• JG TRAVELS

Thailand 🇹🇭 Part 1 '23

Petualangan 31-sehari oleh JG TRAVELS Baca selengkapnya
  • 25. 6. Koh Tao Diving

    8 Juli 2023, Thailand ⋅ ☁️ 29 °C

    Today was our first ocean dive! We got collected and taken to the dive centre where we had our exam, we both passed the theory side, which was a relief 😂. We had about 2 hours of theory before we headed around the island on a big boat to a dive spot where me and Grace had snorkled a day or so before, called Aow Luek. We got all our gear sorted and prepared and did our buddy checks on eachother before we put on our flippers and jumped in. Wow this is wierd breathing in the ocean, felt so different to the pool yesterday. Once we had relaxed we finally got into it. No doubt it was a wierd sensation being underwater and breathing, everything seems to slow down and your main focus is equalising your ears and controlling your breath. We now had to put in place everything we learnt yesterday but at 9 mtrs deep first. Safe to say it feels wierd being so deep and not having mask on and then again finding your regulator incase it's knocked out. Hope we don't have to do that again😐. We then had a dive around the area and saw an erray of wildlife, including a stingray and moray Eel. Really cool being so deep and feeling like one of the marine life swimming about! After 51 minutes we came back up as we needed to stop for our surface interval. We had some drinks and got reset for dive 2.

    We headed across the bay to a different dive spot, we were now heading down to 12mtrs. We set off and as soon as we got back in the water Grace started having issues with equalising her ears underwater. Grace stayed calm and managed to finally get them sorted before heading deeper luckily. We headed deep and practised a few more exercises, but no more taking mask off phew! We swam around and got more time to explore this dive and there is different reef fish at 12 mtrs and it was cool looking around in the deep blue, yet still feeling really weird.

    We passed everything today so 2 more dives down to 18 mtrs tomorrow and we will be fully fledged Scuba Divers which is wierd to say😂.

    I had fun jumping off the boat a few times whilst waiting for other dives to finish and then we headed back around the island to get dropped off home, we were knackered when we were dropped off and early start tomorrow for our final 2 dives. We are off to a WW2 American shipwreck tomorrow which will be awesome, best chance of seeing a whale shark as well! Normally Go Pros aren't allowed in training sessions but he is letting me take mine tomorrow so hopefully will have some awesome footage to share tomorrow.

    Pizza take away and early night!
    Baca selengkapnya

  • 26. 7. Koh Tao Diving

    9 Juli 2023, Gulf of Thailand ⋅ ☁️ 28 °C

    Early rise today at 0630 , ready to be at the boat for 0730 . The weather was vile today , heavy rain and quite windy , the sea looked very choppy !
    The dive went ahead and our first dive stop was Chumphon Pinnacle. We jumped in one by one and swam to the buoy ahead . The descend this time went very smoothly and we were all safely at the right depth - no more than 18 metres .
    The marine life was just mesmerising this far down , much bigger fish down here! Our instructor managed to find an eel hiding beneath some coral too , which was really cool. James found his old friend the trigger fish , but they seemed on good terms this time !
    After about half and hour in the water , we surfaced for our surface interval , the next dive was a while away , so we had to get on the boat again. We noticed that the waves were really quite big now at the surface, the boat next to us was really rocking . We all managed to get to the boat safely eventually , but I got taken out by a wave as I was getting on the boat the first time , ending up ages away from the ladder again! Not going to lie it was quite scary , but all was well in the end .
    We headed to the next dive site called Hin Pee Wee . The amazing thing about this site is that there is an American ww2 ship there, that was deliberately sunk 15 years ago.
    Again an uneventful descent down , the shipwreck was just amazing. We were allowed to swim over the the top of the ship but not allowed to explore any further. On the way there , our instructor found a grouper fish by a rock - they're horrible looking things , with little spikes in places and weird teeth. They are harmless though apparently.
    We reached about 18 m depth again (James reached 20 ! ) and the dive lasted for about 30 mins before we ascended. When we ascended we were given a challenge to kiss about 10 mtrs deep! We managed it despite a Google clash haha! Getting into the boat this time was much easier too, thankfully!
    Once we arrived back at the scuba school , we had some photos of our group together, followed by lunch and beers to celebrate our certification !
    After a lift back to the hotel , we headed out again to have have a bit of an explore . Shark Bay was first on our list, it was a lovely little beach and James even saw some leatherback turtles whilst snorkeling, he was enormous, most probably 5-6ft long. There was a nice little cafe which did good coffee too which is a rarity on the beach in Thailand!
    Afterwards we headed to Sairee beach , we had a nice stroll and found a lovely restaurant to eat at , the food was amazing- especially the tiger King prawn!
    There was a long street of little shops behind the beach which lead to the centre which we enjoyed afterwards before heading back to our room.
    Last full day at Koh Tao tomorrow so want to have a day of last minute exploring , maybe taking a boat to Nang Yuan Island.
    Baca selengkapnya

