Townsville

For the last few years I have been mentioning to Erik that we should head to Townsville to visit a few of my "Contiki" friends. I know I've talked about them on the blog a few times before, but in case you are a new reader, I did a Contiki tour of Europe in 2004 and fortunately I have managed to keep in touch with a few friends from that trip. Two of those guys came to America for our wedding in 2007. One of those guys who made it to our wedding lives in Townsville, a small town in North Queensland. I have been threatening to visit him and another Contiki friend basically since we moved Down Under, and a few months ago there was an airfare sale that I could not pass up, so we decided to spend our first footy-free weekend (the season just ended) in Townsville.

May 2004. Amsterdam.
Marley, center wearing the black shirt, and Joe, in the striped shirt, are the guys we were visiting!

We flew up on Friday night after work and went straight to "The Strand", or the waterfront part of Townsville. We enjoyed dinner on the water at Longboard Bar and Grill before heading to "City Lane", a new laneway in the CBD with outdoor bars and restaurants. We also walked along the main street in Townsville where many young people were out for a big night!

A store in the Townsville CBD. To be "off your tree" means you are crazy.

In the morning we hit the road to Ayr, the town where my Contiki friends grew up and where one currently lives. That friend, Marley, owns a boat and enjoys fishing and crabbing. He and Joe, our other friend, had arranged for us to spend the day on the water catching mud crabs. Erik and I are accustomed to eating Maryland blue crabs, but we had never tasted mud crab and we had never actually been out on a boat trying to catch crabs. The weather could not have been better for our day on the water. Not only did Marley catch mud crabs for us, but he used a net to catch fresh prawns (shrimp) and set up a boiling pot on the beach so that we could eat the crabs and shrimp right there on the water. It was an amazing day!

Joe waiting to pick up the next crab pot

Erik getting in on the action

Marley baiting up a crab pot

Can't remember which cape this is! Note the white dots...those are our crab pots!

Measuring the mud crab to see if it is a keeper

Erik got pretty good at holding these guys!

This one looks big enough to keep. They have to be 15cm across and you can only keep males.

A female sand crab. These are protected, so she went back in the water.

This pelican came to visit while Marley was fishing for prawns.

Docked on the beach

Our view for the feed

After 20 minutes in a boiling pot, our crabs were ready to eat!

The best part, the "nippers"

Out of the water just as the sun was setting

That night we went to watch the local rugby game, as our friend Joe is an assistant coach for the team, the Burdekin Cane Toads. Yes, the mascot is a cane toad!

In the morning we headed down the road about 15 minutes to Alva Beach, where we would check in at Yongala Dive to spend the day scuba diving! Last January when I went diving on the Great Barrier Reef with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, our guide mentioned that her favorite dive site she had ever been to was the SS Yongala shipwreck. The ship sunk in 1911 on the way from Melbourne to Cairns, but the wreck was not discovered until 1958. It has become one of the most popular shipwreck dive sites in the world, and it is known for an abundance of fish and sharks. We did not get a glimpse of any sharks on the day, but we saw TONS of fish, small and large, along with turtles, sea snakes, an eel, and two different types of rays. There are some really BIG fish at the site, grouper and maori wrasse, and also huge schools of barracuda. We saw typical fish similar to those we had seen at other dive sites, but the fish were much larger! We used our GoPro, but we don't have the special case for underwater shooting so unfortunately the footage is not great. The visions are still fresh in my memory, however, and for me the dive quickly became my favorite site of the 10 or so dives I have completed. I highly recommend diving the site with Yongala Dive. Normally you need advanced diver certification to dive below 18 meters, but at this site you can pay a little extra money for "deep dive training" (which only includes a skill or two once you enter the water on the first of two dives), which allows you to dive to 30 meters. Here is a YouTube video that helps give you an idea of what we saw down there!

One we hit the surface, we saw humpback whales playing near the boat. According to our skipper, it was a mom and a calf, probably 2-3 days old. We also saw another whale on the way back to shore, as it is migratory and calving season for the whales. Those sightings just topped off an awesome day of diving!

The tides are crazy, so we ended up having to make a few trips back to the boat to carry things to shore.

That night we set out to find a cane fire. Sugar cane farming is the livelihood of many people in North Queensland, and that night you could see piles of smoke coming from various cane farms. Joe got us pretty close to a fire so that we could see, hear, and smell the cane burning. Apparently there are lots of snakes and wild pigs amongst the cane fields, so the fire gets rid of those pests. After the burn off, the next step is harvesting, and we drove by the plant in Ayr where cane is harvested after it is burned.

One of several cane fires we saw that evening

After another amazing meal from the sea (Marley fed us delicious grilled fish that he had caught earlier in the week), we headed back to Townsville for the night to rest up for our Monday adventure, Magnetic Island.

