After a long and hideous journey, we finally arrived back on the welcoming Koh Tao, where we headed to our accommodation for the night and were "upgraded" to a beach front villa. We walked straight up to Roctopus where we booked places on the Sunday Sail Rock trip, and ended up listening to the stories about the numerous whale shark sitings all the dive schools on the island had been having over the past week. We were persuaded by Sammy to get straight back into the water and head out to Chumpon Pinnacle, the whale sharks favourite, the very next morning! The evening was spent catching up with the dive school staff and other divers we had met previously on the island, none of whom were surprised that we couldn't stay away from the addictive Koh Tao!
Waking up early to the sound of waves crashing on the beach, we checked out of our room, lugged our backpacks up to the dive school and left them in the office whilst we packed our kit in the familiar blue bags, ready for our first dive back on the island. After the taxi ride down to the pier, we clambered over five or six boats, finally reaching the Roctopus dive boat where we set up our equipment and lay in the sun for the 40 minute ride to the pinnacle out at sea. After twenty minutes, we noticed that the dive site seemed to be unusually busy and P-man (the skipper) started making the whale shark signal, informing us that there was in fact a whale shark there! Immediately butterflies filled our stomachs and the last twenty minutes of the journey seemed like an age as we prayed the whale shark would stick around. We geared up and performed our buddy checks as we approached the dive site. Shep, our dive master said that we wouldn't wait for the captain to moor the boat and we would just hop in as we cruised over the pinnacle. It was time and we all jumped in, cleared our masks, and deflated our BCs as we descended down equalising to make sure we had no problems with our ears. We all noticed a wall of bubbles the other side of the pinnacle and Shep led us in that direction. As we got closer to the wall of bubbles, that looked like an upside down waterfall, it appeared, around four and a half to five metres long, the blue-ish grey giant, splattered with a striking mosaic of white spots and lines unique to each and every whale shark. It cruised passed the flapping divers trying to keep up with it with a single majestic sweep of its tail, the excitement on Laura's face, in fact everyones faces, was priceless. We spent a good twenty minutes with the shark as it circled the pinnacle before it cruised into the blue beyond our reach so we carried on navigating the dive site and as we were reaching the end of our dive time it appeared again over our heads creating a stunning silhouette above us. It got to the point where we had to say goodbye to the shark and ascend back to the surface.
However, during our surface interval, we spent about 40 minutes snorkelling above the whale shark, taking as many photos and videos as we could, who remained near the surface the entire time, even coming up to 1m below the surface right next to the boat so everyone, including the skipper, got a great view! We quickly geared up for our second dive with the shark, jumped off the boat and descended, quicker than ever before. Watching people trying to rush underwater is a pretty funny sight! One of the great perks of diving with Roctopus is that they leave about an hour after all the other dive schools, meaning that dive sites are quieter when we get there. By this point, everyone at Chumpon had finished there second dive and were leaving, allowing us to dive with the shark alone! Rather than having 30-40 divers crowding around the stunning, spotted animal, the five of us spent about fifteen minutes swimming along with the shark all to ourselves, getting some great photos and having as close a look as we could. Mikey, the videographer filming the open water students, said that his footage from our two dives that day was the best footage of whale sharks that his company had and that we were so incredibly lucky to spend so much time with the shark. All together, we spent well over an hour either swimming with or above the shark. As we clambered back onto the Roctopus boat, exhausted both emotionally and physically, we couldn't speak to each other for a good few minutes. Almost in shock, we enjoyed the boat journey back relaxing in the sun and talking at a speed we didn't even no was possible, about the morning. For both of us, it was the most exciting, memorable and special time of our trip.
