Merry Christmas and Mantas!

Hello and Happy Holidays!!!

A very Merry Christmas from Thailand (maybe a day or two early... depending on where you are!)

So for the last two weeks, we've been holed up in Ko Lanta, checking out another island in the beautiful Andaman sea. It's been amazing. As soon as our ferry moored up to the dock, we knew it would be an awesome laid back kinda place.

The first few days were spent renting scooters and zooming around the island, checking out beaches and running up and down rainforested hills. The island is beautiful. It's a lot bigger than Ko Phi Phi, but smaller than Phuket, so its perfect for scooter rides around the island. We're staying up in the northernmost bit of the island in a little town called Saladan. There are some really beautiful beaches down the west coast of the island and on the east coast you can find Lanta Old Town, where some of the wooden buildings are nearly a hundred years old.

After a day or two of land exploration, we hopped into the water. Our first day diving was off Ko Ha. Ko Ha means "five islands", all massive limestone cliffs. The first dive, I had some serious fish-nerd moments and saw some wild new fish... including a fish called an ornate ghost pipefish... a mouthful of a name for a fish only a few inches long. But they're related to seahorses and not terribly easy to find, so I was pretty pumped. One of our other sites was called the Cathedral. You entered a little cavern and after swimming for a little while, you can surface inside a cave under the island. There's a huge air pocket, so tall you can't see the top of the cave, but there's light coming in from the water below giving the water a luminescent green color. Very very cool dive.

Our next dives took us to a place called Hin Daeng and Hin Muang... allegedly some of the best dives on this coast. Can't say I disagree. The first site was just beautiful... lots of bright purple and red soft corals and millions of fish... The second dive we had a couple of manta rays!! There's only been a couple manta-free dives for the last few weeks, so after our first dive was lacking mantas, we were starting to get a little bummed. 5 minutes into our second dive, a big 4m manta cruised by. That was enough to get my manta fix, but they just kept coming! There were at least 3, maybe 4 different mantas that came by, including one big female. She was nearly 5m/20ft or so and she wasn't shy at all. At one stage, she swam straight at me, cruised underneath me and plopped down on the reef so all the cleaner fish could give her a good cleaning. It was one of the most amazing experiences... she was so close I could see her eyes and I really felt like she was looking at me just as much as I was looking at her!!

I got loads of video on my gopro, and as soon as I get motivated, I'll edit it all up and hopefully be able to share it!

On a drier day, we took a scooter down to the national park at the southern tip of the island. A beautiful spot, really nice beach hiding in some rainforest and infested with monkeys and monitor lizards. I've already had a bad track record with monkeys and this adventure certainly didn't help. I bought a couple of Cokes from the park's store. The women at the cashier warned me that the monkeys might try to steal my drinks, but I wandered back into the nature anyway. Within two minutes I was chased back into the store by two monkeys that were really after a caffeine fix. I used to think monkeys were cute! Not so sure anymore... they're too clever for their own good.

Ko Lanta has been a really great adventure... we've been passing our resumes around the dive shops here and on Ko Phi Phi as well, hopefully we'll find some work around these parts.

But before that happens I've got some silly parents coming to see me!!!! Mom and Dad are flying out in a few hours to come to Thailand!!!! I'm really excited, we've got some fun adventures planned. Elephant riding and sea cave kayaking and what not, so expect some stories from there! Also... Dad will be in a town full of ladyboys, so that should be entertaining.

Until then, HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!


LOTS OF LOVE! (and fishes!)

Phi Phi, Patong and Island Hopping fun!

Hey all!

After a couple days with Mike in Phuket, we ventured off to the islands. Phuket is very touristy, loud and in your face, so we though heading to the islands would be the right speed.

We headed to Phi Phi. I spent a couple days there when my friend Mark came to visit a few weeks ago. This time Mike and I were planning on staying for longer, to really check out the scenery and see if it was somewhere we could work. Obviously, the most important scenery was underwater, so just about as soon as we got there, we booked in for some underwater time.

The first dives we did were fantastic. We did three dives, the King Cruiser wreck and two reef dives, Anemone reef and Shark Point. The King Cruiser wreck was a vehicle ferry that sank mysteriously with no cars or passengers on it, just the captain, in the 90's. It was probably an insurance job, but they decided to leave the boat there anyway... made for a good dive spot. And now it is! There were SO many fish inside the wreck, thousands of little yellow snapper and other schooling fish. Lots of big buys, like baracudas and jacks, were cruising along the outside of the wreck. Our next dive was Anemone Reef, which was my favorite site of the day. It's named because the coral pinnacle that makes up the reef is literally coated in anemones and in most of those anemones there are a couple little nemos cruising around! We also saw a bright yellow seahorse, some really neat little eels, lionfish, scorpionfish and lots of squid! The last dive was called Shark Point, named because the reef come out of the water in the shape of a shark fin, not because there are any sharks. Another really cool site... saw some more creepy crawly guys... mantis shrimp, lionfish and eels!

