Merry Fishmas!!

Hi Guys!!

I know its been a little while since I've been on here, but the Wifi has been limited and the work has not!

Things are good here in Mexico, but firstly i wanted to say Merry Christmas to all!! Its always tough being away from home during the holidays, especially when you have to work through them! Our Christmas, as well as today, started at 5am, much to our despair. The days have been busy, but good. At least people are always in a good mood around the holidays!

Mike and I have moved into a new place, a little studio apartment in the area of town called Casitas (translation: little homes). ITs where most of the locals live, including all our coworkers, so it tends to be a little more social around here. The place is nice, we've got a kitchen area... Basically a minifridge with an electric cooker sitting on top of it. Hey, it works!!

Again, work has been good. The diving out here is beautiful, lots of happy, healthy corals!! I'm in the water now nearly every day, either leading certified divers or taking people on a first time dive. Its a lot of fun, and I love seeing people's reactions after they experience breathing underwater for the first time.

Anyway, not much new to note, other than to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Years!!!!

Love and fishes!!

Bienvenidos a Mahahual!!

Hola from Mexico!

So I've been here for about a week now, and things are good! Starting to get into the swing of things at work and around town.

I'm living in a place called Mahahual. It's about 4 hours south of Playa del Carmen and about an hour north of the border with Belize. Mahahual used to be a small fishing village, but it started to convert to tourism in 2000 when the cruise ship port of Costa Maya was built. Most people think the port and the town are the same, but they are actually two separate entiies. In 2007, Hurricane Dean came through and destroyed the town and the port pretty successfully. Its still in a process of recovery, but for the most part you cant tell there was ever a storm.

Part of my job is to deal with cruise ship relations at the port, so its easy to see the difference between the port and the town. The port of Costa Maya is privatized, so you cant actually visit it unless you're
on a cruise or have a special port pass. The port is just what you would expect from a cruise port: Senor Frogs, jewelry, and assorted Mexican trinkets. The town is a bit further away, maybe a ten minute drive from the port. It's actually a very cool little town. Lots of little restaurants with delicious food, local artisan shops and beautiful beaches. Much better than the port, but so many cruise visitors don't bother leaving the port!

The shop I work for mainly does excursions for the cruise ships, so we do half day diving trips out to the reef. It's busy busy busy on cruise ship days, especially when we have two or three ships in one day. It has definitely been hard work so far since I've been a bum on holiday for the last two months! Hopefully my muscles will adjust and hauling tanks won't feel so bad!!

Mike and I are doing well, we think we've finally found a good place to live! It's been slow going finding housing, but I think we'll be moving into a studio apartment on Tuesday. Fingers crossed!!

Sending lots of love from Mexico. There's not a whole lot of Wifi around, which seems to be pretty standard for all the places I've been living in the past few years!! Ill try to be good with my updates though,  so stay tuned!

Love and fishes!!

On to Mexico!

Looks like I'm going to have to change the name of this blog again! I'm not in Australia, I'm not in Thailand... This time I'm off to Mexico!!

At the airport now, getting ready to head to Cancun and then on to the little beach town of Mahahual! Its near the cruise ship port of Costa Maya. Mike and I will be working for a dive shop that primarily deals with cruise excursions so it should be a new experience for us!

Ill get to Mahahual tomorrow, so stay tuned for some updates about my new location!

Love and fishes!!

The end of the Indonesian Adventure!

I love how international this blog has become! I'm currently writing this from the Kuala Lumpur airport, waiting for my a flight to Bangkok while Mike sleeps sprawled out over as many seats as he possibly can. There is a LOT of travel getting ready to happen... hell, its started already! But, before I get into that, I'll tell you about the last few days in Indonesia!

We went from Tulumben, a very very quiet town with nearly no one in it, to Gili Trawangan, an island a ways off the coast of mainland Bali. In fact, it doesn't belong to Bali at all, its actually part of Lombok, another nearby Indonesian island. Gili T is awesome. It's a pretty big tourist destination and the speed of the island reminded me a lot of Koh Tao. Lots of dive shops, lots of backpackers, lots of bars. But Gili T is much smaller. There is no motorized transport on the island, only bicycles and horse and buggy. Even the horses are smaller than normal horses... must be an island thing.

We got to Gili T and met up with a couple of friends from Australia! Mike and I worked with Bec and Jeremy in Cairns long, long ago (last year). They've been traveling around southeast Asia as well, but have found a good spot on Gili T for a while. They were our tour guides around the island for the days we were there. The first day we got there was actually quite a good day to arrive! It was the island's annual Sports Day, where all the dive shops get their crews together for a field day kind of event... although the sports were a little different. Mike got roped in to participate with Manta Dive, the shop Bec and Jeremy had been hanging out at and where we would be diving the next day. The first event was a lime and spoon race. Pretty typical, you hold a lime on a spoon and run to the line without dropping it. The only difference was all the Sports Day events were done with fins! Old diving fins to be exact! So the wheelbarrow race? The three legged race? Fins, fins, fins. Trust me, it was fun to be an observer. The rest of the night was one big crazy party, all the divers on the island together and drinking. Needless to say, we decided to opt out of the morning dive the next day and stick with the afternoon dive instead. Our first dive was at a place called Turtle Point. VERY aptly named. Must have seen at least a dozen sea turtles on the dive. Most of them were just hanging out and snoozing. It was really nice to see that many of them again though!

