You gonna come to Ko Phangan with me?..

Day 105 - Bangkok

Bangkok...shit, I'm in Bangkok. Again. Economy of time necessitated that I skip Cambodia, the planning fallacy would not be defied in the greater scheme of things I had to admit. Economy of money necessitated that I fly back to Thailand's capital. I suspect that I'll never love it no matter how much time I spend there. Too big, too hot, too many stones that have been turned.

peek-a-boodha

With only a day to pass though I could suffer it one last time, tiny violins strike up. Wat Pho has a 46 metre reclining Buddha and while size isn't everything it was enough to get me through the door so I could wonder how they got it through the door. Stopping by Penguin Café Bar afterwards I found the alley leading down to it mysteriously blocked off. I crossed to the other side of the canal to get a better look. The owner was sitting on a concrete bollard watching a film crew bustling around his joint. He hadn't learned English in the 90 days since I was last here so couldn't tell me what was being filmed. He did, however, recognise me which was nice. With my chances of getting a Chang looking slim I decided instead to try and find a sports bar to catch the first day of The Ashes. Consulting the map I had a feeling that 'The Sportsman' sports bar and restaurant might, possibly, show some sport. And, lo, it did. And lo England did bat well though it was a test that would ultimately be lost to the tail. It was to Thailand's tail that I was headed next. The south of the country curves slenderly between the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand and the coastlines are studded with the stuff of summer holidays and gap years - Ko Phangan, Phuket, Phi Phi etc.. I'd booked a sleeper train in the classic backpacker travel/accommodation one stone solution. The train provided a level of comfort aimed at people who travel with their possessions in a knotted bag hanging on the end of a stick. Did people actually travel like that? I have childhood memories of the depiction but none from adulthood. It seems an odd arrangement with no obvious advantages. There's no distribution of weight and whichever arm and shoulder you chose to bear it would soon get sore I'd think. The bag has no organisational features to speak of. The stick can't be used for walking at the same time as carrying. it may be useful in fending off bandits or wild animals but so would carbon-fibre hiking poles and they'd weigh less. Perhaps Decathlon brought this way of travel to an end. The designer of the sleeper train was quaint in their assumption that the modern traveller would find anywhere to put their multitudinous belongings. There was a little personal lamp at the side of my compartment that I assumed worked once upon a time but no longer. So far, so underwhelming. But wait, what's this? A restaurant car? Be still my beating heart! Instantly I imagined sitting in it and striking up conversations with interesting strangers as we trundled through forests and rice paddies. We'd buy rounds, challenge each other to drinking games and tell outlandish tales of our homeland. But, alas, I'm not Theroux. Any of them. The car was fairly dilapidated so after ordering a beer, 150baht (£3.50) for the pleasure, I retired to my bunk. Knowing that sleep was highly unlikely without special measures I drank the beer and then washed down a couple of sleeping pills with half a bottle of rum. Because when has that ever turned out badly?

Simple huts and palm trees lined the beach and despite the glum sky I was enjoying the idealised backpacker vista. This was Ko Samui so not the back of beyond but I had chanced upon some peace and quiet. It was only an island hop though because the next day I was off to Ko Tao. There's very little to do on Ko Tao except dive so it was very much my kind of place. It was the kind of place I could lose myself in for weeks at a time in the gentle swing of a hammock. To avoid joining the lotus-eaters permanently I signed up for an advanced diving course. I'll be honest in saying that the main reason I wanted to be an advanced diver was so that I could say that I was an advanced diver. But first the rather humbling experience of a refresher course in a swimming pool. You're supposed to do one if you haven't dived for six months but usually the dive master will have a quick look at you in the water and if you don't immediately drown they'll wave the requirement. I hadn't dived for six months and nine days and the only waving was goodbye to several hundred baht so I could dick around like a performing seal in the shallow end. After I had shown that I could swim, would not swallow my regulator when breathing and not get a flipper stuck up my arse I was permitted to start the course proper. The group was comprised of me, a young Scots guy called Darren, a Thai couple called **checks notes** Umm and Dunno and a Colombian called...er...Who-lio. The instructor's name was Poom, I remember that at least. If you pass your advanced diving course you are then permitted to dive to a depth of 30 metres. That is a lot of water on your head. At 30 metres down people become susceptible to nitrogen narcosis otherwise known 'getting narced'. This isn't as cool as it sounds. For some people this manifests as a feeling of being drunk and euphoric (OK that bit is as cool as it sounds), but for others it causes anxiety and fear. Neither of those two scenarios is ideal at that depth though. The way the instructor works out if you're likely to have a funny turn at 30 metres underwater is to take you down to 30 metres underwater and see if you have a funny turn. If there are no signs then you are asked to do some simple maths like summing the total of fingers that the instructor holds up. If you pass that test then you're good to go. Our group all passed with flying colours. I say colours but there isn't actually a lot of colour to see down there. The overall light is noticeably diminished from 18 metres and already some colours are disappearing. Red and orange are gone and yellow is on the way out. What remains is blue and green. Orange appears at blue at depth, no wonder Nemo was so hard to find.

