koh tao
Day 4
Wednesday saw a very early 5 AM wake up, as we were going to catch the 7 AM ferry to Koh Tao, and had to drive 45 mins. to get there from Chumphon. We stopped at 7-11 on the way and picked up breakfast along with a big bag of pipping hot Pa Tong Ko (Thai donuts), which reminded me of the Peruvian picarones. Anyone who’s ever taken this ferry will mention that the jetty to get out to the ferry is one to remember – it’s made of rickety wooden slats that run perpendicular to the direction of the pier, and it’s about 150 feet long. So for about 10 minutes, all you hear is the clicking of suitcases being dragged behind people as a line of bodies snakes out to the boat. The Lomprayah ferry left right on time and was only about 1/2 full. It is a very modern catamaran style boat, with a large inside seating area. Unfortunately, the movie they were showing was one that I had watched on the plane, so I just listened to some music and tried to sleep some more.
When the ferry arrived, we were greeted by a man holding a sign with my name on it. This was our free taxi from the villas we had chose to stay at. Rick knew the driver from the time that he had spent on Koh Tao, so the driver took them as well and dropped them off in town on the way to our place. Most of the taxis on Koh Tao are 4WD pick up trucks with two parallel benches in the back running along side of the truck bed. We chose to splurge a little on Koh Tao and stay in one of the new, luxury villas that have recently sprung up, The Rocks Luxury Villas. The Rocks is about half way up the hill on Koh Tao, up a very steep driveway, but the view is magnificent! Shortly after we got settled in, Pili’s friends from Peru, Cecilia (who now lives in Dubai) arrived, as she was going to be joining us in Koh Tao and Bangkok.
We all walked down and met Rick and Fanette for lunch, then headed over to Big Blue Koh Tao to see where Rick had worked so many years. The Big Blue office was more of a complex, bigger than I had ever imagined, and featured several equipment buildings, rooms for rent, a restaurant and a bar. Pili, Cecilia and I hit the beach for a swim and I got a nice sunburn, then we headed back to the Rocks and took advantage of their great infinity swimming pool. We headed down to the bar at Big Blue (which rick had leased for a year a while back and called it the Blue Bar) and watched the sunset. We had dinner at the restaurant next door, called Fizz, during which I did my best to stay awake. Not sure if it was all the sun that day or the jet lag or the traveling, but I was ready for bed by 8.
Day 5
The Rocks offers a complimentary breakfast, so on Thursday, we started the day by ordering three “English breakfasts” which pretty much kept us all filled up for the rest of the day. After breakfast, we took a tour of Rick’s friend, Lincoln’s property and houses. Lincoln bought some hillside property on Koh Tao about six years ago and is building a series of about 13 unique and original houses, three of which are complete. We thought The Rocks driveway was steep! Put it this way: Lincoln’s truck has a rope in the back you can hold so as to not fall out of the back as you are driving uphill. Wow, all I could think about once we got to the top was “how did all this stuff get up here?” Lincoln’s old beater truck, apparently, as he has done most of the work himself.
After the tour of the property, we headed down to Big Blue, so that we could go SCUBA diving. I have been a few times, but Pili and Ceci had not, so we were all going to take the Discover SCUBA diving course. We spent an hour or so with Rick at a table of the Big Blue restaurant going over diving basics, then took a small boat out to the diving boat, the MV Banzai. We did some basic exercises in waist-deep water, then headed out for a 40 minute dive, going about 6 meters deep at most.
In the afternoon, we headed back up to the hotel and swam in the pool for a few hours and watched the sunset from there. Dinner that night was at a place called Cafe Del Sol, which had a mixed menu of tastes from all over the world. From there we walked back to Sairee beach via a foot path that winds through town. Rick and Fanette ran into a couple they knew that had just opened a bar a few days ago, so we went in and had a beer with them. Before we left for the hotel, we set off a wish lantern that Rick had bought for us. On some days of the year, hundreds or thousands are set off at once.