The next day we went on a different sort of dive trip. We took a boat to a place called Seahorse Bay. Again, aptly named. Instead of diving on a reef or a wreck, we were doing what is called muck diving. Basically the environment is pretty simple: mostly sand and mud, but the animals that live there are amazing. They are expertly camouflaged, so you have to take the dive extra slow. We got to see lots of seahorses, pipefish and frogfish. We played hide and seek with a cuttlefish who, like their octopus cousins, can change their skin color rapidly to blend in with their environment. This was not a high octane dive, it was slow and sandy for most of the time, but the cool little critters we found hiding out made up for it ten-fold.

The rest of our time on Gili T was land-based, but still pretty awesome. One afternoon I was able to help out with a pretty cool project. Some of the guys at the dive shop were making an artificial reef. They used rebar and chicken wire to construct the structure and they're going to sink it and hook it up to a solar panel that will provide a slight electrical current to the structure. The theory is that the slight electrical charge provides a better substrate for new little corals to land on and they are supposed to grow faster than corals on non-charged artificial reefs! Cool! I helped out building the beginning of the structure, which will eventually look like a paper airplane, but unfortunately we left before we could see the reef get wet. Maybe if we come back to Gili T sometime, we can dive on a whole new reef!

Another day, we rented bicycles and cruised around the island. Gili T is very small, only a couple kilometers long, so the bike ride wasn't going to be too long... only problem is Gili T doesn't have much for roads! Much of it is still sandy paths, not as good for biking. There was a very humorous stretch of the ride where we had to do more bike pushing than bike riding, but we rewarded ourselves with nice cold beer at the end.

We left our friends on Gili T and spent one night on mainland Bali before flying out this afternoon. Indonesia was amazing, I wish we could have stayed longer, but we've got family to see! I definitely plan on visiting Indo again one day. There are so many islands and so many places to see, we just scratched the surface. The locals are also really nice, I don't think we encountered one unpleasant person on our whole trip! Leaving Asia is certainly going to be weird. I can't believe I'm going to be in a city tomorrow, let alone a city where the primary language is English! Well, it'll be England English, but I think I've got the hang of that one ;) It's been an amazing journey so far and I've met so many incredible people and done so many cool things. That being said, I'm very much looking forward to being home for a bit. First stop is England, so Mike can catch up with his family and I can see where he's from! I've never been so England, so I'm quite excited. Then it's back to the good ol' USA after nearly two years away!

So our Australian/Asian adventure is over, but stay tuned... the next adventure will just be around the corner!

Love and fishes!!

Bali down below!

Hey all!

We've had quite the exciting few days underwater in Bali... I think I like underwater better than the land stuff!

After Ubud, we headed out to Nusa Lembongan, a small island off the coast of mainland Bali. We took a taxi and ferry out to the island. It's a little place, nice and quaint and very different from Ubud. It's still a tourist destination, but from what I saw, it's still in its tourism infancy. The island's draw is primarily it's marine life. The island has a regular population of manta rays and a seasonal population of mola mola or ocean sunfish. Google them. It's the weirdest fish you'll ever see, but for some reason they love Nusa Lembongan (unfortunately we didn't see any molas, but we saw EVERYTHING else).

It took us a couple days before we got in the water, but once we did, it was stunning. Indonesia is part of an area called the Coral Triangle, which is an area of the Pacific that includes places like Indo, the Phillippines, the Solomon Islands and more, but it has the most coral diversity and fish life of anywhere else on the planet. It does not disappoint!! Our first dive was in a place called Manta Bay. It it aptly named! Within two minutes of being in the water, we had our first manta drive-by. In total we saw at least three, if not more. They came and went, so it was hard to tell if it was the same one. Another great thing about diving on Lembongan was the current! There was lots of it! Koh Tao, as lovely as it is, has no current at all. This may sound like a good thing, but when used to your advantage, current is magic. The rest of our dives were awesome drift dives. You jump in at one place and let the current carry you along. Not much kicking involved, its great! These drifts had so much life, I didn't know where to look. So many fish everywhere! And there was all the crazy little things! Nudibranchs, garden eels, scorpion and lionfish... you name it! And we met Dory! After two years of diving with Nemo, we finally met his best buddy!!