Koh Tao

I was very much looking forward to arriving in Koh Tao. The beach is one of my most favorite places to be, and it had been relatively cool in Khao Sok. The journey from Khao Sok required several other modes of transport, the first being a minibus (mode 7, click here if you didn't read about the previous modes of transport). I did not take any pictures of the minibus, but essentially it was like a 15 passenger van, but with much less roomier seating. Bom dropped us off at a corner store and helped us buy our minibus tickets to get to Surat Thani. The trip was supposed to take a little over 2 hours. We arrived in about an hour and a half thanks to our driver going what seemed to be 80 miles an hour. The minibus actually stopped repeatedly to let people in and out and this didn't appear to happen at bus stops but just at any place along the road. The ride went smoothly, but once we arrived in Surat Thani we had absolutely no idea where to go and all of the sudden we were in the middle of a torrential downpour.

There are several travel agencies conveniently located right across from the minibus station, so we popped in to see what they had to offer as far as getting us to Koh Tao was concerned. The price they were quoting was much higher than what the Lonely Planet book mentioned, so despite the pouring down rain, we walked out and continued to look for any signs of where the ferry port might be, as we were looking for the boat to Koh Tao. After walking for a bit and finding nothing, a sorng-taa-ou driver asks us if we needed a ride. He spoke excellent English, so we took him up on his offer to take us to an ATM, followed by the boat, for about $2. The ride was probably less than 5 minutes. We were so close to where we needed to be but couldn't figure it out! Anyway, we purchased our tickets for the night boat, which was leaving at 11pm. I think it was about 6 or 7pm at that point, so we had quite a few hours to burn and it was still raining. We wandered the streets a bit, found a place that I could activate my phone so that we could be in touch with our folks on Christmas, went into a shopping "mall" where the stores were literally 1/8 of the size they are in malls in Oz or the States, purchased some fruit from the night market food stalls, and ended up eating dinner at a pizza place along with a bunch of other non-Thai folk.

The view from a covered area we were using to escape from the rain.

We boarded the boat (mode 8) sometime after 10pm to "settle in" for an interesting evening. We chose to take the night boat instead of spending the night in Surat Thani to save a few bucks and get a jump start on Koh Tao in the morning. I also wanted to do it for the experience. The night boat is basically a barge that the Thais use to transport food, water, and other items to the islands. On the top part of the boat, they have some old mattresses (with actually fairly clean sheets) and pillows, so they can make some extra money while transporting these goods. I had read about the night boat and knew that it would be close sleeping quarters, but nothing really prepares you for seeing these numbers on the wall where your head goes. Erik was number 1 and I was 2 (we were the first 2 people to buy tickets, apparently!), and there were 50 total people on the boat, mostly travelers but some locals, including a few young kids and a grandmotherly-looking lady as well.

That thing over Erik's head is the #1, his designated sleeping area!

Fortunately, there seemed to be no number 3, so Erik and I were feeling pretty lucky that we had some extra room as we watched all of the cramped people on the boat. However, around 10:55, number 3 boarded the boat, sweating profusely with lots of booze in hand. He started talking to the guys in numbers 4 & 5, but eventually got up and went somewhere else and actually never returned, so we did end up having a little extra space. It was still raining pretty hard and the boat was not water tight, so both Erik and I got quite wet on the ride. I cannot say that either one of us slept very well, but we did manage to get a bit of shut-eye. The seas were really rough and that did not help. Apparently the Northeast monsoon that affects the Gulf side of Thailand was happening in late December instead of November and early December like it normally does. That would affect our trip later as well. At any rate, we arrived in Koh Tao 8 hours later at 7am.

Rise and Shine!

Sunrise from the boat

Night Boat

Once arriving in town we hopped in another pick-up truck taxi and headed to our home for the next 5 nights, Scuba Junction. I picked Scuba Junction based on all of the great reviews on Trip Advisor and because they allowed me to do the online portion of the SSI Open Water Diver course in Oz so that I could spend a bit less time in the classroom on vacation. I chose SSI over PADI because PADI charges $120 for the online course but with SSI it's free. Natalie, who runs things at Scuba Junction, had told us that the shop would be closed when we arrived, but let us know that we could eat breakfast at the Coffee Boat just across the street. After devouring some food, we were able to check into our accommodation, which cost a whopping 150 Baht a night, or less than $5! We stayed in Sabai Sabai, which is a set of bungalows about a 10 minute walk away from the "action" of Sairee Beach in Koh Tao. They have housing closer to the beach as well, but state on their website that it gets rather loud there at night, and I was fearing that it might be like a time that Erik and I stayed with his family on South Padre Island in the middle of Spring Break and couldn't sleep because of the noise raging on until 4am every night. In hindsight, I think the beach would have been fine, as Scuba J is a bit further North on Sairee Beach where things seem to be a bit quieter.