Day 6
Friday, we had breakfast at the villas again when the taxi came to pick up Pili and Ceci for a day at the Jamahkiri Spa, while Rick and I rode around Koh Tao on his rented Honda Wave. Rick got to show me the piece of land he used to own, as well as all the other places I’d heard about for the last six years while he lived here. I checked my e-mail while Pili was finishing up her massage and we all met up for lunch at one of the local Thai restaurants. The weather on Koh Tao was very hot this week, so again, we headed back to the villas to go for a swim (starting to see a trend, here?). For dinner, we hit up Thipwimarn Resort, another favorite of Rick and Fanette’s, which took them a few years to discover that most of the entres on the menu were priced at about $4-$5 before they ate there.
Day 7
We were originally scheduled to leave Koh Tao on Saturday, but postponed it to Sunday as the lead stories on CNN and BBC in our room were about the escalating protests in Bangkok. So this day, we really had nothing planned and decided to just do a beach day. We walked from The Rocks down to the beach side lounge chairs at the Koh Tao Cabanas. We spent a few hours just hanging out there as well as wading out into the ocean, where it was low tide. For lunch, we walked along the beach down to the Big Blue restaurant, then got foot massages on the beach on the way back to the villas.
We went back to the hotel and used the pool to cool down and relax after such a stressful day. That night, we had arranged a poolside BBQ through The Rocks, and had invited Rick and Fanette as our guests, as they had taken us diving for free two days prior. The hotel set up a grill and got everything going along with a table at the pool, then we got to cook all of the meat ourselves. Rick brought a bottle of Thailand’s finest – Sangsom Rum – which I actually liked very much and we did our best to polish it off. After dinner, we all headed down to the Big Blue bar for drinks, but it was so hot we only stayed for a few, then headed back to our room.
Day 8
Sunday we had a half day on Koh Tao, so we went into town and did some gift shopping, then (you guessed it) back to the pool at the villas. Our taxi driver picked us up about an hour before the 2:30 ferry back to Chumphon. This time, the ferry was packed and we were unable to get seats together by the time we boarded. The AC was not working well, so as soon as the boat took off, I went upstairs and outside and sat on some stools in front of the ferry’s pilot house. The breeze was blowing and at one point it even rained and no one moved because it felt no nice. Our ticket on the ferry was actually all the way to Bangkok, but the second half of the trip is on a double decker bus owned by the same company. It used to leave as soon as everyone from the ferry boarded, but now waits about 45 minutes as they’ve built a new convenience store at the pier in Chumhon and the general consensus is that they want you to buy stuff while you wait. The bus ride was enjoyable. It was a modern, comfortable bus and Rick had managed to get us three seats in the very front row on the top, and two more just behind those. Just as Rick predicted, there were two terrible movies shown, with a quick stop for dinner in between.
Dinner was…interesting – we had stopped at a roadside restaurant that had a cafeteria-style serving, with most plates costing about a buck. There were three ladies behind the food and you just kind of pointed to what looked good to you. Most of the offerings were vegetable-centric, so I picked the one that I knew was chicken and looked like it was in a nice curry, so I went for it. I set my food down on the table and went to get some drinks. By the time I got back to the table with our drinks, Pili looked up at me and said “Um, I don’t think you’re going to like it!”. I tried it and I could see why immediately: it was so hot, it felt like someone was pinching my tongue with clothes pin! I started to sweat immediately. But I was starving by this point and nothing else looked good, so I decided I was just going to muscle my way through it and eat it as fast as I could. I got about two more mouthfuls down before I gave up. Rick tried some of it, but I don’t think that he finished it. Luckily, the restaurant also had a convenience store, so I just stocked up on some cookies and deserts! We pulled away about a half hour later and slept most of the rest of the way to Bangkok, where we pulled in just after 2 AM.
Cecilia’s flight to Dubai was the next morning, so she caught a taxi to the airport hotel. The Rambuttri Village Inn hotel was withing walking distance, so the four of us made the five minute walk to the hotel. Rick said that sometimes you need to wait for a room here, but luckily they had two together and in no time we were laying down under the cool blanket of the air conditioning.