In addition to not having a longterm “plan” for what would I would do in Asia, I hadn’t even considered what would happen at the “end” of Thailand. Go home? Keep traveling? But where!? Eventually I decided to hop on a southbound train to Malaysia, although ironically I wasn’t even sure what city that train was taking me to.
It’s not very often that I have a clear idea of where I’m going or even how I’m going to get there. It also seems that I have a tendency to not leave places when I think I will – that I’m currently spending four days in George Town instead of two is a great example of this. So, the fact that I have a rough idea of where I’ll be for the next three weeks is a pretty big change of pace for me.
The full moon has come and gone. Endless hours of dancing and partying on the beach until 7, 8, and 9 AM have been logged. Many of the things that happened on Koh Phangan will never be spoken of again. Over two months have passed since I arrived in Vietnam, and in those 60 days I’ve gone around the coast of Vietnam, through Cambodia, and stopped by the typical tourist destinations in Thailand. So what now?
I arrived yesterday back on Koh Tao, the small island north of Koh Phangan where I had been for the last few days. (Four or five – I really can’t remember since the ‘end’ of the day came at rather weird hours…) I will stay here for the next three or four days getting my open water scuba dicing certification. Similar to randomly hopping onto a scooter and proceeding to drive it 1000 miles down the coast of a country, scuba is the next adventure that I’ve decided to undertake on this trip. It turns out that Koh Tao has the second highest concentration of scuba instruction sites in the entire world – second only to the area around the Great Barrier Reef. Considering that people plan vacations around the ability to get to this side of the world and go underwater, it only made sense that I spend some time getting certified and seeing what all of the fuss is about. This also opens up some of the other activities on this side of the world (should I choose to visit them) – specifically Borneo and the Great Barrier Reef.
Certification is 50% class and 50% underwater. I spent 2 hours in a class room last night, and today will spend half of the day in the pool and half in a classroom. Tomorrow I will be on a boat all day doing the first of two dives, and the day after I’ll start the day early with two more. I’ll have an exam to complete after that, at which point I’ll be $300 poorer and certified to go roughly 50 feet underwater. While this is going on, I get a reduced rate at a hostel (4 person dorm) for any days that I’m diving with this company. The room costs $3 a night when I’m diving and $12 when I’m not.
In the meantime, I’ve got a few days to figure out what to do after Thailand. Flights from Kuala Lumpur are extremely cheap to a number of countries in this area. Which ones, and in what order, are the primary questions I’m trying to answer.
One Way Backpacking 