Koh Tao: The murky truth

28 April 2010
Koh Tao, Thailand

Ah, how I like a dramatic headline. But indeed the island of Koh Tao proved less wonderful than the brochures or the enthusiatic travellers promised. The island shocked me initially with its messy, tout-ridden port and extensively developed Sairee beach - think 2 km of bars and eateries, loud music, occasional drunken silliness from the wrong sort of traveller, and monthly boatloads of wasted-looking ravers who come after the famous full moon parties on Koh Phangan, the fluorescent paint still peeling off their pale bodies.













At Sairee, the water off the beach is so shallow behind the very degraded reef that you can't swim except for around high tide - or you can pick your way through the coral and swim on the far side, taking your chances with the taxi boats in the deeper water.

Worse, smelly, possibly sewage-laden streams also enter the bay in several places, undoubtedly spreading their biohazard cargo all along the beach. And we have other issues with the place as will be seen later...

But I don't want to unfairly paint too black a picture. It's a very pretty island with white sand beaches, coral reefs, a hilly jungle interior that clings to a substrate of picturesque giant granite boulders, and mountains of good food to eat and booze to drink in the chilled out beach-side restaurants. Plus there's a lively scene of divers and dive pros, climbers and other visitors that arrive seeking thrills.

There's even a ladyboy cabaret show - the cast of which plays volleyball every afternoon near the beach which is where Maja took this great picture - if only real women could be that glamorous when doing sports.



















A couple of days after arriving, we moved away from the pricey beach-strip bungalows which we couldn't afford, and into a rather plush and spacious apartment up on the hill overlooking Sairee bay that seemed cheap at the time. It was great for a few weeks but I found myself slipping into a bit of a depression, with Maja being off at the dive school every day and we three boys being stuck in a flat, a hot 25-minute walk from the sea and the cafes, and every other day having to suffer the smoke from the bonfires our landlord's workers lit to dispose of their rubbish; plastic bottles being a main component.



















I started to get grumpy and remote, I guess, and Maja, tired and stressed with the demanding course, responded in kind. We had a few horrid fights (our English neighbour moved out soon after the worst, which may have been our fault. Or maybe I'm just paranoid as well) and even started to veer towards splitting up; so much so that, for the first time, I started telling Aron how parents don't always stay together and that it's OK because children still get to see mummy and daddy, if not at the same time. He, being a wise boy seemed to understand.

We had to move we realised - a nice flat was not as important as being actually happy. So we left; getting charged a HUGE amount for electricity and water bills in the process which meant the flat wasn't cheap at all. We headed down to the scruffy but cheap Queen's Resort (with its weird owners and their eight or so grumpy, yapping dogs that terrified the kids and nipped Aron twice).













A few weeks later, and tired of the dogs, we moved again, just a short distance, to the AC2 Resort (pic of its terrace cafe above) where we had a nice bungalow in a lovely garden full of giant butterflies that was only 20m from the sea. We found to our great relief that if you promise to stay a month or more, the prices for accommodation suddenly plummet and we ended up saving money by moving to the beach.













So life suddenly improved and Maja and I stopped arguing; well, mostly. Aron and Ariel were having a great time. The beach, while unsatisfying for adults, offered shallow, safe water for them to swim in, and they loved the tree swings outside many of the beach cafes and the free pool tables inside our favourite beach cafes. That's not to mention the spaghetti, pancakes, and other non-spicy foods to relish. So Aron got really good at playing pool here, Ariel first learned to swim without arm bands and, unusually, they made a friend...

Their new mate, Nont (pronounced Non), the son of the AC2 resort owner, was sweet but a bit spoilt and played quite rough, as Thai kids seem to do. We weren't always happy with the way he treated Aron and Ariel, but they still had a great time with him, leaping around in the giant bean bags of the Maya rave bar next door and spending far too long enjoying cable TV and computer games than is really healthy.

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After a few weeks on the island, we found out that Koh Tao has a dark underbelly in the form of locally powerful mafia-like families that own many of the businesses and make sure that they get the cream of the profits that tumble into Koh Tao. In the fairly short time we were there, several people were killed - that is, murdered. We even heard the crack of a gunshot on one occasion.

