How to Relax, in One Easy Step...

We decided on the bus from Bac Ha that Thailand was going to be our “rain vacation,” and that the destination was going to be Koh Tao, a beautiful little island in the gulf of Thailand with amazing coral reefs, stunning beaches, and more diving shops per capita than anywhere else on Earth. Sounded like a great place for Rachel to take on a new adventure – her open water scuba certification! Being already certified, I was going to join her on her open water dives and, other than that, do a lot of rest and relaxation (and catching up on blog posts).

Just so you’re aware, here are all of the steps that had to go right for us to get down to Koh Tao and get Rachel certified within the window of time that we had:

• Get motorcycles off of bus and into Hanoi, as they dropped us halfway across town, in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain
• Get a hostel for the night so we could attempt to get some sleep
• Find a place to park the motorcycles for 3+ weeks at a reasonable cost (thanks again here to Style Motorcycles!!)
• Book airport transportation from hostel
• Book last minute flights to Bangkok
• Get from Don Mueng airport in Bangkok to the bus terminal
• Book an overnight bus ride down to Chumphon
• Book a ferry trip from Chumphon to Koh Tao
• Book course (and accommodation, if applicable) at well-rated dive shop, that started the day we got there and ended the day we had to leave to make our next flight in Bangkok
• Get taxi to dive shop
• Breathe

Somehow, in completely atypical fashion for us, every single one of these items went off without a hitch.

I cannot stress how rare this is for us. Something always goes wrong – we’ve come to expect it at this point. Either a bus is late, or there’s an accident on the freeway, or the internet goes down when we’re trying to book flights – something happens. Imagine our surprise when literally everything worked out perfectly. Magic, ladies and gents.

Once we got to Bangkok, the airport transfer bus took us straight to Khao San Road, which happened to be one block from where the bus was leaving from. This was semi-coincidental, but appreciated nonetheless – like Leo said in The Beach, Khao San Road is backpacker central; if there was going to be a bus leaving from somewhere in Bangkok, there’s probably at least a 50% chance it’s from here. We booked our bus and ferry tickets, and spent the next few hours hanging out on Khao San until we were able to board.

Those of you who know me, know that about 10 years ago I spent around six or seven weeks in Thailand. Man, have things changed around here in a decade, first and foremost of which is Khao San Road.

It's true -- Khao San Road was the center of the backpacking universe. Not so much anymore, I'm afraid. Gone are the crowds of messed up backpackers, drunk off 20 baht beers and high as a kite on whatever they could find (i.e. everything) -- now it's so...kitschy. Khao San reminds me more of Pier 39 in San Fran than the hedonistic slum it used to be, and this goes for the rest of the country as well. I'm amazed at how far Thailand has come in the past decade; in my eyes, it's gone from a country that was on the cusp of taking off to a fully modern western-style country.

You can still see scraps of the old Thailand here and there, as well as some cultural quirks and black marks that absolutely refuse to go away (I'm looking at you, sex trade), but for the most part, the standard of living here has been raised to a point where I think I could live here quite comfortably for some time. However, what's great for Thailand and the Thai people ain't so great for us -- with that increased standard of living comes an equally increased cost of living. Meaning, of course, that our $1 meals in Vietnam were far behind us now -- welcome to civilization, ladies and gents, and the costs associated with it.

That said, the robust tourist infrastructure here came in very handy as we made our last minute bookings down to Koh Tao, the beautiful island where we'd spend our next few days. And the great food and wonderful (vegetarian!) restaurants we ate at were a brief and expensive, but ultimately welcome, break from our steady diet of noodle soups in Vietnam.

Vegetarian meals!? On the beach!? Vietnam, take notes.

Once we were through with our plane-bus-ferry-taxi milk run, we got to the resort and set Rachel up for her first day of diving instruction, and I settled in for a relaxing three and a half days of...virtually nothing. That's right, I'm sorry, we really don't have any great tales to tell from Koh Tao as Rachel spent the whole time getting instructed in achieving optimum buoyancy and I spent most of my time sleeping and reading. We did get a chance to go out a couple nights though, one of which was to a ladyboy cabaret, which was...hilarious.

Palms & poses.

I don't know why there's such a huge population of trans folk here in Thailand, though I have my hunches (see sex tourism, Thailand, above), but it's been prevalent here for longer than anyone can remember. It's also much more accepted here on a general level than in the West, although trans people here do seem to slip through holes in the social security net just like they do back home, and suffer from many of the same setbacks (i.e. job availability, medical coverage, etc). That said, one of the ways that they are able to continue living their lives is through the tourism industry, and shows like the one we saw. Think big hair, ridiculous costumes, and terrible lip-synching -- Thailand tourism at it's finest.

This bucket had no liquor in it.

The other night we went out involved us walking up and down the beach like true Thai tourists -- bar hopping, watching the sun set, and grabbing drinks from everywhere we could. They have this drinking tradition in Thailand of giving drinks out in 1 liter plastic buckets -- we ordered one of these 'bucket drinks,' and promptly got stone-cold sober as we realized it was 100% passion fruit juice. We spent the rest of the night watching the fire dancers on the beach -- it also happens that there are more fire dancers per tourist in Koh Tao than anywhere else in the world -- before hitting the sack.

The other thing that being a tourist in Koh Tao gave us, aside from a fantastically over-the-top ladyboy show, a stomach ache from passion fruit juice, and a wealth of fire dancing, was the ability to sit back and not think for a few days. I mean, Rachel was using her brain getting the whole scuba thing down pat, but overall our accommodation was set, finding vegetarian meals was simple, and we had ways to spend our time for a few days that didn't involve some base-level of stress. It's important when travelling long-term to not overdo it, and we had been doing just that in Vietnam. We were well on our way to burnout, and the reset we got with a few days of white sand and the island pace of life was perfect.

Beautiful sunsets over the beaches and boats of Koh Tao.

The fourth day in Koh Tao was our last, and Rachel's final two open water certification dives. I asked the instructors at the Sairee Cottage Divers if I could join her as her buddy, and being one of the 'stronger' students in the class they consented.

Rachel, just swinging life away.

Allen, always monkeying around.

Sairee Cottage Divers was the school that Rachel attended for her open water, and also our resort for the few days we had on the island. We cannot recommend this school highly enough -- the instructors were knowledgeable and patient, the gear was modern and in good nick, they had a great diving pool on-site so they can ease their students into the water, and their choices of dives were, for the most part, excellent.

You can't tell from this photo, but conditions on our first dive were less than optimal.

The first couple of open water dives that Rachel did were mostly skill-based dives, getting her acquainted with the gear and with the water. The day I came out to do her final dives was much more recreational -- minimal skills, and a lot more ability to actually sit back and actually enjoy the dives. Our first dive had a lot of current and the sea-life wasn't that great, but the second dive we were on was fantastic -- perfect conditions, visibility, sea-life, and even an old US Navy destroyer thrown in for good measure. We both got out of the water grinning from ear-to-ear -- that was what diving was all about! As the cherry on top, Rachel passed her certification with flying colors. 

I never get photos of my dives, so I decided to be very smiley. Rachel was too terrified to take the regulator out of her mouth.

After stripping off our wetsuits, we booked it back for shore and another taxi-ferry-bus-train combination back to Bangkok. We were sorry to leave Koh Tao behind, but excited for our next adventures in Northern Thailand. One more day in Bangkok, and we were on our way up to Chiang Mai to see our friend Jess and for Rachel's 29th!

All smiles after completing Rachel's open water certification! (Also let's have a look at that leg burn for a second...)