Feb 29th, 2008
Diving our way down to Malay
There are so many beautiful island to visit in Thailand it’s hard to figure out just which ones you should go to when you only have a few weeks. You need a reason to go from one to the next. Some choose the full moon, others the beaches or rock climbing, we chose diving.
Our first stop was spent on the tiny island of Ko Tao, once an underdeveloped little dot at the end of Samui and Pang Nang it has now become completely over run with hundreds of dive operators but it is stunning. For the first time since leaving home 5 months ago we slept in the same bed for more than 3 nights. Bliss. Unloading everything we had in our bags was very therapeutic and we made a little home in our hut near the beach – a refreshing change from continuously moving on every couple of days and at last we were on the beach.
I learnt to dive, and both of us took our advanced diving courses too with the help of the lovely Alison and super cool Rick. Helen has decided that she is now a fish and we spent most of out time underwater, diving 3 or 4 times a day.
The whole geeky underwater world has consumed us, we both have dive computers (because that’s cool!) and we can now tell our Scorpion Fish from our Stone Fish no problem! We missed the Whale Shark sadly but there are more opportunities ahead of us so we’ve not lost hope.
From Ko Tao we dived the mighty Similan Islands off the coast of Ko Lak, a town which was devastated by the Tsunami in 2004. The police patrol boat sitting on the side of hill about 2 km inland serves as reminder to the residents of that horrifying day a few years ago. There’s a small museum which recalls the figures of casualties and the devastation left in its wake all over South East Asia. The locals now get very twitchy at the slightest tremor, of which there was one whilst we were there.
Nearly every street corner has a new signpost directing people to the nearest Tsunami evacuation point and the Thai government has re-built Ko Lak at an amazingly fast rate. There were all sorts of other not-so-nice things that appeared to have happened in the aftermath of the Tsunami like looting but, probably worse was the squabbling and disagreements which took place about whose land was whose once the waters had receded.
We didn’t see anything specifically but heard that there were a lot of people who lost not only their worldly possessions but also the land they once owned too. In most cases just sucked up by the wealthy landowners ether side of their plots. 5 star hotels are still re-building whilst others have just simply been left to rot without the finances to re-build. All this in the wealthiest of the countries which was hit. I dread to think how things have unfolded in Sumatra and other parts of Indonesia which is significantly poorer, less well developed and has less of a tourist industry to protect.
Next, we took a bus and boat to Ko Lanta, a huge island just a few kilometers from the west coast near Phuket and Phi Phi to dive two rocks off its coast which were amazing. Dive Hin Daeng and Hin Mouang were full of life and crystal clear waters. Others in our group saw Manta Ray however the beautiful underwater beast has remained elusive to us – we’re still searching.
Our next stop was an island we thought might be a little more remote and not so popular due to its slightly less accessible location off the very south west coast of Thailand, Ko Lipe. How wrong we were. Lipe is only about 3 km square with a mere 700 local inhabitants but it felt like there were 10000 tourists on this little piece of paradise. We struggled to find a place to stay the first night after trudging up and down the beach with our backpacks in search of any one with room at the inn. After finally a night in one place we kayaked around the entire island and discovered a quieter little beach around the back with one small resort called the Porn Resort – no nothing dodgy about it, just a great name!
Every place we’ve visited in Thailand after leaving Bangkok has rained – so, for anyone thinking we are living life in the sun you are very wrong. Lipe was no exception and everyone kept telling us “the monsoon should have finished by now”. We are so bored of hearing that line. Lipe tipped it down for a couple of days, we had only one day of sun which was lovely but we needed more.
It’s farewell to Thailand from us and our next stop is Kuala Lumpur (KL to the locals) the Malaysian capital, home to the mighty Petronas Towers.
Thailand can’t be visited in one trip, you’d need one life time just to get under the surface of it’s diverse culture from the big cities to the hill tribes and islands. I’ve been here 3 times now and still haven’t been to the far remote areas of the northern or the southern states which are struggling with themselves for political independence. It’s an adventure paradise for anyone on any budget to exploit, there’s something for everyone and I hope we come back again one day and try to see some of the more remote areas of the country.