48. Epilogue

So It’s pretty much 6 years since I returned from that long jaunt to south east asia. It has been strange to finish writing it up after all this time.
I thought it would be fitting to wrap up with a bit of a summary on what long term travelling was like for me and how it compares to my plans to go abroad for a few months this year.

When I was away, I was miles out of my comfort zone. It certainly taught me a lot:

• I vastly improved my ability to talk with people I’ve never met and learned to make friends with other travellers
• I learned how to be more self sufficient and make decisions
• On a day to day level I learned how to get outside and find things to do in a completely foreign place
• I became accustomed to being without the usual creature comforts
• I also was interested to learn that my most enjoyable experiences were those that were done with others.

During the trip I identified very much as a backpacker. In some part of my mind I thought that this made me somehow different to the other types of tourist. However I came to realise I wasn’t very different at all, since we’d all generally be foreigners; and would end up visiting the same places and doing similar things. The only difference was that I had no job, no plan and enough cash to get by for the next few weeks.
That being said it was a fantastic and unique way to travel. I was able to meet and journey with some awesome and like minded folk. I also had much more time on my hands, which meant I could see how people lived day to day over a longer period. I had more time to explore the sites and culture of a place. All of that meant I felt more inclined to try new things and I certainly gained some new perspectives.

Another freedom that backpacking affords is that ability to be spontaneous. For example my decision to try scuba diving was done somewhat last minute, just before heading to Ko Phagnan for the full moon party I changed my mind and booked a ferry to Ko Tao instead. I’m not sure what motivated the decision, possibly remembering how much I enjoyed snorkelling, possibly the idea was put in my head when an old flame said she thought I looked like a scuba instructor, or maybe just that it sounded like fun.
Whatever the reason when I got my advanced diving certification it was one of the proudest things I had achieved in a long time. It was quite a life changing whim.

Since then I’ve not gone on another long trip like that, but have always had vague plans to. I heard it’s a common thing for people that have returned from travelling to be determined to leave again, but don’t. Instead they get caught up with their job, or a mortgage, starting a family etc.
A few months ago whilst writing this I started to think that maybe I wasn’t quite ready to properly settle down like that yet. So I made a decision that the time was right to head off again and spend a few months on foreign shores.

This time it’s going to be a little different. Rather than “proper” travelling I’m going to Cyprus on a 5 month internship, working in a scuba diving centre. During that time I hope to train up to be a divemaster and maybe even an instructor, which could allow me to then work in that industry. I’m not certain at this point whether that will be something I continue with long term, but I’m excited about the opportunity to work with people, to teach and to do a heck of a lot of diving!

Whatever the outcome it has instilled in me that same feeling of excited apprehension that I felt those years ago before heading off to Asia. Just like then then a part of me is terrified and unsure of myself, but wondering if it could eventually yield something truly memorable.

43. Last dive for a while

I left Ho Chi Minh City and caught a coach to Nah Trang. It was a coach unlike any I’d been on before because the aisle wasn’t lined with seats, but little plastic beds. I think these beds must have been designed for the Vietnamese physiology, because mine was a good few inches too short for me. It was a pretty fidgety, uncomfortable 10 hours.

When the coach eventually pulled in I unfolded myself from the bed and had a good stretch. As I got off the coach I was immediately pounced on by a gang of men who had various offers for rooms in hotels. Despite having scouted a place to stay beforehand I decided to haggle a little anyway and got a pretty great price from one of the guys. I hopped on his bike and we set off there instead of the one I'd picked out from the guidebook.

One of the first things I did in the town was to book a couple of dives in the area.
In the dive shop whilst I waited to go off on them a severely drunk Russian man stumbled in. He spoke in slurred English to the girl working there, demanding she phone the police. He claimed he had been swindled out of 20 dollars by the people working at the bar next door.
The unfortunate proprietor of the bar was actually outside the dive shop trying to reason with him through the door. For a few minutes the Russian man kept slurring his demands that the police be summoned, and I started to wonder if I could intervene. The girl in the shop stayed resolute, firmly telling him that they would do no such thing, and so he eventually lost interest and wandered off.

The dives that day were fun. The slight problem was that I had last been diving in Sipadan - and that is quite an experience to live up to. Indeed the Nah Trang waters felt relatively cold and fish free by comparison. That being said there were some stunning coral formations there, and I had a lot of fun - so was not disappointed at all.

