Burn, Baby, Burn!

Monday 20 October 2008
Ko Tao

The next morning I woke up and in a pool near my room I saw loads of tadpoles. Mating season it is, then.

I had snorkelling booked and so I had to get up at a horrendously early 7.30 to meet at 8.30 in the hotel. At first I was worried that the only other people on the tour would be three old Australians and one old English woman, but luckily by the time we arrived at the boat there were around 30 or 40 of us.

We set off and immediately it started chucking it down again. However it didn't last too long and, after all, we were going to be in the water, so it didn't really matter. We stopped off at a bay and started snorkelling. Now I love snorkelling, something I first fully realised when I was on holiday in Sharm-el-Sheik and there was the clearest water I have ever seen and small coral reefs filled with fish about three metres from the shore.

I guess I was spoilt. There was coral and fish here, but in much smaller numbers and not as colourful. The coral here for the most part seemed to be brown, like it was dead or something. I hope not, but compared to Egypt it wasn't great. There were a fair few fish here and apparently a few small sharks, though unfortunately I didn't get to see them.

The rest of the trip consisted of travelling to a few other bays and snorkelling around. And it was during this that, despite the sun screen that I was wearing, I burnt my back pretty badly! There was bay after bay, and after a while I had "bay fatigue," partly because the bays were less and less impressive as the day went on.

The end of the trip was Ko Nang Yuan - a group of three islands connected by two sand bars at the north west of Ko Tao. It's pretty beautiful but everything is very expensive (at least for my budget). However my back was properly burnt by now so I couldn't do any more snorkelling. I walked to the top of one of the islands which had a pretty nice view, and the peak was full of amazingly hot but miserable-looking Russian girls, and northern English lads.

On the trip back to Ko Tao I was chatting to a Dutch couple, as well as some Swedes that I'd been hanging out with for most of the trip, but I also met some Aussies, one of which had a nasty welt on his leg. Turns out he earnt it when trying to jump the burning rope at Hadd Rin while drunk. Even funnier, was that he had done exactly the same thing the year before and had sworn never to do it again. Such is the power of alcohol.

Once back home I bought some aloe vera after-sun and liberally applied it. I then slept for a bit and wondered around the town again, treating myself to a pizza. It's actually physically impossible to eat Thai the whole time.

I was feeling pretty knackered and wasn't feeling like making anything of the evening. I had a couple of drinks in a couple of places but nothing was clicking for me. Then I went to watch the fire twirlers again and managed to get a bit of it on video. The bar I was at is the main beach party bar on the island and after a while I joined in the spirit of things. Especially once they started playing that David Byrne Lazy track, and I met some Scottish people dancing like loons. A couple of songs later I thought I should head off to bed again, only to realise that I wasn't feeling tired anymore. They played that We All Live and Die track as well, which was great and something I hadn't heard in a while. "If in doubt always go out," as a very wise man once said*. The music was good and the beers were cheap enough so I kept at it for a while, but soon enough the tiredness came back and I went to bed at a pretty respectable 12.45.

*It was me.