Every year around March/April time (this year 28/29th April), thousands of people come to the island to enjoy the Koh Tao Festival. This year the date has been announced for the 18th and 19th June. This event lasts for two days and two nights and should not be missed. During the day, there are many activities like tug-of-war, face painting, climbing, volleyball etc… The party really gets going in the night with live bands, shows (performed by the local dive schools), competitions (photography, Mr & Mrs Koh Tao), and DJs (later in the evening). Don’t eat before you go as there is a huge area filled with food stalls. Here you can get some amazing local food and western dishes too.

This isn’t just a huge party put on for people to get drunk…..it’s a fund raising party. The profits from the Koh Tao Festival go towards marine conservation projects like Buoyancy World and the Bio Rock. This conservation theme is always present at the festival with many eductional areas dedicated to teaching people about how to interact positivley with our underwater environment. There is also a land and underwater clean-up organised during the festival (which many dive schools participate in). Another special event that you can watch during the festival is the turtle release.

For more information, visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Koh-Tao-Festival-18-19-june-2013/346259062163109 on Facebook, or www.marineconservationkohtao.com

The Coach / Boat option

This is one of the more popular options due to its price. There are a couple of different companies you can use, some better than others. The Songserm has a coach and boat join ticket available, but their boat is very slow and not the most luxurious. If you want to save yourself a couple hundred Thai Baht, this is the cheapest. By far the most popular joint ticket is the Lomprayah company. Their booking office is located on Soi Rambutti (next to Ko San Road), but you can get your ticket at any of the travel agencies. The coaches they use are large and comfortable enough, and their high speed catamaran boats are very nice. You will usually get on the coach at around 9pm, and travel down to Chumphon, stopping a couple of times on the way for food and refreshments. The coach arrives at Chumphon at around 6am, then you will take the boat at 7am to Koh Tao (arriving at 9am).

The Plane / Boat option

This is the more expensive of the three options available. Solar Air (Lomprayah company) and Nok Air both fly from Bangkok to Chumphon. The Solar Air plane is a smaller aircraft and can hold around 16 people, so not for the faint hearted. When booking with Solar Air, you can get a joint ticket that includes the high speed catamaran as well. Bangkok Air is a little bit more expensive and flies into Koh Samui. When you arrive on Koh Samui you can take a 5 min taxi ride to the Seatran pier, where you can get a ticket to Koh Tao. Be warned, the last boat from Samui to Koh Tao leaves at 13:30, so if you miss it, you will be stuck on Koh Samui for one night.

The Train / Boat option

This is another popular option due to the price. The train leaves from the main station in Bangkok and arrives the next day, early in the morning in Chumphon. You will have your own fold down bed where it is possible to get a good nights sleep. The joint ticket for the train and boat can be booked at most of the travel agencies around the Ko San Road area. You can also book your train ticket online.

Sharks have occupied the seas for the last 450 million years and, as one of the oceans top predators, sit firmly at the head of the table, occupying the same position as the big cats – lions and tigers – do on land. They are exceptionally efficient hunters armed with a mouthful of self-replacing teeth in a large, powerful body. But this efficiency should be admired rather than feared – sharks have evolved over the aeons, developing adaptations perfected to hunting down and devouring the prey needed to survive – not to terrify bony, nutritionally-poor humans.

Worldwide, sharks are responsible for less than 15 fatalities each year – a tiny number in comparison with death by drowning. Indeed, more people die from household accidents or from crossing the road, yet these incidences are not covered by the media with such ghoulish fervour. Irresponsible and careless coverage reinforces the public image of sharks as senseless killers and films such as Jaws and Open Water, born from fascination with our own mortality in the face of the unknown, have much to answer for by portraying sharks as indiscriminate aggressors.

There is a deep psychological root to this fascination.  As top predators, and Earth’s dominant species, humans are not accustomed to, nor accept being considered as prey.  Consequently we are intrigued and disturbed by any undermining of our sense of superior invincibility – emotions which the prospect of being consumed by a large ferocious fish can only amplify.

We are also conscious of being out of our element in the sea.  It is an unfamiliar environment where our senses don’t work properly: our vision and hearing is hindered and our movement feels unnatural. We are aware of being very vulnerable when suspended in the water and our imaginations race to fill any gaps in our senses, and that below us. While we cannot see what may be lurking below, and although our rational mind knows that there is little chance of something attacking us, we are aware of the possibility of potential harm, which is then magnified.

Given the boom in the popularity of ocean-based recreational pursuits and the many millions of people using the oceans and seas every day, if sharks were the sinister predators they are often portrayed to be, the statistics – and headlines – would tell a grim and bloody story. Instead, analysis of fishery and shark attack figures suggest that sharks may be up to 30 million times more likely to be eaten by us than we are to be attacked by them. For sharks the statistics are without doubt a grim, bloody and desperate account. With up to 73 million sharks killed every year, many species face extinction through over-fishing, trophy hunting, and habitat destruction.

Fear of unseen predators is an ancient, primeval terror. Improving our understanding and knowledge of these creatures will help dispel the myths, the bad press, and the general perception of sharks as evil killers and re-launch them in the public eye as the fascinating and diverse creatures they are.

For more info on sharks visit http://www.sharktrust.org

PLEASE HELP SAVE THE SHARKS AND DON’T BUY ANY SHARK PRODUCTS, AND DO NOT EAT IN ANY RESTAURANT THAT SERVES SHARK FIN SOUP.

