We headed to Koh Tao at the recommendation of some fellow travelers who said it was beautiful with great scuba diving. Although I did some research for places to stay, we did not settle on anything and chose to look when we arrived because it would be early afternoon. On the ferry from Koh Pangnan, there were several salesmen trying to get us to book at their scuba resort. We talked to the guy from the resort that was recommended, Ban’s, and he offered us a free ride to the resort (score)! Once at the resort, we signed up for the PADI Advanced Open Water course, which even included 2 nights accommodations. Because finding a place to stay took much less time than expected, the rest of the afternoon was spent exploring the beachfront and buying supplies for breakfast and lunch (in an effort to save money).

Our scuba class started the next morning. The course is made up of five adventure dives to practice certain skills: deep dive to 30M, underwater navigation, night dive, wreck dive, and fish identification. On the wreck dive, I used Nitrox gas which is a combination of Nitrogen and Oxygen. Nitrox has a higher percentage of oxygen than a normal air tank which meant I could stay deeper longer. The wreck is actually a US ship used to flight in WWII. After the war, the ship was purchased and used by Thailand. Three years ago, it was placed off the shore of Kho Tao to form an artificial reef – it was a fun learning experience to see a reef starting to grow.

Unfortunately, our dives had poor water clarity, but at least there were a lot of fish! You can watch a summary of the dives below from our GoPro footage. You’ll notice the clarity and the coloring changes at each location and depth. We didn’t attempt to capture anything on the night dive (between navigating and keeping track with a single light we had enough going on anyways) but it was really neat. At one point on the bottom, our group of 10 turned out all lights, waved our hands around and watched bioluminescent plankton illuminate. We also saw nocturnal creatures such as spotted stingrays, puffer fish, and a huge hermit crab along with many fish that looked like they were glowing when we shined the light on them.

After we completed our diving course, we enjoyed the nightlife on the beach. Our main focus was the impressive fire dancing at each hotel bar. Looking down the beach was beautiful because you could see multiple shows happening at once. After chatting with our new scuba diving buddies, it was time to call it a night because we were wiped out from the last couple days of adventuring.

The next morning was decision time; either stay 3 more days on the island to complete a free-diving course (like scuba but with zero equipment) or continue on to Bangkok. We ultimately chose to leave that day because it would allow for the proper amount of time in Bangkok to obtain a visa for Vietnam. Our hotel sold travel arrangements to Bangkok, but our first choice (overnight) was full so we had to take the more expense ferry and also arrange for a place to stay that night in Bangkok.