Da na... Da Na ...DA NA!

Swimming with sharks? Yeah sure no problem....Wait did I just say that?

The sign read something along the lines of 'swim with black tip sharks...600 baht'
Dan said Cool! I said yeah...sure.
However with a bit of advice we were told that we could go for free...by ourselves. I was not too sure how thrilled I was. We rented a kayak and by the time we got to our destination it was late in the day, worse yet the visibility was very poor and we were battling huge 3m swells! So I not only was to get over of my fear of deep water, but also my fear of the scary ocean swells, and oh yeah...Sharks. I was too chicken shit to get in the water.
But alas I would have another try.
The thought of swimming with sharks scared and thrilled me. I thought 'wow that would be so cool' but also 'what are you crazy?'
Two days later we again rented a kayak and went to 'shark bay' to try and find the black tip creatures lurking somewhere deep down.
We were much more lucky on our second try, the water was calm and the visibility was amazing. We could easily see the bottom from where we were at least 5m deep. The hardest part for me was to actually get in the water. I just kept telling myself that I may never get this opportunity again...so in I went.
With a bit of advice from some other snorkelers we were able to see the sharks in about 30 minutes from when we first got in the water. It was amazing! We saw up to 6 at once and strangely enough I really wasn't scared, after I saw the first one, I wanted to see more, I was mesmerized and intrigued. They swim so cautious and slow through the water, majestic even. I think that I was not so afraid when we finally saw them because I was imagining the worst...huge boat sized, teeth baring giants coming towards me at a threatening pace. As soon as I saw that they are not so big and are actually scared of you...I relaxed a bit. But what a thrill! It was definitely a highlight of staying on Koh Tao, along with pretty much everything else. One of the great things about being on vacation is that you can read...any book you want! We have been reading a lot lately, one of my favorites that I finished was "the Time Travelers Wife"-very sweet and nicely written. I also read "The Divinci Code" to see what it was all about, a gripping tale but a bit fantastic for my taste. Next will be "Memoirs of a Geisha" and I'm trying to find Alex Garlands "The Tesseract".
Well now is the time to leave here and we are going to Ranong on the Andaman coast and I look forward to seeing the Surin islands where there is supposed to be amazing snorkeling. We will be heading straight to Koh Chang right from Ranong but there is not even electricity there so I will be out of contact for a while.