Koh Tao and the great whale shark conspiracy

Koh Tao Island,

Off the east coast of the Thailand peninsula

We had heard that Koh Tao was a diving mecca from various sources, so we decided to head there from Bangkok and do a few days diving and lazing on the beach. We ended up at a place called Sairee Beach, staying with a dive outfit called Big Blue Diving. Our first day's diving was at a site called Chumphon Pinnacle, where on the previous two mornings whale sharks had been spotted. Now, bearing in mind that diving with whale sharks holds the number one position on my "Things I absolutely have to do before I die" list, I was understandably excited about getting into the water. Typical of most things in Asia, we had to be up at 6am, but we managed it and off we set. Pardon the pun, but once in the water it all went downhill from there. The visability was atrocious and nothing went to plan. Koh Tao is famous for it's turtles, reef sharks and whale sharks. Needless to say, we saw none of them. Despite this, we had 3 days of fantastic diving and spent time on Sairee Beach, which is beautiful in a way that someone from Lancashire would struggle to convey.

After Sairee, we moved down to the south of the island to a place called Chalok Baan Kao. On the recommendation of one of our dive guides we'd checked into a place called Viewpoint Resort. To us, it was a massively expensive luxury, to you it was about the same price as a two carrier bags of Tesco's groceries. We had a massive balcony on our hillside room that looked out across the entire bay. The room had sliding doors which essentially opened up one side of the room onto the balcony. We would go to bed at night and wake up in the morning looking out across the bay, and hear the waves breaking on the rocks below us. One of the best locations I have ever been in, and a huge thank you to Cara's Colchester friends whose parting gift to us allowed us to stay here. We could only stay a few days , but we had a fantastic time and were very sorry to leave.

By the way, the great whale shark conspiracy is as follows : Every dive centre on the island will display a big sign out front saying that their dive boat spotted several playful whale sharks at some dive site of other, and if you want to see them you had better get in there right away and get booked onto their boat, only a few places left etc. You will not see a whale shark. Odds are the visibility will be so bad you won't see much of anything. We chatted to several dive guides and instructors on the island who had been there for years and done thousands of dives and who still hadn't yet seen a whale shark. Seeing a whale shark seems to be very much like winning the lottery. Yes it's possible, it's just also very, very improbable.

From here we moved on to the next island of Koh Phangan, which we had seriously considered missing out completely as they were gearing up for the next full moon party - hummm!