Pardise by the Dashboard Light

I left Chiang Mai because I had spent too much time in the North. I also figured that because of all my accidents something was telling me to get a move on. My destination was Koh Tao (Turtle Island) in the South of Thailand to do some diving since it's the cheapest place in the World to learn here. I estimated it would take me 3 days to ride the 1200 odd km

650 Km later that day I arrived in Ayythara, not far from Bangkok. I could have made the capital but the crazy traffic would have hampered many of my efforts to get anywhere. I found a small guesthouse and ate and slept to continue the onslaught south in the morning.

The next day my GPS persisted in taking me straight through the centre of Bangkok. The street signs didn't help since they all also directed me to Bangkok or told me to take U-turns to places I had already been.

I was nervous after my previous accidents, especially in traffic, always expecting someone to do something stupid. I used the horn a fair bit which probably upset and surprised the Thai's. I was also rather uneasy on the bike but made myself do little things to get back the confidence I had lost. Just riding over a kerb or doing a U-turn helped. Little things, baby steps.
Somehow I made it through the chaos and was on the highway heading South. Another 600km later and I arrived in Chumporn where I could find the night ferry.

I spend a good 2 hours trying to find the right boat which could take me and the bike. I asked drunken fishermen which way and how far to the boat. To be fair they were highly accurate on the directions, they just didn't realise that I couldn't get my bike onto a speedboat.

Just as it was getting dark I found the right boat. It left at 11pm that night. I headed to a restaurant to wait it out. Upon my return I bought a ticket for myself and the bike and was ushered down the ramp to park on the deck. This was the main supply boat for the island. It was filled with crates of beer, cola, food of every type, 10 tonnes of building sand, breezeblocks, generators and even a house. I anxiously watched 2 fuel trucks reverse onto the boat. If anything happened on the trip across we would be going up, then down pretty fast.

Jam Packed.

I expected to have to spend a night on the deck of the boat but amazingly there was a dorm with bunk beds. I managed to get some sleep before we arrived at 6am. I was turfed off the boat with my bike feeling rather groggy and confused.

I rode around the island as the sun rose to get acquainted and to take a photo of the dawn, something I usually try very hard to avoid seeing. I snuck into a 5 star resort where I picked up a couple of stray dogs for a change then realised I was on the wrong side of the island to see the dawn. I took a photo of a cloud and some crabs instead.

I met up with Dan who I had met on 4000 Islands in Laos. He had recently completed his PADI Open Water training which I also wanted to do. He suggested I go to a dive school first to sign up because most give discounts on accomodation. By 10am I was signed up for the 4 day course and billeted in a guesthouse.

That afternoon I commenced my training. We dived the next day in a shallow bay to put into practise what we had learnt. The day afer we went on our first proper dives to 10 metres depth. Just before the second we heard a call over the radio. There was a whale shark not far away. The boat chugged off to enable us to catch a glimpse. When we arrived at the site it was reminiscent of D-Day. Boats with divers and snorkelers on were everywhere. It was easy to see where the big fish was, it had a trail of demented snorkellers after it. We jumped in with just our masks to try and catch a glimpse. I was 10 seconds too late and was only able to see a diver below me.

The next day we completed our training with two fun dives. The first was down to 18m, the maximum we are allowed to go. It was pretty deep, despite not sounding it. The pressure is almost 3x the pressure on the surface. Through the murk we could make out reef sharks about 10m below us. The biggest was about 3m in length.

We completed our training with a second dive where we saw a scorpion fish, moray eel and clown fish amongst other things. I've decided to start my advanced training straight away. Tomorrow we will do our first unsupervised fun dive followed by an adventure night dive. I will then do 4 other courses including navigation and deep diving to go down to a depth of up to 30 metres.


Tough Stuff this overlanding!