Abandoned places and cliff jumping - A tale from Koh Tao Thailand (Warning - Lots of pictures inside ;-) )

When I was travelling through Thailand with my girl in 2013, Koh Tao was the second island we stranded on. Koh Tao is a famous place in the backpacking world when it comes to diving schools. You can get your open water certification relatively cheap and combine the learning process with partying.

Usually you learn in small groups and also live together with your fellow soon-to-be-divers in the accommodations of the diving schools. Needless to say, that after a day of learning or diving, the Chang beers start flowing!

One of my highlights was to snorkel in the so-called shark bay area. There are lots of little (like 1 m) white fin sharks and they come soo close to you. Scary but so so amazing at the same time. Sharks are some of my favorite animals and swimming with them in the open water made a dream come true. They are so majestic and pretty!

Besides of that we found that there was not soo much to do on that little island. On our last day we had some time to kill before we were going to catch the night ferry to Koh Phi Phi (an island that created even more crazy and hilarious memories than Koh Tao) .
I´ve been searching online for cliff jumping spots on Koh Tao and found a little Blog that recommend a place on the other side of the island in the middle of nowhere. The directions weren´t very clear but the description sounded very promising.

Since we didn´t have any plans for that last day we thought we might as well try to find that place. Can´t be that hard to find - can it? Hooked by the smell of adventure, we quickly packed a bag and bought some water and electrolytes, to get rid of that nasty hangover from the night before, at the nearest seven eleven.

We´ve been walking through the jungle for nearly two hours, without anything to see besides those wild, green, branched jungle plants. Not a single soul in sight and the water we brought was nearly empty (rookie mistake).

We were about to give up and turn back to the guesthouse when all of a sudden, the ocean with its stunning cliffs started to appear on the skyline. Now we had the goal in clear sight and were about to be rewarded for the struggles.

In front of the cliffs there was this huge abandoned resort. It looked like it was quite pricey when it was still open but seemed like it´s been uninhabited for years. It was an amazing experience to walk through that complex, exploring and imagining what it must have been like, back in the day.

To get to the higher cliffs that led to the ocean was not that easy. Thankfully some people before us must have laid out some boards to get over the smaller cliffs. Those boards were a bit rotten though to say the least.

The cliffs were not that high but therefore quite safe to jump off. And it wasn´t a problem to get back on land after the jump which sometimes can be the tricky part of cliff jumping.

If you´re ever on Koh Tao I highly recommend you to check that place out. I´m sure if you ask some locals for the lost resort, they can give you some direction. Or who knows, maybe it´s even become a popular spot, since it seems that Thailand has a lot more tourists nowadays.

Thanks for reading and please follow me if you don´t want to miss any of the more amazing stories I will tell in the future!
Stay tuned!