35. Sipadan Finale

I had a healthy buzz from the day’s dives, which called for celebration. That evening a lot of guests were drinking out on the decking / common area, including the divemaster who had joined us that day: Marie. Before long we grew a little footloose and decided to go wandering around the little island. We went to one bar that was a part of a different fancy “east Side” resort. It felt a little sedate and boring to us rough and ready west siders, so we soon left and headed to one of the nearby beaches. There we found some locals that Marie knew. We sat with them on the beach. One passed around a milk jug filled with liquor that apparently had been distilled by his kindly old grandma.

The night drew on and thanks to granny's special distillations I had gotten quite steaming - so decided to go back. Pat said he would stay on for a bit. So I took the key and stumbled off back to the homestay. The only problem was that my guidance system was on drunk mode, so I got very lost. I remember getting to one side of the island and finding myself in various resort beaches and getting shooed away by security men. After much walking, tracking, backtracking and getting thoroughly confused I came across the familiar slum that hid my home. I got in and Pat still wasn’t there. It was around 4 in the morning so I passed out, leaving the door open so Pat could get in.

I awoke with a throbbing head and a horrible taste in my dry mouth. Pat had gone already. It wasn’t long before more diving. I tentatively opened the door and crept out to find pretty much everyone from the previous night all up. Turns out that Pat got back before me and banged on our door for ages to no avail - since I had the key but wasn't there. He did succeed in waking up half the homestay. Johnny Keely from next door apparently let him crash in his room. I felt terrible.

We did 4 dives around Mabul that day: panglimara reef; Lobster wall and kapalai or “house reef” which was a purpose built area made up of the skeletons of houses that were slowly filling out with coral.
That night we did a night dive at paradise 2 which was a cool. One thing I like to do on night dives (since it’s pitch black) is look entirely away from the coral, rocks and all torch light for a while. All you feel is weightless. All you see is black. The only sensory input you get is the breath in your regulator. Somewhere deep down there is an involuntary twang somewhere between dread and vertigo, forcing me to look back. Both to reassure myself the world still existed, and also that I’ve not lost control of my buoyancy and am shooting up to the surface. Or worse: down into oblivion.

I wasn’t we got back and it was fine. Although not all that fine since it was the last day :(

34. Sipadan - Parte the Thirde

Sorry it's been so long, team... I got carried away building a video game. Well the story has few remaining chapters - and I would be sad to not finish them. So despite this adventure starting nearly five years ago to the day, I'll now try to wrap up this write up of my travelling journal.

For the record this post covers the best day of diving I have ever done.

The following day dawned. I was up so early that I had eaten and was waiting on the jetty pretty much before anyone else had even got up! Eventually the lucky divers who would be on the boat for Sipadan turned up and we set off.

It probably comes as no surprise that I had an awesome time.

The first site was south point. We went down to 30m. The coral was spectacular and saw a huge quantity of white tip sharks & turtles. I hadn’t seen a shark before so to glide alongside these graceful hunters was a fantastic experience and was happy to check it off my bucket list.

The second spot was barracuda point. Almost immediately after beginning my descent along the guide rope I was engulfed in a wall of great trevali, we emerged beneath the shoal and looked back up but couldn’t see the surface above us. The coral was beautiful and abounded with life. There were jacks, more turtles; and black & white tip sharks.

The last of the dives was known as “drop off”. We coasted along a sheer face of coral that sank vertically into the deep, it went way beneath our 30m limit. There was less wildlife here, but I still saw an octupus and some fish were to be seen. We also ventured into a cave on this dive. We didn’t go far in but it was a taster for what cave diving was like. Embarrassingly at one point I did lose control of my balance a little bit and my tank hit the cave roof before I could correct. Thankfully nobody appeared to notice.

After every dive after surfacing we all had big stupid grins on our faces. Even now I struggle to articulate how good it was. My expectations of the diving, and the stay on the island in general had been more than surpassed.

33. Sipadan - Parte the Seconde

Pretty much immediately after arriving we were scheduled for 2 dives.

We did have just enough time to drop off our things, grab some food from the lunch buffet before we had to go and get our gear from the hut on the jetty.

