Day 25 - Koh Tao

Today we have a 'Dive site clean up'!    I love doing these  ...basically its a dive but we collect rubbish that's made it's way into the ocean.

Today we're diving off Freedom Beach  ..Crystal Dive has 22 volunteers out on their boat amongst a number of other dive schools. On the boat we're split into small groups of 3/4 divers, given bags to collect rubbish with a pair of scissors if needed to cut any netting tangled up and and then sent off into different directions to hunt for rubbish.

You'll be amazed at what you find.  Batteries, hair & toothbrushes, clothes, fan belts, big ole biscuit tins, rope and loads of netting.  As bags are filled, either one or all of the divers within that group would ascend and call over the longtail boat to collect the bag and empty it for us and then we'd drop back down to collect more.
My biggest find was around 20 or so fanbelts ..I just dont understand why people throw rubbish into the sea.  I suppose they think what the eye doesn't see, doesn't hurt....

Crystal boat was responsible for carrying all the rubbish back to the pier so that we could sort through it in order to get an idea who or what was the biggest offender and possibly take steps into prevention.

Later on we went to 'Dirty Nellys' for a drink, watch the new Open Water students video and then headed back down to Crystal bar where a 'Snorkel Test' was taking place for the 5 newly qualified Dive Masters.
If  you don't remember what this entails, then check out post of  Friday, 3 April 2009

As the mayhem settled and people dispersed, we bumped into Tom (fellow instructor) and his friend Frederica, who's visiting from France.  We chatted for a couple of beers and then headed off home stopping on the way to grab a takeaway as we were starving.

Day 24 - Koh Tao

As usual Simon was already working by the time I got up.  Connection hasn't been great but he's struggling on through.  I made tea and pottered about for a bit.  Heidi popped down to see if we wanted to go snorkelling at 'Shark Bay', as Si was busy I went on my own.   Alan was already down in town having a massage, so Heide drove their jeep down to Crystal so I could pick up my fins and mask, threw them in the boot and then waited in the shade for Alan to turn up.  He parked up his bike and jumped in the jeep and we headed off.

After parking and walking down some monstrous steps, we got our gear on and jumped in.  It wasn't long before we saw some black tip reef sharks, a trigger fish happily munching away (thankfully) and the biggest puffa fish I've seen in a long time. Conditions for snorkelling were perfect.  Black tips were everywhere, I think in one count there were about a dozen or so, nothing compared the 40 which Alan and Heidi saw last week.

I've only been to Shark Bay a couple of times, the first time I only saw a couple but only briefly and the second time, none at all, so seeing so many around me I felt a little nervous and apprehensive that they were going to attack  ...but they were just chilling taking no notice of us at all.  There were couple of times when Heidi and I turned around and one would swim between us  ...Awesome!!
The funniest thing I saw down there was a chaps privates as he attempted to mermaid swm underwater and his trunks ended up around his knees.  I pretended I didn't see and ended up nearly choking with laughter
Two or so hours later, after getting a burnt butt, we swam back and dried ourselves and climbed the humungous steps and clambered in the jeep.

Back home, Si was still working!!

After a 11hr day, Si had finished and we showered and headed out to 'Vibe' for a beer or two and then ended up moving to the 'Fizz' and another beach bar where we met Nathan (Eco man) & Teresa (Dive Master Trainee) for more beer, eco chats and then around 11pm we left to get a takeaway and head home to watch LOST

Jen x

Day 23 - Koh Tao

We woke early and headed down to the ferry terminal around 9am to meet Scott before he caught the 9.30 boat to Koh Samui for the last leg of his journey. After hugs, slaps on the back were exchanged and tears wiped from our cheeks we watched him toodle off down the pier, his head hung low and bag in tow looking back occassionally to see us waving ridiculously with joy ;-D  LOL

Scott, if you're reading this, it's been fabulous to have you here.  We will really miss you XX

On our way home we stopped and picked up a couple of pre-made rolls for lunch as today Si's got to work for most of the day, which isn't gong too well at the moment as one of the program's crashed, his disks to reinstall it are in Mae Haad and would you believe it, it's chucking it down and it doesnt look as though it's going to stop for some time.  Typical!!

Si finally managed to find a fix and carry on working for another few hours before we sat back to watch an episode of Eastenders (does anything cheery ever happen?!)
After quickly showering we headed to 'Dirty Nellys' for the 7pm 'Save Koh Tao' meeting where we discuss what's going on and around the island to help sustain the islands ecology.  Beach Clean ups (land/sea) updates on the Festival which runs on the 20th & 21st March, up and coming projects etc

After the meeting, it was rehersals for the Crystal Horror Picture Show  ...if I havent mention it, we're doing the Timewarp and hopefully getting one of the guys to do the Sweet Transvestite part which is going to be hilarious.  Simons cleverly done the graphics & titles and luckily for us, one of the Dive masters is a choreographer, I think without her we would have wasted hours, maybe days on getting a routine together.  What a talent!  By the end of the night we'd just about covered everything, less the main leading roles. 

After rehearsals, we stopped at 'Cafe Del Sol' for dinner and headed home to watch a couple of episodes of 'Heroes'

Jen x

Day 22 - Koh Tao

Si had been up for an hour at least before I surfaced around 10.40am after another unplanned late night.