It's five to six and the sun is nearing the horizon. I'm dragging an oxygen tank towards a boat rather than away from one, this is new. Night diving is another of the specialisms of the advanced course. Nightfall really does nothing for visibility underwater it should be said. Most of the dive was spent watching torch beams draw faint white lines in the infinitesimal walls of black all around me. My body moved in three dimensions (well, four technically) but went in no perceptible direction. The bubbles from my regulator rose and without them up and down would have been abstractions. Time became harder to measure without the visual evidence of its passing. Underwater life would occasionally pop out of the blackness in full technicolour as someone's torch hit it. As I wearily hauled myself up the ladder afterwards a long day of diving was done. I'd survived narcosis and the formless void and, hardest of all, the patronising pool. I'd also found myself to be pretty good at diving again. I like diving very much yet not enough to do it more often than every few years. This brings on the threat of the refresher course when I do dip my toe in again but also the worry that I have entirely forgotten how to do it. That I will be the one in the group with no depth control, shooting suddenly to the surface or crashing into delicate coral. That I will be, for want of a better word, Mike. Drowning is bad but embarrassing yourself underwater is worse. Better dead than red as Joseph McCarthy would have said.
The next morning I got up early but the dive shop was operating like a well-oiled machine for once so I was actually late. Every dive shop seems to share an inherent chaoticness. Time bends and fades like sunrays underwater. This is down to the type of people that are attracted to diving. They are attracted to diving because, at its best, it offers an easy tranquillity. And though time impacts everything you do at depth, too deep + too long = too fucked, for moments none of it matters. Speaking of too deep, too long... You can't really read emotions underwater, scuba mask and breathing apparatus obscure the face, but there was something in Poom's eyes that might have been mild concern. She gripped my arm firmly which, given that she had never gripped my arm even softly before, gave me mild concern. I've thought in the past that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me but after times like this I wonder if it has given me a preternatural idea of invulnerability. Poom starred intently at the dive watch on my wrist. The third dive on the advanced course was designed to test navigational skills and impress upon a diver the need to take responsibility for yourself. As a recreational diver you can, should you put your mind to it, create a whole waterworld of trouble for yourself. But in reality you'll generally be lead on a well-planned route by a very experienced diver. And they will, with a safety margin, have calculated the times and depths you'll be exposed to. And additionally most dives are planned so you can immediately swim to the surface should you need without suffering any undesirable affects on your health, like death. We had been tasked to follow a regular course while managing our depth and closely monitoring the 'NDC' displayed on the dive watch. This was the No Decompression Limit and shows in minutes how much longer you can remain at your current depth without having to do a decompression stop near the surface to allow nitrogen out of the blood stream. The stop isn't a problem in itself but if you need to surface in an emergency then it ain't happening and welcome to the bends. Which is probably why the big zero next to the letters 'NDC' aroused Poom from her hitherto disinterest in our navigational progress. It necessitated about ten minutes of her and I waiting a few metres down, arm still firmly grasped, until I could safely go up. Despite not exactly having nailed this one I had still passed and was now a certified idiot advanced open water diver. After one last recreational dive in the afternoon I decided that was it for me on Ko Tao. I could easily have whiled away another week there but my ears were fairly blocked up from the regular compressions and there was more yet to see. Time waits for no man. Even if he is an advanced diver.

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