I’m baaack! Well, for now. I’m here to brag a little about how well I planned my most recent trip to Europe. Specifically, I went to Germany, Switzerland, and France. I planned my ground travel so well that I wanted to make a standalone post about it.
In this post, you will learn when and how I went about scheduling all of the train and bus travel that took me across three European countries. I went from Munich, Germany to Interlaken, Switzerland and then from Swizterland to 3 different locations in France.
The key was scheduling ahead and downloading all the relevant train apps. This saved me money and plenty of hassle. There were only a few hiccups along the way, but I’ll also share how those were smoothed over with help from technology, friendly locals, and some luck!
When I left Bangkok for Ko Tao, I had no idea what I was going to decide to do once I arrived at the dive resort where Astrid works. I have always wanted to take a SCUBA diving course and get certified, but I never thought I’d do it in Thailand. Between the excellent instruction I received, the great underwater visibility, and the diverse tropical fish and coral reef, I made the best decision to learn to dive off the shores of Ko Tao.
After the 9 hour bus and ferry ride from Bangkok, one of the Big Bubble resort taxi drivers picked me up from the port. Five minutes later, we arrived at the resort where I met KaiNui who is one of the master divers at Big Bubble. He introduced me to a list of dive options and their prices. The open water diver certification course involved watching a video, receiving short instruction in the classroom, and going on 4 dives, 2 the first day which were mainly training focused and 2 the following day which were for fun and practice. The course cost about $300 USD and included 4 nights’ accommodation in their bungalows. Normally there are up to 6 other divers in each training group, but because it was low season for tourists on the island, I ended up having a private instruction for the group price! You cannot get this kind of deal back home, so I was immediately in.
