He has been living and working on Koh Tao as a dive instructor for a couple of years and can tell us a lot about the way business is done on Koh Tao. He brings us to a nightboat to Chumphon and the next morning we set foot on Koh Tao. We continue our journey to our own place in the back of a pick-up truck.

We have found a so called longstay bungalow. Bungalow is a pretty word for “Thai cabin”. It’s a simple house with more luxury than a standard hotel room, like your own fridge, desk and kitchen. And it’s a lot more affordable. We will stay here for the next 5 weeks. Together with lots and lots of mosquito’s… It takes some getting used to and improvising. No cabinet, but 2 desks and 1 office chair (YES, a real chair!!), no flushing toilet, a shower head that squirts the wrong way around, a bed as hard as bricks and a housekeeper who didn’t exactly offer us the house “cleaned”. All in all, farming corals isn’t quite like a lazy stroll in the park.

 
Since 2010 we have walked around with the idea of making the farming of corals our life’s work, and even back then we were interviewed once by the NTW Magazine (in Dutch). After summer school and the Studentbattle, the moment has finally come. The money we have collected during the Student battle, will be used to test new techniques developed by the student team Reefolution and our own materials developed by the CoralGardening team. We take care of our housing costs ourselves.

The rain season has arrived and that means tropical storms and drizzles take turns soaking us through and through. This of course has some influence on our plans. We cannot weld and working with cement is impractical. That kind of stuff happens out in the open, but is best done on a sunny day. We’ll just have to adjust. That’s the way of life in Thailand: go with the flow. Luckily we can fill our time with lots of discussions and meetings and arranging things. We still need to order some of the necessary materials.
We meet a few old-timers on the Marine Conservation Project. Students and interns we’ve met before in February. It’s nice to see them again, and everyone is enthusiastic about our ideas. Next week we will meet with Chad to discuss our plans in detail. We will a.o. decide the location for our pilot project and arrange the last necessities for the required permits.
Besides these things, we are also photographing and filming lots of stuff to use in our promotional video which we will publish during our crowdfund campaign.

While a part of our team works in Thailand, the rest stayed behind in the Netherlands and is busy preparing the crowdfund campaign, which will start in about a month. If you have a good idea for this and want to help us reach our goals, just let us know!

The post Will you follow us to Koh Tao? appeared first on CoralGardening.

And as they say in in Asia, the weather is “Same same, but different”. A lot has changed but a lot has also remained the same. Some things have changed for the better, some for the worse. The tourism on Koh Tao has increased. And changed. Before, most tourists were backpackers that came to dive. Nowadays you see more diversity in the tourists. From complete families to elderly, non-divers and partygoers. You can see the reef has suffered from the pressure of the tourism. More places are damaged and there is less fish around.

Luckily we can also announce some good news. More and more people see the problems and want to commit themselves to restoring reefs. We have met Julia, an underwater architect, she wants to help design our reef. Bob will focus on the technical aspect of our project, e.g. what are the possible means of communications between Koh Tao and The Netherlands. Access to the internet is not as common in Koh Tao as in The Netherlands. They have never heard of a fiber connection. In fact, Skype only works without a video connection. We met a lot of friends and acquaintances. Everybody is enthusiastic about our plans.

Between all the work we try to enjoy life on Koh Toa. It feels like coming home. It’s lovely to eat Thai dishes again and enjoy the fresh fruit.

Our last appointment is at the Dutch embassy in Bangkok. A taxi through the busy streets of this city takes longer than expected. We have a good talk with the second secretary. He will also look at what the embassy can do for CoralGardening.

 
With pain in our hearts we return to The Netherlands. Our hands are itching to start working here, but first we need to do a lot of work back home. Of course the Student Battle and the preparation of our crowdfunding campaign are on the top of our list. We will tell you more about that in future updates. And no doubt we will have some news from Koh Tao as well.

The post Business trip on flip-flops appeared first on CoralGardening.