Diving at Sipadan island itself was strictly regulated and you needed to pay for a special license to dive there. The deal that we had hurriedly arranged a few weeks back was inclusive of one day diving at Sipada - but that would be tomorrow. On that day we would just be diving at sites around Mabul itself.
The first site was stingray city, where I saw 0 stingrays, but did see a few clownfish. The other site was a more interesting. I saw a frog fish for the first time - it was a freaky looking thing. There was also a baracuda protecting a sunken rowing boat that was being engulfed by coral; a turtle and more clownfish. The visibility was brilliant and both dives were thoroughly enjoyable. The evening we decided not to go too crazy and spoil the next day’s Sipadan dives, which was the whole reason we were there. But we did have a few drinks, and got to know some of the other guests: Cassie Crosby from Tazmania, Johnny Keely who was a diving instructor working in KK, and a few others. I remember talking about how I had enjoyed my dives. I learned that the local Mabul sites were supposedly not as amazing as those around Sipadan. So as the evening drew on I became increasingly excited!

23. The Diving Plan

One topic that kept coming up between Pat and I was diving. Both of us had recently qualified for our advanced open water and so we spent a lot of time talking about our experiences of that, and how if the opportunity came up we should both do a dive. We were both friends and at the same level diving-wise so made sense to arrange something.

We did intend to do a scuba dive in Cambodia, but according to reports the quality of the water isn’t good and the marine life isn’t the best.

A few days before new years, to make up for not diving here Pat and I decided to rent some Kayaks instead and explore the coast a little.

 When we got back we found Nico in his usual wicker chair, with Cam. Cam was having a quiet evening and had only drunk 4 bottles of red wine. The sun was throwing glorious orange rays across the sky.

“You’re missing the sunset, Nico!” We said
“fuck the sunset” He replied


That night there was excited talk of fire plankton in the sea. I hadn't seen "the beach" yet, so didn't really know what the fuss was all about. I decided to go for a bit of a late night dip to see. It was my first experience of fire plankton. In the darkness when you move the plankton’s natural bioluminescence is triggered which creates a bright blue glow whenever you move. Quite incredible.

Later on Pat and I got talking about diving again, and how it was a shame that we wouldn’t dive during our time here. So we began to wonder: Surely there were some good dive spots in our general global vicinity? Neither of us had concrete plans for what to do after Cambodia, so one evening we made use of Google and sure enough a plethora of options presented themselves. It didn’t take us long to settle on Malaysia, more specifically Sipadan Island of Borneo. It boasted incredible coral; turtles; and something that I especially wanted to see: reef sharks.

I couldn’t book the flights fast enough!

10. Bans diving resort - 3 of 3. Advanced open water

When I had set off travelling it had been a goal of mine to learn to scuba dive, and I had finally achieved becoming a certified diver! I was celebrating this in "the fish bowl" along with the other few new graduates of bans diving resort. Alcohol flowed freely and at some stage I even drunkenly persuaded a girl to show me her apartment.

Our diving group celebrated our victory. I can be seen here miming the size of a fish I saw

After the visit I decided to make my way home, and staggered back to my apartment (still pretty drunk). When I got back I blearily discovered that I didn't have my key. The apartment was one large room containing 3 beds and accessed by a large french window, where I was stood, locked out. Inside I could see that the light was on, and Tony was sleeping, so I banged on the french windows, hoping to wake him.

"TONY!" I shouted.

Nothing.

I tried again, and again until about five minutes had passed with me hammering and shouting trying to rouse the slumbering lump. Eventually there was movement from an unexpected part of the apartment when the bathroom door swung open and out hopped Rob completely naked. He scurried over, clutching his tackle, unlocked the door, and scuttled back into the bathroom. I thought nothing about this, and passed out in my bed.

The next day I learned that Rob had in fact been with a lady in the bathroom, and had to stop half way through to come and let me in. Not only that but he told me the next day that they had moved things back into our room shortly after! I remembered none of this.

On my day off, very hungover, I met up with my dive buddy Jack. We jumped on his quad bike to go to a place that did mini golf. Or was it crazy golf? What is the difference? Anyway we nursed our heads and spent a few hours playing some size or sanity of golf. On the way back Jack thought it would be a laugh to see how fast the quad bike would go. The answer is very. Luckily quad bikes are quite loud, so most of my terrified screams were drowned out by the engine.

