Learning to Scuba Dive - Koh Tao, Thailand

The 617-mile trip from Tanah Rata, Malaysia to Koh Tao, Thailand turned out to be much trickier than I’d anticipated, but it ended up going fairly smoothly.  The trip required a minibus from Tanah Rata, a brief stop in Georgetown, another minibus across the border, an overnight train, a ride to the coast in the back of a pick-up, and a ferry into the Gulf of Thailand, totaling about 28 hours of travel time.  Yes, we traveled at an overall average speed of about 22mph.

Southern Thailand is a beach-lover’s paradise, and we knew we wanted to visit one of the many beautiful islands off the coast, but had a hard time choosing.  Phuket, Koh Phi Phi, Koh Pha-Ghan – all are gorgeous, with cheap hotels and lots to do.  But, by deciding that we wanted to use our time at the beach to complete a PADI Open Water scuba diving course, our choice was made easy.  The tiny island (just eight square miles) of Koh Tao – literally “Turtle Island” – is the cheapest place in the world to dive, and more people earn scuba diving certifications there than anywhere else.  I’d been wanting to try scuba diving for a long time, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally do it.

Koh Tao itself was a nice place to be, but it wouldn’t be a great destination for non-divers.  The island’s beaches really don’t compare to many of Thailand’s other offerings.  Further, there’s almost no local culture on Koh Tao.  At any given time, Koh Tao has far more visitors than residents, and most of the people who live there are ex-pats, not Thais.  I don’t think I’ve ever been some place that had so few local people.  But, for people focused on diving, it’s a good choice.

Located in Koh Tao’s heart of Sairee Beach, our hotel, the Prick Thai, was about $20/night and was definitely not the best place we stayed, mainly because there was a pretty serious ant problem.  But it was right across the street from our diving school, which was where we spent most of our time.

It was difficult to choose a school from the 100+ options on Koh Tao, but we eventually ended up at Scuba Junction, mainly because their Trip Advisor reviews were great.  Plus, the people there seemed infinitely more competent than at the other place we looked at, Simple Life Divers.

Before we arrived, I wasn’t too sure what to expect from the course.  It turned out to be pretty intensive and kept us really busy for the 3.5 days that it lasted.  The first three days included classroom time, which meant watching videos and having discussions with our instructor, as well as taking review quizzes on each section.  We also had homework every night – reading a couple chapters from the handbook and answering some questions to discuss the following day.  On our second day, we learned all about the equipment and then went out for our confined water dives (essentially practicing with diving gear in shallow water).  That was definitely the worst time we had in the water, especially for me since I got really seasick on the ride from the coast out to the dive site.  We started with a test of swimming around the boat three times, which would have been nothing except it was pretty stormy that day and the water was super choppy.  Then we put on our equipment for the first time and took our first “giant stride” into the water.  Unfortunately, we then had to swim pretty far, fighting the rough water and feeling awkward in our equipment for the first time, to get to shallower water.  We were pretty wiped by that point, and we hadn’t even started yet!  The rest of our time in the water that day was spent doing “skills,” basically things you need to know in order to dive safely, but that are never used unless there’s an emergency.  We were so anxious to dive down, swim around, and start seeing fish and coral, but we had to spend the day practicing what to do if you lose your mouthpiece or goggles, or you run out of air, or you get too tired to swim back to the boat.  Fortunately, our next two days in the water were much more fun and much easier.

The following day, after doing classroom work in the morning, we left for our first real dives.  It was awesome.  We had to practice some of the same skills in deeper water, but we also got to swim around – and finally feel like we were actually scuba diving!  We did two dives that afternoon and two more the next morning, each lasting about thirty minutes.  We got down as deep as about 17 meters, just shy of the 18-meter maximum allowed for Open Water divers.  Though diving can be a bit nerve-wracking – especially if you really stop to think about how far under the water you are and how terrifying (and potentially dangerous) it would be if your equipment malfunctioned – it can also be relaxing, if you focus on your breath and how your body is moving underwater.  We got to see more fish and plants that I could begin to name, but the things I found the coolest were the various types of coral and the clownfish (aka, Nemo) swimming in their brightly-colored sea anemone habitat.

