First Dives

I finally went diving in the ocean in Thailand! AND IT WAS AWESOME! The water was 82 degrees. Wow. We were at a sandy site so the visibility was only about 30 feet (still good by Monterey standards...) but there were little fish everywhere and it was beautiful. I'll be on a liveaboard trip for the next 3 days to do some wreck diving, with the afternoon free on October 27, and then I'm back on a liveaboard trip for 6 more days. I'll upload when I get the chance!

Here's a sample of the things we saw on the last 4 dives, taken from google image searches. I couldn't use my camera while on the dives because we had Open Water students, but I should be able to take photos for the next few dives.

Blackspotted pufferfish:http://www.freeirishphotos.com/animals/sea_life_photos.html  

Camouflaged scorpionfish: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/08/Scorpion_fish.jpg

Varicose warty sea slug: http://us.123rf.com/400wm/400/400/andamanse/andamanse1206/andamanse120600008/13956473-varicose-wart-slug-phyllidia-varicosa--lembeh-strait-indonesia.jpg

Honeyomb moray eels: http://catbirdinoman.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/honeycombmorayeel01-vi.jpg

And here are some photo from the dives - the battery didn't last long enough to take many pics sadly, so stay tuned for more photos from the next few days of diving:

Liveaboards at the doc

Scorpionfish were all over the place

This cuttlefish was the highlight of our dive!! THEY ARE SO COOL!

When in Thailand... :)

Hopefully I'll have some awesome wreck diving photos to show when I'm back from the liveaboard trip!

Memories Bar

Today the DMTs (Divemasters in Training) had the morning off, so a bunch of us decided to go to Memories Bar in Bangnam about 20 km from Khao Lak.  There was a cabana, surfing, music, and volleyball - what more could we want??

On the way to the beach, we drove along an incredible muddy and pitted road. Oh, there were also elephants.

This was unexpected... and AWESOME.

Surfboard rentals were 100 baht ($3.50 in U.S.) per hour because we're "locals," and the water was actually too warm for me - I wished it were a few degrees cooler. Beautiful sandy beaches and ideal waves for easy surfing! Technically, Memories Bar doesn't open until Oct 25th, but one of our Thai friends knows the owner and they let us hang out and rent boards :)

Well I didn't realize I have such terrible posture, but hey look at my surfboard!

Me and Tuk stood up! Tuk was a little wobbly though...

The gang settles into our bungalow

Model shot

This afternoon, we helped a family of 4 with their Open Water Course. The parents are American and they're living in Bangkok right now with their two daughters age 13 and 11, both of whom are super hardcore swimmers and are getting certified. The 11 year old is teeny but super adventurous, and I think both girls are loving scuba already.

I don't have many exciting photos because we mostly sat at the bottom of the pool and taught them basic scuba skills like how to clear a mask, how to inflate/deflate the BCD, retrieve and clear regulators, but tomorrow is my first dive in the Thailand tropical ocean! SO EXCITED! It will still be a dive with the open water family so nothing too intense - but it'll be my first tropical dive since Australia. I can't wait!

The dark shapes are the Open Water class + instructors. I had to check my gear  - turns out I had a leaky O-ring :(

See I'm diving! I know it seems like I'm just eating and hanging out, but there's actually a lot of work involved in this class too. Promise. It's just really fun work.

Even when I'm not underwater, I'm under water...

Here's a quick video of our daily 3pm thunderstorm (though this one is especially intense, I don't usually have a river running outside my bungalow...):

Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. - Langston Hughes

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. - Roger Miller

---

And because these quotes made me smile:

If you think it's going to rain, it will. - Clint Eastwood

We gonna stay together baby through the monsoon and no matter the weather honey me and you will bloom yeah. - WillIAm 

Getting Acquainted

The dive season starts on Monday, so we've had a very busy few days preparing to assist with Open Water Courses and Divemastering.  It's great having a bungalow to call home base, and I have space to hang my things outside so they dry (mostly, since there's a thunderstorm of truly epic proportions at 3pm sharp every day). 

I live in the right half of the bungalow with a queen bed, porch, bathroom, sink, fridge, and FAN. It's very nice!

The pool is quite small but there are only 4 of us taking the class, so we have plenty of space to practice our skills.  Right now we're learning how to demonstrate, which is SO much harder than just being able to do them in cases of emergency. I truly believe that teaching is the best way to learn and I think my diving has hugely improved in the last 2 days of pool sessions.  ~4 hours each day in chlorine is exhausting though. John and I are both working on the SSI skills (I'll do PADI as well) so we are trained by Anna, an amazing and fiesty woman from Barcelona. She and her husband have been instructors for years and have made a living traveling from exotic location to exotic location - awesome role models, and great to work with!

Me and my dive trainer Anna.

Of course, all work and no play wouldn't be any fun. I think diving is the best way to combine work and play, but there is also a vibrant dive community in addition to learning skills and taking tourists on dive boats.  Tuk and Ploy, two of the staff at Wicked Diving, are native Thai who know the area and took us around to some of the best bars and restaurants. It's awesome having their experience because otherwise we would have no idea where to go! 

