I had a great time in Pattaya, staying with David (whom my parents and aunt know from Hong Kong days) for almost a week. He and his partner were lovely hosts and spoiled me rotten! It was interesting to get a taste of ex-pat life and really nice to kick back in a beautiful house and not have to organise transport, accomodation or meals for a while. David showed me around Jom Tien and Pattaya, took me to his exercise class (I could hardly keep up!), hosted a dinner party (charming company - I was told I should be an actress, I think it was a compliment) and got to join them at a friend's birthday party after which I was kidnapped by a charming Australian who introduced me to Pattaya's 'Walking Street' with all its bars and slightly seedy clubs. Earlier during the week I also saw an amusing transvestitie show which had a largely Chinese tourist audience (lots of kids!). Definitely a bit different from the sights I'd been taking in up until then and good fun!
After Pattaya I travelled down to Thailand's Southwestern Gulf Coast. First I stayed on Ko Tao, which is popular with divers (and those who want to become divers) - I think after Cairns it issues the highest number of diving certificates, for a fraction of the price. It's a small island (21 sq km) and easy to walk around. I stayed a week and was really lucky with the weather. There were one or two thunderstorms late at night but plenty of sun during the day. First I stayed in Chalok bay which is where I picked my scuba dive school - the "Scuba Shack", which wasn't as flashy as some of the dive shops around, which specialised in attracting hungover 18-year old gap yearers and went out with big groups. Scuba Shack had a really nice (if completely mad) international bunch of dive masters and dive instructors, incl. an American, Brit, Swede, German and Frenchman. Getting instructions in your mother tongue is what you want when you're doing something as technical as scuba! I was assigned the German instructor, Dirk, who was very calm and disciplined (i.e. German..) and did a one-day introductory dive with him for about 30 pounds. The day before I tried on all the gear (feeling like a spaceman) and he lent me an SSI book - which I devoured because I know I'm rubbish at technical things. It was definitely good to read up on the technicalities beforehand, as there are a million emergency procedures and all these laws of Physics which apply, but don't always make sense - like having to deflate your BC (Buoyancy Compensator, which is the big black jacket your air tank is attached to) when you ascend, even though your BC makes you float so you'd think it should be inflated - but you have to take the water pressure into account and the fact that your wetsuit decompresses as you rise, etc. etc. I was pretty confused at first as you can imagine! The first dive went well though - I was the only one doing an intro, everyone else was doing fun dives, so I got a private lesson which was great. We went out on the dive shop's boat at about noon, and went diving at a site called Japanese Gardens - very popular with first-timers, so there were almost more divers than fish! It was what felt like quite a short dive but Dirk said I was doing well so I got to swim around on my own after we'd done all the emergency exercises, practised achieving neutral buoyancy by breathing the right way, forcing water out of the mask when it filled up underwater, using the 'octopus' (the back-up mouthpiece), as well as 'equalising' as you go down to adjust to the water pressure (basically this entails squeezing your nose and gulping a lot).
It was very weird actually and as everyone tells you beforehand you feel conscious of every breath you take, and communicating with handsigns is a bit bizarre as well (the sign for 'rabbit fish' is particularly amusing). I really enjoyed it though and only had a little mishap at the end as we were ascending, when I got my mouthpiece full of water and pressed the 'purge' button (which will expel the water if you do it right) without closing my mouth - so the water got blasted into my throat and I couldn't take a breath and panicked. Dirk saw what happened and got me my octopus and I got a watery breath out of that, and then our ascension was a bit speedier than it was supposed to be! Still, it didn't put me off and I took another two dives later in the week. I got one of the American instructors that time, and he said it would be an introductory-style dive as well, but he didn't actually let me swim around by myself but held my arm throughout. In a way it was good because he pointed out loads of cool fish to me (we were at a different site called White Rock) and we were diving with two English guys who were a lot more experienced, so I'm glad I got a bit more attention. We saw angelfish, clownfish (like Nemo), two stingrays (under a rock, they looked very sweet and non-threatening), a big triggerfish, rabbitfish, a moray eel, a striped sea snake, Christmas-tree worms, soft and hard coral, and I got to hold a sea cucumber! (Actually one of the English guys was kicking it about on his flipper so he could get a photo of it on his underwater camera, so the dive instructor freaked out and took it away from him, then let me hold it while he told him off!). Then we got back on the boat and went to the second site (if you're Open Water qualified and pay for a fun dive you get two dives with a break on the boat in between, which you spend eating cookies and fruit and sunbathing on the deck). As I'd paid half the introductory-dive price and was a novice I wasn't entitled to a second dive but I got lucky and the instructor said he'd be happy to take me down to this site too, since I didn't "kick about too much" (though I wasn't allowed to tell anyone). We were on the lookout for a big turtle that they kept seeing on that site, but sadly it was hiding that day. I got to sit on the seabed while one of the boys practised emergency ascensions and air sharing with the instructor; then we swam about looking at coral and fish. We were down for about 45 minutes each time - I was so tired that night!
There was a pretty bay called Shark Bay near where I was staying, so I spent a couple of days swimming and reading on the beach. The water was so shallow you had to wade for 100m before you were in it up to your chest! Very clear and the sand was gorgeous white too. Apparently sharks actually came into the bay, often in the evenings, but I didn't see any. Probably a good thing.
