Hello guys…. We are not ignoring you!

Apart from working back to back courses, we are also in the middle of a wicked Monsoon…  It has not stopped raining for over 7 days… Everything is wet……

The rain has caused issues with power and also internet, so bear with us..!

Much Love

x

SD

It took us 2 days to get back to Koh Tao, arriving back on the afternoon of the 13th.

No rest from the travel, both of us were called in to work immediately. I had 20 minutes notice before having to jump into the the pool and teach people I had not previously met.

A very long and tough pool session, with one person dropping out due to panicking every 30 seconds… it left me feeling pretty low.

The next couple of days taken up with Open Water dives with the remaining students also was tough… especially when one of the students (hungover) decide to bring up his breakfast forcing me to end the dive early…

The course was completed last night, and Jen finishes hers today. I would like to chill out but sadly I am being roped into so many things with UK work, diving, and eco stuff… that I can’t imagine a rest for the next couple of weeks…

But, we only have just under 4 weeks before a nice UK visit…. which I think we are both looking forward to…. the only one getting some chill time, is the cat that visits us…. not sure what it was listening to though!

We did not have any internet for the past couple of days, so I shall have to recap the rest of our vacation….

More diving, every day of course.. Seeing a range of different marine life and having plenty of fun..

The island is quite basic, and the only option other than the horse and cart taxi is a bicycle.. Mine was especially retarded!

There is very little in the way of lights once you come away from the beach, so its quite handy to carry a torch as the bikes don’t come with any lights at all. The torch is important because of the extremely large potholes that will swallow you up if you don’t spot them.

One night, we managed to get lost and instead of a 10 minute bike ride to our villa, it took us an hour and a half to finally locate our place… after riding around half of the island… Believe me, I was not the happiest bunny… my broken toe still hurts and was bloody sore after that… so was my butt seeing as the bike suspension is non existent!

We met up with some friends from Koh Tao who have moved here.. Jace and Nick were videographers on Koh Tao, and now they are the only ones on this island.. bit of a niche market for them, and I think its working out quite well for them. Then there was Mike, who just recently left the instructor team at Crystal to head to the Gili islands. We had some good meals and nice chats, and ended most evenings by heading home to swim in our pool before an early night.

Our last night however was different. We had pizza at La Pirata.. stunning food.. I cannot remember having a pizza that good.. they import all their ingredients from Italy, and the chef is Italian… what more can you ask for?!

12 people turned up for our last meal.. Koh Tao people plus the dive school manager (Edwin) who we seemed to get on with very well. We all ate our pizza, drinking Bintang beer (gives you a nasty headache even if you only have a couple). We also had Nutella pizza for desert… I will certainly not be having that ever again… far too sickly for my liking.

Meals over, Mike had a bright idea to head to Sama Sama Reggae bar to have the local specialty. Vodka Joss. Vodka shots order and a packet of stuff in our hand, the challenge began.. You start by shaking the packet of Joss (basically a sherbert form of Red Bull). Next you open the packet and pour the contents into your mouth. then pour in the vodka… swish it all around, and swallow.. It feels like you have just poured acid into your mouth…

Several shots and more beers later.. I looked at the time and was stunned to find it was 4am !!  It was time to go… we were getting up at 7am… We rode our bikes to Jace’s house to pick up our cases, and take them to our villa to pack… needless to say it was a rather difficult task considering the amount of alcohol we had consumed… Eventually we got home, and went to sleep about 5am.

Waking up… was painful…. and the journey back to Koh Tao began….