Following our final dive, we took a written test, which covered what we’d learned in the water, as well as our three days of classroom discussions, videos, readings, and homework.  We both passed and received our certification cards – and began planning our next diving trip!  Spring break 2013, maybe?

More Malaysia - The Cameron Highlands

After leaving Kuala Lumpur, we headed to our only other stop in Malaysia, a refreshingly cool and incredibly lush area known as the Cameron Highlands, about four hours north of the capital.  The area is becoming increasingly popular as an eco-focused travel destination, and it’s known for producing much of Malaysia’s best strawberries and tea – and strawberry tea!

The bus we took from Kuala Lumpur was incredibly nice, but the ride was pretty nerve-racking – on extremely narrow and incredibly curvy roads, right on the edge of the mountain.  Fortunately, our bus driver – as well as the drivers of the numerous other buses, trucks, cars, and motorcycles on the road – drove very slow and courteously, and we made it with no problem.

Our base in the Cameron Highlands was Tanah Rata, one of the main towns in the area.  It was small, but much busier and more bustling than I would have expected.  There were a lot of tourists walking around, though the vast majority of them were Asian, many from Thailand, I imagine.

Our hotel, KRS Pines, was decent but nothing special – and, at $27/night for a double, another reminder that your money just doesn’t go as far in Malaysia as in other nearby countries.  Thailand had spoiled me!

Nearly all of Tanah Rata’s restaurants (other than a very out-of-place Starbucks, the town’s only remotely Western place) served Indian cuisine – good thing Ryan and I really like our dahl and naan!  The highlight food-wise was definitely a vegetarian banana-leaf meal, consisting of rice, chickpeas, and several vegetable dishes, all served on a large banana leaf.  And the whole thing cost only $3!

We knew there were a lot of things we wanted to visit in the Highlands, and we didn’t have much time, so we opted to spend one day on a tour, which took us to several eco-tourism sites in the area.  Along with a group otherwise comprised of French and Dutch people, we started the day with a hike into a beautiful, lush jungle to get a glimpse of a rafflesia, the world’s largest flower.  The hike only took about an hour each way, but it was harder than I had anticipated, with several steep and slippery areas, as well as a couple very narrow rickety bridges.  The flower itself was unlike anything I’ve seen.  Rafflesia, which are red, are so big that it’s hard to even recognize them as flowers.  The one we saw had grown flat on the ground and was about 29 inches across, though they sometimes hang and can get up to four feet across.  In the pictures we saw afterward, the rafflesia look almost pre-historic.

We made a quick stop outside a nearby village, where our guide talked about a new government program in the area.  Traditionally, people in this part of Malaysia have lived in houses constructed from bamboo.  Recently, however, the government has started paying to build concrete houses in rural areas, so people will live in these more modern houses instead of their traditional ones.  Our guide, a native of the Highlands, was pretty upset about this initiative, both because he believes it is unnecessarily changing people’s way of living, and also because he thinks the government should be putting money toward education, healthcare, or food instead.  I know hardly anything about the government’s program or how it’s affecting people there, but it was really interesting to hear a local person’s take on it.

After an Indian lunch, we visited a tea plantation and factory and got to see how the tea grows and how it’s processed.  I don’t remember a lot of the details of processing tealeaves, but I do remember how green and hilly the plantation was, with the tea organized in chunks and growing about waist-high.

We also visited one of several strawberry farms in the Highlands.  To our surprise, the strawberries were growing not in an open field, but rather in long containers under a large tent.  We had strawberry milkshakes and strawberry muffins, and bought some strawberry tea, strawberry jam, and chocolate-strawberry candy to take with us.  All of it was delicious.

