Koh Tao: Falling in Love On and With and Island
Trip Start
Sep 24, 2008
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62
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Trip End
Jul 21, 2009
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Ko Tao,
Thailand
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Getting Settled into Koh Tao and Island Life, Thai-style
Mary and I took an overnight bus from Bangkok to the town of Chumporn, the gateway to the islands in the Gulf of Thailand. Our bus arrived at 4am and the two of us spent three slightly cold hours huddled on the docks as we awaited our 7:30am departure for the island of Koh Tao. Mary's partner-in-crime, Sarah, was unable to SCUBA dive, so she spent an extra day in Bangkok and would join us later.
Koh Tao is one of the three main tourist destinations in the Gulf of Thailand, along with Koh Phangan and Koh Samui. Samui is the largest of the three islands and is mainly a resort destination, Phangan is home to the world famous full moon/black moon parties, and Koh Tao is the Gulf of Thailand's diving mecca. It is also one of the best places on the planet to get dive certifications, all the way from the beginning course through to the professional Divemaster (DM) certification. Having partied the world over (including a blackout night in Ibiza with my main man, Shashank, in 2006), Mary and I opted to spend our time in Koh Tao. She had her mind set on completing the PADI Open Water Diver (OWD) course and I wanted to complete the PADI Advanced Open Water Diver (AOWD) course. Originally, we intended to spend five days in Koh Tao, before making a dash for the Malaysian border as our visa expired on January 21. We would soon discover the enchantment of this island and the miracle of the visa run.
Mary and my legs on dive boat (Marie Helene)
After a beautiful morning ride on the Seatran Discovery catamaran to Koh Tao, we reached the main pier and were quickly on our way in the back of the truck to our dive center/hostel, the Buddha View Resort. Buddha View is on the southern part of the island in the Chalok Baan Kao bay (http://kohtao.sawadee.com/map.html) and is one of the myriad 5-star dive resorts on the island. They are all essentially the same and we quickly got to know and like many of the staff/DMs. Like many of the other shops, the resort includes lodging and the entire place has the feeling of a summer camp for divers where you quickly get to know and see all of the residents/students all over the place. It is a great atmosphere and culture for diving. The two of us sorted out our courses and quickly got on to the second task (after getting a room) of a new place in Southeast Asia: renting a motorbike and going for an explore.
A fairly small and mountainous island, there is one main paved road that travels north-south, while there are many steep and hilly dirt roads that traverse the rest of the island. Our steed was another Honda 125cc, this time bright red with an Autobot sticker on the front, and we quickly traveled the paved road of the island. We made our way to Sairee Beach, the main drag of beach on the western coast of the island and just north of the main pier/town, to see what everyone is raving about when they talk about Thailand's beaches.
Scorpionfish - Chris Vadas Pics
They do not disappoint. The first thing that strikes you (and we noticed this the second our catamaran arrived on the island) is the absurd azure color of the water. There are several shades of blue, depending on the depth and base of the bottom, but it is crystal clear, calm and warm. All of my dives on the island were 25-27 degrees Celsius (approx. 80 degrees Fahrenheit). I went for a swim/skin dive and got a glimpse of what was to come in the depths as I saw tons of tropical fish everywhere in depths no more than 1-3m down! It was also while swimming off Saidee Beach that I waxed poetic: "There's at least something erotic about getting slapped in the a$$. There's only something demeaning about getting kicked in the a$$". Guess you had to be there. This was also the first time that Mary and I had been on a beach together and it was blissfully romantic to walk down a white sand beach with blue waters while holding the hand of my beautiful woman looking dazzling in her bikini. Man, was this a sign of good things to come. After another quick cruise around the island, I dropped Mary back off at the dive shop for the beginning of her OWD course and took to the roads to this bar/hotel on a hilltop that overlooked some gorgeous and lightly visited white sand beaches on the southeastern side of the island. Here, I met the bartender, who was playing non-stop Marley, and jammed out for a bit on his guitar as he had the chords to every single Marley track written down in a binder. He also let me know about a place called the Easy Bar.