On of our land days on Phi Phi, we went up to the viewpoint up on the top of the island, you can see the whole tourist village area. It's a beautiful spot, but holy hell does it take some effort to get there. Of course we took the long way accidentally.  

 

 Worth the hike! 

Another day, we rented a kayak and decided to explore the "quiet" beach nearby. It was called Monkey Beach for exactly the right reasons.... it was full of monkeys! So therefore, also full of tourists. "Quiet" beach, my ass! But it was still a beautiful little cove, the water was gorgeous and clear, the sand was white and fluffy and there were monkeys roaming wild! Some of the tour operators were throwing them bananas to get them closer to the beach and out of the trees. After checking out the beach, we went on kayaking for a bit more before returning to the monkey beach for a healthy snack of Pringles. We pulled the kayak up on the rocky end of the beach where there were no primates of any sort. I sat clueless on a rock, eating some chips where out of nowhere, one of the biggest monkeys jumps on my lap and tries to steal my can of Pringles! I threw a chip at him and ran in knee deep water. Even though they can swim, they don't seem to get in the water very much. The hungry monkey had brought along his family and before we knew it, there were eight or ten monkeys in our kayak looking for more food! Eventually they got bored and wandered back to the tour boat operators with the bananas.  

After our stint on Phi Phi, Mike and I had to venture back to Phuket... he needed to get his visa extended and I needed to hop on a plane to do my very first border run to Malaysia and back. We stayed in Patong, which seemed to have the cheapest accommodation. Patong is the Las Vegas of Phuket... it's loud, it's neon and it has no rules. Anything goes. We went out for a night, just to see the spectacle of it. Mike was terrified, because he couldn't tell if the people hitting on him were women or ladyboys... and it really is hard to tell! Some of the ladyboys are beautiful!!! It was a very weird night in a very weird town. Literally anything goes and everyone wants you to be a part of it. Let's just say there are some things in life you can't un-see. Although, I did get to hold an animal called a slow loris... google it. They're adorable. 

 My border run and Mike's visa extension were successful, so now we've hopped over to Ko Lanta, another island in the area, a three hour ferry ride from Phuket. So far, its awesome. It's slower paced than Phuket and Phi Phi and has some really beautiful beaches. We're off to check out the underwater world tomorrow, so hopefully that proves equally as beautiful! 

Love and fishes!!

The (second) beginning of the Thailand adventure!

I finally feel like my Thailand adventure has begun!

So since my last post, I've mostly just been hanging out in Kata Beach on Phuket by myself. It's a bit pricy out here, so I've mostly just been sticking to the beaches... I've gotten very very brown. My days have been rather uneventful... mostly have been sleeping in, going to the beach and reading for a couple hours then taking myself out to dinner. Not a bad way to spend time but I gotta say... there's only so many times you can eat dinner alone before the company gets a little monotonous, haha!

But that's all changed now! Mike has finally joined me out here in jolly old Thailand. He flew in a couple days ago and we've had a busy couple of days! We've been up to Patong, the crazy tourist town having a joyous time sorting out visas and passports and all kinds of fun things. We met up with his best friend from England, Sam, who's been in Phuket teaching English for almost two years. We had a blast with her. We met her for dinner and went out for some drinks... had a blast in Rawai... a little beach town just over the mountains from where I've been staying. She showed us some awesome beaches and we drank Malibu rum and coconut out of coconuts... doesn't get much better than that!

After popping back and forth to Rawai a couple times, we realized that cabs are not a financially viable way of travel when you're poor backpackers. There was only one other thing to do. Rent a scooter. I've said before that the traffic here is insane. Yesterday, Mike and I rented a scooter and went to go check out Big Buddha and some other spots around Phuket. I drove, since I've had extensive scooter experience (read: I've ridden one once....) I was never worried, but by the time we got up the mountain to Big Buddha, Mike was as pale as a ghost. Apparently he didn't have as much faith in my scooter driving skills as I did. Spent some time checking out the giant statue of Buddha and the other shines around and then we headed off on more adventures. The way down the mountain was a little better, I think Mike realized I wasn't going to kill him. Either that or he had a religious experience with Buddha and had accepted his fate. We drove around Phuket and wound up at the botanic gardens. Actually a really beautiful place... very quiet and peaceful with some beautiful flowers and plants.

Adventures in botanic gardens!

SO MANY PRETTY ORCHIDS! 

We decided to keep the scooter today, and I decided to suck it up and let Mike drive the scooter. At this point, whoever is on the back of the scooter is just terrified and clinging for dear life. Haha, but in all fairness he probably did better than me. He managed to navigate through Patong without getting us hit by a tuk tuk and that in itself is a great challenge.

Tomorrow we're heading out to Phi Phi island. I'm excited to go back and look at all the awesomeness again, and hopefully we'll be able to get underwater for a while. We're heading out for 5 days... going to check it out, hopefully find out if its a place we want to work! I'm not going to forget my camera on these dives... so I should have some good footage of Thai fish soon!

Love and fishes!!