The night bus deposited us at the Krabi bus station at 6:30 AM, and we couldn’t check into our hostel until 2, so we were left with practically a whole day to kill. We were groggy and half-coherent from our unconventional night’s rest, not to mention grimy from lack of a shower (we had walked several miles to get partway to the bus station in Bangkok, so we were pretty stinky). Thankfully, Krabi Town seemed to be the perfect place to wile away a day doing nothing in particular. It’s a sleepy town sitting on a swampy tidal river, with fewer tourists compared to many other areas in southern Thailand. We spent most of the day in a big local park by the water, which turned out to be really peaceful and a great chance to see how the locals spend their mornings. We watched families getting their early morning calisthenics in, relaxing like us, or helping to set up for a big ceremony that was taking place later that day in honor of the King’s funeral.
The next morning we hopped on another bus, which in turn hopped on a car ferry, and headed to the island of Koh Lanta. This large island is home to a large muslim population who are pretty conservative, so it’s reputed to be one of the more chill islands in the area, and seems to appeal more to families than to the party backpacker crowd. We were desperate for some much-needed down time, and we had decided to take four days to get our SCUBA certificaion, so a week here sounded perfect to us.
We settled into relaxing with a vengence. We didn’t do much for the three days until our SCUBA class started except chill on the beach, chill in a hammock, and eat delicious curries and pad thais. It’s a rough life, let me tell you.
We had decided to get our dive certificaion while here because it’s so cheap compared to the US, and the diving here is supposed to be some of the best in the world. After completing all our study material, we spent the first day in the pool learning to not panic while we pulled off our masks, “lost” our regulators, and went through some other exercises. Both of us struggled with it a bit at first. Every instinct tells you to shoot to the surface when you’re having trouble breathing, but if you do that under 20 meters of water you’re dead, so you have to learn to fight the instinct. You also have to be really relaxed and calm underwater, or you could make a mistake. Got that? Relax or you’re dead! Dana’s anxiety struggled with this for a bit.
Our second day was spent in open water, on the beautiful reefs of Koh Haa, which is a protected national park. We were doing a lot better by now, and were able to successfully complete all our tests underwater and enjoy two dives around the beautiful area. We were still a bit distracted by the novelty of breathing underwater and trying to control our bouyancy so we weren’t bobbing up and down with every breath and movement, so we probably didn’t notice as much we normally would’ve, but the coral was huge and spectacular here. It seemed much less bleached out than reefs we’ve seen in parts of the Caribbean.
On the third and final day of our class, we got to do two dives in Koh Rok, also part of the national park. The reefs here were also gorgeous, and we got to see an octopus, some moray eels, and a sea turtle as well as countless beautiful fish and corals. Unfortunately, Dana’s dream of seeing a whale shark went unrealized. One was spotted at Koh Haa a few days before we arrived there, but they are still fairly rare to see in this area. Guess we’ll just have to keep diving until we find them! We felt pretty darn proud of ourselves for finishing the open water course, despite being a little freaked out the first day!
On our final full day on Lanta, we rented a scooter, despite having never driven one before. Justin was feeling brave, and Dana was willing to hold on tight and close her eyes and not think about the fact that they were on a scooter (holy crap what if we crash I’ve seen all the people with road rash I do NOT want that all over my legs WHY IS HE GOING SO FAST). Anyways, it turned out we had a lovely time exploring the island and its many beautiful beaches, with no unexpected road rash or heart attacks to ruin the day.
