddha” that was a few blocks away and decided that we would wake up early the next morning and come back with cameras and the rest of the group.

The next morning we got up at the crack of dawn because the bikes had to be returned by 11am, we made it back to the statues took pictures and explored some more and then headed back returned the bikes and packed up our bags to catch a boat to our last destination of the break Koh Phangan……

Koh Phangan was the finale of the 10 day break and we were there for 3 nights, which is a definite overkill for this island. None the less it was fun, Koh Phangan is infamous for its full moon parties and that is why we were there. The full moon parties are at Haad Rin beach but accommodations are pricier there so we stayed at the next beach over and found a room for 400 baht a night and spilt it between me and a guy from Germany; David. The only problem was that since there were 20,000 extra people on the island for full moon the taxi’s would inflate their prices so it would cost 100 baht down to the beach and 100 baht back…it was a rip-off so once again we rented motorbikes 300 baht for 2 days and saved on taxi’s.

The 3 nights were crazy and all I can say is that I did not sleep much but the days were just as tiring but fun. The first day I got split from everyone and no one’s phones were working on the islands, so I went riding around and ended up hiking 2 km up to a viewpoint once again with no camera with me. I eventually ran into a few people at Koh Ma which is kind of like an island off of Koh Phangan but there is a sand bar which allows you to walk across to it. And then we all went to Malibu Beach. After the 3 nights were over there was a long journey back it started around noon by boat and ended by bus in Bangkok at 5 am Monday followed by class at 9am. Great.