Day 9 - The Journey to Koh Tao

Our last morning in Chiang Mai, we woke up, had breakfast, and headed to the airport to get there in time for our 11:40 flight.

Unlike in Bangkok, checking our bags and going through security was a breeze - so much of a breeze that we forgot to get cash beforehand as planned. We decided to go back out in order to get to the ATMs, but when we got back to security the line had increased substantially. Luckily, even long lines at Thai airports take a fraction of the time any American security line would take! After that, Benji grabbed a beer and I got a coffee, and we were on the plane before we knew it!

The short flight to Surat Thani was quite uneventful. AirAsia is funny because they give you meals on even the shortest flights. Because it was cheaper to pay for an all-inclusive ticket rather than paying for luggage individually at the airports, we got vegetarian meals for our two hour flight. It was only some vegetable fried rice, but later on I was very glad we had that snack because food options from then until we got to Koh Tao were incredibly limited. 

Once in Koh Tao, we bought our bus and ferry transfers, and then waited. Although we arrived in Surat Thani at 1 PM, we wouldn’t be on Koh Tao until 7:15 or so. Although it is much more expensive, I might recommend to those who can afford it to just fly into Koh Samui and take the 1.5 hour ferry instead. It shaves 2.5 hours off the ferry, and eliminates the one hour bus ride. Albeit long, the ferry ride ended up being quite nice as we were lucky enough to have a breathtaking sunset. I would soon learn that sunsets on Koh Tao are equally beautiful every single night, but at the time I was still mesmerized. 

Once in Koh Tao, we quickly checked in to our hostel. It was a brand new place called Savage Hostel - not exactly quintessentially Thai, but it was clean and funky and it had availability for a private bed/bath when we booked it four days beforehand. 😎

After that, we hustled to find a spot for food. We had placed a couple popping spots on our walk from the ferry port to the hostel, so we doubled back to find one of those. Once inside, we learned that the chosen restaurant had tables right out on the deck by the beach. It was beautiful and serene and exactly what we wanted after our crazy day of travel. The food was mediocre but we didn’t even care because of our hunger, and the atmosphere more than made up for it.

While we were eating, we noticed up the beach from us that there were fire dancers performing! We decided to walk up in that direction after dinner to see if we could find them. The bars in Koh Tao were WILD. Loud dance music was coming from every bar we passed by, each seemingly trying to compete with its neighbors for customers like us. We walked past our hostel and explored part of the road we hadn’t been on before. Then we passed by one particularly inviting looking club, Lotus, and decided to check it out. As luck would have it, Lotus’s beachfront bar had the very fire dances we had admired from afar. 

We weren’t sure yet whether we wanted to stay, so before sitting down we stood to the side of the audience watching the fire dancing performance. As soon as we started watching, the smallest of the four fire dances had taken his fire sticks out to a platform in the water, and began furiously twirling the fiery nunchucks with reckless abandon. I had never seen anyone perform this so fast! Just when I thought it was as fast as he could go, the petite fire dancer then upped his speed, causing huge gasoline fireballs to go rocketing off the ends of his fire sticks and into the water. It was absolutely beautiful, and one of the coolest things I have ever seen. After that, Benji and I exchanged shocked glances, and quickly took seats in the audience.

Although I was tired, and did not want to drink heavily before our scuba diving orientation, we couldn’t help but hang out at Lotus for a couple of hours. The fire dancers were mesmerizing, and so we just hung out. When we both gave in to our exhaustion, we waddled home and slept very soundly.