Batfish - Chris Vadas Pics
I said goodbye to my friend and made my way down the hill back towards the Buddha View and stopped at a beach bar for sunset. This wasn't without incident as I hit a patch of deep sand at the bottom of the steep access driveway and found myself, my bike and my books in the basket all strewn on the ground. Thankfully, I wasn't moving fast. Unfortunately, I wasn't alone and I embarassingly accepted my books that this girl, who was walking by, had picked up for me. I enjoyed a large Beer Chang and a spectacular sunset and chatted with my waiter, a Burmese immigrant. The island is populated mostly by Burmese as they are the majority of the workers, waiters, bartenders, cooks, etc. As a result, Burmese and English (and not Thai) are the predominant languages heard on the island. If you aren't Burmese, you are likely either a tourist, a DM or a dive shop operator, none of which are generally Thai. My waiter was one of the nicest and biggest smiling people I'd ever met, who took great pride in his job despite working as a waiter in a not-very-crowded beach bar and being away from his family. He was elated to find out I was from the US and as I spoke with more Burmese on the island, I found a similar sentiment. While missing their families at home, they were all very quick to dismiss of their oppressive government and none had any immenent plans of returning to their country. There's too much opportunity and relative freedom to be had working on Koh Tao, even if it is for meager wages.
After my conversation and sunset, I returned to the Buddha View to meet up with Mary and the two of us took the short stroll (two "doors" down) to the Easy Bar, our evening spot of relaxation nearly every night we were on the island.
Blue Spotted Stingray - Chris Vadas Pics
Easy Bar is run by a bunch of chilled out Burmese musicians and is a simple establishment right on the sand that consists of a raised wooden platform, cushions and small tables, and one of the greatest MP3 collections a bar has ever had. Anything you can think of from Marley to classic rock to hip-hop to Burmese pop to classic electronic tracks can be heard here. As if drinking an icy cold under the stars while laying on a cushion looking at the ocean while listening to Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety is not enough, there is non-stop poi on the beach. One of the Burmese dudes who works at the bar would mesmerize us with his fire dancing/juggling abilities and it was all-the-more spectacular with the backdrop of no city lights and only the starry glow of the sky on the water. We kicked back with these three Aussie guys (Mick, Owen and Adam) and eventually got to bed as I had a 6:30am wakeup call to begin my AOWD course the following morning. Advanced Open Water Diver - January 17-18
I met up with my instructor "G" (Germaine), an energetic Irishwoman, and my buddy/AOWD mate Oren bright and early at 7am to begin our course. The AOWD course certifies a diver to specialize in new skills, dive up to depths of 30m (OWD max is 18m), at night, in caves, wrecks, etc. It is a great course and the increased experience and tutelage of my instructors at Buddha View vastly improved my diving ability.
We loaded up our kits and were off on the morning boat out to the 30m underwater pinnacle at Chumphon Pinnacle.
Blue Ringed Angelfish - Chris Vadas Pics
The objective of our first dive was the deep dive, which is less of a skills dive and more of a "see/feel the experience" dive. At 30m depth, several things occur that are of interest. The first is that air pressure is nearly 4x the pressure at the surface and accordingly occupíes 1/4 the volume of air at the surface (shoutout for the Inert Gas Law!). We witnessed this by viewing a completely emaciated bag of chips on the bottom. The second is that bright colors - reds, yellows, oranges - completely disappear and are replaced by a bluish-greyish hue. This was also witnessed as a red Doritos bag was anything but that color at the bottom. The last and most significant thing at 30m depth is the effect of nitrogen on your Central Nervous System. As you breathe greater amounts of compressed air at depth than at the surface, your intake of nitrogen is greater than at the surface, and you can develop nitrogen narcosis. Akin to being slightly intoxicated, it is a serious problem that can result in incoherence or unconsciousness at depths - bad news bears. The solution is to ascend. Being slightly narced is an interesting feeling and many people (including myself) foolishly strive to reach a slight level of narcosis without putting oneself in real danger. Alas, on our first deep dive, neither Oren or I were narced at all as we passed the underwater sobriety tests. (For more on deep diving and a great adventure and history book, read Shadow Divers by Robert Kurston). Our second dive took us to Twin Rocks, just off the northwestern part of Koh Tao.