On arriving back at Roctopus and cleaning our gear, we were met by a lady who worked at Suksamran Villas, where we had previously stayed and were moving back to for the next two weeks. Having been told the night before that their standard air-con rooms were all full, they rang back to inform us that we could stay in there "very beautiful villa" for 1000 baht a night (the same price as their standard room). We were shown to the "room", which turned out to be the top floor of a huge villa and consisted of a king size bedroom, a stunning and CLEAN bathroom, a huge living area with a plasma tv, sky tv, dvd player and a kitchenette. Already on such a high after the whale shark, we didn't think our day could get any better….but it did! We also later found out that usually this villa cost 4500 baht a night! We spent the rest of the afternoon having lunch at Mint Kitchen and looking through the photos and videos. So excited to tell her parents, Laura rang them back in England forgetting the time difference and woke them up VERY early on a Sunday morning, putting them into a panic that something was wrong (sorry!). We then chilled back in our luxury villa, periodically pinching ourselves to check it wasn't a dream, before heading to Banyan Bar where we watched Mikey's film he made earlier that day and had a few catch up drinks with some Roctopus staff before heading out for dinner.
That Sunday was finally time for the long-awaited Sail Rock trip, a full day trip out to a pinnacle in the middle of the sea between Koh Tao and Koh Phangan where we had two dives. After a long boat journey we finally reached the pinnacle and had two fantastic dives, one exploring the "secret" pinnacle. We were astounded by both the number of fish in the gigantic schools that dwarfed those we have seen at Chumpon Pinnacle and the size of the fish, in particular the giant grouper. One of our favourite moments was when a huge school of hundreds of batfish swam straight past us in the deep blue. It was also great to see smaller things such as varicose wart slugs, indian cushion seastars and tiger cowries. In our surface interval break we enjoyed spicy penang curries for lunch, provided by the delicious Mint Kitchen whilst sitting in the sun. After two memorable deep dives, we headed back to the island for a relaxing evening.
The following day we had a day off diving, enjoying a lie in in the incredibly comfortable bed before heading down to the beach to sunbathe and chill in the warm water. In the evening we enjoyed a delicious pizza at the islands best italian restaurant and headed back to watch a film on our huge television. We decided that the chilled thai lifestyle definitely suits us both!
Back to diving, and we had another early start at Roctopus. We jumped on the boat with our gear and set off towards Chumpon Pinnacle again with our dive master Shep, a friend called Wes (who was with us on our whale shark dives) and open water students, including videographer Mikey again. Again, Chumpon seemed unusually busy and when we got into the water we realised that there was a whale shark circling the pinnacle again! This time we spent the first fifteen minutes with several other divers following the shark who seemed to be slightly more stressed than the one a few days before. People crowded around the shark, with some careless people even stroking it before being told off and put to shame by numerous other divers. We then went for a swim round the pinnacle spotting mackerel, batfish, hunting queenfish and rainbow runners.
The next four days were spent eating a lot of pot noodle and doing nothing but chilling in the villa and at the beach as we forced ourselves to spend as little money as possible and we decided we would spread our dives out over the two weeks that we had on Koh Tao. We also discovered the great restaurant called Pud, where we enjoyed a delicious meal costing less than one pound!
The following two days consisted of more diving at sites such as Chumpon Pinnacle, Green Rock, South West Pinnacle and Shark Island. On the dives we were lucky to spot a yellow boxfish, porcupine pufferfish, lined butterfly fish, an enormous rhizostome jellyfish and a blue-spotted stingray which we hadn't seen in a while. One evening we managed to pursued each other to go on our first night dive. Rather than heading to White Rock, where most night dives took place, we stopped at Pottery due to the huge and unusual swell that was rocking the boat like a see-saw. We were handed the tiny torches (definitely not the flashlights that we were expecting) and were briefed on how to dive in the dark. We entered the water before it was completely dark, allowing our eyes to adjust underwater as darkness fell. We didn't see as much on the night dive, probably as during most of the dive we had to concentrate on not being thrown against the sea urchin-covered rocks, but we did spot a sleeping porcupine pufferfish, a blue spotted stingray with his eyes reflecting against the light, the largest hermit crab we have both ever seen, a scorpionfish, an eel and a baby octopus. Had there been no swell, we would have enjoyed this dive more as it daunting enough doing our first night dive and swimming against the huge swell was quite a struggle. However, we are proud that we did our first night dive which we would never have dreamed of doing before we started diving and look forward to the next.
