Koh Tao aka Turtle Island

Last January, I had the opportunity to get scuba certified in Zanzibar. At that time, I told myself it was to be prepared to dive the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, however, saving it for just that one country seemed silly when there are so many other places to dive as well! Kaitlyn was not certified, but decided that she too wanted to learn how to dive, so we did some searching on where the best place to learn was. The number one place that popped up was Koh Tao, so we made arrangements to go! We took an overnight bus down to a port somewhere and then a two hour ferry ride over to the island. Although it was crawling with European tourists, the island was beautiful and was a nice getaway after having spent so much time in big cities.

On Halloween we checked out a beach party where they had Poi performances going on. I can’t get videos to upload here, but they were cool to watch!

I couldn’t believe the number of dogs on this island! Typically when you think of street dogs, they tend to be rather skinny but unfortunately many of the dogs here were obese, which was really heartbreaking.

Stopped in to this place and got an hour long Thai massage one morning for less than $10. It was amazing. They gave me tea and cookies afterward. 🙂

We went to a Ladyboys Cabaret show. My biggest takeaway from this was that English people are assholes. The MC was an American guy who was asking where everyone was from. There were some Germans, some Dutch, and a ton of English people. When he asked if there were any other Americans, Kaitlyn and I were the only ones who cheered. And then all the English people booed us! What the hell?! But anyway, the show was very entertaining!

They had some pretty witty signs

And for the best part, the diving! My ear is paying the consequences from these dives, but it was totally worth it. I did a refresher course since it had been awhile since I last dove, but it’s like riding a bike and everything came back really easily. The first day, the motion of the boat kind of got to me and I almost sat out the second dive, but I decided to tough it out. As soon as I went under the water, the motion sickness stopped. Good thing because my only option would have been to puke through the regulator and provide the fish with a meal…Gross! On day two, our guide, Olga took a bunch of pictures with her Go Pro and shared them with us. Thank you to her for providing this footage!