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!)