Anemone - Chris Vadas Pics
It is directly adjacent to the Nang Yuna Island, which is rated one of the Top 10 Beaches in the World. Nang Yuna is a private beach that requires an entrance fee and is a spectacular site as it is actually three islands that are connected by two sand bars. When the water level is low, the sand bars are exposed and reveal one of the greatest beaches on earth. You can climb up to the top of the mountains and there is tremendous snorkeling and diving off the island by way of the Japanese Garden dive site. We would later do a fun dive here at the Japanese Garden and it is appropriately named as it is a shallow and tremendous coral dive site. The objective of our second dive was underwater navigation, which involves both using a compass as well as natural navigation. Using a compass underwater is relatively straightforward as you use the planned compass bearings to navigate a dive - go out and come back along the reciprocal reading, form a square, or another route. The only tricky part is measuring the amount of time in one direction (keeping in mind that currents can cause unequal times to cover the same amount of ground) or kick cycles. Natural navigation is, in my view, far more effective and fun and involves using underwater landmarks and homes of certain aquatic life to orient your bearings. Of course, normally you follow a DM/Instructor around a dive site and you get quite comfortable and don't rely on your buddy as much. However, for the first time, G left us underwater at 20m and surfaced, while the two of us used non-verbal communication and our natural navigation skills to traverse the dive site and surface along the mooring line, just next to the boat.
Sleeping Titan Triggerfish - Chris Vadas Pics
G said she was nervously watching from the deck for bubbles and felt like a proud mother when her two students appeared right where we were supposed to surface! The third dive of our course was my first night dive, but this, obviously, wasn't until the evening. With Mary breathing underwater for the first time in her OWD course during the afternoon, I took to the dirt roads to explore more of the island and reach the beach I'd seen the previous day from the hilltop bar. A few things: 1) The dirt roads on Tao are legit 2) "Sometimes before you smile, you need to cry" -The Roots 3) Honda 125cc cruisers are not meant for dirt roads. This basically sums up my experience on the dirt roads of Koh Tao. Slow and steady, I was able to traverse the hills, and I was rewarded with tremendous hilltop views of the surrounding beaches and palm groves as well as access to completely deserted white sand beaches. Brilliant! I found myself on a beach on the southeastern side of the island with mangroves segmenting the white sand and planted myself on a dominant OCR with my headphones in and basked in the sun's glow as I took in the magnificent scenery.
Elated from my two dives and a fantastic afternoon, I returned to Buddha View to meet with Mary and grab a meal before my first night dive. Oren met her and addressed her as the "First Lady", which was pretty sweet. Mary and I grabbed a savory pancake from a stand across the street from the dive shop that advertised itself as "The Best Pancake on Koh Tao".
6 Banded Angelfish - Chris Vadas Pics
Let me tell you, not only was it the best pancake, but our main man, Abdul, delivered it in unbelievable style as he was constantly flipping knives and everything. We learned that Abdul, a Burmese man, was a former ping pong champion, which is why he was so skilled at flipping things in his hands. When asked why he doesn't play anymore, he said it was because he lost in 1998. He doesn't like to lose and to know someone is better than him, so he has not since picked up a paddle. Instead, he moved to Koh Tao, like many of his countrymen, and opened a pancake stand. Given he's the best at his business on the island, he remains in business. If he were to be bested by someone else, he would engage in a new trade. Classic story. Full up on a delicious pancake, I was off for my night dive and met my favorite DM, Chris. Chris, a South African, is one of the nicest, friendliest and best instructors I've seen and during my time in Koh Tao we quickly became great friends. He also LOVES night dives and would spend 4 of 5 times underwater at night, if possible. There's nothing different at all about the procedure of diving at night except for, of course, the lack of natural light. As a result, you have to carry a torch, all you can see (assuming little moonlight) is what is within the scope of your torch, and underwater communication is much more difficult as you must make signals in front of your torch. Once you get over the anxiety of dropping down 20m in open ocean and in darkness, it is one of the greatest thrills and most interesting dives one can do.
Pair Butterflyfish - Chris Vadas Pics
All night dives at Buddha View are at White Rocks, one of the most beautiful pinnacled dive sites around the island. At night, most fish tend to sleep, but many are also on the prowl for food. Being considerate not to blind fish in the eyes with your torches (as Chris said, imagine how you'd feel if someone entered your house at night and woke you up with a torch in the eye), you can get up close and personal, you can notice tons of shrimp and other crustaceans with glowing eyes and tentacles that are more difficult to see by day, and you get within a foot of aggressive (on the Gulf side at least) sleeping Titan Triggerfish. Triggerfish are some of the most beautiful, but painful fish out there as their bite can puncture through a fin! One of the most fun things to do is to follow hunting barracuda (including the larger Chevron Barracuda). Generally speaking, a dive is relaxed and the fish pass you by as they swim. However, at night when you get a barracuda in your torch, all of a sudden you are following it around as though you are swimming like the fish up, down and around pinnacles. If you have two torches, which Chris did on our first night dive, you can get a parrotfish or other feeder in your light and lure prey towards the barracuda. If you are lucky enough to see a successful kill, in a split-second both the barracuda and the entire fish (except for perhaps a single bone) are gone. It may not be true survival of the fittest given the aid of the torch, but it's nonetheless still natural and fascinating.