It seems that on this island you really don't want to say the wrong thing about the family head or sell drugs without their permission. Even people that merely go there and open a shop or cafe that thrives can become a target and, allegedly, new businesses sometimes mysteriously burn down during the night.

To stay sane (yes, you can have to much time idling on a beach), I decided to use my time on the island to some benefit, so I started jogging, swimming and dieting - mostly on spicy green papaya salad, spicy chicken yam salad and spicy tom yam soup with the occasional spicy green curry too - it works! And, yes, it is really spicy. I also took up t'ai chi with an unusual, interesting and sometimes disturbing man who I shall dub 'Giovanni' (because he probably won't like what I'm about to write).

Giovanni was a 50-something Italian with a head of flowing white hair who it seemed had been exiled from Italy by a culture and a family that couldn't understand him and had spent much of his life either in Goa or in Thailand. He had three grown-up kids in the area and a Thai ex-wife somewhere that he thoroughly despised.

A spiritualist misogynist - Giovanni spent his time trying to enlighten himself but was seemingly unable to rid himself of a deep hatred of women. In fact, I'm not sure he was aware of it. He once said he should have hired a hitman to take care of his wife, and the way he said it was like he'd just had a good idea. It wasn't ironic.

He was also more hunky than most of the 25-year-olds on the island. He looked after his ageing but finely honed body and seemed to bed one fine young woman after the other. One, a really nice, intelligent and confident Italian lady, he despised for 'stalking him'. I think she had just fallen for him.

But Giovanni was very wise in some ways, as well as funny and likeable in short doses. He also knew his t'ai chi. So in six weeks I learned the Yang-style 37-movement form. Very poorly at first but eventually I started to get it (or thought I did; Giovanni would probably disagree).

Giovanni had a way of teaching that involved imagining a figure of blue light that did the form and you just move along with it. It didn't work for me at all. But one day towards the end of our time together he said 'move like you are fog dispersing through the air'. And that really had an effect. I learned to glide through the form without wanting to push something/someone over. I still have trouble not doing it at light-speed though.

Eventually Giovanni left the island, heading for Cambodia where he planned to set up a hypnotherapy resort with a friend which might or might not involve the use of 'surrogate lovers' - women that would sleep with men and teach them to be confident with women again. Hmmm.

The tiny island of Koh Tao apparently issues the most PADI dive certificates in SE Asia and something like 40 dive shops vie to snap up the many wannabe Jacques Cousteaus that turn up at the island. This means that competition is fierce and prices are low. Indeed, we turned up there purely because it had been recommended as a good and cheap place for Maja to do the DM course.

But take a dive and you'll soon discover that the local dive sites are mediocre compared with other areas in the region, such as Indonesia; a fact compounded by the unusually awful underwater visibility this season and the aggressive and scary titan triggerfish that are common in the area (See pic below. This one's 'trigger' fin is up, meaning it's resenting Maja's intrusion into its territory and may soon attack).



















There's not a huge abundance of other sea life, though, except at the two really good dive spots in the area: Sail Rock and Chumphorn. Most dive schools, though, avoid the more distant Sail Rock as they don't want to burn too much fuel, such are the pressures to keep costs low. Even the whale sharks that the place is famous for gave it a wide berth this year - we only heard of one sighting in the 5 months we were there, and that beast was so inundated by snorkelers it had nowhere to go, poor thing.

So why does everyone come to dive here? We think people just don't know any better. We realised that Koh Tao may be a good place to go and learn to dive (it is very cheap and the conditions are very mild), but it is not a good dive destination. Similarly, it may be a nice place to go for a week's relaxation, but it is not a 'proper' travel destination. It's just not that interesting.