We'd invited Scott up for food and a game of pool, then Alan & Heidi joined us and we ended up chatting and playing pool till 1am   ..Scott eventually caught a taxi home after Alans assistance as not many taxi's want to venture up our mountainous hill.

Most of the day was spent in the pool as we hadn't booked to go on any dives and Tina (fellow instructor) was out of the water due to her ear being inflamed so we all just to played around in the pool having doggy paddle races, handstand competions and all that marlarky.

A few hours later we all felt peckish, so decided to go 'Safety Stop' to grab some food.  Si logged onto the internet as usual to do work.  After eating, Tina went home and I popped out with Scott to buy his ferry ticket to Koh Samui for tomorrow morning.    On our return, we got the checkers out and I gave Scott a good thrashing ;-)    We had good intention to go to mini golf when it got a bit cooler but Si received a few more urgent jobs that needed to be done, so we ended up staying.
Scott left around 7pm to get showered and returned an hour later  ..thankfully Si had just about completed all that he all he could, so we had a celebratory beer and headed to Dirty Nelly's for food, before retiring early.

Day 21 - Koh Tao

We're so tired!!

We must have stumbled home around 1.30am and had to be up at 6am in order to be down at Crystal in time to catch the boat as we volunteered to lead fun divers.   We obviously hadn't planned on staying out late, it just ended out that way.  Originally we thought that Scott should experience Sairee by night properly, so started at Choppers' an Aussie bar, loud music, band, sports being played on plasma's everywhere  ..most popular place for newly qualified Open Water Students where things can get very messy.

Then our next port of call was 'Lotus' beach bar. This is one of those bars where it just comes alive at night  ..its got a palm tree leaning right over the sea, people doing fire poi, good upbeat tunes and sell lethal buckets of Samsumg & coke, Vodka & Redbull.    So after bumping into Tina & Carsten who we didnt think were coming out ...the earlish night went out the window.

Anyway, in the morning,  after stopping to get a fried egg sandwich to takeaway, we made it to Crystal in good time &
sat quietly on the boat feeling sorry for ourselves from the lack of sleep & heavy heads :-D
Luckily both of our groups that we took fun diving were very good, so a nice & easy couple of dives at 'South West Pinnacle' and 'Shark Island'

Back on dry land we washed our kit, stamped the fun divers log books with our new funky stamps with our PADI intructor numbers on, then headed to 'Safety Stop' for lunch with Tina & Scott before jumping in  the pool.

Tonight, Scotts coming over and we'll play a few games of pool :-D

Day 20 - Koh Tao

Met with Scott at his hotel, he was busy watching a film in the luxury of his air conditioned room, so we ventured back to Crystal to grab the bike and go for breaky...on the way we bumped into Nathan who was going to Chalok, other end of the island to grab some food, so we decided to go with him, just for a change of scenery.   We both ended up having a jacket spud would you believe with cheese and bean. Very nice indeed :-D

Back at the Crystal we thought it would be an ideal time to catch Matt the Crystal Course Director to film his part in the 'The Rocky Horror Crystal Show' as Si had his camcorder but as we arrived he was just leaving, full of cold  ..sounding terrible.  A real shame but we managed to grab Lob (an instructor) to shoot a B list version in one of the classrooms to test the lighting and work out exactly what Matt would have to do.   Its going to be hilarious!

Running only a hour or so late we met Scott at his hotel and played in the pool.  After a few hours in the pool we felt pretty peckish so went to Cafe Del Sol for a sandwich and drink and then headed home for a shower and change of clothes, ready for a night out in Sairee.

Day 19 - Koh Tao

Today, I was rudely awakened by my phone ringing.... it was the Dive School. They had no-one to teach the Discover Scuba Diving to Scott and since we were instructors, they asked if we could come down to do it ourselves.

So we zoomed down to Crystal, and briefed Scott, before getting him into all the kit and jumping into the pool.

I could tell he was nervous, but Jen and I did a good job of making him feel safe and comfortable. We did the necessary few skill demonstrations, and he repeated them, completing his pool session in relatively quick time.

So, we had an hour spare to grab some food and get our butts to the boat.

Boarding the boat, we showed Scott where things are put etc, and set the kit up for him. We had roll call and the boat left dock for Mango Bay, a dive site at the North end of the island.


Once we had arrived and finished briefing Scott on the dive procedures, we jumped in and went down via the buoy line. Besides a small cough splutter at the beginning, Scott had no troubles... We even managed to find the huge bait ball of Fusiliers, who have apparently been missing for months!

Upon returning to the boat, and completing roll call. The boat moved to Japanese Gardens, when Scott did a free descent with me holding on to him. Jen navigated this dive while I monitored Scott, and we saw lots of things including Triggerfish, Pufferfish, Groupers, Squid, to name a few. Jen navigated perfectly back to the boat, and we all came up with smiles on our face.!

We returned to Mae Haad, and washed our kit etc. Then after a quick game of pool, we headed to Dirty Nelly's as there was an Instructor party being held there, which meant free food!!!



We spent the next few hours putting the world to rights, and headed back home to bed, where we watched the Eastenders live episode....How sad are we?!

SD