Bannerfish - Chris Vadas Pics
With good moonlight or boat lights, it's also beautiful to black out your torch on your chest and view all of the shadows and reduced natural light at night. Contrary to the blues and greens of the day, you can really see the actual colors of marine life a lot better when the sun has gone down. Finally, photoplankton are everywhere and glow in the water when there is kinetic energy (waving your hands frantically through the water). Night dives are slower, more relaxed and you don't see as much aquatic life as when you have great visibility in sunlight, but they are truly a wonderful experience. And one of the best parts of the night dive is when you ascend to the surface ,looking up to make sure you avoid any obstacles, and crack the surface of the water to have your mask filled with the thousands of stars in a citylight-less clear night sky.
Juiced on endorphins from a great night dive, I met up with Mary, her OWD coursemates and our other friends at Easy Bar for a couple of beers and some good conversations. Steve, Matt and Jake were three of the guys in Mary's class and all hailed from Washington state. We would all spend a lot of time together during our time in Koh Tao and all of us would reunite a few weeks later in Indonesia. They are all great guys and we engaged in both light and heavy conversations concerning politics, culture, music, environment, economics, etc. Both Jake and Matt were hockey players and Jake played in the Juniors in Canada alongside Sidney Crosby! That is just unbelievable - its akin to knowing someone on LeBron's high school team.
Yellow Spotted Boxfish - Chris Vadas Pics
Mary would have a good laugh at Jake and me as the following night we all ended up at an open-air beach party nearby at Babaloos. With the inauguration days away and hopeful Obama talk (that hasn't worked out so well thus far), Jake also considering joining the Peace Corps after his studies at the University of Arizona, and mad hockey talk in the air, the both of us engaged in numerous man-hugs and male bonding. Jake, sorry to call you out buddy, also had one of the most hysterical stories of all-time. Hockey teams are locker rooms full of competitive meatheads who like to drink and push each other. One time, him and his Arizona teammates were out in Tucson at a bar where they apparently brand people with the face of God. Sufficiently inebriated, Jake wanted to be the biggest man amongst his teammates and taunted the bartender into branding his behind. When you taunt a man with a hot poker, it's not going to work out well for you. Essentially, Jake voluntarily received the equivalent of "a 3rd degree burn on (his) a$$"!
The morning of the 18th would see the completion of my AOWD course. Our instructor of the day was Tim as my girl, G, was now leading Mary's OWD course. I told her to take care of my baby and G was always quick to point out how wonderful Mary was and how stellar she was doing in her course. Our two remaining dive objectives were Underwater Naturalist and Peak Performance Buoyancy and we returned to Chumphon Pinnacle and Twin Rocks.
The Underwater Naturalist is a purely fun dive, but allows you appreciate what you are seeing much more as you learn to identify most of the coral, invertebrates and fish that you see underwater.
School Batfish - Chris Vadas Pics
Carrying around the identification cards with me on that dive and all my subsequent dives, I became incredibly proficient at finding and identifying nearly everything that I saw. Peak Performance Buoyancy is the single most imporant skill I gained in my AOWD course. Through a combination of weights and the amount of air in your lungs, a diver constantly strives for neutral buoyancy underwater as that is the most efficient use of your energy and air as well as the least intrusive way to get up close to everything you are swimming around, through and under in the water. The skills test is to set three weights (about 4 inches long) perpendicular to the sandy bottom and to hover upside down above the weights. Then, using control of the air in your lungs to be neutrally buoyant at all times, you kick with your fins to gently descend towards the bottom and knock the weight over with your regulator, ascend gently, move over, and gently descend to knock over the next weight. After doing this exercise and constantly being aware of my breathing control afterwards, I was forever a different diver. I can now hover in any direction, get an inch from the bottom and not touch a thing and have complete body control underwater. Through proper buoyancy, you can create the weightless environment of spacewalking and it is one of the most surreal sensations in the world.