The hammock was absolutely the best part!

It was quite a warm and sunny day, so once we were settled in we headed to the beach to try to nap a bit and get some sun. Unfortunately, there was not much beach to be found! The tide was extremely high, so we had to walk quite a ways down the beach to find a nice spot in the sand. Later on, we heard from one the locals that he had never seen the tide so high.

High tide or not, the beach was beautiful!

That night was the official start of my scuba course, however, it was just a short meet and greet with the instructor and my fellow course participants. My instructor, Paul, a former lawyer from South Africa, had been teaching scuba on Koh Tao for about 2 years. My coursemates, Suzanne and Gerbrand hailed from Holland. Suzanne is a PhD student in Psychology and Gerbrand is a psychiatrist. Gerbrand is actually from the town of "Doren", and those who know my maiden name will understand the significance of that fun fact!

Later that evening, Erik was itching to get in a run, so I sat at a really cool bar called Fizz, where they have huge bean bag chairs right on the beach, and it turned out to be a beautiful place to watch the sunset. I also had a very tasty margarita that incorporated honey and pineapple along with the typical lime juice and now I'm determined to start making those here in Oz!

The beach in front of Fizz was lined with light

The next day I began my dive course. The first part was getting all of our equipment fitted and set up, which we did in the morning. We took a break for lunch and then in the afternoon we completed many different shallow water skills. That night was Christmas Eve, so I treated myself to a fun mixed drink:

It wasn't nearly as tasty as the margarita but I was impressed with the appearance :)

On Christmas Day there was no diving, so Erik and I relaxed for part of the day and then decided to hike to a different part of the island called Hin Wong Bay. I had read that there was good snorkeling there and we thought it would be fun to see another part of the island. The hike to get there was probably the steepest hill I have ever walked up in my life. There is a hill on the Big Island of Hawaii that comes close (I think the grade on that hill is about 30%), but this HAD to be steeper. It was insane and my calves were sore for days after this walk. Anyway, when we got over to Hin Wong Bay, we realized it was not exactly appropriate snorkeling weather. I wish I had a video to show you, because the sea was incredibly rough. It was actually quite fun to watch the huge waves crashing onto the rocks.

Some of the scenery on our hike up the giant hill

Once we returned back to our bungalow, we grabbed our computer and headed down to the beach so that we could pick up the WiFi in order to Skype with our families. When we were there we ran into Suzanne and Gerbrand, who happened to be doing the same thing. We ended up joining them for Christmas dinner at one of the tiny hole-in-the-wall Thai places that Erik and I had enjoyed previously called Tik. Our meals were delicious as usual and the conversation was wonderful as well. It was then that we learned that Suzanne and Gerbrand had just recently gotten engaged on their trip. They had traveled a bit in Laos and Cambodia before coming to Thailand, so they had been engaged for a few weeks but had told no one because they wanted to tell their families in person. Obviously we offered our congrats and drank Chang to celebrate! :)

The following day we were scheduled to do two dives, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The first dive was fairly shallow and we didn't see much that you wouldn't see snorkeling except that we ran into a rather large bigfin reef squid, which was pretty cool! The second dive was supposed to be deeper, but just before we entered the water, another diver who was taking an advanced class got stung badly by a jellyfish while entering the water. She had red steaks all over her body...this was not the kind of jelly fish that you find in Ocean City, Maryland! Paul decided that we would do another shallow reef dive, where we saw several different types of fish and also practiced some more skills. That night we had dinner with Suzanne and Gerbrand again, this time at a pizza place!

The next day was the last day of our dive course. Erik also decided to join along for some fun dives, so I was excited to be able to have a "dive buddy" this time. Unfortunately the seas were still rather rough, so visibility wasn't great and there were a ton of divers in both spots because many of the other dive sites around Koh Tao were unusable due to the weather. The highlight of the first dive was seeing a titan triggerfrish. On the second dive we spotted a scorpion fish (these fish have excellent camo and are actually venomous), along with a variety of other colorful fish. After completing those dives, Suzanne, Gerbrand, and I were now certified open water divers!

From L - R: Paul, Gerbrand, Suzanne, and presumably you know Erik and I!

That was our last night on Koh Tao, and we spent it without Gerbrand and Suzanne, as they were headed for home right after the completion of the course. We spent the night wandering around Sairee Beach and eventually decided it would be a good idea to buy our ferry tickets for the morning. By the time we got around to this, the ferry we had planned to take was booked! Fortunately, there was a different ferry going to a different city, Chumphon instead of Surat Thani, which I had actually considered taking originally but ruled it out due to the distance I thought we'd have to travel in a vehicle to our next destination. At that point we had no choice, so we booked the ferry to Chumphon. The next morning we said goodbye to the friendly Scuba Junction staff and started the voyage to our final destination, Koh Phi Phi.