Our journey to Thailand involved what was to be the first of many trips on the infamous Air Asia. Yes, the rumours are true – the seats are narrower and the leg room is considerably less! Nonetheless we endured the four hour torture to be greeted with a very pleasant surprise on arrival at Bangkok airport, which was realising that Claire had inadvertently booked business class tickets for the flight to Koh Samui! So we headed off to the business class lounge of Bangkok Airways and helped ourselves to the endless supply of pastries, juices and teas as well as catching forty winks before heading to island paradise.
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| Business Class Lounge Luxury |
After the craziness of India, a week of R&R was exactly what we needed. Therefore our first destination on hitting Thailand was the beautiful island of Koh Samui where we duly booked ourselves into a 5 star resort for a week! Well aware of the fact that we were on a backpacker’s budget, we were delighted to find out that breakfast was included in our package at the Impiana Samui resort on Chaweng Noi beach. Understanding that breakfast is indeed the most important meal of the day, we took full advantage of this fact and ate our way through the breakfast buffet each day, thus eliminating the need to have lunch! Our time on Koh Samui was spent in a lazy fashion and included such activities as sleeping, lying in the sun, lying under an umbrella, swimming in the sparkling blue sea, paddling in the sea, strolling along the beautiful beaches, eating and drinking. Claire relived some childhood memories of her trip to Thailand ten years ago, by indulging in some deep-fried ice-cream. And yes, it was as delicious as she remembered! By the time our week was up, we were ready to move on to our next destination, Koh Tao.
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| A room with a view |
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| Enjoying a Samui sunset |
Koh Tao, or Turtle Island is a small island 2 hours north of Koh Samui by ferry. We arrived at our accommodation, Ban’s Diving Centre, and to our delight found out that we were being given a room upgrade as they had no standard rooms left. No complaints here! Our reason for coming to Koh Tao was to do the PADI Open Water diving course, which would take three and a half days. It consisted of three 3 hour theory sessions, a written exam, followed by an afternoon of diving skills in a swimming pool before we were even allowed in the sea. When the time came to actually getting into the sea, the nerves were high. In fact, the first sea-dive did not go well. However, after a quick pep-talk from our fantastic instructors, Mario and Steve, our second dive went really well. By the time we came to our third and fourth dives the following morning, we were so confident that we were even doing somersaults in the water at 18 metres deep. We saw a plethora of sealife including clownfish (Nemo), triggerfish, sea slugs, beautiful and colourful coral, scorpion fish, barracuda and shoals of other fish that we couldn’t possible name. The highlight though was seeing a turtle, which we saw fifteen minutes before our final dive ended. Just seeing this placid and languid creature floating past you made the whole experience so worthwhile.
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| Suited and booted in our diving gear We spent a further three days on Koh Tao and booked ourselves a small bunglow with a great sea view. We didn’t do any further dives but just enjoyed the laid-back nature of the island and continued in the same vein as Koh Samui. Claire developed quite a grá for the island, with its charming beach bars, lovely beaches and narrow streets which were so clean that footwear wasn’t even necessary. Rob was not so enamoured by it. I think having two pairs of flip flops taken from a bar within 7 days might have had something to do with it. Claire’s bright purple €1.50 Dunnes Stores sandles did the job for her! Over the following three days we debated on where our next stop would be and finally decided on Khao Sok National Park.  |
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| Koh Tao Beach |
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| A Room with a View too |
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