The best came on our very last dive, however. We were diving on a site called Mangroves. It was one of the fastest drift dives I've done. Zooming along, trying to look at all the fish before they fly by you... The first 40 minute of the dive were awesome, but nothing particularly special. Until about the time my camera died... Drifting along we see a couple of sea turtles cruising along. I love turtles, and seeing them never gets old, so that pretty much made the dive for me. But a few minutes later I started hearing the squeaking and squealing that you so often associate with dolphins. Nah... can't be... but low and behold a few moments later, our dive guide starts bangning on her tank and pointing into the blue, and then we saw pod of about 15 dolphins, including a few babies!! They didn't stick around for long, but its always amazing seeing them underwater. You can really tell they're looking at you and checking you out. As if that wasn't enough, a few moments later our dive guide starts banging on her tank and pointing again... this time, it was a school of six eagle rays hanging out in the current. They weren't moving at all, even though we were swimming like hell against the current to stay with them. Needless to say, it was an incredibly memorable dive and a great way to end our awesome stay on Lembongan.

We left Lembongan to head to a new dive location. It was a bit of a hike... took us nearly all day in a ferry and then in a taxi. We did make a couple stops in the car on the way, though. We stopped at a place called the water palace. It used to be the king's bathhouse, full of fountains and beautiful sculptures, but its since been opened to the public. So we stopped there for lunch and had a bit of a wander around the gardens. I wish all taxis and transport would do that for you! Oh, long drive? Why don't we stop at this beautifully scenic lunch place for 30 or 40 minutes?

Anyway, we finally got to Tulamben, our next diving destination. Tulamben's main dive site is actually a wreck, rather than a reef. It's the site of the wreck of an American warship, called the Liberty. It was torpedoed by the Japanese in WWII, but it was dragged on shore before it could sink, so the cargo could be salvaged. The ship stayed on the beach in Tulamben until 1963, when the big, bad Bali volcano erupted. The lava flows pushed the wreck just offshore and tore it up a bit. Now, it lies just off the beach and starts in about 5m(15ft) of water, all the way down to 30m (100ft).

Initially when we got in last night, the waves on the beach were quite big, so we thought it might be a blowout... the dive shop next door said visibility was going to be iffy at best and conditions weren't so hot. But we got up early this morning to have a look and things were looking pretty damn good, so we said what the hell, let's go for it. The dive was awesome. Tons of fish life, and since the wreck has been underwater since the 60's, there's tons of coral growth as well. One of the dive guides described it as an iron cathedral, and it seems fitting. The wreck is a bit torn apart, so its hard to see which bit is what, but regardless, the towering beams and bits of decking make a stunning backdrop to an awesome dive.

We did a second beach dive in the afternoon, just down the shore from the wreck. The highlight of this dive may seem a little silly to most... but I convinced a cleaner shrimp to crawl inside my mouth and it was the happiest moment ever. It has been one of those weird bucket list things for as long as I can remember to get my mouth cleaned by a cleaner shrimp. They offer that service to fish, so why should I be any different?? And my mother worries about my dental hygiene... BAH! The fish will take care of it, right?

Anyway, we're off to the Gili Islands for more diving and island fun! We have a couple friends staying there as well, so it should be a good time! Hopefully we'll have more fishy fun and adventure over our last 7 days in Bali!

Love and fishes!!!

Bali: the adventure begins!

Hi friends!

So, a bit of updating is in order. The internet on Koh Tao crashed on us on our last few days! So I am currently updating you from our new hangout in.... Bali!!

We left Koh Tao four days ago, after a lovely going away celebration (aka drinking lots at our favorite bar with our favorite Koh Taoians) and headed over to Indonesia. It was two solid days of travel: one day from Tao to Bangkok and one day from Bangkok to Bali, but we made it!

We're spending just over two weeks in and around Bali, before we head to England and Florida to see Mikes and my family. We've started our journey in Ubud, made famous by the movie/book Eat, Pray, Love. It's a very cool town. Lots of interesting shops, lots of temples and its all surrounded by mountainy rice paddies on all sides.

Rice paddies near Ubud

Our first full day in Ubud started out meeting old friends! I worked with Dan and Emily back at Biscayne when I was still a marine biologist, before all this traveling started. They moved out to New Zealand while I was living in Australia, and I had every intention of going out there to visit, but somehow to trip to kiwi-land never quite happened. Dan and Em happened to be in Indonesia about the same time as Mike and I! We met up for lunch and caught up on our respective lives in the Pacific. Pretty cool! It's certainly a small world. They had to jet off just as we were getting to Bali, so we had to split ways after lunch. Mike and I spent the rest of the day exploring on foot. There are so many temples and beautiful spots around Ubud. There's the Ubud Palace right in the center of town and a beautiful temple surrounded by ponds of lotus flowers.

