Thailand is stupid.

Thailand is stupid.

Stupid beautiful. Like seriously, look at those colors. Stupid, stupid beautiful. 

So anyway! I've been in Phuket for a little over a week now. It's been pretty good... spending a lot of time on the beach being a giant bum, but I've had a couple of adventures, mostly with the help of my friend Mark. Mark and I were housemates in Cairns, and he was out in Phuket taking a tec diving course. On his days off, we would get together for some adventuring around Phuket. He's brave enough to drive a scooter, thank goodness for that. Although after riding around town with him, I have realized there is some method to the traffic madness. It DOES make sense somehow, despite the lack of apparent traffic laws. If parents will take their three year old children on scooters, I can certainly figure one out, right? 

Well, one of our adventures was to Big Buddha. Big Buddha is a gigantic statue of Buddha sitting on the highest point on Phuket so you can see him from all over. On the way up, are some beautiful rainforests and lots of elephant trekking places... those awesome places where you ride elephants around. 

Baby elephant on the way up to see Buddha! ISNT HE THE CUTEST???

Meet Big Buddha. 

Going up to Big Buddha was pretty awesome. It was the first religious sort of area I've been in since being in Thailand and it was really neat. There were lots of smaller statues and religious figures around underneath Buddha. There were monks chanting and you could even get blessed by one of the monks. Really a neat experience. Hopefully I'll be able to check out more temples and things around Thailand! 

One our adventure day we also went beach hopping. Mark showed me some of the beaches he'd been diving off of, much more scenic and less crowded than Kata beach. 

Nice little patch of sand tucked away in the jumgle

But mostly our adventures consisted of drinking lots of cheap cocktails :) Can't beat a beachside bar serving up pina coladas for about $3 US. But it was really nice to get out of the city and explore some of the areas off the beaten path. One of these days I'll work up the courage to rent my own scooter and head out on the road. 

Now for the last three days, I've been off Phuket. We went to Ko Phi Phi for a couple days, its an island just off the coast (two hours by slowwww ferry) and it is incredible. One of the prettiest places I've ever been (where the first picture came from). The water there is so turquoise and beautiful beaches and really dramatic cliffs. Our first day on Phi Phi, was just spend walking around speechless. It's stunning. It's a big island, but there's only a small area that you can live on because there are so many cliffs and mountains. There are no cars or motorized vehicles, just some bikes. The streets are narrow and lined with shops selling knock off Ray Bans and designer purses and neon "I Love Phi Phi" tank tops. There's street food and nice restaurants and lots of shady bars. It's paradise. There's also about 15 dive shops on this teeny tiny island, so I finally got underwater in Thailand. 

The diving was really beautiful. Different than anywhere I've ever been. We dived around two of the smaller islands off the coast of Phi Phi. 

THIS was our dive site. If you look in the water just in front of the island, you can see the teeny tiny heads in the water. 

We started our first dive in a shallow lagoon and worked our way into the deeper water just off the island. There wasn't much in the way of coral, but lots and lots of fish. Thousands of small snappers and fusiliers. We saw lots of the weird little creatures that were always pretty rare on the GBR. Lots of eels, scorpionfish, lionfish, and nudibranchs (kind of like sea slugs). We also saw a couple of turtles and a black tip reef shark. The second dive we did just around the corner from the beach from the movie "The Beach" starring Leo DiCaprio. Many of the same critters, but this site had some awesome swim thrus and small caves to check out. We went through one swim-thru to find a hawksbill sea turtle sleeping on the other side of it. At the end of the dive, when we had moved up into shallower water, we found this really neat little cave going underneath the island. We spend a few minutes poking around in there, found another eel and then surfaced. IN A CAVE. It was a really cool experience, coming up from a dive and being under an island. We weren't far into the cave, but enough to get that experience. 

Hopefully once Mike gets out here in about 10 days, we'll head over to Phi Phi to look for some work. Its just starting to be the dive high season over there, so hopefully we'll be able to find something... even just some freelance stuff. Mostly the only reason I want to work at the moment is so I can keep doing those awesome dives for free... haha. Or even better, get paid for them :)  Until then, I'm just going to keep being a beach bum and enjoy napping on the beaches and eating tasty tasty Thai food! 

Love and fishes! 

 

Mangoes in Thailand?

I suppose I should really rethink the name of my blog now, huh?

That's right. I made it to Thailand!

But first, a few pics from the Sydney adventure

Ta-Da! 

View of the skyline from the water

The harbor bridge with the opera house in the background

And also, as always, I went to the aquarium. :) This is a dugong, Australia's manatee. Don't tell the Florida manatees but I think this guy might be cuter. 

Sydney was fun! I did the touristy things, as you can see and finished up all the stuff I needed to get done before leaving Australia. I stayed on Bondi beach, which was very beautiful until it got cold the second day I was there. Good thing I did the beach thing on the first day! But aside from getting good pictures of the opera house and getting to see a dugong (and a platypus that wouldn't pose for a picture) up close and personal, Sydney was pretty uneventful. A couple of relaxing days to play tourist and get ready for Thailand. 

