Koh Tao (Turtle Island)

After Koh Phangan we took the short ferry north to Koh Tao, we were planning on spending a night or two only here but I ended up signing up to do my PADI open water license, so we're here for 4 nights. Yesterday I had to return to the classroom to watch some tedious videos and then today we spent a few hours diving in the swimming pool. The next two days I have to be up at 7.15am (!) to head out and do a couple of dives on each day. After that I have to sit a test and then I should get my open water diving license. Very exciting, bit of a burn on the wallet but I figure It's a pretty good opportunity to do it. The place we're staying and doing the diving is a massive place by the looks of things, so many Rahs around here though, it's like a cliquey club of gap yahs - a bit strange but pretty chilled. The grounds are nice but we had our first bit of accommodation we really weren't happy with last night, we just got put in some dirty little room infested with ants and spiders (I think the rooms is usually held off until they're busy since every other room is numbered but we were in room 'number' A). Anyway, thankfully today we've been moved to somewhere a lot nicer.

Sadly Maddy couldn't do it also because she has problems with her ears, so diving would basically mean days of pain and probably trips to the doctor - not really worth it. Thankfully she can still come on the boat with us and go snorkelling around the diving spots if she wants to - which will be nice that I'm not the only one getting up at stupid o clock.

No more pictures yet - the internet around here is all 2baht/minute which is about 4p/minute, considering how long the photos are taking to upload it's not really worth it so we're going to wait until we find somewhere a bit cheaper.

After Koh Tao we're going to head across to the islands on the west side of Thailand to see what they're all about. Not really much else to say other than we have been kicking back, loads of fresh fish barbecues here which are awesome. We ate Barracuda steaks last night which were incredible, going to watch the Arsenal game tonight. Was pretty gutted that we couldn't find anywhere to show the Leicester game on Friday but whenever we asked we were just told "no, small team" - brutal. Got caught in our first proper bit of rain today, never seen it raining so hard, I'm pretty sure some thunder hit the building we were sitting in as well, pretty scary!

On the scuba diving theme here is some music from Scuba, he bridges the gap between techno and dubstep really well, really unique stuff and his label Hotflush Recordings puts out some amazing music. I'd seriously recommend checking out his Triangulation album, easily one of my favourites of 2010 - can't pick one song so here are three. The first two are just quality tunes and the third a bit more representative of his dancefloor stuff, enjoy.