After yet another dive at our favourite Chumpon Pinnacle, we travelled back towards White Rock where we were to do our second dive at the wreck of HTMS Sattakut. We descended down the buoy line, hoping for good visibility which is very hit and miss at this site. We were thoroughly pleased to be greeted with great visibility allowing us to have a long swim around the wreck peeking through the port holes into the wreck which was full to the brim with fish. Once we had swam round the ship, we swam over the top, where we got some great photos of Charlie next to the guns! We then had a short swim around Hin Wee Pinnacle, next to the wreck where we saw all the usual suspects. We had a quiet afternoon before meeting up with Wes and Rachel at Fizz to watch the sunset with cocktails and a nice dinner before they headed back to England the following day.
On our last dive at Chumpon, we had our fingers crossed for one last glimpse of a whale shark but saw only the usual fish and creatures that lived on the pinnacle. We then headed back to the shallow waters of White Rock, where we jumped in the water and straight away followed all the divers who were crowding around….a whale shark! Unusual to find a whale shark at this dive site so shallow and close to land, we were completely surprised and had completely lost all hope of seeing another one before we left Koh Tao. We managed to swim with it for a few minutes before it raced off into the deep blue, clearly on a mission. Three is the magic number! That evening we headed back to Fizz for cocktails and the sunset where we randomly bumped into Charlie's friend's girlfriend on the way and then Charlie's friend Simon at the bar! After a drink with Simon, we headed back to Nong for one of their scrummy pizzas for dinner.
For our final day Will, one of the owners of Roctopus had organised a special trip with a second boat taking eight of us to Laem Tien, a dive site on the other side of the island, in the afternoon for two dives and another delicious Mint Kitchen curry for lunch. Our first dive was off the beach of a previously deserted resort, an unofficial dive site, where four of us went off spotting a couple of harlequin sweetlips, several aggressive titan triggerfish, lined butterflyfish, orange-spined unicorn fish and copper band butterflyfish to name a few. Having spotted several new species of fish, our second dive was more of an obstacle course with less fish than the previous. We spotted our favourite nudibranch Jorunna funebris as well as both blue-ringed and six-banded angelfish and had great fun finding and navigating through three tricky swimthroughs. Sad to have finished diving on Koh Tao (for now) we arrived back on the island after a lovely, glowing sunset cruise. That evening we had farewell drinks with Will and Shep at Banyan before our final dinner at our favourite restaurant.
The final morning was spent packing our stuff before heading to the Mint Kitchen for our last pad thai in Thailand and to say a final thank you and goodbye to Roctopus. After bumping into one of the DMTs, we were told that the night boat south that we were supposed to be getting had been cancelled. We headed straight to the tourist shop where we got our ticket to ask how we could make it to Langkawi for the following day if the night boat was cancelled. We were told there was no way, and that our only solution was to get the night boat back to Chumpon, and then a bus down to Satun where we were to get the ferry to Langkawi. However, we would arrive an hour after the last ferry had left for Langkawi and would have to spend the night in Satun (not the most desirable place). This also put a spanner in the works as we had arranged with Robert (Laura's Dad) that we were going to surprise Kate (Laura's Mum) by showing up at the hotel 24 hours before she expected, and he had also arranged transport from the ferry and booked a hotel room! So, annoyed we had to spend a night in the dreary Satun and desperate to get to Langkawi, we informed Robert who luckily managed to cancel the room. Later that evening we headed down to the harbour and had a good few hours sleep on the surprisingly comfortable bunk beds on the air-conditioned night ferry.
On arriving at Chumpon, we were excited to find that the bus to Satun left three hours before planned, raising our hopes that we might in fact be able to make the ferry to Langkawi. For a second time in 24 hours we told Robert that there was a chance we may actually make it to the hotel that evening but we wouldn't know for sure until we made it all the way to Satun and managed to buy ferry tickets. Our bus went via Krabi where we dropped passengers off at various locations before we were dumped at a random tourist shop. By this time it was 11.30am and we were informed that they forgot to book us a place on the bus to Satun that was now full and that we would have to stay there overnight. After a long conversation and several phone calls later, the couple at the tourist shop arranged to borrow their friends car and drive us all the way south to Satun themselves (for more money but well worth it). We made the ferry with half an hour to spare, went through border control on Langkawi (Malaysia) and after a 45 minute drive to the hotel we pulled up with butterflies of excitement in our stomachs to the Datai, Langkawi.
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