SE Asia Backpacking Series : Ko Tao, Ko Samui, Ko Phi Phi, Chiang Mai (again :P) and Bangkok

Hello everyone! Long time no post! I wanted to post this earlier but the internet here is not always great and uploading pictures can be a pain. Now I have a decent wifi in my room in Nha Trang Vietnam so I will update you on how the trip has been going. First thing we did in Ko Tao was find a good diving resort for a couple fun dives. Our friends wanted to do the PADI Open Water Course so we went diving in the meantime. We dived 6 times, in 6 different sites, all of which were very nice. I reckon it's some of the best diving I have done so far (not that I have done that much :P).

 On our last day in Ko Tao, Mathieu and I went snorkeling in Shark Bay, where you can usually spot black fin sharks. We were able to see a bunch of different species of fish including one shark!

After that, we left for Ko Samui. In Ko Phangan, we met two girls from Quebec and decided to travel along with them for a while. We decided to follow them to Ko Samui as they were going there to celebrate one of the girls' birthday. We only stayed two nights. While we were there, we went to the Green Mango, a popular night club there. It was all a lot of fun :)

We left Ko Samui and headed straight for Ko Phi Phi where we spent a couple days. There, we went for two more fun dives (this time we saw a bunch of sharks and a sea turtle!) and a snorkeling trip to the beautiful beaches of the area, including Maya Bay, the place from the movie "The Beach". I wasn't so keen on the island itself though. It felt too crowded for the ressources and there was usually quite a bit of trash lying around. There were many nice restaurants there though and we even had a poutine! Who would've thought?

From Ko Phi Phi, we caught a boat to Phuket, were we stayed the night. Our plane for the north was leaving from there so we walked around the city a little bit during the day. After a pretty uneventful plane ride to Chiang Mai we were back, once again, in the north. Our friend had never been and since I quite enjoy it there, we decided it was fine to go back. This time, we went to a tiger farm, where you can pet tigers and take pictures with them and took a day long tour to the golden triangle and the white temple. The white temple was simply breathtaking and the paintings inside were amazing (pictures inside the temples aren't allowed in Thailand so I don't have pictures). We also went to the night market in Chiang Mai for some souvenir shopping, to see a muay thai show and to get thai massages. As always, Chiang Mai was a lot of fun and I'd definitely would go back in the future.

 Our friend's trip was getting close to its end by this point so we caught a night train back to Bangkok. After she left, Mathieu and I spent some time there to relax, went to the cinema, the arcade and ate huge amounts of japanese food. There are many great japanese restaurants at the MBK Center in Bangkok, I had no idea until this time that there was so much of it there!

We have been to Cambodia briefly since then and are now in Vietnam. Cambodia hasn't been the greatest experience for us, but we didn't stay very long which means it's hard to judge. I'll update in a bit on how it's going here in Vietnam! Right now I'm kind of sick and might go to the doctor tomorrow if it doesn't get any better. Not to worry though, I doubt it's anything serious, but I might needs some antibiotics to help speed my recovery :)

  That's all for now, hope you all enjoyed this :) How's all of your summers going so far? Let me know in the comments!

Bocas Del Toro Diving

 Bocas Del Toro diving is renowned to be quite good in comparison to most other dive sites in Panama or Costa Rica. Therefore, like I mentionned in my last travel update post, Mathieu and I have decided to take the advanced open water certification course as soon as we reached Isla Colon. For only 175 USD, you get 5 adventure dives as well plus two free fun dives. Good deal, right?

You can choose some of the adventure dives among a list of available dives, but some others are mendatory for the certification. The dives we did were :

- Navigation dive (mendatory) : you learn how to use a compass underwater.

- Deep Dive (mendatory) : You go deeper than the open water certification limit of 18 metres. We went down to 27 meters!

- Peak Performance buoyancy dive : Allows you to control your buoyancy by breathing.

- Fish identification dive : We learned to recognize fish families and identifies more than 7 different species during the dive! We saw (and touched!) a jellyfish, starfishes, parrottfishes, butterflyfishes and a couple lobsters and tons more.

- Night dive : this is the dive I was the most apprehensive about. You basically go on a dive in the dark, with nothing else but a small flashlight to illuminate the sea's bottom. It was very exciting! Lots of fish only come out at night so we had tons to see.