The following day heralded the start of the two day advanced diving course. I was happy to learn that the advanced course was more focused on the practical side of things and doing dives, so no more classroom boredom.

These dives were a blast. This was partly because we went to some interesting places, but also in no small part down to the fact that I was now a bit more competent underwater so felt less like I might drown at any moment. The course was highlighted by....

Wreck dive: This was a dive around a decommissioned battleship that had been scuppered near to Ko Tao fairly recently - solely for the benefit of visitors to dive around. It was fascinating to explore nonetheless.

Orientation dive: Up until this point we had always been accompanied Steve the dive master, however for this dive we were on our own. Each buddy pair made a map of the underwater terrain, then were free to randomly roam out across the reef at our leisure. Rob and I did fine, apart from when we thought we would try crossing from one reef to another, and ended up just swimming off into the open ocean where there we could see nothing but infinite blue ahead and featureless sand below. We started to get a little worried, realising that it seemed like we'd gone astray - so retraced our steps.

Night dive: This had to be my favourite of all the dives I did at Ko Tao. A group of about 4 set off at sunset with our normal gear and 2 torches. By the time we got to the dive site it was pitch black. Going down was creepy and amazing at the same time. When diving I find you  have a certain sense of weightlessness, and as it was night it was pitch black in all directions. As such it was easy for me to imagine that I was drifting in space, pulling myself along an invisible rope. After a minute or two torches started being switched on ahead, so was able to stick with the group, gradually descending until the reef eventually materialised ahead of us. It was interesting to observe the different marine life that emerged at night. It was also fun to occasionally look away from the reef and look into the complete blackness of the ocean, which gave me a very real feeling that I was floating in a void of nothingness. It only took a few second before I would feel a twinge of panic and quickly have to look back to the patches of light ahead, and realise that the world was still there.

So I would thoroughly recommend Ko Tao if you are thinking of travelling to Thailand, it might not feature as much diversity or marine life or coral as a few other places, but that is not to say that there isn't still plenty you can see. It is also relaxing to dive on an island where the diving is so common that the process has been refined to hassle free perfection. Alas my visit here came to an end, and I was to continue my island hopping trip to include Ko Samui.

9. Bans diving resort - 2 of 3

Our motorboat arrived at a giant wooden brick that was apparently the main diving vessel. We clambered aboard, and with a shiver it chugged in to life before heading out to deeper waters. In diving you always have to dive with a buddy, in case you panic or anything - they can give you a slap and tell you to pull yourself together.

That day I buddied up with an English guy called Jack, we checked our equipment over, had a final group talk and all too soon the boat arrived at the first dive site. I donned my fins and with a great deal of trepidation clumsily flapped over to the rear of the boat, and launched myself into the water.

My first dive in the sea! We weren't going deep: only 9 meters, but it felt a lot to me as I caught sight of the the dim ocean floor looming way below. As your body gets under pressure you being to feel a 'sqeeze', where the little pockets of air inside you get pressurised - especially in your ears. You have to equalise this pressure, by blowing on your nose, swallowing or wiggling your jaw about. And so that is how I descended: inching down the buoy rope frantically swallowing, waggling my jaw about and blowing on my nose. I took so long that Steve the instructor, and all the dive master helpers swam over to check that I was ok. We eventually all made it to the bottom, and practiced all of the techniques we had learned in the pool. I didn't really get a chance to look about too much - focused as I was on not messing up.
Tony seemed to be coping fine, despite the fear he had told us about yesterday. However that evening he did confess he'd found it hard, and that he wasn't sure he could finish the course. I attempted to persuade him to stick with it to the end, being that it was only 3 days, and he had already done one of them.

The next day was rather boring and contained no dives. We were just sat in classroom, learning theory.

The day after that was the last of the course. We went on a few more dives, getting familiar with how the whole diving thing worked, and to demonstrate a couple of skills that weren't too simple. The first was that I had to take all off all of my equipment and put it on again. The second was a simulation of being out of air. Or to put it another way: drowning. To do this I had to take off my mask, and Steve the instructor turned off my air. Very suddenly I could not breathe at all. I frantically batted at him to let him know I was suffocating, and he let the air flow again. Thinking about it I'm not sure if that part was actually part of the course at all, and was in fact just Steve getting some twisted kick out of torturing us.