After several months of daily diving and only a week before completing the course, Maja had a huge argument with one of the dive masters she was assisting. The woman involved was very competent but her bossy, condescending attitude proved too much for Maja to put with and eventually she blew her top. The final week was a tense one, but they managed to settle into a guarded politeness, if not a friendship. Finally, after a brief trip to Kota Bharu in Malaysia to get new visas, Maja successfully passed her last few tests and became a dive master. Hurrah!

Our plan then had been to hang around for a few weeks and see if Maja could pick up some freelance work in one of the dive shops. However, after touting herself around many of them, we realised that the island is stuffed with newly qualified dive masters wanting work and the chances of making a living were negligible. She did, though, get a break at the fantastic Goodtime Adventures - a really cool place that does climbing (Maja had a go, of course, see her abseiling in the cool pic, above left), wake boarding, freediving and scuba trips (to only the good dive sites!). But the single day's work Maja got merely bought her a nice haircut from the guy below with the amazing tattoos. It was time to leave.



















Before heading off, Maja and I both signed up for the two/three-day AIDA** freediving course run by Akim Adhare of Blue Immersion. Akim is based at the Goodtime Adventures shop, which also has a great, if pricey, cafe run by a tattooed Belgian guy who loves to tell gory tales of his kickboxing days. It's a cool place.

Ever since I was a child, I've wanted to dive deep and used to lurk at the bottom of the deep end in the local swimming pool. But I also had a recurring dream where I couldn't hold my breath long enough to reach the surface and would gulp in water causing me to wake up in panic. This course turned out to be a good chance to reconcile these two ancient and contradictory memories.

After a safety briefing and some training in yogic breathing and relaxation techniques, we started off climbing down a marked rope that descends into the blue depths - on a single breath, of course. I had trouble going much past 10 metres for the first day, with creeping tentacles of fear in my stomach (the body saying 'more oxygen, please') sending me back up the rope.

But Akim - the Tunisian record holder for constant weight freediving at, I think, 103 metres - got me over my fear and made me understand that our bodies can survive without a breath for much longer than we realise (he can do 8-minutes plus). I started to loosen up and made it to 20 metres, as did Maja, by climbing down the rope feet first. However, we both had problems with ear equalisation and couldn't fin our way down to 16 metres head first, and hence could not pass the course.

Akim kindly let us have a few days off and then come back to try again. Frustratingly for her, Maja's ears were still not happy and she still couldn't fin down. Luckily my head cold had eased and I made it. In my final dive, I found myself hanging off the rope near the bottom at 21 metres, completely calm, and wishing I could go deeper.

So I did. I persuaded the family to let me have a few more days to do the AIDA*** course. The highlight of this was learning to 'freefall'. Basically, after about 10 metres of finning down, the water pressure compresses your lungs sufficiently to give you negative buoyancy - that is to say, you sink. Then you can just hold a streamlined position and let yourself glide towards the sea floor - keeping an eye on the depth, of course.

Despite nerves beforehand, my first decent freefall was beautiful and serene - I descended to 30 metres and calmly finned back up, with Akim giving me moral support nearby. Later in the static breath hold (lying face down in shallow water trying to hold your breath as long as possible) I managed just over 4 mins 30 secs. Maja also did an impressive breath hold on the two star course.

It's the most wonderful feeling to overcome lifelong fears in this way and discover exciting new experiences in the process. I think I'll have to do a climbing course to get over the heights thing next.

Doing the AIDA*** course with me was a really nice Austrian guy called Roland who was there with his Sumatran/Viennese girlfriend Puti - both very experienced martial artists. They turned out to be great fun to hang out with and in trying to persuade me to take up muay Thai (kick boxing) at the local gym, they actually persuaded Maja to have a go. Of course she loved it and spent the last few days on the island punching and kicking bags and pads. She had a truly great if sweaty time, and even the boys had a quick go.















But now we no longer had a good reason to stay - ironically at a time when we were starting to really enjoy the island. We packed our bags, said our goodbyes to our new friends, and boarded the ferry to the mainland. Next destination, Bangkok, then the People's Democratic Republic of Lao. wOOT! After being static for months, we were happy to be on the move again. The boys, though, were sad to leave little Nont behind and still talk of him fondly.