Thailand Part 3: Scuba Diving in Ko Tao (July 12-17)

Island Time – I Forgot What That Meant…

I always forget about Island Time…nothing is ever on time. I was all set to be at the ferry port for my 4:30 ferry for my last island in Thailand…Ko Tao. So I left my hotel at 3:00 to allow enough time to get there, buy a ticket and be there the 30 minutes before the departure time which is required.

The EXPECTED timeframe for my journey was the following:

• 3:00 – leave hotel for ferry dock
• 3:45 – Arrive at ferry ticket office to get ticket
• 4:00 – Walk to ferry dock to tag bags and wait for ferry
• 4:30 – Ferry Arrives and departs for Ko Tao
• 6:00 – Arrive at Ko Tao and dive school picks me up and transfer me to my hotel.

So the REALITY of my journey:

• 3:00 – leave hotel for ferry dock
• 3:45 – Arrive at ferry ticket office to get ticket
• 4:00 – Walk to ferry dock to tag bags and wait for ferry
• 4:30 – No ferry as expected…still waiting
• 5:30 – Ferry finally arrives an hour late
• 6:00 – Ferry takes 30 minutes to unload what seems like thousands of people, (as they were all arriving for the Full Moon Party that weekend).
• 6:30 – I finally board my ferry 2 hours late and we are off
• 8:00 – We finally arrive outside Ko Tao and have to transfer to a smaller boat as the large ferry can’t take us all the way into the small Ko Tao ferry dock
• 8:30 – Small boat arrives at the ferry boat in the pitch black of night and I find my pick up ride
• 9:00pm – I finally arrive at my hotel 3 hours late – ahhhh you gotta love island time  – but at least I arrived!

There is something that is easier to be delayed at an airport as you know there is a delay, there is information about what to expect and there is somewhere to walk or explore.  With a ferry, there is no information about what is happening, no where to go and it’s really quite unnerving as it’s a quiet game of trying to figure out what’s happening as no one is saying a word.

Scuba Diving:

So I decided to start scuba diving the next morning as I really wanted to go to one specific dive spot and the dive company I selected was going early Sunday morning.   The only downside was the dive company left at 5:45am. The good news is this company was the first dive company (out of hundreds on the small island) so you were the first to the best dive sites and didn’t have to deal with too many other divers and hopefully would be seeing the fish as they were waking up.

So as I woke up and got to the dive center at 5:30am, I was saddened to learn we weren’t going to Chumpton Pinnacle, the site I really wanted to go to, as the weather conditions were too rough. So the boat captain was going to find alternative sites. I figured I was here to dive for multiple days so I’m sure any sites would be great.

The Titan Trigger Fish

At the first dive briefing, we were warned about the Titan Trigger Fish at this time of the year. This fish is known to be in mating season and can get very territorial. We were told if we see one, and especially see one with the “trigger” up on the back, the best thing to do is to swim away backwards at a parallel fashion and kick the fins at the fish. You do not want to swim up towards the fish (and getting close for a photo are a big no no…even though the fish is colorful and pretty).  The Titan Trigger Fish will cover it’s territory in an upward cone area and is very territorial.   Over the three dives I’ve seen in Thailand, we have seen a few Trigger Fish and my dive masters have always warned us of these fish. I mention all this as it became a reality really quickly…So on our second dive of the morning, we ran into a problem with a Titian Trigger Fish!

 

 

Attack of the Killer Titan Trigger Fish – Our 17 Minute Underwater Attack!

It was only two minutes into our dive, and we found a beautiful puffer fish just hanging out by some coral. I thought I would drop down a bit and come in a bit closer to get a photo of the puffer fish. All of a sudden, my dive master pushed me away from where I was taking a photo (and I never got the photo of the puffer fish) as a large Titan Trigger Fish came out of nowhere and came right for me.

We didn’t do anything to provoke him, but he was coming right at me. So quickly our dive master, my dive buddy Michelle and I were all in “fight and flight” mode. We expected that if we turned on our back and started to swim and kick away we would be fine as this is what we were trained to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, this was not the case. The angry Trigger Fish came at our dive master next and was attacking and biting his fins (with pretty large and sharp teeth). Then the Trigger Fish would bite and swim away and them approach Michelle and then swim at me.  I had to kick my fins pretty quickly to keep him away from me.  He kept going back and forth with all three of us as we were swimming away.

So the three of us were having to work together to protect each other, swim away, watch out for other things behind us as we swam away. To make matters worse, a second Trigger Fish came up so all of a sudden, there were two angry Trigger Fish and three scuba divers in a show down underwater. Our dive master was using his flashlight to fight him off and we were all using our flippers.

