Koh Tao is a beautiful island located in the Gulf of Thailand. It is mostly known by its turquoise waters and amazing corals and water life. Koh Tao is one of the best places in the world for diving where the visibility can go up to 30m. The island is really famous among the tourists and travelers, it is developed with a lot of restaurants, bars and shops but big enough so there is always spots to relax and run away from the crowds.
For those who want to drink and party the best place to go is Sairee Beach on the west coast, for those who want to relax in remote places the east coast is more recommended but our perfect spot was in the south of the island where there was cheap accomodation, some restaurants and shops but not too crowded and we could enjoy our days without having to rent a motorbike. Generally there is a misconception that to be in the paradise people have to pay $100/night but we found accomodation in a very nice room for $12/night... absolutely incredible.
We reached Koh Tao with a very specific task, we had to decide what to do with the rest of our trip. When we arrived to Koh Tao we had no clue about how many days we would stay in the island, the only thing we knew was that we needed to use our time to relax and to figure out what would be our next step so we lived our days very slowly and with no stress at all. We did only what we felt like doing, no rush and no preasure to visit this or that. 
After Laos our minds were a bit lost... we were in the middle of the trip still with some money left and we had no clue what we wanted to do.
We thought about so many possibilities...
keep travelling in Southeast Asia?! What if we are not going to enjoy as much and we are wasting money?! Get a minivan and travel around Europe?! Sounds fun but what is the actual purpose of that? South America?! At one point we were even more lost... so many places we could go but something was escaping us... the purpose. Why did we decide to do this trip in the first place? The answer to that is so easy... we wanted: Culture shock, to volunteer, to learn, to teach, to be put to test... so why were we even considering going to Europe or keep staying in Southeast Asia? We were ready for the next step in terms of backpacking... AFRICA!
Almost everybody thinks of Africa as a dangerous place where it is not possible to backpack. We also thought the same but excited about the possibility of an even bigger adventure, we forgot the paradise beach in our yard. We just started researching online: is it safe to backpack and volunteer in Africa? For a couple of days we did not stop researching... visas, vaccines, malaria, crime, safaris... so many Google searches, without noticing there was no way to go back in our decision. We found several blogs of travellers that backpacked in Africa and they total recommend it. All of them say the same, they were scared before starting the trip but after doing it, it easily became the trip of their lives. All the blogs we read made us feel much more confortable about the crime and the deseases. There was only one thing missing, we wanted to find a volunteering place to go and that ended up being much harder than expected.
After going through tons of NGO websites and finding nothing or being asked for $800/week to volunteer, we decided to start looking at our dear www.workaway.info. We always used this website and it is great because it has reviews from other travellers. We tried to find volunteering places in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. After contacting a few of them we decided that we could start in Uganda, more specifically in Mubende where we will be helping to build water wells for schools, distribute higiene kits for children and pregnant women, etc.
With our minds clear and with our next adventure already planned, it was time to enjoy the sun, the beach and the turquoise waters. We spent amazing days in Koh Tao, we bought snorkels and enjoyed the days watching tousands of fish and beautiful coral.
In one of the days we did the snorkel tour around the island and it was one of the most fantastic days of our trip... we saw the ocean in a way that we had never imagined and we also got the opportunity to explore the famous Koh Nang Yuan, an island composed by three small mountains connected by sand and surrounded by the astonishing Japanese Gardens (under water gardens).
We tried to explore the island as much as we could, sometimes by motorbike but most of the times by feet. Since the accident in Krabi, riding a motorbike is not as fun as it used to be.
From all the great beaches that we went, our favorite was definitely the Freedom Beach with a very relaxed environment and beautiful underwater views.
Koh Tao was exactly what we wanted to be, a place to refresh our minds, to find our next move and obviously to relax.
After Pedro's birthday we were ready to leave Koh Tao. We now had the mission of getting the vaccines and visas to Africa  in Bangkok... we even got a great surprise, on our last day in Koh Tao, our dear friend Garcia informed us that he was going to meet us for a few days!!! We couldn't be more excited about seeing a friend after so many months of traveling.
