Koa Toa is an overnight bus ride away from Bangkok. The same type of trip I swore I’d never do again after Australia. But this time is was a little better; the bus’s seats reclined quite a bit. The trade off was that the bus arrived ahead of schedule by one hour (at 5am). From there we had to wait at the docks for 2 hours for a high speed catamaran. This is the way you get to the tropical islands of Thailand. The 9 hour bus ride and 1.5 hour boat ride cost a total of $20 US. Once on the boat, there were many people trying to sell me dive and accommodation packages, but all I could do is think about how good my all day sleep session would be (since I only got 1 hour of sleep on the bus).

While exiting the boat I met a 21 year old guy from San Francisco named Ronnie. His dad was from Israel and his mom’s parents were both from Russia, but don’t let that background fool you into thinking he is some sort of ultra exotic traveler. He grew up in San Mateo (suburb of San Francisco) and went to the same High School as my cousins Laura and Sasha! It may as well have been written, this looks to be the beginning of my next stage of travel, single or few companion based travel.

On this island, and most others in Thailand, there aren’t any hostels. Because of this, you meet people at a bone chillingly slow pace. You see a lot of couples on islands like these. All of the accommodation is set up as 2 person bungalows etc. Even since we have been on this island, we have attempted to meet other groups of people and mostly all that we meet are beautiful pairs of Swedish girls who enjoy (in not so many words) telling us to take a hike J

We went on 2 dives that were very disappointing due to the murky water. This is funny because when looking at the water from the shore, the water looks crystal clear, but once we go to any depth, it seems impossibly murky. When descending my first time into the deep, it felt like someone had turned off my air. Could the guy who checks my tank before I jump in possibly have mistakenly turned my air the wrong way? Did he even have time to turn it all the way off? Either way, it was extremely hard to breath and the deeper I got the harder it got.

Luckily I was second in line going down, so when I was going up I happened to tell a few others that I didn’t have any air. When I got to the surface, I told the boat manager and he said it was probably because I was not used to diving. I told him that I dove two weeks ago and he told me to try the backup breathing regulator. That one worked and the dive instructor came back to the surface to get me again. I breathed fine from my alternate regulator for the rest of the dive. Upon getting back on the boat, the boat manager was venting about 5 feet away from me. “How dare he come onto my boat and blame my equipment. It’s his damn fault for not checking the equipment. I don’t care, get the insurance and sit in the chamber for all I care.” The chamber he was referring to is to counter act the bends, a condition one gets if they rush to the surface, say… if their air was turned off. The company’s name is “Easy Divers” on Koh Tao island Thailand. I would definitely say that this company should be avoided by everyone. It’s really too bad that boat manager (a 39 year old English piece of shit) was having a bad day and all, because when this internet marketer gets a chance to smear his place of work on the internet, he will have something real to complain about J

There are a thousand other dive companies on Koh Tao and a few have been seeing whale sharks recently. I the last one they saw was a little over 19 feet which is a little on the smaller side for a whale shark. Unfortunately, the shark is a very illusive creature and it took more than a little luck to swim with one, even if it is in the season.

I leave you with this video of me twirling fire. Why did I do it? Because Ronnie did it right before me and it didn’t look that hard. As I did it, I remembered how hard it is for me to twirl two things at the same time without hitting myself with at least one of them and I think you can see in the video that I nearly did hit myself with the left one. It was a spontaneous end to a breathless day.

We went back to the bungalow that we were paying $3 a night to stay at. It has a cold water shower which is actually a blessing since the days are about 100 degrees here and the nights are still easily 80 degrees.

And Yes, I’ve redden an elephant in Cambodia through a temple

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