Koh Tao Festival is upon us again! It happens every year, and is a two day event run by the Save Koh Tao organisation, and the local Koh Taoian community. This year it falls on the 18th and 19th of June, and right now I can hear the thumping bass from the festival grounds. It’s my third year attending the Koh Tao Festival, and as always, it’s a time for the Thais, Burmese workers, and Westerners (local, and tourists) to mingle, eat food, drink, and listen to looooud, peaking Thai techno/pop. There’s also usually a few shows that are performed on the main stage, and last night we watched the…
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The Diving on Koh Tao
Here’s a look at the diving from 2015 on Koh Tao with Sairee Cottage Diving. Filmed, and edited by yours truly! Enjoy! F***, I love my life.
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Koh Tao – Don’t Not Come and The Day We Saved A Turtle
Just wanted to post an update re: current murderous situation on Koh Tao. We are fine. Yes, it was pretty close to us, but considering it happened on the longest, busiest stretch of beach on Koh Tao where the majority of locals, foreign locals, and tourists stay, everything is in close proximity. Especially on an island about 21 km². It’s a horrid situation, but not believed to be a random attack which makes us feel better. For now, business is as usual. On the upside, this morning I was filming a diving video for a few fun divers and we stumbled across a turtle that had its’ fin stuck in…
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Diving with Team Awesome – Koh Tao Diving Video
Two very cool divers, which are now very good friends have cut together this awesome video about our diving together! I assisted on their Open Water, Advanced, Nitrox, Deep and Wreck Specialty courses during my Divemaster course at Sairee Cottage and it was a fantastic experience! Some of my first dive leads were these guys! Lucky I didn’t get lost. Thank you Tobbe and Linda. All credits for the video goes to Tobbe and Linda. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqNVP_2xL3o
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Songkran! An Epic Waterfight on Koh Tao
What is Songkran you ask? I asked the very same question and got two answers from various people regarding the 13th of April. 1. It’s the Thai New Year according to the Buddhist calendar. 2. It’s the one day a year on Koh Tao where everything is shut and you get drunk and there’s an epic water fight on the streets. Prior to this day we were advised to buy some water guns to use at Songkran. However, due to Songkran all of the stores were now charging hundreds of baht for cheap, plastic water guns. We’re cheap. We refused to buy them of course. So we woke up on…
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Cost of Living on Koh Tao
Accommodation Cost on Koh Tao Accommodation cost on Koh Tao will depend on what is available and what kind of luxuries you need. The cheapest per night rate you can find is about 400 baht (excluding dorms). If you are planning to stay longer, there are quite a lot of “long term” accommodation options available. They are usually charged to you on a monthly basis. The basic accommodation in the form of a bungalow starts from about 7000 baht per month which will most likely have a cold water shower and fan only. If you would like a hot water shower, air conditioning and a fridge, you would be looking…
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Bangkok to Koh Tao by Bus and Ferry
Despite the many confusing ideas TripAdvisor might put in your head, the cheapest way to get from Bangkok to Koh Tao is using the Lomprayah service. The ticket costs 1050baht per person and includes the bus and high speed ferry.
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Diving to join the under water world in Koh Tao
Our main reason for coming to Koh Tao was to do some diving. I’ve wanted to learn how to dive for a while now. After our epic journey to Koh Tao, we were tired and a bit discouraged. However, after speaking to Robin at Sairee Cottage Diving, we signed up to start the course that night with some theory and 3 chapters of homework! The next morning we began our classroom theory with Robin and then got taught on the equipment by Neil. After lunch we jumped into the water with our gear at Mango Bay to do our confined dive with all our mask and emergency skills. We had…
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Landing on Koh Tao
After an epic journey from the mainland – see Lionel’s previous post, and a brilliant nights sleep on the night ferry (except for being covered in ants) we arrived in Koh Tao. We looked at the massive map that was located by the pier and tried to work out where we were. There were three ‘You Are Here’ arrows pointing to various parts of the island. After guessing where we thought we were, we located Sairee Cottage – a place we had looked up on Trip Advisor that offered diving courses and accommodation. It seemed like a quick walk across the island so we set off on our way, walking…
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From Trang to Koh Tao – if you’re game
We thought land travel was tricky in Malaysia, seems like we were wrong. There is no efficient nor cost effective way to travel from Trang to Koh Tao. We went to a travel agent and they quoted us about 1300baht each to take a minibus to Surat Thani and then a night ferry to Koh Tao. Our other option was to make our own way to Krabi and stay an extra night, then go with a minibus from Krabi to Surat Thani and take the speedboad. This was 850baht per person, of course excluding the night’s accommodation and trip to Krabi. We really didn’t know and wanted to go the…
