After saying goodbye to Fez and B we caught up with Kate's cousin Andrew and his wife Mona who live in Bangkok. We checked out a massive market and had allegedly Bangkok's finest fried chicken. Later after a few drinks we went to this hidden bar without signs where you had to knock on the door to be let in like an old style speakeasy.
This very small bar is run by a British former child star who is a film buff and upstairs is a private 9 seat movie theatre. That night he was showing The Breakfast Club, one of my favourites so we all sat down and enjoyed that.
After Bangkok we caught a bus and ferry to an island called Koh Tao. I wasn't too keen on heading down as we'd done a bit of beach time already and were heading to Sri Lanka (where some of the world's best beaches are), but after a while it clicked, Kate had organised for us to get scuba training as my birthday present!!! You might not know but snorkelling is (was) my favourite activity, so this was pretty exciting for me.
We were picked up at the ferry by one of the Roctopus Dive crew and taken to our lodgings before getting straight into the theory. Our instructor Sanne was Dutch and amazing, she made it all seem so easy and it turned out her birthday was the same day as mine, the day we finished our course.
There was only 3 students in our group which was ace, they never have more than 4 which makes for a very personal learning experience. We had 2 theory lessons and homework learning all the basics before heading out to learn to dive in the shallows.
We picked it up very quickly and soon felt very confident in the water. Any worries you might have are quickly forgotten once you see what's under the water. We saw all kinds of fish, rays, corals of all colours which were so beautiful but they had nothing on what came next....
Suddenly there was lots of pointing and people swimming up, we looked skyward to see the sun shining brightly through the clear water and then an eclipse, a giant whale shark sized eclipse!!!!!!!!
We swam up to and alongside this huge (although apparently still young and growing) whale shark. It was ri-goddamn-diculous how awesome it was. It just slowly cruised around us, even making eye contact with us as it passed. Everyone was crazy pumped, especially Sanne who said it was our birthday present. One of the dive crew said a previous team member dived almost every day for two and a half years and never saw one and we were lucky enough to swim with one on our second day in the water!!!
That evening we all went to the pub for birthday drinks and watched our graduation video which heavily featured the shark, it was amazing.
Needless to say we were hooked. Every day we'd wander down to the office and ask Westy the kiwi fella who ran the desk where they were going the next day and would sign up. We even got to dive on a shipwreck!!! So bloody cool, the type of stuff you dream about as a kid, addicted!
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