  • 26. 7. Koh Tao Diving Pictures

    9 Juli 2023, Thailand ⋅ ☁️ 28 °C

    More Pictures of the Ship wreck and turtles
    Please click or type in on youtube JGMAdventures

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=o3RbMpTMfqk&fea…

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=PJSflDU2abg&fea…
    Baca selengkapnya

  • 27. 8. Koh Tao

    10 Juli 2023, Thailand ⋅ ☁️ 30 °C

    Last day before heading back to Bangkok! We wanted to seize the last day so woke up early and headed to a neighbouring island call Koh Nangyuan about 1 km from the main beach. It is supposedly in the top 10 most beautiful islands in the world, it's 3 small islands which are connected with a unique sand bank between them, shallow coral reefs and the clearest blue waters.
    We headed down to the beach where you can arrange a taxi boat with a local to do an around trip. After about 30 mins of changing boats and being switched around we headed off. The boats here are quite Unique as they are longboat with a car or truck engine strapped to the back and some are quite quick! Dad may find this interesting 😂.
    We landed at Nang Yuan and firstly headed up to the view point, this was a hard one as it was about 36 degree today and it was many steps to the top but the view made it worthwhile! We enjoyed the view for a while before heading down for some lunch and enjoyed a snorkle around the lagoon. Sadly many of the coral reef has died here but the water was so warm here, maybe that's why all the coral has died.
    We then had a lift home and headed up to a beach we hadn't visited yet which weirdly was the beach closest to our hotel. 😂 It was tiny but we enjoyed a chill in the shade in the rocks as it was so hot today. We headed home and packed our stuff as early start back to Bangkok tomorrow morning. We headed to a local restaurant and enjoyed some white snapper fish and chips and headed home and had a beer on the balcony! We are going to miss Thailands paradise, Bali... you have alot to live up to!! We are excited to move onto somewhere new to explore. Thailand has many islands to the west which we haven't had time to visit. We will definitely be back as this has been the best place we have ever visited.
    Baca selengkapnya

  • 28. Travel day

    11 Juli 2023, Thailand ⋅ ☁️ 33 °C

    The ferry to Tapee Pier was leaving at 1015 this morning . We managed to leave our hotel room at 0845 to drop the moped off and get our ferry tickets , with plenty of time to spare . We sat on the beach for a while before the ferry arrived . It is sad to be leaving Koh Tao, as we have both had such an amazing time here, but at the same time we are excited to be going somewhere new !
    The ferry ride was about 2 hours long , we sat on the top deck to catch some final rays of sunshine. We almost had the whole top deck to ourselves , which was nice !
    When we arrived at Tapee Pier we had an hour long wait before catching the bus to Bangkok. We grabbed some iced coffees and found somewhere nice to sit before our bus arrived .
    Our bus journey will take around 7 hours today , we are lucky as we have been placed right at the front of the bus on top deck , so loads of leg room and scenic views all the way to Bangkok. We won't be arriving in Bangkok until around 2030 tonight, so we will quickly check into our hotel and find somewhere to eat once we are there .
    Can't believe its our last night in Thailand tomorrow, its gone too quickly!
    Baca selengkapnya

  • Last day in Thailand

    12 Juli 2023, Thailand ⋅ ☁️ 33 °C

    Last day in Thailand

    We woke up early to embrace our last day in Thailand (boooo!). We decided to head into the city to look at the markets for some potential gifts for people .
    It was sweltering hot , so we took things slowly and took loads of water with us . We spent ages walking around one of the markets but we didn't find anything that caught our eye . As we were walking towards the boat station to get back to our hotel, we found a lovely little store that had exactly what we wanted!
    When we got near our hotel , we stopped off to have our evening meal . We both had really tasty Thai curries , which we will miss in Bali ! My favourite is massaman curry and James is penang curry ( sooo good).
    Afterwards , we headed back to our hotel to sort our luggage out for our flight the next day . We had managed to wash some of our clothes with our scrubba bag ( best buy in the world) and get the rest of our clothes packed . We also spent some time just sorting out documentation for Bali.
    We were really buzzing after this , so we ended up going to bed quite late but no worries as only travelling the next day .
    Baca selengkapnya

    Akhir trip
    13 Juli 2023