After that I moved to Sai Ree beach on the other side of the island, which was much busier with lots of boutiques (selling GAP and Abercrombie clothes made in Cambodia at about 60% of what you'd pay in the US) and restaurants and bars. Good fun, and I watched a couple of films in the beach bars in the evenings, which satisfied a craving.
Interestingly there were quite a lot of Burmese people working in the restaurants and resorts on the island, including the first place I stayed in. The woman there said she and her husband both worked in Thailand while their mothers raised their daughters in Burma. She only went back to Burma a couple of times a year and had once been away for three years. When she went back she didn't recognise her eldest daughter because she'd grown up so much.
Then I got the ferry to Ko Pha Ngan, where it proceeded to rain for two days! The island was definitely popular with the party crowd, with buckets of alcohol for sale everywhere. But it was quite tame in the evenings, I suppose because it was out-of-season. On the third day the sun finally came out again and I inspected the beach at Hat Rin Nok where I was staying. This infamous strip of sand plays host to the Fullmoon party once a month. I went to the Halfmoonparty on the third night - it's held in a kind of open-air bar with a sandy dance area, not on the beach but inland. There were a lot of taxi drivers with Halfmoon Party posters on standby to ferry revellers to the party, so I shared a taxi with some rowdy Dutch girls and three Israelis (who were so fascinated by how fast the taxidriver went and how reckless he was - I can hardly remember what it's like to be driven by a sane, safe driver). It was still quite quiet when I got there at about 10.30 or so, and really picked up at 1am (though when I was getting the taxi to get to the ferry at 6am the next morning there were a lot of people about who'd obviously just left the party!). A lot of people there looked like they'd never dream of going to a rave at home and were just curious, others really went in for the whole glow-paint and flashing devil's horns thing!
The next day I had a classic Asian-style journey. I got a ferry from Ko Pha Ngan and then a bus to Surat Thani, were I was sold an aircon minibus ticket to Hat Yai, and they said the bus would come at 11.30. It was about quarter past so I sat down to wait but as soon as I'd taken my backpack off the lady who'd sold me the ticket came over and said I could go. So I went outisde and there was a guy on a motorbike waiting. I asked where the bus was and she said "You get on the motorbike" - which I politely refused to do. I must have looked convinced because they gave up and the motorbike drove off without me and I waited another 5 mins. Then another guy came up and waved at me and said I should follow him. I looked for the lady who sold me the ticket to check it was ok to go with him, and she confirmed I should go. So I got in his flashy red car (!) and he drove me 5 mins into town and dropped me off at a street corner. There some other bloke wandered up and said I should follow him. He walked me to a travel agency. The lady there took my receipt but didn't give me a ticket and said the bus would be here at 12.00. I'd been expecting a lift to the bus station, so I said "So the bus comes here?"and she said "Yes! you wait here". So I sat down again and waited for a minute. Then the bloke came back and she said I should follow him again. We walked around the corner to another travel agency. By now I was feeling a little bit had, especially as I no longer had a receipt or ticket. At the next agency they said I should sit down. I asked when the bus was coming. One guy said 12.30, no, maybe 1 o' clock. It was now 11:45. I said they'd sold me an 11.30 bus ticket. They said they didn't know why I'd been told 11:30. I asked where the bus station was. They said the next bus at the bus station would be at three o' clock. I asked again where it was, regardless of when the bus would apparently be coming, but they just shrugged. So I walked out to check what street we were on to see if I could locate it on my map. A minivan pulled up just then and three German guys got out who I'd met in the taxi that morning on Ko Pha Ngan, on the way to the pier . I started talking to them and they said they were going to Pattani but had paid for return tickets to Bangkok and also had no receipts now. They were told to unload their luggage and we sat around and mused about Asian organisaton. One minute later we were told to load all the luggage back into the minivan and to get in. By now I felt a bit like a sheep. Then the driver got in, got the motor running, the air-con on (and the doors open..) and got out and left us to stew for a couple more minutes. Some more people got in and we set off before one o clock! Four hours later he made us all get off, get our luggage, and sent us across a busy dual carriageway towards a different mini-van (no explanation). Half- way across the road in the middle of busy traffic the driver of the other minivan asked me where I was going, and started shouting across to the other driver. We all stood in the middle of the road and had a cosy chat about who should be going where, then established that two Thai guys and I shouldn't be changing minivans and had to go back and load our luggage again while the Germans finished crossing the road. Five minutes later I was at the minibus stop in Hat Yai... miraculoulsy enough! I stayed there long enough to buy a bus ticket to get to Malaysia on Monday, but wasn't particularly enamoured with it. The British consulate website strongly advised against travelling in this area because of terrorist activity, which might be why I was the only white tourist (plus a hundred Chinese) in the area. I did see military police about, and they were doing bag searches at the malls, as some shops and bars were bombed there in 2005. Most of the violence is not aimed at tourists though, and happens in the villages. Anyone who chatted to me in restaurants or the guesthouse was very nice, but they all assumed I was working in Hat Yai, or I'd have no reason to be there. They were also astounded that I was alone, and sometimes a bit protective, e.g. a restaurant owner told me I should be getting back to the guesthouse (at 10pm) because I shouldn't be out and about so late. And while two taxidrivers were trying to rip me off a lady intervened and flagged down another taxi for me and got him to take me to the bus station at the local price (not the +50% tourist price) - which left quite an impression. You wouldn't get that kind of treatment (the positive kind, not the rip-off taxi drivers) in Bangkok.
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