Koh Tao: Diving and Boxing

From one island to another, except with a very different pace of life. I left the Perhentians and made my way to Koh Tao, Thailand via Kuala Lumpur and Koh Samui (roundabout to avoid a "dangerous border crossing"). Koh Tao is known for diving, and that is what I did. Checked into a dive resort, and started off by doing a refresher course for my open water certification (which I left at home...deja vu, Belize...). Luckily they could look up my certification online. Good work, NAUI.

I did the refresher dive and then two more fun dives. There were fish, and some coral, it was cool. But my favorite dive was the last one I did, in a site called Laem Thian Caves. There were a bunch of narrow caves and swimthroughs to negotiate, I felt like Indiana Jones swimming into a dark cave 15m below the surface with no flashlight. It was also good practice controlling my buoyancy, trying not to smack my head, tank, and hands on the rocks and coral.

Turns out I don't have the dive mentality. Seems like lots of people come for a week and end up staying months (or years). Every time the boat went out there would be two dives. I liked doing one dive (which was frowned upon by the people running the show) and just hanging out on the boat during the second dive with my dive buddy. On one of the dives I spent above water, they saw a turtle and a yellow boxfish. The divemaster was so excited...screaming excited. I didn't feel that sad about "missing it", although some people seemed to be disappointed in me for not having seen it. It was weird. Anyway, I enjoyed the diving I did, and was pretty well done after the 3 days.

Dive buddy Ben (had an underwater camera)

While I spent my afternoons diving, I spent my mornings doing Muay Thai Boxing. I loved it. Come in 8am, warm up, then an hour or so spent in a solo lesson. Just me, and a padded instructor for about $8/day. We'd do around 3 minute intervals where he'd hold for various punch/kick combos. At the end of each 3 minutes I was dying. Short break, correct my form, start again. The strikes and kicks were pretty similar to what I do in Krav Maga in Austin, so I picked up quick.

After 4 days of the fight/dive cycle, I was pretty exhausted. In some ways I understand how people get sucked into months or years of diving. I probably could have spent a couple weeks doing the Muay Thai training.

My instructor Jem

Time spent not diving on the dive boat.

Sairee Beach, where I was staying