Quick one day stop in Doha was spent in the hotel and working. It's Ramadan, so unfortunately none of the restaurants were open at daytime. Well, delivery service was still available for some snack and next morning breakfast at the airport lounge was excellent.
Made it to Bangkok. The night train is actually very comfortable way to travel to the island and back, especially in the first class private cabin. It's always a bit cold, but otherwise you get a good night sleep and arrive early in the morning.
Checked into the hotel, ordered a Starbucks coffee and wondering what to do today. At least some souvenir shopping before the workday begins.
Meh. The Thai trains are always late, and I was really surprised that this one was actually on time according to the live status on Internet. Well, it was not.. Or, the train is on time but our wagon was broken and we were moved to the next train in one hour. Not even a surprise. :)
Luckily there's a nice restaurant next to the station, so we just moved back there. Like the place, it's a strange combination of Muay Thai training club, a bar and a restaurant with actually tasty Thai food. :)
The last week went quickly by double working. Mornings diving with customers, afternoons and evening doing the usual work to Finland.
After the first weeks I started to actually get customers as some of the old divemasters left the island or were otherwise unavailable, which was really helpful to get some practice in working. After a couple of customer dives the nervousness disappeared and started to actually enjoy diving with them. :)
Today it's unfortunately the time to leave the winter home island and start our long and slow journey towards Finland. We took a boat to Chumphon and will continue by night train to Bangkok, spend a day there and fly to Finland via Doha.
The last couple of days have been more than wet. It was raining heavily for two days, streets turned to rivers and our home street up the hill was a fast flowing waterfall for a day, preventing driving down to the town. The cold, windy and rainy days passed though, and now it's nice and sunny again. Even the streets are starting to be drivable, as most of the water and sand has been removed.
Other than that, no news. Regular diving continues and so does working.
Just a bunch of diving photos. One more broken teeth filling fixed..
More random Tao photos from the first days.
First dives done in addition to normal working days. I got the tooth problem fixed on Monday for the first tooth, but an another one is having similar symptoms and will do an another run to Samui tomorrow to fix it.
Today was a special day, as I saw my first ever whale shark at Tao. They are frequent visitors here, but only seen maybe once per month and I haven't seen any so far. This one was a rather small one at maybe 6 meters length, but still a huge and beautiful animal.
Arrived to the winter home island. :)
Development is fast here, so much people and so much new business in only 10 months. Most of the old favorites seem to still be in place though.
Got doctor approval certificate for professional diving, signed up for a dive on Tuesday and promised to be available for divemaster work after that. Just need to get the stupid teeth fixed at Samui on Monday morning and test on Tuesday that is good for diving, should be.
Otherwise, it feels good to be here, kind of second home with all the familiar people of Koh Tao Divers family. :)
Last flight done and we landed to Samui Island just one boat trip away from Tao. Met a Finnish diving friend Hanna here and had a consultation at dentist with relatively positive news about my tooth.