Christmas on Koh Tao

From about half way down the mainland of the Thai peninsula we took a 'fast cat' ferry for the 75km ride to the tropical island of Koh Tao (21 sq km in size). The 90 minute ride turned into 3 hrs thanks to some wave action that sent not a few passengers over the side with plastic bags. Luckily Lori and I, the old salty dogs that we are managed to avoid that most embarrassing fate!

So this was Christmas eve and it truly is a weird experience to see some resorts trying to do their best of Christmas celebrations and lights in such a tropical environment. In the end you need to be with a community of family and friends to really get into the Christmas spirit and so the day passed rather uneventfully for us. We even avoided the Christmas dinner...turkey and stuffing just seem too out of place here, so we opted for BBQ fish served at tables on the beach at low tide. I think I could get into this kind of dining more often!

So on first landing, we stayed in a simple room in the resort laden stretch of the main beach. The resorts are shoulder to shoulder and it is crowded. At high tide, the water laps up to the edge of the resort front restaurants as shown below. It is very relaxing to eat lounging at a table with this as your view!



By the way, I should mention that I brought along a little pocket PC and it has a few games loaded on it. This has saved my butt a few times by distracting Lori when she is getting a little cranky from long bus rides or from just putting up with this husband of hers 24x7!.

But kidding aside...one of the games on it is chess and she is becoming quite the little chess player. She has now beaten me once and in the current game has me on the ropes again. You can see her below crouched over the little machine scheming her next move!.


The next day we rented a scooter to check out other parts of this very hilly island and came up with a new place to stay. The "OK Bungalows". Very simple cabins built on a rocky shore at the edge of a quiet bay, with the waves washing around rocks below and snorkelling steps from our front door. Here's the view from the veranda of our simple little cabin.



And the view from another angle through the window as taken from bed...

OK, that's all the photos of Koh Tao for now...in fact we have had mostly overcast and some rain in the 3 days we've been here so it hasn't appeared the most photogenic.

Today is relax, read, internet day and we have to decide whether we want to enroll in a 3.5 day diving course. This is what this island is famous for...apparently the 2nd most diving certifications of any place in the world are done here. But after a couple of snorkelling sessions off the beach I 'd say the water visibility doesn't seem that great...i think because they are on the tail end of the windy, rainy season and the water is still kind of stirred up. Also if its not going to get sunny anytime soon, then perhaps we should wait to do any diving until both these 2 conditions improve.

Well, we are pretty lucky when these are the only things we have to worry about.

Hope that winter isn't treating any of you too harshly back up there in the northern hemisphere. That's all for now.

John and Lori