Diving with Buddha View in Koh Tao, Thailand

Sawaty kah! Hello! 

I have been MIA for far too long, sorry about that. As I mentioned, I'm posting a bunch of posts now that I finally have solid internet connection. 

We have been in Koh Tao for about 4 days, and I have absolutely loved it! The vibe on the island is super laid-back, and pretty much everyone that lives or stays here is diving. That's my jam ;) 

I decided to do my advanced open water course with Buddha View Diving, and highly recommend them. They are not the largest diving school on the island, but they sure can deal with a high volume of students - there are packs of people doing their open water, advanced, dive masters, instructor course and straight up fun dives. 

I was able to do some pretty awesome dives during my time here. I went on a wreck dive, to see the sunken Suttaka ship which was a US patrol ship during WWII that was given to the king of Thailand as a gift and he decided to sink it near Koh Tao to help develop the diving tourism in the area. Smart guy ;) 

I also went on the regular deep dive to 30m and a buoyancy control skill dive (we did some awesome 'swim throughs' which essentially means swimming through an enclosed place in the coral. Turns out I love swimming through things...wrecks, corals, caves, it's an awesome feeling to look around and be totally surrounded by new and exciting things). 

My favourite dive was the night dive. I did one while in Dahab, Egypt but I didn't really enjoy it since my mask was fogged up and I was super disoriented and worried that I was going to hit the sea urchins on the bottom - they come out at night, and man are there spikes ever big and scary! 

Anywho, I am SO glad that I went for another night dive here. It went super smoothly and I felt kind of like I was floating in space. Some people had the blue flashlights, which light up certain coral and fish in neon colours. So cool! 

The best thing though? Luminescent plankton. We covered our torches at one point and waved our hands around. It was like fairy dust, for reals. I was in pure bliss mode. My instructor made fun of me because I kept doing it throughout the dive, but I couldn't help it! 

We surfaced a bit far from the boat, so we swam back on our backs while gazing at the stars. Epic. 

One dive site that you MUST check out if ever you go diving here is Chumphon. It had the best visibility of all the daytime sites and had amazing coral with huge schools of tessler fish and barracudas. It was so much fun to swim through them. 

I realize now how spoiled I was diving in Egypt: every site was gorgeous with an overload of beautiful coral to look at and great visibility. The 'vis' here isn't so awesome, with dust particles all over the place, and you learn to appreciate it when you see each and every fish or crab or whatnot. 

Overall, I'm so happy that I decided to go for my advanced, and I'm excited to do more wreck dives in the future. 

The diving scene here is awesome, everyone is so friendly and it's easy to strike up a conversation with anyone since everyone has something in common: the love of the depths of the ocean. 

Divers also know how to party. A couple of instructors graduated while we were here so there was a huge party at the Buddha Bar where they did their 'snorkel test'. Aka wore a blacked out mask and got a bucket full of alcohol donated by people in the crowd down their snorkel. Fun times were had by all ;) 

Everyone was still up at the crack of dawn to get their equipment together and head out on the boat for a full day of diving. All in a days work, I suppose. 

I understand how people get sucked into this sport. And spend all their life savings on it haha. Will I do my dive masters? Maybe instructor course? Not 100% yet, but it sure is appealing ;)

Northern Koh Phangan Island, Thailand

Hi friends! 

Well, it's been a few days since I've had any wifi connection, so you're about to be bombarded with a couple of blog posts all at once. 

It's like Christmas come early, n'est-ce pas? I thought so ;)

Bags piled high on the ferry ride to Koh Phangan

Anywho, we spent an awesome day on Koh Phangan Island (also written Koh Pha Ngan...seen them both equally as much, so I don't even know which one is correct and which ones not...) 

We took a ferry from Big Buddha Beach Pier on Koh Samui Island early-ish in the morning, and we even saw some of the friends we made at the full moon party. Kind of like we were switching places. 

We did a pit stop at the sunrise beach, Haad Rin Nok, where the party was so I could take a look in the off chance that I could find my glasses. 

I asked a couple of guys if there was some sort of lost and found, and they started laughing. 'I think what's lost is now stolen, ya?' 

Le sad trombone. 

I wandered up and down the beach a bit, and then decided to call it quits. We jumped into a taxi truck going towards the north side of the island. The island is way bigger than I expected, with lots of hilly roads with little towns and palm tree groves on either side. Totally stunning. 

Ridin' in the truck

We made it to our hotel in about 40 minutes, dumped our stuff and high-tailed it to the beach. We wanted to see the little Koh Ma island, which you can walk to on a sand bar from the beach. 

We hadn't eaten since breaky, so we stopped off at the cutest little restaurant - Grandma Langs. 

She told us Koh Ma was 'maybe 1km' away, which seemed manageable. Except it was all uphill. I kid you not. I'm all about the hiking, but we decided to flag down a couple of people on scooters so we could make the most of the remaining sunshine on the beach. 

We hitched a ride with twins from Argentina, who were with other friends. We made it to Koh Ma in no time - and it was beautiful! 

We walked over to the small island and hung out for a bit with our Argentinian friends, then we got a ride back to Thong Sala to check out the night market. 

My phone was dead at that point, so I didn't snap any pics, but Cyn and I wandered about - we've learned to do a full tour and take in all our options and then choose instead of going for the first delicious thing you see (I mean, it all looks awesome). We settled on a full fish ( head and fins intact, just the way I like it), some curry and rice. We also tried some Thai desserts, we took a Thai girls advice who was also buying some. Interesting textures, but good! 