Which brings us to... drumroll please! Phuket! Where I'm currently staying! It was a long day of travel: an 8 hour flight, Malaysian immigration and customs, a three hour layover, an hour and a half flight and finally Thailand immigration and customs. When I got to my hotel, I immediately crashed out. I did not pass go or collect any food or souvenirs. I was beat. 

Day two in Thailand started out much better. I wandered down to the beach, which is beautiful and covered in tourists. Mostly from Russia, which I find slightly odd, but I guess Russians like to holiday in Thailand too! Then, culture shocked as I was, I made the mistake of leaving quiet Kata beach and heading to the tourist mecca of Patong. Now, Thai is a completely different written language, leaving me pretty much clueless with street signs. Also, my mode of transportation to Patong was also pretty alienating. I got into a tuk-tuk (which is actually pronounced duk-duk. Go figure. This is a weird little vehicle, like a mini truck. The back is enclosed, with benches, except where the tailgate would be. Now, driving in Phuket, ALSO terrifying. There are no real street signs, no speed limits and no real rules. Awesome. So I shell out 400 baht to get inside a weird little truck and careen around skinny mountain roads with about a million scooters, going about a million miles an hour. So then I get to Patong and things just got crazier. My first impression was taking the seediest parts of Key West and New Orleans (think sketchy girlie bars, sex shops and bars) and adding the chaos of downtown LA and then throw in a different written and spoken alphabet. I think we need to spend a few more days in the quiet bits of Kata before we venture back to Patong. A little overwhelming. 

Other than that, I've just been cruising around trying to get mt bearings. I'm staying in a little guesthouse on Kata beach, which is a nice name for a crappy hotel. But it'll do for the week or so I'm here! It's got air con and wifi, I'm happy. I'm going to be bumming around for 3 weeks until Mike gets out here... but hopefully I'll find some fun adventures to keep me busy. Look for pictures soon! 

Love and fishes

A bittersweet farewell...

Well, the inevitable finally happened. I'm writing this post from a hostel in Bondi Beach... a three hour flight from my beloved Cairns. It's the end of an era, folks. 

When I first moved to Australia, I planned on going to spend a bit of time in Cairns, check out the Great Barrier Reef and scoot on down the east coast over the course of three or four months. I told everyone that I'd be home in February (that's February 2013). What really happened went more this this: 

-Move to Cairns

-Realize Australia is freaking expensive and if I need to stay for more than three weeks, I need a job

-Got a job on Reef Experience

And it all went downhill from there. The crew I met on Rexy were/are amazing. I met so many incredible people who are now some of my best friends/family. Even when I stopped working there, I still found myself at the Pier Bar at least two or three nights a week hanging out with all the blue shirted Rex crew. I've seen a lot of people come and go from that boat, and from the other boats in Cairns. I've met some of the most amazing people from all over the world and I'll remember them forever and ever. I love Cairns and the dive life there... I love knowing that if I show up at the Pier Bar any day of the week around 5 or 6 when the boat crews get off, I'll find a couple people I know, if not a million. Now, maybe that makes us alcoholics, but where else can you find something like that? 

I can't wrap my head around that my time in Cairns is over. The people I lived with and worked with and met along the way have just been incredible and I love you all to bits. I've been lucky enough to have the best work mates and house mates ever... even if my work mates throw me in the marina or dye my hair blue and my house mates turn all my bedroom furniture upside down. Haha. I've had some great adventure days... It's hard when you have to decide in the morning which waterfall you want to go on any given day. I'll miss so many things about Cairns, but it's the people I'll miss the most. My heart aches because I know it will be a long while until I make it back, but I know I'll bump into everyone along the way. Thank God the diving world is so small :)  

My last week in Queensland was brilliant. Mike and I roadtripped down to Townsville to (finally) dive the Yongala, a passenger ship that sank in a cyclone in 1911. They call it Australia's Titanic... it was a fancy pants ship and all the passengers died at sea. Since it's been down there for more than 100 years it is COVERED with creatures. I've never seen so many fish in one place in my life. Not to mention the sharks, sea snakes and giant Queensland gropers. Beautiful dives... I took lots of video with the GoPro, so stay tuned for an youtube masterpiece.

Me and Mike hanging out on the Townsville Strand

We hung out in Townsville for basically three days. But got to stay with my friend Heather again. We met long long ago in the Turks and Caicos and we managed to hang out in Australia! Like I said, the diving/marine bio world is very small, so I know I'll bump into all these amazing friends somewhere else crazy in the world. Madagascar or Bali or South Africa or maybe even Florida ;) We also checked out the aquarium in Townsville (where I have been before, but Mike hadn't so I gave him the grand tour).

I may have had too much fun at the aquarium....

On my second to last day in Cairns, I went out on Mike's boat, the Falla, an old wooden sailboat where he works as an instructor. It was an absolutely idyllic day. Really doesn't get any better than that. AND I saw an octopus. :) 

So the Cairns leg of my adventure might be over, but I'm on to new and exciting things, I hope! Sydney for the next few days, then off to Thailand. Flying into Phuket on Tuesday and bopping around for a couple weeks until Mike meets me out there! I'm really sad to leave Cairns, it's been such a good home to me for the past year, but I'm also excited about the new adventures to come. To my Cairns family, I love you to pieces and I can't wait to see you on another journey. Thanks for an amazing year guys. 

Love and fishes.