Koh Tao - Fish with Wings

25 Dec Koh Tao

Posted at 00:10h in Blog by Mallory 1 Comment

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Travel cost to Koh Tao – Experiment

I had to get to Koh Tao to meet Gina, but I had some time. I thought it would be fun to test whether getting the combined travel tickets you see at every kiosk was comparable to traveling on my own. The kiosks/travel agencies vary slightly in cost, but it’s negligible – varying 50-100B from place to place. The cheapest I found, and the most common price provided was 800B, plus the 100B boat ride to Ao Nang.

So! I took my last long tail boat ride away from Tonsai, very nearly shedding some tears, for 100B. In Ao Nang I caught a Song Tiew taxi to take me to Krabi bus station for 60B. A Song Tiew is one of the trucks with benches built into the back. From there, a public bus to Suratthani was 150B. Then I hunted for a ferry ticket. The bus took me to downtown Suratthani ferry (very important! Downtown, not the other stations) which only has the overnight boats. Perfect. Tickets were 600B, adding up to a grand total of 910B, or exactly the same price as a combo ticket would have been. Ta-da!

I did not have a lot of wait time, except for the ferry which left at 10pm. The bus was spacious and comfortable, while to me the mini-buses the tours use are very tight and small. A lady at the dock also said my ferry ticket would have been only 500B if it hadn’t been a weekend. So it seems if you want the convenience, stop at a kiosk and get a combo ticket. If you want the adventure, go yourself and it should cost about the same! I’m also not sure if the tours use the overnight ferry or not, but it did save me the cost of lodging for a night. Double bonus! The return ticket to Chumphon from Koh Tao on our way out was even cheaper – an overnight ferry for 400B.

Suratthani

I got in and went straight to the water to get my ticket. I ran into two other travelers trying to make it to the islands, but they wanted to get there on one of the speed boats to arrive the same day. Unfortunately, the downtown dock only has overnight ferries, and the private boat owners were already closed for the day. I was looking for price, not timing, but when another traveler said he has done this 15 times and 600B is the price I decided to go for it.

One of the guys I met got the ferry as well and we spent some time exploring the food carts. No one spoke any English, and a lot of them didn’t understand my attempts at Thai, either. (And everyone giggles when I say aroy/aloy when I get delicious food. What the hell, dude, it’s a compliment!) It made for an interesting experience.

My new friend, David, had spent some time in Southeast Asia before and he explained what some of the local fruits were at the stands and we tried…dun dun duuunnnnn…BUGS!! Specifically, silk worms and crickets. Yum! My personal opinion – the little crickets and silk worms are delicious. The bigger crickets kind of taste how they smell and have a less pleasant texture.

I didn’t see much of the town, but by the water it looks pretty ghetto during the day. At night, though, the whole area lights up with food carts and fruit stands. The ferry was loaded up with things the island locals need, and left around 10pm. The lodging was just one big room with small bunks for each passenger. No privacy, and my bag didn’t fit in the storage area, but I slept nearly the whole way and so it goes.

Koh Tao Island

Docked at 6am and wasted some time until the hostels opened so I could find a place to stay. I was almost immediately nabbed by a Thai man with a silk bandana and long, wild hair. This is Joey, he’s amazing. I was, of course, skeptical of his call, but he asked where I was going and when I said Hostel he told me to hop on his bike and he would take me to one in my price range. He took me to White Jail Hostel, which smelled a bit mildewy, but looked clean and was the same price as all the other hostels. He also said if I stayed there he would take me on a tour of the island for free.

Psh. DONE.

So I hopped back on the bike after checking in and basically just came along everywhere he was going on his day off. We stopped at a beautiful area of beach watching the tide, at a cabana-style bar when it started raining, drove through roads and alleys across the island, and grabbed lunch somewhere local (and delicious). We also stopped at a place called High Bar, where he said his brother works. We got about 3/4 of the way up this very, very steep hill when his bike started slowing down…it slowed down so much that I hopped off the back and ran after him the rest of the way. We hung out and played cards for a few hours, and on our way back down the hill he says, ‘hope we ok, I only have one brake.’ 😳

Joey is a character – a total hippy, he never wears shoes, performs all sorts of odd jobs from tattoo artist to jeweler to moto and boat taxi driver to diving centers, and has this wild 1970s look/hair. He’s very generous and speaks great English, so you can actually have a conversation together. I asked him all sorts of questions. It was an adventurous and relaxing day, and an awesome welcome to the island.