This was probably the hardest part of the course, and to make sure that Tony could do it Steve yet again deployed Daphne the pretty dive master to do the skill demonstration individually with him. He did so admirably, even somehow managing to puff out his chest a little at the same time.
At midday we were brought back to land. That was the end of the practical side of the course. In the afternoon we sat the exam. Although to say exam would be a bit of an exaggeration. There were questions to answer, sure, with multiple choice answers - except that Daphne the dive master was in the room with us, and as soon as we didn't know an answer we asked her and she just told us. Unsurprisingly everyone passed. Nobody was more happy about this than Tony.

Rob and I had already signed up to go on to complete the advanced course as well. Tony felt that this would be a little much so did not decide to join us on that venture. The only issue was that the advanced course was scheduled to start the day after the exam. There were a few people in the same boat (pardon the pun) and everybody agreed that it was a little "full on", to start the day after. With a little persuading we managed to get Steve the instructor to let us all have the day off. He agreed, and so that meant party times ahoy.

8. Bans diving resort - 1 of 3

So my mission to learn to become a diver has come to fruition - I had arrived at ko Tao.

We arrived as dawn was breaking, and despite it being so early that there was barely enough light in the sky to see by, me and my prospective diver companions (Rob and Tony) found several people there sleepily peddling the services of various dive schools as we disembarked. I smiled and nodded non-commitally as one rep waggled a leaflet under my nose.


Tony had heard about a place so we ignored all of them and instead stated to nobody in particular that we'd like a taxi. Dutifully a man materialised in possession of a four by four pickup. We hopped in the back and the driver pulled away.
The rep that had shown me the leaflet was having none of this. As soon as he saw that we were leaving he jumped onto his scooter fired up the engine and took chase. He clutched to the side as we trundled along, handing us leaflets into the back of the pickup - we learned that he represented a dive school called Bans diving resort. We were at first dismissive, but then started to get genuinely concerned that the guy was going to disappear under the wheels of the pickup unless we agreed to at least look at Bans. So we told him that we would take a look. With that he pulled forward to the driver window and shouted some instructions to him. The pickup slowed into a u-turn which almost send the Bans rep flying into a bush, and we sped off in the opposite direction.

Bans turned out be ideal as far as I was concerned. The  small complex sprawled away from a little beach where there was a cafe, bar, and a small staging area for Bans pupils could jump onto boats and head into open water. Further back were a couple of practice pools where you would normally find some newby divers (like I was about to become) bubbling away under the surface, and finally some apartments set against a picturesque forested backdrop. We haggled our way into a palatial little suite for the three of us, full diving course for a really good price.

view from the beach at bans. Couple of dive boats off in the distance there

The next day heralded the beginning of the course. We had all signed up to both open water and advanced courses, which means we'll be qualified to dive to 18 and then 30 metres. During sign in we are instructed to meet at a block of onsite classrooms. So first thing the next morning we all headed to it. We meet our classmates, a group of around 8 people. We met our instructor - an awesome dutch guy in his fifties wearing a permanent grin and preceding most of his sentences with "alright guysh! ... "; and we also met a couple of the dive masters - who would be helping us out: Tom and Daphne.
We had a little overview and then watched an incredibly patronising video voiced by an American (Apparently it is frowned upon to remove all of you equipment for no reason whilst under water? Who knew). After that we were herded to one of the practice pools to learn how to don our various bits and bobs before all clumsily waddling out into the shallows.
We spent the next while learning the tricks of the diving trade, like how to not immediately drown and that kind of thing. Tony was having a little trouble with some of the methods we had to learn. He had told me yesterday that he had a slight fear of the water - and doing his open water diving course was a way to conquer this. So Steve (the instructor) had a solution for this, which was to pair him off with Daphne. Now Daphne was pretty, young, curvy and had a soft Italian accent. Tony: who seemed to have a soft spot for her amd didn't dare to be seen to lose face - so Steve the instructor's plan worked perfectly. Tony was up to speed in no time.