Bocas Del Toro diving was great after all! The visibility, even though it was the rainy season, was pretty good most of the time and we saw tons of fish. The quality, however, is not necessarily comparable to Utila diving (which was out of this world), but I have to say that it was quite good nonetheless. After all of this, we are now certified advanced open water! I'm really glad we did this =)

We still have two fun dives to complete tomorrow and we intend on visiting the surronding islands by water taxi too. Our next destination is Panama City! We cannot wait to see the canal!

We also celebrated the Saint Jean Baptiste here in Panama! It was raining buckets, but we still enjoyed a couple drinks at an outdoor bar. (1$ beers, an electric 4$ Margarita and 8.95$ pitcher of Sangria) It was a quiet, but fun evening! Too bad we were the only travelers from Quebec there that night =)

Have you tried Bocas Del Toro diving or scuba diving in general? What did you think of it? What is your favorite diving spot? Tell me in the comments!

Cost of scuba diving lessons and our journey Bocas Del Toro ♥

The cost of scuba diving lessons can be really steep. The price for the Open Water certification can be anywhere between 300$ to over 600$ and more in some spots. Central America is one of the cheapest areas to dive in the world with Thailand. We went to Utila, Honduras two years ago and were very satisfied with the quality and the prices. Another place that is renowned to be cheap is Bocas Del Toro in Panama. That's why we chose to go there to hopefully book an advanced Open water class.

Getting here to Bocas Del Toro was pretty much a nightmare. We left off early tuesday to grab the 9 am bus which was suposed to take us all the way to Almirante from which you need to take a water taxi to get onto the islands. We then learned from a passenger that apparently the bus stopped at Changinola instead, about an hour an a half hour from a destination. The whole ride was supposed to take only 6 hours, but 6 hours after our departure we were just arriving to the borders.

The officials at the border gave us an incredible hard time. They wanted us to have a ticket out of Panama to let us in. We have plane tickets out of Costa Rica in a month, but that wasn't enough for them, they wanted a proof of departure. Of, course, they were selling these 12$ bus return tickets there! They bascially forced us to buy some or they wouldn't let us in. Issue was, we were out of cash and they did not accept cards. We ended up borrowing money from a mini bus driver that was there.

While this was happening (it took about 45 minutes to get everything settled) our bus left (intentionnally) without us. We were forced to grab a ride with the mini bus driver for 10$ more each to Almirante (coincidence? I don't think so!). We finally arrived at the water taxi place and grabbed a boat to Isla Colon in Bocas Del Toro where we are now. Phew! What a frustrating day X_X

After that, things started to look up, we got a great hostel (review soon!) and went out for pizza and 1$ beers at a restaurant called Black olives. The next day, we went out to look for a dive shop and found the Starfleet dive shop, not far from the hotel. We decided on taking the advanced open water classes, which include 5 dives and 2 free fun dives (it was super cheap! only 175$ per person, the reviewers weren't kidding the cost of scuba diving lessons here in Bocas is really inexpensive!). You get to choose some of the dives you will go through and we chose a night dive and fish identification!

We are on day 2 of three days for the certification and diving is exhausted! We dived twice this morning and now we are simply taking it easy in our hostel for now. We might try and find a play with air conditionning soon, it's really hot here!

My scuba diving experience ^^

Scuba diving has got to be my favourite sport. I love the feeling that you get from being underwater, gliding through the water, breathing deeply while watching with amazement the amazing wildlife and corals.

I’m still fairly new at scuba diving. My first experience was last year, when I went to the Utila Island in Honduras. I spend a week there, diving almost every single day while I was completing my PADI formation. I would like to pursue my diving and hopefully complete my dive master course some day!

I’m not one to be super comfortable when in the water. My swimming skills while adequate aren’t the best, but when I dive, it’s another story completely. To anyone who might hesitate to try scuba diving I say, give it a try, it’s one of my most precious memories! ♥

Here are some pictures I took while I was there. I also have an underwater video of us and the group we dived with where you can see exactly what we've seen, but I'm not sure where that is! I'll upload later if I can find it =D

This is the dive shop where I did my PADI, the Utila dive center, the people there were amazingly helpful and nice =D

If I had had more time and more money I would have done my advanced open water course there too!

The diving equipment, just before a dive on the boat