Eating at our favorite street food stand, Orchids. AMAZING food!! 

Fruity drinks at the Monkey Bar, a local hot spot for divers

Thai funk band at the Happy Snapper, which has live music daily. The band & singers played songs ranging from "Price Tag" by Jessie J to  Sublime and Bob Marley. They are so talented!

We also had a big welcome dinner for all the staff at Wicked Diving - here's the photo :) there are 8 instructors and 4 of us taking the Divemaster Training class, plus Aldo (standing up) who coordinates the shop and Ploy who helps with international bookings. It's a very fun, welcoming, and exciting group of people with INCREDIBLE life stories. For example, Danny is the other Barcelonean dive instructor and he used to be a business formal, professional lawyer. Now he's living the dream! The instructors are all experienced and come from all over, so it's going to be an AMAZING experience learning from them. I can't believe it's already been a week!

The Wicked Diving team

Field trip to the Decompression Chamber

Don't worry, I didn't have to USE the decompression chamber. We had a tour of the center and learned about the process of removing excess nitrogen from the bloodstream to avoid tissue damage, which was very interesting since I've only read about the facilities. The decompression chamber in Phuket has a large submarine-like interior so you can be comfortable (ish) while undergoing treatment. Hopefully I'll never have to experience it first hand, especially since it costs 753 Euro per treatment hour (minimum 5 hours, up to 9 hours), but that's what dive insurance is for! Tomorrow we start with pool sessions, and we begin assistant-teaching Open Water Diver certification classes in 2 days. I'm so excited!!

Located adjacent to the Phuket International Hospital

This is what I'll look like if I ever need to be recompressed

The control panel for O2, normal air, etc...

Regulator Servicing station in Phuket

Random photo of the day: Donut Pizza?? BUT WHY??

Adventure 1: Ze Epic Walk

Self study days = reading, mini-quizzes, and time to have an adventure. 

Adventure 1. Ze Epic Walk

~1.5 miles of walking along a road filled with trucks, cars, and motos with jungle on the other side. Here's what we saw at the next town along the road:

A police boat that was tossed ~2 km upland from the beach during the 2004 tsunami. Crazyyy

Small shrine with a potbellied guardian 

Deep-fried grasshopper? FOR DINNER? (it tasted buggy...)

Wheels spinning in the sky

Pastry-covered hot dogs on a stick

Rhys unimpressed with grasshopper and mealworm

Mealworms om nom (they tasted like chips...)

George and chicken (it wasn't was spicy as it looks, thank goodness)

 And a carnival celebrating the 9-day vegetarian Buddhist holiday going on right now:

Meet the Gang

Thailand is what I expected and not at all what I expected. This is hard for me to explain, since I'm not sure what I expected, but I do know that I like it here a lot.  I'm located in Khao Lak, the small city that acts as a gateway to some of the best diving in Thailand. It becomes a crazy whirlwind of tourism and diving when the Similian National Park opens on November 1st, but right now it feels like a calm beachfront town. Every day I see more tourist stands, restaurants, and tailoring shops open up in anticipation of the tourist season. The growing energy is almost palpable (never thought I'd use that word in a sentence...) and I'm so excited for things to get rolling!

The first portion of the course is primarily classroom learning. We have to be able to lead group dives, instruct Open Water courses, and work the dive shop, so we'll be honing those skills before we start teaching on the liveaboard trips. I do wish we could get in the water NOW, but I suppose it's important to make sure we have the soft skills before they toss us in the ocean with a group of tourists.

Who is this "we," you ask? Let's do some brief introductions to my fellow Divemasters-in-training:

John, the intrepid mid-30s Australian who left his banking job for a 15-month sabbatical traveling to 17 countries, starting with Thailand. He's a hoot and a half - very sharp and funny. He worked on cruise ships in the Caribbean and Alaska so he's had first-hand experience with the crazy things Americans do. Luckily, he is giving me lots of credit for being from the Bay Area. Yes he's holding a monkey in the photo.

Rhys (left), the youthful Canadian who has taken a break from his electrician studies to do his Divemaster and become more confident in diving without a guide. He's 19 and has gotten 4 tattoos since arriving, since bamboo tattoos heal almost instantly and can still go in the water... one is a tattoo of a mustache on his pointer finger. Actually.

George (right), the techie Canadian who left his IT job and is now traveling to dive and possibly transition to divemastering. He's the most experienced diver of our group and has been diving in Montreal rivers most recently, as well as in the Caribbean. He bought a bag of cornflakes that would make Costco patrons jealous, since we have little fridges for milk and fruit in our rooms.

The food has been tasty, spicy, and cheap, which is as expected. I don't think I'm going to get sick of Thai food anytime soon - I'm having a hard time picking which dish I want because they all sound so good. I'm glad I trained myself to eat curry and spicy food though, because they don't mess around with the chili powders and sauces.  Time to study the methods for teaching dive techniques!