With the rest of the day free, I cruised around the island on my motorbike until I grabbed Mary and took her down some of the roads and to some of the beaches I had visited.
Porcupinefish - Chris Vadas Pics
However, the first stop was Zanzibar, one of the greatest burger and sandwich joints in the world. Even more so for a nomadic backpacker who hasn't had avocado on a sandwich in 4 months. My god, I could eat one of those burgers everyday. Eventually, I took Mary to that white sand beach with the OCR rock and we saw a tiny bungalow sitting right on the sand that would make for a perfect home. With Mary falling in love with diving, with my fanatic love for the sport, with both of us falling in love with each other, and with both of us loving the life and beauty of Koh Tao, we were finding ourselves trying to sort out how we could make a life on the island and never look back. Many more thoughts on this below. Falling In Love With an Island and Going on a Visa Run
With Mary completing her OWD course over the 19th and 20th and having completed my AOWD course, I could now freely fun dive at my leisure with Buddha View and filled in the gaps with motorbike rides and beach exploration. My dives over these couple of days allowed me to see more dive sites, including Ao Leuk, Japanese Garden, Shark Island (because the rock looks like a shark fin). My dive buddies were Kellie, a sweet and cute blond from Western Australia freshly done with her OWD course (who was seeing our friend Jake), Ais, a sweet Indonesian girl who has to have gills as she always surfaced with 100 bars of air (Bars are another pressure measure to PSI; you start with 200 bar and typically 50-70 bar is what you have left from a 40-55 minute dive if you are good and depending on your depths and the currents) and Ben, a dude from Sydney who was beginning an alternative energy engineering degree upon his return to Australia.
Titan Triggerfish 1 - Chris Vadas Pics
Ben and I ended up being dive buddies on 6-8 dives during my time at Koh Tao and he became really good friends with Mary and me. Ben, also a guitarist, and his girl Carolina were motorbiking around the island towards the end of our stay and he came upon a recording studio on the island and the ex-pat who runs it let him jam and was looking to get bands into the space. A recording studio is also on the island... the reasons to live here just kept piling up.
By the end of Mary's course, she was absolutely hooked and wanted to enroll in the AOWD course, so she could be on par with me. I loved Koh Tao, was hearing about a magical place called the Similan Islands with 35m visibility, and also wanted to do more diving in Koh Tao. Sarah, unfortunately because of her ear problems, was tiring of the dive culture that is Koh Tao and wanted to push on to other islands within Thailand. However, despite different plans, all three of us wanted to extend our stay in Thailand. It was January 20 and our visa expired January 21. The solution: a visa run.
The visa run is a simple concept: you bolt for the border, cross it for a matter of minutes, get a few stamps, re-enter the border and tada, you have a new 15-day entry visa. There are several outfits that organize visa runs in Koh Tao and the quickest method is to head to the Burmese (Myanmar) border. We took off on an overnight cargo boat back to mainland, sat on a bus for a few hours until we reached the border town of Ranong on the Andaman Sea coast of Thailand.
Titan Triggerfish 2 - Chris Vadas Pics
Upon arriving at Ranong, you get exit stamps to leave Thailand, pay USD5 to get on a boat and cross over to Victoria Point, Burma, enter and exit Burma in less than 10 minutes (I have entry and exit stamps of the same day and wish they had timestamps, so you could realize how comical and ludicrous this whole process is), take the boat back to Ranong where you submit Arrival Card and receive an entry visa, and within 5 hours (bus and speedboat) you are back in Koh Tao. We left the previous night at around 11pm and arrived back in Koh Tao by 1pm the following day. It was supremely painless and was kind of cool to say I was in Burma and to pick up their currency (I collect notes from all countries I'm visiting), but these happy thoughts were overwhelmed by thoughts of how ridiculous immigration procedures can be around the world. If the Thai government had simply allowed longer entry visas or not required short-term visas at all (as all countries should do for tourist visas), none of this would have been required and we all would have saved some money and time on a visa run. The other bummer was the night that we left, Jan 20th, was the night of Obama's inauguration. We caught some of the festivities and his speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial before bouncing, but missed officially seeing him sworn in. However, for the days leading up to and the day after his inauguration, I did not miss an opportunity to announce out loud and in celebration the final days of the Bush Administration.