We walked around the market some more, looking at the different stalls selling clothes and trinkets, then hopped back in a taxi truck. The people who were already inside were stopping at Amsterdam bar, so we begged our driver to wait 5 minutes while we went to look around. 

Amsterdam Bar is supposedly the best place to watch the sunset, and it's true: it's on the top of a mountain (a trek and a half to get to) and there's an infinity pool that overlooks the whole top of the island. 

We asked our driver to meet us back at 7:30am the next morning, and he seemed to understand - there was a lot of head nodding involved - but he was a no show this morning. 

We started to panic a bit - we had been told to show up to our ferry to Koh Tao early since they will leave as soon as they are full enough - and finally begged a passing truck to take us to the pier. 

Gotta love the kindness of strangers sometimes. There had been nothing but scooters passing by us that early in the morning, and every one had two passengers. I hope life is kind to that man, he was a life saver! 

We're on the Sea Tran ferry now (I would recommend taking Lompraya instead - there were about 3 of those that showed up and left while we were waiting for ours, late as usual) en route to Koh Tao to do our diving courses! I convinced Cyn to do her open water, and I'm getting my advanced :)

Excited to go diving again, and this time in even warmer water...swoop!!

Chaweng Beach on Koh Samui Island, Thailand

Although we had hoped to stay on Koh Pha Ngan the whole time, I'm glad that we stayed on Koh Samui Island. 

We stayed on Chaweng beach, which is supposedly the nicest beach on the island. You could keep walking along the beach for a loooong time, passing by beautiful little hotels, restaurants and bars. 

If ever you're in the area, definitely check out i) The Library - it's an expensive place, but happy hour has two-for-one drinks and it has a great vibe and beautiful landscaping; ii) Ark Bar, which is a chill bar on the beach and turns into quite the party pretty much every night - a good place to meet people; and iii) the massage huts at the right end of the beach (when you're looking out at the water). 

I would also recommend eating at the little Thai cuisine places along the first street that runs parallel to the water, and try to find the night market - it's on a side street, but has amazingly cheap and delicious eats! 

Night market 

I would def suggest doing a couple of nights on Koh Samui, it's a super relaxing and beautiful place. If you book early enough (which we didn't, unfortunately) you can find some pretty reasonable huts on the beach or a cheap hostel off the beach. 

Or splurge at a higher-end place. 

Either way, there's plenty of corn on a stick to go around ;)

My Favourite Temple in Bangkok, Thailand: Wat Pho

Wat Pho (pronounced 'Wat Po', I think) is hands down my favourite temple that I've seen in Bangkok, and considering the amount of time that I've been here (which is not long at all) I have seen a surprising amount. Which clearly makes me an instant pro at these things. Not. 

Striking an Anna pose ;)

Either way, if you don't feel like seeing an overload of temples, I would say that you HAVE to put Wat Po at the top of your list of sights to see in Bangkok. 

The grounds themselves are breathtaking, with buildings decked-out in beautiful carving, bright colours and gold. There are also huge stupas, which are impossible to capture in one picture. The detailing and painting on them are so intricate and wonderful. 

Wat Po has the most images of Buddha in one place in all of Thailand. They are all over the place, and mostly painted gold or they have been covered in gold squares. 

There are other statues on the grounds, and a bunch of different doorways. We made it our personal challenge to take a picture at almost every single one we passed by, they were so cool! 

The pièce de resistance, however, was the reclining Buddha. I'm pretty sure it's the biggest Buddha statue inside a temple in Thailand, but I could be very wrong. Either way, it is nearly impossible to capture the whole thing in one picture. 

Just look at that face! So large, and so serene. 

There are also columns along the length of it, which makes it even more challenging to take it the full statue at once. 

We went around snapping pictures like mad men, along with the rest of the gaggle of tourists, of the Buddha itself, the gorgeous paintings along the walls and ceiling, and the metal pots at the back side of the Buddha where people would pick up coins and drop them one by one back into the pots to make a fresh clinking sound. 

The feet were covered in mother of pearl designs, which I didn't expect. 

We left the temple and sat down, decked out in our green robes since we showed up wearing tank tops and shorts. 

We decided that we were so focused on taking pictures, that we didn't truly feel like we had truly experienced the magnitude of the statue. We decided to do another tour of it sans camera, and I'm so glad that we did! It has such a calming presence. So wonderful. 

The temple was closing, so we took off in search of China Town since we heard that it opens after 6pm, kind of like a night market. 

Turns out we had it confused: China Town closes at around 6pm, so all the stores were boarded up. Le lame sauce. 

We ended up passing by another cool market along the way, though, where we tried some new fruits - we have some new faves but have no idea what their names are haha. There were also a bunch of flower stalls, we think they were for the Buddhist festival this weekend. 

It was getting dark, so I haggled a tuktuk down to 60 baht for a ride back to Khoasan Road to get our bags, get some street food and set up shop with a couple of Changs before heading to the airport. 

Piles of yellow flowers 

 

Mystery flower 

We ended up meeting some people who invited us to a roof bar, where we had our first Thai bucket experience. 

And so began my travel day from hell...but good thing is that I made it to the southern beaches  ;) 

Hope you all have a great day and I'll be back with my recap of the full moon party! Spoiler alert: I survived!!