There was another day of "confined water" skills (in other words swimming around in circles in a pool), where everyone was itching to go out in the ocean; and before we knew it another beautiful day dawned in Thailand. we headed down to the jetty to board a massive motorboat. I was shitting my pants a little bit at this point, as I picked out the right size wetsuit and assorted equipment. I dumped it into a big bag and clambered onto the motor boat. Where is my tank of air? I suddenly thought in a panic.

"Alright guysh!" Announced Steve the instructor "We're going to head out to a few dives sitesh now, We are meeting up with a bigger boat we'll be diving from which has our air tanks and you'll do your buddy checksh there."*

"Whew" I think I said out loud.

With that the engines roared into life and we sped off towards our first ever ocean scuba dive!

*You may have read this in the voice of Sean Connery, and you would be right to because he didn't sound dissimilar

7. The Night Bucket

Why travel to Ko Tao, I hear you ask? Well it's a diving factory set up to transform soft foreigners like me into hardened underwater explorers with ruthless efficiency. That's what I'm after because I want to learn. It's also a picturesque bump in the gulf of Thailand so quite nice to look at above and below water.

Some things that happen when you are a massive cheapskate and spend hours shopping around to save about a fiver on an overnight ferry ticket:

 The trip is likely to be pretty uncomfortable, you probably wont sleep, It may take five times as long as it should... I forgot all of that as I painstakingly tried to hunt down the best possible deal on a ticket. Eventually I did, from a tourist office, which also inexplicably doubled as a tattoo parlour. In hindsight I probably should have taken that as a warning. I bought the ticket from a swarthy looking Thai man, who gave me a handful of scraps of paper in which, I was informed, I would find the tickets I needed. I then packed my things and was on my way.

I spent the day travelling first from Phi Phi to the mainland on one of two ferries fleeing an epic looking storm; and then Eastwards to Surat Thani where I would pick up a night ferry to Ko Tao. There were about 10 coaches* involved in getting me there. For some reason when we changed to the final coach me and a couple of other English guys were afforded the privilege of being seated in the VIP section - which was on the "ground floor" of the bus with padded leather seats and a private toilet. All of the luggage also appeared to be in there with us. So besides having to constantly readjust bags to avoid being buried, it was pleasant enough. I learned that the other guys: Rob and Tony were headed to the same island to do some diving as well. They too hadn't bothered to book anything other than the ferry trip yet.

As night fell we arrived at what looked like a dock in Surat Thani. The three of us were unduly hoofed out, apparently being the only people getting this ferry. Although where said ferry was did not seem clear - because as the bus drove off we could only see a few beaten up old cargo ships. I scrutinised the  crumpled scrap of paper with a number stamped on it that was apparently my ticket. It took a moment to realise that the number did correspond to one of the boats. Toward the end of the line of rickety old buckets in front of us there was one bizarre looking sort of cargo ship that looked as if someone found noahs ark, shrunk it down, painted it blue and then attacked it with a hammer for a few days.

We boarded via a rickety plank and made our way to the passenger area. The part we were to sleep in seemed as if it had been bolted on to the top of the boat as an afterthought. It was one large room, with a roof so low that we had to stoop down to get in. It was about 70 feet long, and about 13 wide with 35 tiny mattresses along each side, about an inch thick and made of some shiny plastic material. Essentially this area was ideal for a small Thai person who wasn't too bothered about getting any sleep. There were a few passengers already on a few of the mattresses. We took 3 spaces next to each other, and promised to avoid any accidental spooning.

After a short while the place had filled up completely. Despite the mattresses being tiny it didn't stop a whole family happily cramming themselves onto one. I still hadn't seen a single member of crew - but assume they existed because eventually the old bucket chugged into life and we were away. We passed the time playing cards and drinking a couple of Changs we has managed to pick up from a 7/11 before boarding. Everyone eventually dozed off so I went to explore a little. At the rear of the boat some stairs lead down to a single covered low deck at the back of the boat. There was a toilet backing onto the ships galley (a couple of tin pots and a tiny gas stove). I could see through to the cargo section and get my first glimpse of the crew, a shadowy figure who gave me a conspiratorial nod before withdrawing out of sight. I sat on the edge of the boat to finish my beer - watching the dark waters slide by, before heading up to fail to sleep for 8 hours.

* Well it was only a couple, but felt like more somehow