Nemo Anemonefish - Chris Vadas Pics
People on my dive boats must have thought I was a little crazy. C'est la vie - we were now allowed to stay in Thailand another 15 days until Feb 4. Sarah had taken off for Koh Samui and Phuket, where we would meet up with her again for a couple of days, while Mary and I continued our diving splendor on Koh Tao. Chris, my South African DM who took me out on my first night dive, was my DM for most of my dives (I had 9 dives with him in total) during our few extra days in Koh Tao. By this point, Chris was very impressed with my diving abilities and basically let me do whatever I wanted underwater. This included carrying two torches as he does on night dives. He also (and I know I sound like a teacher's pet) gave me his backup mask (which I have since purchased), which is leaps and bounds better than the average dive shop mask.
With Mary entering her AOWD course, I could now go out on dives with her as my buddy, including her first night dive. We saw barracuda, blue-spotted sting rays, morey eels and tons of sleeping fish. Using the two torches, Mary and I veered away from Chris, and the rest of the people he was guiding, chasing a barracuda. While I turned around to bring us back within range of Chris, Mary caught sight of a barracuda swallowing a rabbitfish! What luck on your first night dive! Later on this dive, the both of us approached a diver with two torches (thinking it was Chris), only to find it was some random Korean dude. We totally lost Chris (as he surfaced with some other divers who were running low on air) for a minute, but eventually found him again and safely surfaced to end our night dive.
Pair Blue Spotted Stingrays - Chris Vadas Pi
It was awesome diving with Mary as my buddy - stealing underwater kisses, grabbing her hands, pointing out fish to each other. It is a completely peaceful world underwater with only the sound of your regulator and your partner by your side. Chris is such a great DM because he lets advanced divers be, as long as they're safe, so Mary and I were always wandering on our own, seaching, hovering upside down and exploring away from Chris. With more and more dives, both of our air consumption and buoyancy skills got better and better. You develop a cadence of breathing in for 2 seconds, out for 4-6 seconds and before you know it you can basically do whatever you want underwater while your breathing is always fully relaxed.
January 23 was a special day as it was Mary's last night on the island (she would head to Phuket a day earlier than me to sort out things with Sarah) and the last night that our huge group of new friends would all be together. These included Angie (Sydney), Ben (Sydney), Carolina (no idea), Alex (Denmark), Chris (RSA), Anna (Russia), Tom (Oz), Eeena (Austin), Joe (UK) and Phil (UK).
Anna, a jaw-droppingly gorgeous Russian who was in Mary's OWD course, had basically drawn the attention of every male at the Buddha View Resort. On the morning dives on the 23rd, Ben, Chris and I were all doing our safety stops towards the end of our dive (you must rest for 3 minutes at 5m depth to let some of the nitrogen in your blood dissipate on no decompression dives).
Yellow Spotted Boxfish 2 - Chris Vadas Pics
Mary was doing one of her AOWD course dives, so Ben was my buddy. All of a sudden, we looked up and all three of us had speechless expressions to each other as we saw Anna skindiving near the surface. Chris had his eyes on the prize. We all cracked jokes about her at the surface and everyone planned to party together that evening, a party that was dubbed the Waning Crescent Party in honor of the Full/Half Moon parties of Pha Ngan.While Chris had to "work" during the afternoon (we played cricket in the parking lot since he was in the office), everyone else headed to the beach to play. Tom, this innocent 19-year old Australian dude, courted Anna all day long at the beach. The rest of us all headed to June Juea beach (after another phenomenal meal at Zanzibar) where Alex and I were jamming on the guitar, I taught Angie to play some songs, the girls and Phil built a sand sea turtle and we basically enjoyed a phenomenal afternoon at the beach. A bunch of us had to return to the Buddha View for a night dive before the party began. I mention Anna because of what would transpire that evening and vault my boy Chris to immortal status in my book.
Everyone reunited that evening at the Buddha View bar and the buckets quickly started flowing. With everyone in smiles and some good music playing, we knew we were in for a great night. Anna, the Russian, had arrived with Tom, the young Australian, but before anyone could blink, Chris (my man) and Anna had disappeared to consummate what they had been lusting for.
Pair White Eyed Morey Eels - Chris Vadas Pics
Mary and I consoled poor Tom, but secretly inside, I was happy for my man Chris. He got his girl. I would later recount this story to Jake, Matt and Steve - the Washington guys in Mary's OWD course - and they also vaulted Chris into immortal status. Classic tales of island romance. As the party wore on, many of us hopped into the back of a pickup truck and made our way into town for a beach party on Sairee. There was poi everywhere, we were knee deep in the water with buckets and eventually Mary and I were just lying under the stars and in the sand, reveling in the beauty of the night and just how much our love for each other had grown.
