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October 21 - Thailand: Koh Tao

Jon's second complete journal entry in less than a week!

This morning the minibus came and picked us up from our hotel and brought us to the high-speed ferry that took us to Ko Tao.  The boat is a catamaran that can seat about 150 but this morning there were only about 25 people headed to Ko Tao.  The ride was pretty much uneventful except for the fact that it did absolutely pour for awhile but by the time we got to the island it had stopped.

We headed to Ban's Dive Center, one of the two biggest dive shops on the island.  It seems that there are only about 750 residents on Ko Tao and 28 dive shops, which means that prices are pretty good compared to what we are used to.  Rooms are free at the dive shop if you are taking a course so once we arrived we had to decide what courses to sign up for.  We had been thinking about getting our Dive Master certification in Australia but it would be much cheaper in Thailand...what to do?  Do we go for our Dive Master in Thailand or pay more and get it in Australia?

Either way we need to get our Rescue Diver and Medic certifications so we signed up for these two for the time being, which should keep us busy for the next 4 days and somewhere in those 4 days we should decide whether we want to go for 4 Dive Master too.  The consensus is that Dive Master should take about weeks but can be done in 2-3 if time is really an issue...great, another consideration for us to take into account!  Well, like I said, we have a few more days to figure this one out. 

Once we got our diving sorted out we headed to our room.  About now I should point out that we are staying at a dive school, not a dive resort.  This is important to remember as the rooms are rather spartan (to say the least) but at least we have a/c.  Heidi checked out the bathroom and noticed that not only do we not have any toilet paper but the toilet seat is completely split in two.  Quick, what do you do?  Now is also a good time to point out the rather large and heavy roll of duct tape that we have been carrying around for four and a half months, 'just-in-case'.  In a repair job that would satisfy any man, we wrapped a bit of duct tape around the two splits and voila our toilet seat was fixed.  Throw in some toilet paper we liberated from one of the recent hotels we have stayed at, and the bathroom is in working order again.  No hot water, but hey, this is a dive school not a dive resort!  Actually Heidi made the observation that Ban's sort of reminds her of her college dorm from her first year at UVA, except, as I pointed out, that UVA wasn't on a tropical island and her dorm wasn't right on the beach.

Since our first class isn't until tomorrow we laid around and read our books for a while and then I went for a run.

Jon runs around Ko Tao (special appearance by Jon:  run #16)

After running around Chiang Mai three times I've been looking forward to a change of scenery on my runs.  Something tropical, maybe some beach views and lots of coconut trees.  That's exactly what I got.  I headed out of the hotel and turned left, passing lots of other little bungalows and a few dive shops (there are about 20 dive shops on the island).  Eventually the road just ended at the top of this really steep hill so I gladly turned around and went back downhill.  Nothing terribly exciting on the trip, except for all of the coconut trees if that qualifies for excitement.  I did notice a Hogs Breath Saloon though, which is a bar on one of our other favorite islands, Key West...maybe we'll have to just check it out and see if they are related!

After the run we napped for a bit and by the time we woke up we decided it was just about too late for dinner, so we just skipped dinner and read for a bit more then headed back to sleep.  It's a rough life, isn't it?

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