IMPORTANT NOTE: for some reason blogger is not allowing us to post with pictures, we will update the post as soon as we fix the issue.
For those who want to drink and party the best place to go is Sairee Beach on the west coast, for those who want to relax in remote places the east coast is more recommended but our perfect spot was in the south of the island where there was cheap accomodation, some restaurants and shops but not too crowded and we could enjoy our days without having to rent a motorbike. Generally there is a misconception that to be in the paradise people have to pay $100/night but we found accomodation in a very nice room for $12/night... absolutely incredible.
We reached Koh Tao with a very specific task, we had to decide what to do with the rest of our trip. When we arrived to Koh Tao we had no clue about how many days we would stay in the island, the only thing we knew was that we needed to use our time to relax and to figure out what would be our next step so we lived our days very slowly and with no stress at all. We did only what we felt like doing, no rush and no preasure to visit this or that. 
After Laos our minds were a bit lost... we were in the middle of the trip still with some money left and we had no clue what we wanted to do.
We thought about so many possibilities...
keep travelling in Southeast Asia?! What if we are not going to enjoy as much and we are wasting money?! Get a minivan and travel around Europe?! Sounds fun but what is the actual purpose of that? South America?! At one point we were even more lost... so many places we could go but something was escaping us... the purpose. Why did we decide to do this trip in the first place? The answer to that is so easy... we wanted: Culture shock, to volunteer, to learn, to teach, to be put to test... so why were we even considering going to Europe or keep staying in Southeast Asia? We were ready for the next step in terms of backpacking... AFRICA!
Almost everybody thinks of Africa as a dangerous place where it is not possible to backpack. We also thought the same but excited about the possibility of an even bigger adventure, we forgot the paradise beach in our yard. We just started researching online: is it safe to backpack and volunteer in Africa? For a couple of days we did not stop researching... visas, vaccines, malaria, crime, safaris... so many Google searches, without noticing there was no way to go back in our decision. We found several blogs of travellers that backpacked in Africa and they total recommend it. All of them say the same, they were scared before starting the trip but after doing it, it easily became the trip of their lives. All the blogs we read made us feel much more confortable about the crime and the deseases. There was only one thing missing, we wanted to find a volunteering place to go and that ended up being much harder than expected.
After going through tons of NGO websites and finding nothing or being asked for $800/week to volunteer, we decided to start looking at our dear www.workaway.info. We always used this website and it is great because it has reviews from other travellers. We tried to find volunteering places in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. After contacting a few of them we decided that we could start in Uganda, more specifically in Mubende where we will be helping to build water wells for schools, distribute higiene kits for children and pregnant women, etc.
With our minds clear and with our next adventure already planned, it was time to enjoy the sun, the beach and the turquoise waters. We spent amazing days in Koh Tao, we bought snorkels and enjoyed the days watching tousands of fish and beautiful coral.
In one of the days we did the snorkel tour around the island and it was one of the most fantastic days of our trip... we saw the ocean in a way that we had never imagined and we also got the opportunity to explore the famous Koh Nang Yuan, an island composed by three small mountains connected by sand and surrounded by the astonishing Japanese Gardens (under water gardens).
We tried to explore the island as much as we could, sometimes by motorbike but most of the times by feet. Since the accident in Krabi, riding a motorbike is not as fun as it used to be.
From all the great beaches that we went, our favorite was definitely the Freedom Beach with a very relaxed environment and beautiful underwater views.
Koh Tao was exactly what we wanted to be, a place to refresh our minds, to find our next move and obviously to relax.
After Pedro's birthday we were ready to leave Koh Tao. We now had the mission of getting the vaccines and visas to Africa  in Bangkok... we even got a great surprise, on our last day in Koh Tao, our dear friend Garcia informed us that he was going to meet us for a few days!!! We couldn't be more excited about seeing a friend after so many months of traveling.
IMPORTANT NOTE: for some reason blogger is not allowing us to post with pictures, we will update the post as soon as we fix the issue.
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