March 14th- Heather, Michelle and I loaded an early morning bus to begin out 2 months of travels. It has been over 2 months since my last blog so you should be all caught up. BUT since I haven’t blogged in so long I have many stories to tell. I suggest you pace yourself and before work each morning get your coffee or tea and read a chapter of my 2 month travels.
Our 5 hour bus took us to the Udon Thani airport where we boarded our first plane in 6 months; arrival town, Phuket (one of Thailand’s most well known beaches). Entering the Phuket greeting area came as a culture shock and gave the three of us a taste of what it will be like to return home. We saw many fralangs (white foreigners), the first white people other than the 15 other WorldTeach volunteers we’ve seen in months and many Thai people shouting at us in English (the first Thai people to know enough English to shout at us fluently). Overwhelmed we made it by taxi to our hotel and out to dinner where the menus were in English and western food was served. “Toto we got swept up by one huge tornado and we are far far away from Kansas. Can we go back home to our middle of nowhere rice fields?”
Fortunately we only had a night stay in Phuket (grossest beach town ever) and made our way to Koh Tao. In order to get there we took a 7 hour bus to Surathani, went through the most spectacular national park, met 3 German guys along the way, and gave little kids sour worms and watched their faces pucker. One little boy enjoyed playing with us so much that his giggles were actually high pitched screams and he got a little wild once and bit my hand. The other bus riders must have loved us!
From Surathani we loaded an overnight ferry (like the spirit of Ethan Allen) and headed to the tiny island of Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand. We met a new friend, TJ, over a bucket of worms in the luggage keeping room and enjoyed a late night of playing Skip-Bo. On the boat we were all given our own little pads to sleep on lined up spooning your neighbor. My spooning buddy was a petite Thai girl who enjoyed shoving her knees into my back the entire night. Once in Koh Tao we met up with 3 other WorldTeach friends who traveled to the island from other places and a Canadian Renada (they picked her up on the boat like we picked up TJ). Then we found the scuba dive company we wanted to use, New Way Divers. A guy Tom (the only other American) from our ferry was doing his advanced scuba training with them. He got us a free ride to their shop and set us up with a huge discount on top of the already low price to get certified on the island. Koh Tao is known to be one of the cheapest yet highly qualified places to get scuba certifies in the world.Due to rains we fit all of our classroom work into one day, leaving the following 2 days for our pool training and 3 dives. The pool training freaked me out and I didn’t really enjoy the feeling of breathing through the octopus under the water. That afternoon we made our way to the boat and had our first open water dive with further training. This was a much better experience and after the dive we all came up with jaws on the floor. We were speechless at how spectacular life under the sea is. This was a shock to our guides considering the visibility was about 2 meters. AND our friends Heather and Michelle got lost at sea at the bottom of the ocean and had to make their own way to the surface.
The next morning we woke up about 5:00 to meet our guides at the shop for a 6:00 dive departure. One of the perks to New Way Divers is that they do an early morning dive to avoid all the other companies. Our first dive was a little better than the day before and we were able to see more fish. We also got to test out different ways to enter the water: free fall backwards and James Bond where you jump off the edge of the boat doing a summersault with all your heavy scuba gear on.So much for me saying I would never scuba dive. I absolutely loved the experience and can’t wait for more dive adventures in the future. Our next stop on our travel plans was a 3 day 3 night live aboard scuba trip so I was eager for more dives. I am so glad that my brother convinced me to scuba dive because it was as amazing as he made it out to be.
At night we would try the variety of restaurants, slowly branching out from Thai food to the western restaurants, even eating burgers one night. After dinner we would go out to one beach bar called Lotus bar where we would sit on cushions on the beach, watch the full moon rise and watch fire twirling shows. They would bring their fire balls into the crowds and twirl the fire over our heads or in front of our faces. They even tossed the fire from one person to the next over the entire crowd of people. We went at the perfect time to the island because many people had left to go to a nearby island that apparently has huge full moon parties. It was a wonderful way for us to meet local people and enjoy a more laid back atmosphere than the crazy party life of western backpackers.During the day when we weren’t scuba diving we would enjoy the town walking around to the shops and visiting our favorite bakery that sold amazing pastry sandwiches for lunch. We also spent many hours tanning ourselves, making friends with the ladies who were selling things on the beach (trying to continue practicing our Thai), and enjoy the cool waters that were calm and perfect for wadding in the middle of the hot day.
We spent about 5 days here before we had to drag ourselves off the island for another adventure. We really enjoyed the island so much that it was hard to say good-bye to both the beautiful place and the many new friends we made. It also meant splitting up with the other volunteers. Our (Heather, Michelle and me) overnight ferry was even more eventful than the first. This time we were on an old wooden boat with smaller pads and a heavy rain storm. Old wooden boat + rain storm= Heather, Michelle, and Rita sleeping in puddles of rain. It will be a ride that goes down in the memory book of laughs! And the first of many more wet stories to happen in the following weeks.
We spent about 5 days here before we had to drag ourselves off the island for another adventure. We really enjoyed the island so much that it was hard to say good-bye to both the beautiful place and the many new friends we made. It also meant splitting up with the other volunteers. Our (Heather, Michelle and me) overnight ferry was even more eventful than the first. This time we were on an old wooden boat with smaller pads and a heavy rain storm. Old wooden boat + rain storm= Heather, Michelle, and Rita sleeping in puddles of rain. It will be a ride that goes down in the memory book of laughs! And the first of many more wet stories to happen in the following weeks.
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