Ups and Downs

Yesterday I wanted to rent a mountain-bike to get around the island, but I couldn’t find a rental within ten minutes, so I just rented a scooter again. This time I only rented a 100ccm, which I already noticed was a mistake, since Koh Tao has some really steep hills.

I took my snorkeling stuff and just rode to different bays, snorkeled a bit and then went to another bay.

A guy in the hostel told me I should be careful with triggerfishes, because he got attacked by one. Luckily he could kick it away with his fins, but it was still following him after that.

I looked it up on wikipedia, triggerfishes seem to be quite aggressive. They even have teeth. So while snorkeling around, I was always careful not to swim over, or to close to the bigger fishes, because what the fuck do I know how a triggerfish can look like. I also don’t have fins, which makes me slower, and I can’t use them for defense.

The snorkeling here on Koh Tao is really great. You can just enter the water on the beaches and there will always be something to look at, more often than not even a reef. The only sad thing is that most of the corals look pretty dead. I also noticed that during the snorkeling tour on Koh Lanta.

So I was snorkeling around in the bay you can see above, when I suddenly saw a huge fucking turtle. This thing was really massive, I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so big. If I had to guess I’d say is was somewhere between 1.3m to 1.5m. It was accompanied by two 1m long fishes, which kind of looked like little sharks, but they were nibbling away on the shell of the turtle, so I guess they were some kind of shark catfish.

I swam with the turtle for a few minutes, which wasn’t really moving, because it was eating seaweed. And then it happened, a second one came out of nowhere. It was probably a little bit smaller than the first one.

When I first saw it, it was heading right in my direction, so I swam away a little bit, because these huge turtles could probably kill me if they wanted to. Then I just continued watching them from maybe 5m away. It was kind of cute, because they were doing something that looked like kissing sometimes. Of course I don’t know if that’s a thing for turtles, but looked funny ether way.

After that I was really stocked to get to shark bay and also see some reef sharks. They are supposed to be quite peaceful, so you can just watch them. To enter shark-bay (if you’re not a guest of the resort) you have to go through a restaurant and down some stairs which lead into knee-deep ocean water and from there walk to the beach.

Well, I was concentrating on keeping my stuff dry and the stairs were really slippery, so I slipped and scratched my arm open on a rock:

After that, I wasn’t so sure anymore if I wanted to swim with sharks. I guess reef-sharks are normally peaceful, but I also know sharks can smell blood miles away, so I didn’t want to take chances.

I drove back to the hostel and had to realize that I didn’t bring any wound-disinfection with me. Luckily that was no problem though, because you can buy that in every pharmacy and even some 7elevens.

So I bought some alcohol, iodine and gauze to apply it, which wasn’t the most pleasant thing to say the least.

After that I just rode around a bit on my scooter, because I didn’t want to get the wound infected in the ocean. I’m not sure if that’s possible, but after seeing one guy getting his wounds carved out with small knifes at the doctor on Phi Phi, I didn’t want to try my luck.

In the evening I went to some bars with another english guy from the hostel, we had some beers and looked at the fire-artists.

My plans for today obviously have also changed. I plan to visit all the viewpoints on the island with my scooter. Since the island has many steep hills, there are some amazing views to be had. Maybe I’ll do a bit more snorkeling tomorrow, but the turtles are really hard to top anyway.