The black hole of Phuket and diving with sharks

Hey guys,

We have finally left Koh Tao now after spending three weeks on the Island. It was hard but we had to leave at some point i guess! After we finished out advanced open water course we did a few fun dives with Crystal Dive Resort which were really good, so we now have a grand total of 19 dives each! I need at least 20 to be able to start my dive master training so i'm almost there.

We left Koh Tao on Monday February 2nd and had to endure a 15 hour trip to get to our next destination which was Phuket. Although the journey wasn't half as bad as i expected, we were both hugely disappointed when we arrived in Phuket and wanted to jump straight back on a boat back to Koh Tao.

We had only booked to spend two nights there and that was more than enough! We stayed in Phuket town, with the idea that we would be able to spend a couple of days sight-seeing...... we couldn't have been more wrong!

We purposely didn't choose to stay at Patong Beach as we knew it would be full of tourists and quite tacky.
We intended to be a little bit more cultural, which didn't work out for us at all as there was no culture to see! It's difficult to describe Phuket town without swearing, but basically it's an absolute hole!

It was so dirty and smelly, the roads were way too busy and we couldn't even find a decent place to have some food and a couple of drinks. Suffice to say, the couple nights we stayed there were very early nights!

As we had already paid for two nights we had to find something to do the following day so we jumped on a bus to Patong Beach! It was better than Phuket Town for the simple fact there was a beach, but there were times when i felt i could've been in Blackpool - it was so tacky with dozens of Mcdonalds and Burger Kings!

It didn't have the feel of Thailand at all. The only redeeming feature of Phuket is I found myself a couple of gorgeous new bikini's!

In Just a couple of days we had gone from being in our favourite place in Thailand so far (Koh Tao) to our absoute worst, so we we're pretty disappointed and missing Koh Tao even more.

As you can probably guess, we were delighted to jump on the boat and leave Phuket for Ko Phi Phi - anything had to be better than Phuket! We arrived and we couldn't keep the smiles from our faces - it was absolutely stunning and a breath of fresh air having come from Phuket!

The town is very small, there is no transport - everyone gets around by foot or on bicycles, but it is packed with tourists, a lot more so than Koh Tao. It was hit badly by the Tsunami and although much of it has been rebuilt up, there are parts which clearly haven't had much work done since the disaster.

There are Tsunami evacuation point signs everywhere you turn. On every corner there is a dive shop and there is a huge variety of restaurants and bars considering the size of the Island.

On Saturday (7th) morning we went diving with a dive shop called Barracuda. We did two dives in the morning and it was absolutely amazing. The visibility was fantastic and I swam with my first shark; a leopard shark. It was pretty big and just lying on the sand so we swam over it. I was gutted I didn't see any turtles though as i've been dying to see a turtle since i started diving!

Would love to do some more diving here before we leave but as it's 2,500baht (50quid) for two dives I have to be thinking of the pennies.

Today we went on a day tour to all the little islands around Ko Phi Phi, including Maya Bay where 'The Beach' was filmed. It was absolutely stunning, so beautiful. If only Leo was there it would've been perfect!

We also did a bit of snorkelling, which ended up being free diving for me and Sarah as the snorkels were getting in our way. Once you've done diving it sort of takes the edge away from snorkelling. Our last stop pf the tour was Monkey Bay, where, you guessed it, we saw lots of monkeys. They were so cute and adorable.

Although Ko Phi Phi is a really beautiful island, for me it doesn't compare to Koh Tao. It is by far the best place I have ever visited in my life and I can't wait to go back. justkohtao.com is a website set up by our dive instructor Justin and gives you everything you need to know about Koh Tao and the diving resources there.

I'm actually now thinking of not going home in August as planned and heading back to Koh Tao for couple of months. The funds probably won't allow me to do that, but i'm thinking of ways to get around that!

We are spending another couple of nights in Ko Phi Phi then getting the boat to Krabi for a couple of days before heading into Cambodia.