Day 136_to_146

Well, we are ready soon in the morning for the departure. We start riding to the border pass early because we want to catch the ferry to Koh Tao today!

We exit from Malaysia without problems. The paperwork is easy. Here comes Thailand. We have to fill some documents, but nothing special, they put the stamp on our visa and we are free to go! Yes, WE are free to go, but not the motorbike!?!!! They don’t allow us to bring the motorbike with us! That’s insane… After a long discussion we see that there is anything we can do. They will not allow us to pass. The officers say to us that we have to go to a bigger border pass. What do we do now??? they have to cancel our entrance to the country adn we are deported (first time ever!!). Then, we have to reenter to Malaysia (thanks that the process is quick and easy), ride more than one hour to the other border under the rain and do the paperwork again. IUHU!!!

Once we reach the Sadao pass border (with a nice storm above us all the way), we start doing the same paperwork again. And again, it seems we are not allowed to enter with the motorbike! This time we have some problems added. They see as something unusual that their colleagues from other border had cancelled our entrance. Again, we have to fight, but finally they put a new stamp on our visa. Next we do is just go out the border on the Bonnie, as there is anybody checking the exit… And just like that we are in Thailand!

The border chaos:

The bonnie is in Thailand!

As it is too late we’ll never reach the harbour on time, so we are just going to spend one night half way in Phatthalung.

Next day we’ll jut ride through the highway to Surat Thani. There, is the harbour from which our ferry departs. The roads aren’t perfect here, but they aren’t as bad as in India neither. So we ridearound 70-80 km/h. It’s not an exciting day, we just see palm oil fields everywhere.

We reach Surat Thani in the evening, we just have time to go to the harbour and ask some information about the ferry. We are a bit nervous because we are not sure if we’ll be able to carry the Bonnie inside. As we are not going to buy a ticket for today, they guys there are not really cooperative with us. They just keep saying… come back tomorrow!!! They have 0 interest in helping us, so tomorrow we’ll see.

The city pillar Shrine

Later we go to a night market, and we discover there some interesting meals

Next night we should depart to the island Koh Tao, we are excited! We spend a lazy day at the hotel while we wait. We should go to the harbour at around 18:00 to buy the tickets and be sure that we can transport the Bonnie with us.

When it’s time we go there and… first they say that ok, the Bonnie can be carried but then… when they see it they say that that’s impossible. The motorbike is too big and heavy!!! besides, there is any ramp or anything to load it! At this point we are desperate, a young lady tries to help us. She speaks English and he offers her parking for our motorbike. This way we could catch the ferry without the Bonnie.

The ferry that cannot carry the Bonnie

We return to the hotel, and we seek help on the receptionists and on Facebook. We know that there is a ferry able to carry cars and motorbikes to Koh Tao from here! After a while we find it, we just have one hour to be ready and buy the tickets before the departure. The lasts minutes are a bit crazy, but we do it. The other ferry is just on the other side of the river! Tonight we’ll sleep on the ferry on our way to the island with the Bonnie!

So here we are! At 6:00 in the morning we reach the worldwide famous Koh Tao island!! it’s famous for being a diving paradise, and that’s the reason we are here. We want to take a diving course!!!

Luckily today we are not going to do much about diving because we are destroyed. We haven’t slept one hour during the whole night on the ferry (it was really cold and noisy). Today we’ll just meet our instructor Marco, and we’ll learn some theory.

Then, we are free to have a walk on the beach!

Don’t freak out… it’s a fake turtle!

Another inhabitant on the island…

We spend these days between theory classes, some tests in the water and diving. It’s hard to express how do we feel underwater. There is a whole new world there!!!

I get easily overwhelmed under the water (I know, and also outside), so I am really lucky for having Marco as instructor. He knows perfectly how to manage me and my fears (and that’s not something easy, I can be quite challenging when I’m blocked). Thanks to him I am able to dive at 18m deep just in 3 days!!! I have to emphasize that until two weeks ago I was barely capable of immerse my head, not even snorkeling!

Well, what can we say… just 5 dives feels like it’s not enough. I let Tià and Marco to convince me to do the Advance Adventurer Diving course! So here we are! 5 more dives in two days including:

Perfect Buoyancy

Navigation

Night dive

Deep (30m deep!!!) + Wreck

Fish ID

And yes, we are now two proud Advance Adventure Divers!!!!!!!!

Pic with our instructor Marco Antonio Villa, if you speak Spanish and you want to learn how to dive… don’t think about it! come to Koh Tao and ask for him at the school Pura Vida Diving! You’ll lose any fear you may have quickly, and in a funny way.

We fall totally in love with the underwater life, we are lucky enough to see some hawks-bill turtles, and the common fish around here… The lovely anemone fish (Nemo!!!), yellow box fish, titan trigger fish (watch out with this ones! They are quite aggressive when breeding), beaked coral fish, blue ringed angelfish, white-eyed moray, file fish, blue-spotted stingray (we saw one eating at night!!), trevally, a more than 1m long pickhandle barracuda, parrot-fish, groupers, squirrel-fish, gobies, scorpionfi-sh, an impressive crown of thorns starfish, harlequin swee-tlips, sole… and an enormous jenkins whipray!!!!

Sorry, we have been busy just learning and not panicking… so no pics from underwater!