The following day, Jan 24, Mary and I headed out to the beach one last time before it started pouring like crazy. In our days at the beaches, both of us had noticed a lot of broken glass and trash all over the place. It was nothing like what we would find in Indonesia during wet season, but there's still far more trash than these paradise beaches deserve. We would also sometimes notice garbage floating in the waters on our dives. More than ruining the environment and being an eyesore, the garbage problem is an unsustainable situation that threatens to eventually erode the 100% tourist and diving driven economy on the island. Both of us did our part, always finding a bag and doing garbage sweeps of the beaches where we hung out, but it opened my eyes to development projects on the island that could really help the people continue to earn a living from the lucrative natural wonders the place has to offer.
Sairee Beach 1
Ideas popped into my head of partnering with dive shops and the catamaran companies to get beach and ocean cleanups going with customers and the shuttle the garbage back to the mainland. Recycling could be encouraged and shuttled back to the mainland infrastructure with the help of the catamaran companies. My friend Ben raised a good point that other islands may use this sustainable development as a competitive advantage to lure customers to their island where they don't have to spend their time cleaning up beaches. I would hope that the dive culture of Koh Tao would persist, given its dive sites and the network effect of the cluster of dive shops, and that visitors and divers would be equally concerned with the continued existence of beautiful and natural Koh Tao. Thoughts on Mary, Raison D'Etre and Reaching Legend Status
Most of my last day in Koh Tao, Jan 25, I was able to reflect on my feelings towards Mary and my thoughts on living on this island. I had a lot of time away from Mary while on the island that allowed me to really process my feelings towards her. It was clear that we had fallen in love with each other. However, it was also clear that Mary wouldn't just be another girlfriend. I began to have thoughts of spending my life with her and began to view her in a different lens: not as a friend, not as a girlfriend, but as a woman that I would want as my wife.
When we lived in New York, because of past relationships, I protected myself from being vulnerable and truly cherished my friendship with Mary.
Sairee Beach 2
As a result, I may have protected our friendship for too long and not allowed myself to realize the true feelings I had towards Mary. We were also very different people when we were both working on Wall Street. Mary's horizons have broadened tremendously, she keeps me in check and is as proud and stubborn as I am to balance me and she's no longer living in the more material-based, New York-focused life as she was before. I, too, have gone through these changes since I left for my vacation in Turkey in July. There's beauty in simplifying one's life, priorities, values and desires and both of us were able to realize this through the physical act of liquidating a cluttered life back home and packing our lives into a bag and traveling around the globe. I truly love this woman. She's one of my best friends and is the closest girl friend I have. It just feels right. All of my emotions were mixed with sadness as, at the time, our travel plans called for us to part ways when we moved from Southeast Asia on to Australia and South America. I have just developed powerful feelings for this woman and in a matter of months would be potentially not able to see her for a couple of years with me off to the Peace Corps (things would dramatically change on this front, but we'll save that for subsequent blog entries).
This brings me to my major dilemma. When I left Citi, I had a concrete plan to travel the world for 10 months, join the Peace Corps for two years and decide if the development life was for me. Then, I went out and fell in love with my best friend. Do I want to be two years away from Mary to do something that I am extremely passionate about? Can I forego my raison d'etre and a sense of passion and purpose in order to be happy, enjoy life and be with the woman I love? Can I satisfy my intellectual curiosity and live with Mary on Koh Tao diving, playing music, running a small business and living the good and simple life? Could I combine these pursuits by finding development projects on the island, etc? These were the deep questions on my mind as I wound down my magical time in Koh Tao.
However, I couldn't just leave Koh Tao without getting in another dive. True to form and the legendary status I attained while diving with Buddha View (16 dives in 8 days or something like this), in the pouring rain I loaded all of my bags onto the dive boat as I was going to join Chris for one more night dive before leaving. The dive gods were shining on us as the torrential downpour cleared up as we were getting our fins on and ready to splash into the water. After a tremendous night dive, I said my sad goodbye to Chris and my other friends from Buddha View and literally walked 10 feet from the dive boat to the overnight cargo boat, wet bathing suit and backpack on, that would take me to Surat Thani on the mainland where I would connect by bus to Phuket and the Andaman Coast of Thailand
