25th April 2015 - Earth Day ResultsI

So Earth Day rubbish has been weighed and the money counted. 

It was amazing to see the Koh Tao community come together in this quest to cleanup the island and to raise the much needed funds for Chad's ongoing treatment.

The community of Koh Tao raised a monumental - 712,080 THB !!!!

This is made up from 278 divers on the cleanup dive, 2,688 raffle tickets, food and drinks raised 73,450 THB
Donations, including money raised for heads being shaved totaled 45,320 THB and the games raised 9,810 THB

A huge amount of rubbish was collected on the land cleanup, this was not weighed but the island is looking beautiful and clean and that is what is important.

The rubbish collected on the underwater cleanup totalled 1,254 kg of which Crystal/Eco Koh Tao collected 149.05kg

So a massive achievement for the environment, for the community and of course for Chad funding.

On another note, Simon finally received his Birthday package from Rosie ...it only took a few months to get here, but it was worth the wait :-D

22nd April 2016 - Earth Day

The last few weeks have been pretty full on helping with the 'Earth Day 2016' getting the Koh Tao community to join in a day of fund raising and conservation all in the name of a great conservationist, a friend member of the Koh Tao community Chad Scott.

Chad has worked on a huge variety of conservation projects on Koh Tao, both on land and underwater. He has given the community of Koh Tao so much and it will be an honor to be able to give back by helping raise funds for his much needed hospital treatments which his medical insurance didn't cover.

Chad was very unfortunate not only to contract Leukemia that has changed and threatened his life but when his insurance company informed him that they would not cover Leukemia, he was put in a position of having to rely on help from others. This is not an easy thing to do for anyone.  So hence the fundraiser.

More than 40 dive centers joined in with the island-wide clean-up, with 20 of these donating the use of their dive boat!    Each boat did 2 cleanup dives and a record all of the rubbish collected was taken and given to the PADI Project AWARE Dive For Debris program.

In the evening, everyone ventured down to he Hacienda and Koh Tao Leisure Park who hosted the evenings activities with variety of food stalls,  fairground games and ending with a top prize raffle with 'Bundles' of amazing prizes.

The over spill!

18th April 2016

Today we got up early, packed a few bits and pieces as we were on the early Seatran boat to Koh Samui to extend our visa's by another month.    While Si confirmed our tickets, I popped to Zest and bought coffee and water for our journey.

On arrival at Samui, we were kindly picked up by Dave and taken back to his hotel Cocooning where we unpacked what little we had and after catching up with emails/work, Simon went off to hire a bike so we could drive to the immigration office. As it had been closed for nearly a week due to Songkran, we expected it to be pretty busy but luckily Simon had prepared all the necessary paperwork which made our life very easy.  It was just a matter of queuing, paying and waiting.    THANK YOU SI!!

After our passports were stamped, the waiting game over, we stopped into a few main food stores, had a look around (sad but when you can't do it, you want to do it) lapped up the air-con and bought cheese for a friend and a pair of new flipflops for Simon as his were stolen.

Tonight we're off to the cinema to see 'Jungle book'

13th April 2016

Happy Songkran everyone!!

For those of you who don't know what Songkran is , its basically a massive water fight that may last hours, days depending where you are, celebrating the Thai New Year.  It represents purification and washing away all of their sins and bad luck.  People who have moved away usually return home to be with their elders and loved ones.   Here on Koh Tao, usually everyone goes out and buys the biggest water gun they can find or jumps in the back of a taxi and drives up and down throwing ice cold water over everyone that's lined up on the road.   It's great fun if you've not experienced it before.

So, the last few days Simon has been teaching a 'Self Reliant' course with a German lady  ..her English wasn't so good, so in the beginning, Carsten helped with translation but he ended up being sick on the 2nd day and she seemed to get on ok and is now very proud of herself.

I on the other hand have been taking the DMT's out on eco dives.  As there is about 35-40 DMT's at the moment and taking 15 or so at one time is too many.   It's like trying herding cats, they're not a bad bunch but I'm definitely going to limit the numbers in the future :-D  

Stan, Simon's grasshead man

This is Stan, just one of Si's brilliant birthday prezzies.  His hair has taken a long time to grow.  I think he may be due for a hair cut soon.   It's really sweet as Simon waters him everyday and has a little chat :-D


One of the highlights this week was seeing Terry the Turtle swim right through my group of  dive master trainees.  I could have sworn that he slowed down, looked straight at me and winked :-D     Iona, you would have laughed  ...such a cheeky turtle :-D

9th April 2016

I hope this blog finds everyone well.

We've both been teaching non stop,  Simon with Open Water and Advanced and I've been doing back to back Reef Check courses, taking DMT's out for beach/dive site clean ups, drupella snail collections and all sorts.  So it has been pretty full on.

Coral eating snail collection

DMTs doing the beach clean up

Nothing out of the ordinary has happened.   We've been involved with an Earth Day fundraiser, which is happening on the 22nd April, all proceeds will go to a chap called Chad Scott who was recently diagnosed with leukemia. Chads been on the island for years, the heart and soul of land/marine conservation and is about to face his second lot of chemotherapy.   So it has been good to see everyone coming together.

I can't wait to have some time off with Simon to hike, swim and cycle.