Me and Joey

Gina and Scuba Diving!

GINA IS HERE!!!! She arrived the very next morning, and I was so ecstatic to see her! She is truly one of my favorite people. We were both giddy with excitement, and spent some time catching up. She has been on her own incredible adventures for the last month in India while visiting her brother. We are super stoked to spend this entire month together!

We checked into Crystal Dive for our PADI scuba dive class, which includes lodging during the course. Day 1 was all videos and quizzes. Day 2 was a pool session with our instructor, Dirk. Talk about information overload! Day 3, though…we had our first ocean dives!! Two training dives where we mostly did exercises, but also got to explore a bit under water. Gina is so hooked (get it?? 😆), and was already talking about continuing training after this. Day 4 we had two more dives and more exploring.

So fresh and full of hope! The problem we had was that a storm had come through recently, cooling the weather drastically and bringing very choppy waves and poor visibility under water. Like zero to two meters poor… Funny story – Gina, Haley, and I were a buddy team for our fourth dive. The boys were following our instructor, and we were to follow them. The entire time we are right on the boys’ heels, literally being kicked by their flippers because that was the only way we could keep them in sight.

About 18 minutes into the dive Haley motions to me. We are all holding hands and I see she’s about to run into some coral, so I start veering left thinking that is what she is trying to tell me. Suddenly I feel something tugging at my air supply, but I can’t turn. When I can look around again, I see Haley twisting and jerking away from me. I had lost her hand and reached for her, but in an instant she was out of sight, heading away and upwards toward the surface.

I turned to look at Gina with wide eyes. Pretty sure they conveyed my feelings well enough… Sort of a ‘WTF just happened oh my goodness I lost her’ look. We looked ahead. The boys were long gone in the murky water. We waited for a few seconds looking around, but it was obvious our party had little chance of reuniting, so we headed up to the surface. It turns out that Haley’s snorkel had gotten caught on my air supply, and while removing it she shot away from us. She got a nice little coral gash when she was kicking away, but otherwise was fine and luckily surfaced very near our boat.

Getting cleaned up Just imagine swimming around in the ocean not being able to see your instructor, anything, or anyone else! More frustrating than scary, honestly. We still decided to stay to complete our advanced PADI training. Conditions may be bad, but if we can learn to swim and navigate in this shit, we are going to crush it anywhere else we go!

PADI Certified

The advance open water was so much more fun! Dirk was sick, so we worked with Youri and the dives were a lot less work and a lot more fun. Visibility was still terrible, but we got to identify some fish, flip through hoops and play games. On day 2 we saw a lot more fish, and even a moray eel and a sea snake! We are now certified and ready to dive around the world!

Crystal Dive Koh Tao was a really great company to learn through. Everyone was helpful and positive and very knowledgeable. It was awesome to hear everyone’s different story and learn why they love scuba diving. They are doing a lot to help the reef, including organizing beach and underwater clean-ups. They also started the ‘junkyard’ site, which is a now popular dive spot made from recycled trash. They made the junk ocean friendly and now use it as structure for coral transplant and regrowth as well as for fish habitat. It’s now a dive site used by most local agencies that reduces diver impact in the area.

Now we move on to the mainland – On to another adventure! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Day!

Koh Tao Expenses

Transport: 1,310B ($39.90)

Lodging: 300B ($9.14)

Food: 2,400B ($73.10)

Alcohol: 780B ($23.76)

Activities: 17,450B ($531.53)

Phone Plan: 500B ($15.23)

Misc: 60B ($1.83)

=22,800B ($694.50)

You may be wondering why I log my expenses so religiously as I’m traveling. I’ve been asked this many times when I’m jotting down the cost of dinner or tracking another beer with a fellow traveler. Have you been looking at my expenses, though? Seeing it in passing after reading my story and thinking, “wow, that’s not so bad.”

Because that is what I want you to see! People make extended travel out to be some horribly expensive and absolutely impossible scenario, but the truth of it is much different. I lived for an entire month in another country for half of what I was spending in the United States! I want you to see where and how I’m spending my money so that you can see how you might be able to do something like this too.

I was terrified of changing my life and traveling with no future or job in line. Now that I’m here, it’s easy. It feels natural. I have some volunteer opportunities ahead and potential work. I’m not worried about my future. I can focus on the here and now. Because money is not as big of a deal as I always made it out to be.