Thanks to Miles Jackson who took the photographs during one of Roctopus Dive’s ‘Sail Rock Sunday’ trips. Send us an Email for more information about the Sail Rock trip

The choice must seem endless and quite intimidating when you first arrive on the island, touts trying to sell you a course on the boat before you even get to the island, people shouting at you on the pier when you step off the boat, and all the dive schools trying to ‘outbid’ each other to get your service, offering ‘free’ dives and breakfasts as added extras.

The best piece of advice would be to do your research. Nowadays there are endless sources of information on the internet but one of the best sites is www.tripadvisor.com written for tourists, by tourists.  Each dive school on the island survives because they all provide a different experience. Many dive schools on the island specialize through languages with some of the smaller dive schools catering almost solely to a specific language, useful if your English, the main language on the island after Thai, isn’t great and you wish to go to a dive school where not only your tuition, but the whole experience will be provided in your mother tongue. The larger dive schools on the island try to cater to as many languages as possible with instructors available in the vast majority of languages. These larger dive schools provide an endless supply of new found friends to go for some drinks with after a day of diving, but may not provide a service that’s as personalized as some of the smaller dive schools.

The smaller dive schools have  fewer customers that means that not only your instructor, but most other instructors at the school are going to know your name and be able to help you out with any questions or problems you might have. Smaller classes often consisting of only two or three people mean you’ll come out a better, more confident diver at the end of your course. And then there’s the post diving social side where as part of a smaller dive school, whether you’re here for a day or a month you’ll find yourself quickly integrated into the local side of the island and enjoying one of the famous Koh Tao nights out

How PADI and SSI are similar – PADI and SSI are both internationally recognised and the core skills are the same. As the skills are similar, you can interchange between organisations (you can do an SSI Open Water course followed by a PADI Advanced Open Water course and visa versa).

How PADI and SSI are different – They both offer online learning (so students can complete all academics before they arrive to Koh Tao) but SSI gives this service for free. PADI gives students a book to keep when SSI uses a book library system with students (which is environmentally friendly). If students need to access information with SSI, they can find it online. SSI also offer an instant certification card when you finish the course with no long waiting period (which sometimes happens with other organisations). PADI is an association of dive instructors so PADI centres are not directly responsible for standards being met (it’s up to the instructors). SSI (Scuba Schools International) believes that it is up to the SSI dive centre to maintain high standards and is directly responsible for standards being upheld. I feel this system works well as it means all SSI dive centres need to ensure their instructors are teaching to a very high standard!

We ensure that all our instructors are the best and give our divers the best possible experience.

Picture of Roctopus Instructors, Divemasters, and Divemaster Trainees with Dan Hawks (SSI representative doing a regualr quality check)

All illustrations were made by Dave Doyle (Roctopus Dive), to help advertise the problems facing the marine life on Koh Tao.

The easiest exit from Thailand, if you’re on Koh Tao or nearby, is across the southern border to Malaysia, and the closest place with a Thai consulate where you can apply for your new visa, is a city called Panang. You can buy a package ticket on Koh Tao, that puts you on the night ferry to Surat Thani, departing at 9:00pm, and arriving at 5:00am, giving you time for a quick breakfast before a connecting mini bus from there, over the border, through the necessary immigration and border control check-points,and into Panang. The border crossing should be quite simple, and not as scary as you think, although when you get there, your driver may charge you 10THB per passenger to get himself and the van through, so have that handy as it is usually necessary. This leg of the journey departs at 6:30am, and arrivesat 4:30pm, so it’s a long drive, and you should bring a book or laptop to keep you entertained, as well as some water and snacks, although there will be adequate pit-stops along the way. You will actually go forward in time 1 hour, because of the countries time difference, so it will be evening by the time you get there, but don’t worry, because if you head to a small travel shop/guest house called ‘Bananas’, they will be expecting you. After they exchange your Thai money, help you arrange your visa application for the following morning, and get you sorted with a room for the night (you’re better off paying a bit extra for something decent as the rooms are basic and considering the surrounding nights situation, you will need a good rest), you can have a beer in their foyer and use the free wireless internet.

There’s nothing really exceptional happening in Panang, apart from a massive shiny shopping complex (which can be comforting and useful if you’ve spent a while living ‘Island-life’ previously), but you will find everything you need for one night, and it’s not a bad place to wander around while you’re waiting to pick up your visa the following afternoon. ‘Bananas’ will arrange your package return journey to depart as soon as the visas are ready at about 4:00pm, and this will mean another mini bus back over the border, and through immigration, changing over to a normal big bus in Hat Yai, for the overnight journey to Chumpon. You will arrive in Chumpon at about 4:00am, giving you a bit of an inconvenient wait before you are transferred to the boat pier about half an hour away, in time for the 7:00am ferry back to Koh Tao, getting you back by about 10:00am.

The total cost of the trip including visa, food and water, transport and accommodation shouldn’t be more than 5500 THB, and you will be gone for about 60 hours. You don’t need to take much with you; one clean change of clothes, a jumper for the travelling nights, and a toothbrush and some soap should do it (take a towel if you can, but they are easily hired at guest house), as well as anything you can think of that is going to make those long journeys go quicker.

This is the most efficient way of getting yourself another 60-day tourist visa (with the option of extending 30 additional days later), or for applying for multiple entry non-immigrant visas (although this option can be much more difficult to obtain successfully, unless you have all the necessary documents and a substantial reason). If you’re looking at staying in Thailand even longer, then it may be worth looking into the even further journey (but still straightforward and simple), across the northern border to Laos, where they issue a double of the 60-day visa, giving you a total of 6 months altogether, including extensions.