We got a good deal to get to koh tao from bangkok we got the overnight sleeper train and a/c coach and hi speed catamaran to the island for just over 1000baht each around 14 quid! koh tao is beautiful its beaches are pure white sand and the sea is light blue and crystal clear even when it gets really deep! the first couple of days here we met up with a few friends from back home it was pretty crazy seeing them so far away from home but we soon got over that thoght and settled down to a couple of days worth of hard drinking, they had already been on the island for nearly a week so left a couple of days after we got there to go back the way we just came from! The main reason we came to koh tao was to do our scuba diving course, its one of the cheapest places in the world to do it and it has some of the best dive sites around. Our padi open water course cost us 9000baht each with coral grand divers and we got free accomadation as part of the deal which works out around 150 pounds for the four day and four night course! we hade to do a lot of classroom work and at night we had homework to do too it was a rite rut but it had to be done, and after some practise in the pool we had four dives at various sites out at sea. the dives were so amazing we couldnt believe the amount of fish and other sealife there was at some places, and whale sharks had been spotted the previous day in the area too the best dive site for me was the southwest pinnacle it was the deepest of all our dives to 18m and it was right out at sea but the visability was quality anf there were so many different schools of fish down there surrounding the pinnacle it was awesome! after all our dives we had to sit a final exam and quite suprising for me i passed with 90% erin passed too but being the boff that she is she got 96% im sure she was copying me! So we are now both qualified scuba divers and we can dive anywhere around the world it was an amazing thing to do and would reccomend it to anyone. We are just going to chill out on koh tao for a few days now and put in a bit of beach time before we move off to the next island of koh phangan. so until the next time!