The Safety Dance

Koh Tao, Thailand - How do we seek safety when we travel? What criterias define comfort? Are degrees of separation inversly porportional to isolation? Naturally, commonality builds bonds but does differences cause opposites to converge? Drops of oil don't mix naturally but when immersed in water, they cling to each other.  

Koh Tao is a small diving island in the Gulf of Thailand.  Every guesthouse or resort that dots the beach is a dive shop and all other businesses on the island support the diving community. You and all the other people from your ferry are in Koh Tao for one purpose only and that is to go diving. Now you don't just share a common culture and language but a common activity. In the backpackers' warped world of relationships, you might as well be blood brothers. The resorts are so communal that sitting down for a meal is like a high school cafeteria. You just pick a empty space and start chatting with your companions about what they saw on their recent dive. When the check comes, you each shell out an equal portion of Bahts.  (Marx couldn't have imagined in his wildest dreams that western tourists would be the ones to currently espouse socialist ideals in Southeast Asia.)

I can't imagine there are so many tourists interested in diving in Thailand. Yes, it is one of the nicest places in the world to dive but it's expensive, certification takes time and you can't really get drunk. In venn diagram of what 18 to 25 year old travelers look for, I'd suspect the union of those three characteristics to be empty. The dive schools does however offer easy access to friendships with people on similar paths and it offers safety to the traveler who is a little wary of diving (no pun intended) head first into a foreign land, culture and language. And to continue the trend of cheesy dive metaphors, it is a safety stop before going too deep.