Bags are lighter when you send stuff back to the US with the other kids. All the fun stuff we have purchased as well as a few extra things we decided we didn’t need are all being carried back by Will and Em. Thanks guys!

12go.asia is very easy to use to book transportation to our next stop. “Van and Boat” has turned into van and maybe a bus? Not sure yet. We were dropped at a bus terminal where a lady said “Sit. We come get you”. Okay. We sit. If it’s good enough for monks, it is good enough for us.

Thailand is probably not the place to visit if you like all the details before you start an adventure. You are not likely to be told things like “we will pick you up in a van, we will drop you at the bus station, you’ll wait for a certain amount of time, you will board a bus, that bus will drive to a certain city, you will board a boat named….”. It is more of a pick you up 10 minutes early and drop you off at the bus station 20 minutes down the road and tell you nothing else. We are pretty chill with going with the flow and letting things happen but we can see how this might stress out some people. We don’t care, we don’t have any important plans. We are just glad we brought peanut butter, jelly and crackers for lunch.

So… the nice lady with a patch on one eye pointed at a man and said “Koh Tao”, so we followed him onto another van. Seems unlikely he is abducting the eight passengers. Less than 20 minutes into our three hour drive and we got a potty/snack break. I can hardly wait to see what happens next!

One more smoke break for our driver. He quickly devoured four cigarettes and we were back on the road.

The ferry ride to Koh Tao was three hours. Beautiful hours, with two other island stops before we got to Koh Tao.

First order of business was to check into our room and then find a dive shop. We picked Aphrodive. It has 5 stars with 146 reviews. The latest review talked about being scared of water and how the team was supportive with that. Done. We are in. Lessons booked for tomorrow. We have a bunch of homework to do before class at 10 am. It is 8 pm and we decided to procrastinate and have some dinner.

We stayed up late, by that I mean 10:30 PM, and watched all the required videos. Megan only fell asleep twice in the middle of them. Turned out not to be necessary. Oh well. Having refreshed the information made me feel more confident.

We opted to skip the option of pool training, and moved straight to the sea for our training. I did not enjoy the first 10 minutes of skills testing in very shallow water. Once we got out into deeper water everything got easier and better.

Diving. What to say about diving? Amazing is not a strong enough word. We saw so much cool stuff that it would be stupid to try and list it all here. We went from being scared to near death on the first dive, to gaining confidence by the third, to shaking our heads in disbelief when the other three divers in our group got lost in our fourth dive. Idiots. We went 28.5 meters below the surface. Yep, 93 feet. To be clear, we are certified to 18 meters. He said we could go to 30 “for free”.

It. Was. Unreal.

Our dives all started off the back end of a boat. We geared up and waddle to the side of the boat with our fins to take that giant step into the ocean.

We are used to the 10 minute torrential rain storms by now, but our second day diving was so much more intense. We pulled up to our second dive site of the day in giant waves and watched divers try to swim to the side of their boat and not get smashed into it. Needless to say, terrifying.

We watched the dark clouds roll in before we all huddled at the back of the boat as we got pelted with rain. Our lovely meteorologist/dive guide named Santi kept saying “10 more minutes”. We were there for at least 40 before the rain slowed. We finally got into the water which was much calmer and absolutely beautiful when you are 18 meters underneath the storm. We had hoped the weather had passed after those 45 minutes underwater but we struggled to get back up into the boat in the massive waves.

We then proceeded to spend an extra 2 hours on the boat getting splashed by waves as we tried to find an open spot on one of the piers. The good news is we really got to know our boat buddies. To keep our trend of wild forms of transportation, we hopped in the back of a pickup truck “taxi” (or Megan did, they let me sit in the cab) back to the dive shop. Almost 7 hours since we first arrived at the dive shop, we returned. We survived.

I may have embarrassed Megan. This is not an easy task. She is pretty unshakeable. When Will and Em were here we were served a drink in beautiful silver bowl. For the last couple weeks I have been searching for a place to purchase one. I saw a lady near the juice stand we were at, using one in a large bucket of water. She was using it as a scoop. I used my translate app and asked the lady that just made us two mango smoothies, where I could buy a bowl like that one (pointing at the second lady in the neighboring doorway). We walked over together to clarify what I was asking about. She proceeded to sell that one to me as well as a second one that she pulled out of her sink! Not my goal, but I paid them well and now have two gorgeous silver bowls! Maybe Megan wasn’t embarrassed, she just shook her head and said “I can’t believe she sold them to you out of her sink!”

Megan does not enjoy a pedicure with “foot scrub”. Foot scrub seems to translate to “remove half the flesh from your feet, leaving you with baby feet”. The fish in Bangkok had nothing on these ladies. These ladies meant business! The pedicure was nice though.

So sad to leave Koh Tao. We took the ferry back to Koh Samui. The ride was ROUGH. Not because of the waves and the bouncing boat, but because of the sun. We sat at the back on the bottom floor and it was near impossible to avoid the sun.

Heat exhaustion? Probably. We spent the rest of the day tired and dizzy. Electrolytes were very helpful.

When we felt better that evening, we arranged a ride with our hotel to go “where there are lots of dive shops”. Ummmm, nope. The driver dropped us at a super touristy market with no dive show for a couple miles. Sigh. We got Megan her new favorite drink, fresh prepared passion fruit juice. Still not feeling 100%, we grabbed picnic food at a grocery to eat at the hotel and went back to finish Ted Lasso.

On our way to Pig Island we waited to drive under the coconut trees so we didn’t get beaned by falling coconuts in the rain and wind. It was gorgeous and sunny when we were picked up at the hotel. Within 20 minutes it was raining sideways. Waiting in the van was better than waiting on a boat in a rain storm.

Pig Island was ….. looking for words….odd? Pigs were cute. People are dumb. Pigs of all sizes and ages. Same with dogs and chickens. Pretty sure we still have pig poop on our feet. They kept our shoes on the boat. Why? Who knows.

Tomorrow we dive again!