Having seen most of the “sights,” we used our second full day in Tanah Rata to do some independent exploring.  The town is essentially surrounded by jungle, which has a few not-very-well-maintained trails running through it.  We started down the trail nearest town and ended up hiking about four hours.  Because the trails loop back and forth, you can hike for quite a long time, despite the fact that none of the trails actually go that far from town.  It was a gorgeous hike, and it was nice to be out in nature on our own and completely alone.

The following morning, we were up early to begin what turned out to be a long and pretty arduous journey through northern Malaysia, across the Thai border, up the Gulf coast, and out to the island of Koh Tao, our next destination.

Intro to Malaysia - Kuala Lumpur

Interested in seeing how Malaysia, a more developed Southeast Asian country, would compare to the other places I’d visited, and since AirAsia has convenient direct flights from Chiang Mai to Kuala Lumpur, Ryan and I decided to spend a few days exploring peninsular Malaysia.

Landing at the Kuala Lumpur airport, we easily found the bus we needed, which we were happy to discover was air-conditioned.  It turned out to be about an hour from the airport to the city, and the ride took us through endless lush green fields.

Our first impression of Kuala Lumpur was a good one, thanks to a very nice cab driver.  Though we had the address of our hotel (and street addresses mean a lot more in Malaysia than in, say, Rwanda), our driver couldn’t find it.  He drove in circles for quite awhile and called the hotel on his cell phone twice to ask for directions.  By the time we finally found the hotel, we’d been in the cab for so long the meter had gone up to 15 ringgit (about $5).  The driver felt so bad that he’d taken so long to find our hotel, he apologized profusely and only charged us 10 ringiit (about $3.30)!  I’d fully expected to pay the full amount, and I was shocked and pleasantly surprised at how kind he was.

The Pujangga Homestay was about we had expected.  We opted to stay there solely because it was the cheapest place we could find online.  Our rather cramped double room with a shared bathroom down the hall was $20/night.  $20 definitely doesn’t go as far in Malaysia as in some countries, but considering that Kuala Lumpur is a pretty first-world city and we had a great location in the Golden Triangle area, I can’t complain.

As far as we could tell, there’s not a lot of truly Malaysian cuisine available in Kuala Lumpur.  Apart from the some Western restaurants – including a whole lot of American chains – most “local” restaurants serve Indian or Chinese fare.

The city itself is very modern and clean.  Various commuter trains, monorails, and buses run through town, and the ones we rode on were all quite nice.  Many of the trains, buses, and taxis have illustrations indicating that food, animals, hazardous materials, and kissing (labeled “indecent behavior”) are prohibited.

Our short time in Kuala Lumpur was filled mostly with seeing the major sights.  The city is known for two skyscrapers – the Kuala Lumpur Tower and the Petronas Twin Towers.  We didn’t go up either one, but we did look up at them from the ground, and both were quite impressive.

The KL Tower, as it’s known, looks a lot like Seattle’s Space Needle and is used for telecommunications and as an Islamic lunar observatory.  Its observation deck is 905 feet high, and races are held in which participants climb the 2,058 steps to the top.  Ryan tried to challenge me to such a race, but I declined – ultimately, I think he was glad I did.

The Petronas Towers, connected by a skybridge between the 41^st and 42^nd floors, serve primarily as the office for Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas company.  They were the tallest buildings in the world until 2004 and are still the tallest twin towers ever built.  The bottom six floors of the towers comprise a 1.5 million square-foot shopping center, filled mostly with luxury shops I can’t even imagine ever buying anything from.

We also made a short trip to the Batu Caves just outside the city.  The caves are sacred in the Hindu faith and is one of the world’s most popular Hindu shrines outside India.  Standing in front of the caves is the world’s largest statue of the Hindu deity Murugan – it’s 140 feet tall!  Entering the caves requires climbing 272 steps (it was about halfway up the stairs that Ryan realized he was glad I hadn’t agreed to the race up the KL Tower!).  Several smaller statues and shrines sit inside the caves, and we saw many people praying and leaving offerings.  Prior to visiting, I hadn’t realized the caves were still used by Hindus today, and I couldn’t help but wonder how they felt about so many tourists trampling through their sacred place.