It was a little scary, and I kept checking my air supply as I knew we were using our air more as it was a tense situation.  I knew it had been a while that we were fighting this fish off but really had no sense of time. I later learned when we were on the boat and everything was ok, that we were in this Trigger Fish attack for 17 minutes! Our Dive master said he has had something similar happen to him twice but it only last one or two minutes and the fish left, and he has never been involved in anything like this. We had a very persistent fish. In the end, all was fine and the fish followed, chased, left teeth marks in our dive masters personal fins (nice memory of this experience for him forever), but luckily no one was hurt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These Trigger fish are aggressive and are known to come up and remove scuba divers masks, bite people’s faces and limbs and even the air tubes of the scuba gear…so we have to take these fish very seriously.

I wish I would have turned on my video camera to get this on video, but it was such a tense situation and we were more concerned with protecting ourselves that I just clipped my camera to my BCD so I had my hands free to wave around and make distract the fish away from us. Later as we were swimming away and the fish was still following but had tired a bit and not as aggressive anymore, I did take a few photos of the fish as he was coming right at me. So in the end, I did get a few close photos of the fish, and these are much closer than you normally would get of the fish (and I didn’t use any zoom on these photos). These photos were just him up close in my face.

 

 

For the rest of my diving in Ko Tao, every time I saw a Titan Trigger Fish, I said a few bad words at the fish (under my breath) and swam backwards as I didn’t want another episode. I found out these aggressive Trigger Fish really just live in the waters in Thailand – so hopefully I won’t see them again.

Other Fun Dives

Once we had the Trigger Fish attack out of the way, I continued to dive and had many other wonderful dives. I think I did 8 dives in total in Ko Tao as the diving was very good and very cheap. Most dives (with gear was only $30 per dive so it’s a great time to take advantage of diving.

Here are some more of the highlights from what I saw underwater:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Afternoon Relaxation

After scuba diving each morning, I would spend most afternoons wandering around the small beach town, try out a different restaurant for lunch and then walk along the long beach front to find a new spot to park it for a while. Ko Tao was very relaxing to read on the beach, play in the water and just enjoy the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunsets Over Ko Tao

One of my favorite Ko Tao activities was finding a new beach lounge, with a happy hour of course, and watch the sunset over the water with a Singha. Many of these beach lounges had huge bean bag chairs out front and made it so easy to just sit back, relax and stay for hours…and I did!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fire Entertainers on the Beach

One of the beach bars had nightly entertainment which was quite fun (yet a litter dangerous if you sat too close). Some local fire entertainers would come to the beach bar with some fire wands, fire batons and fire chains with weights and a few gallons of gasoline. From there, they would take turns dipping their fire toy into the gasoline, lighting it on fire and then twirling, throwing and essentially rocking out to the music with the fire. The more experienced guys would throw the fire into the air and most would catch the batons. It was fun to watch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were even some young boys that were learning to be fire entertainers that would take a turn and you could tell they were less experienced, but it was still fun to watch them.

Click on: Video of fire baton twirling (or you can copy link into new browser at: http://youtu.be/NLmmnlzRI84)

Thailand’s Beers and Flag

Here are my photos of Thailand’s local beer, Signha at Ko Tao and Thailand’s National flag.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ko Samui Airport

My last stop in Thailand was the Ko Samui airport.  Even though it was a short stop, I had two things to note from the airport:

1.  Lucky for me, as I was waiting for my flight at the Ko Samui airport, I stumbled into an Irish Pub and they had my favorite Kilkenny Beer, so I was quite happy before I boarded my Malaysia Airlines flight headed for Penang.

2. The last ladies room I went to had such a nice aquarium in it.  Seemed odd, but sort of peaceful to see all the fish as you were washing your hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logistics:

Koya Guesthouse – There is no website yet as this is a fairly new guesthouse (just opened a few months ago). My dive center recommended it and I booked it through booking.com or agoda. It was a really nice clean and simple room close to the dive center. The guesthouse was also a quick 3 minute walk to the beach. I would stay there again if I was going to dive as primary goal, but not if I was looking for a beach holiday as it’s not on the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scuba Diving Company: New Way Diving – www.newwaydiving.com

I read great reviews about this dive company and was thrilled I selected them. Most of the companies on the island cater to the backpacker crowd and take too many people out at one time so it’s very crowded at each dive site. As I heard I was going to be on Ko Tao right when all the Full Moon parties, I wanted to find one of the mid to small dive shops to really focus on diving and not the mass amounts of people and New Way Diving was great for this. Plus they were the first boat on the island to leave (at 5:45am) so we were always the first to every dive site to see the fish wake up.