Silver Sands Beach Resort Ko Tao

After awakening from the bowels of our residence we slithered over to a place for food and then wadded through the fierce heat of the day to the beach. I read a book, whilst Steve chilled out on the beach listening to some music. I then went for a brief swim in the moderately warm, moderately clear sea. After working on the tan I chatted with some Swedish girls and agreed to meet up later with us for dinner (but ...

... were clearing, as the last time we went diving I had a nasty head cold and was unable to clear them, leading to a severe ear infection that lasted over a month. This time though everything was going according to plan and we had barely reached the bottom when Heini made the signal for shark and we looked over to see a huge gray mass. It must have been over 3 meters in length and its girth was double my body! It wasn’t nearly as close as the white tip reef ...

i think i've given it away in the title?! well we were bombarded on the boat from koh samui by dive companies looking for business. Mark, Gav and myself were interested in doing the course but wanted the best price and as much extras thrown in as possible. i think we accomplished our aim. we got our easy divers open water course including accommodation and 6 food vouchers for 180 euro. apparently you'd pay more than 300 euro at home to do it so ...

... The whole thing only took about fifteen minutes. Afterward, Waz showed us how to assemble and disassemble the scuba gear and how to clean it and where to store it.<br><br>That afternoon we had two more chapters in the classroom and the final exam, which we easily passed. That evening Waz came over to our bungalow and we sat on our porch and drank beers and chatted with him. We had a really interesting conversation mostly revolving around Russia, Israel and Ireland. I have learned so much ...

... which were really good and we saw some more cool corals, fish and more fish. Infact we were so keen on diving we signed up for the PADI advanced course for the next 2 days! <br>We had a PADI passing dinner with our instructor Suki, assistant Steve who's a divemaster in training and the 6 of us students! It was nice, and we ended up on the beach sharing a few lethal cocktail buckets.<br><br>The advanced course gave us more theory and 5 dives, 3 of which were of our own choice ...

... to be a policy of charging extra for everything (£2 to come on the island, £1 to use the beach shower!) and there were too few shaded areas for residents to relax without the expectation of buying yet another overpriced drink. There are huge numbers of cats (and some dogs) that are free to wander everywhere and there is no attempt to keep them out of eating areas and off tables and chairs. We kept suffering insect bites that always seemed to be around our ankles, which we have now ...

... edit it before getting it into the editing software (Adobe Premiere Pro). We went over my shots (I was congratulated on how steady my still and pan shots were) and then made plans for the next day...when I would have my first session in the water with the camera.<br><br>The next few weeks alternated between dry days (editing) and diving days. The course itself is 2 weeks long and so I spent June 1st to June 15th learning the innermost workings of underwater videography. <br><br>On June 26th I ...

... one of the windows I locked doesn't actually lock, and it slid right open. I hiked my dress all the way up to my hips and threw one leg in and slid myself through the window as quickly as possible, so strangers on the street wouldn't see how ridiculously easy it is to break into my room. Now, the bigger problem is that I have no power, which means no lights (ok, because I have a headlamp) and... no fan. I lay as if in a hot tub for ...

Hello! Day One: We arrived in Ko Tao (Turtle Island) on the 2nd of April, after a long long bus, train, minibus and then boat trip; leaving Kanchanaburi at 4pm and reaching Ko Tao at 10am the following morning. On arrival, we were swamped by taxi drivers harrassing us to take us to various guesthouses and beach resorts. We walked around for a while, trying to find an ATM, being constantly harrassed by taxi drivers offering to charge 'only' 400baht for the trip ...