Ubud Palace

One of the deity statues at the Ubud Palace

Lotus temple

There's also a scary, scary part of Ubud.... the monkey forest... It's actually not that scary, but after my monkey adventures in Phi Phi and Koh Tao, I'm generally a little wary of primates. There's a big forest just outside of town with a large population of long-tailed macaques. It's been a tourist stop for many years, so the monkeys are very comfortable around humans. Even going so far as to jump on unsuspecting tourists carrying something of interest: sunglasses, water bottles, even saw one monkey going after the keychain on a woman's backpack. There are also some beautiful temples and grounds within the forest, so there's and added draw it as well. Despite a general wariness of monkeys, the calmness and apparent tameness of the monkeys there eased my suspicions. One even jumped on my lap when we were sat down taking in the scenery. And then his buddy ran across my lap as well! 

One very curious macaque...

Komodo dragon statue selfie!

Day two in Bali we decided to expand our adventure to the outskirts of Ubud. We rented a motorbike and decided to get lost and see what we could find. Luckily, there is one road out of town with all the good spots along it! We started off at a beautiful terraced rice paddy alongside a mountainside. Had a brief snack (a banana split and spring rolls, obviously) and enjoyed the scenery. We were headed in the general direction of one of the dormant volcanoes in the center of the island, and along the way had a few adventures as well.

Suddenly, as we were driving along, a local guy pulled along side our bike and started chatting to us about all the things to see in the area: coffee farms, temples, and the volcano. He kept on talking up all these places, so we finally stopped into one of the coffee plantation "agro-tourism" centers. We saw the different types of coffee that are grown on the island and learned a bit about "luwak coffee". Basically these little cat/mongoose/fox creatures called luwaks (or civets in English) eat the best coffee berries whole. They can't digest the bean inside the berries, so it comes out the other end. The luwaks poo is then collected and cleaned to get the bean out. The beans get cleaned like six times, then roasted, then cleaned again and then ground into possibly the most expensive coffee on the planet. It goes for about $60 USD for a small bag of beans. Anyone for some cat poop coffee?

When we left the coffee plantation (no cat poo coffee for us, thanks), we headed toward the volcano. On the way, Mike had his very first run in with traffic cops! Lucky for us, they were pretty cool about him not having a license for motorbikes and let him off with a ticket. Poor thing, it was his first traffic ticket since he's never had a driving license ever!! He manged to convince the scary Bali police he had left his license in our hotel room. Even still, he was all mopey about it, but I promised him if we converted his fine into USD, it would be nowhere near what I've paid for some speeding fines ;)

Traffic ticket in hand, we finally made it to the volcano lookout. Definitely worth the fines. We stopped at a stunning viewpoint and could see the volcanic mountain and the lovely lake beside it. We took in the sights, had a drink and started our motorbike journey back into Ubud.

Tonight is our last night here, we're heading to an island just off the coast of Bali called Nusa Lembogan. It's supposed to be awesome for beaches, surfing and most importantly diving, so obviously we have to go. If the wifi is good, expect more updates soon!

Love and fishes!

Alright FINE, I guess I owe everyone an update.

In my defense, Koh Tao is a little like Groundhog Day. Wake up, teach diving, have a beer, eat dinner, watch some tv, go to bed. Not much new to report on that front. The "busy season" has been slower than everyone expected. Maybe from the government nonsense, maybe from the economy, maybe from the fact that its been raining a lot? No idea, but its certainly not overwhelming.

But that's alright, because we're gonna be changing things up a lot and moving around a bit! There's a lot of weird things going on with immigration... they're trying to crack down on people working illegally (cough cough who would do THAT?). Our visas run out at the end of August and since its just gotten too complicated, we're going to run away! We've already made plans to go home. We're flying out of Bangkok September 12th and going to England for ten days! Mike hasn't been home in a long time and I haven't ever been to England so BOOM. Party time. Then we're wandering back over to Florida!!! Thennnnnn we don't know whats happening. Haha... life is confusing and hard sometimes. I'm really excited to go home... it's been way too long and I've been getting homesick, I need some Florida time. We're not sure how long we'll be home for, that's open ended for the time being. At least a couple of weeks, hopefully!!

But the problem we're encountering is what to do between end of visa time and London... we've got about two weeks between point A and point B. Since the visa people are cracking down, we kinda need to leave the country or else we'll get slammed with overstay fees.

Sooooo the burning question is.... Bali or the Philippines?????? It's a very tough call to make, and its going to come down to which one is cheaper. Bali has manta rays and maybe mola mola (ocean sunfish) and beautiful reefs. The Philippines have thresher sharks and maybe manta rays and beautiful reefs. HOW CAN I BE FORCED TO MAKE THESE DECISIONS? Any ideas?

Thats all for now! Hopefully this blog will be getting a lot more exciting!

Love and fishes!

Working and playing!

Happy May!

Well, still here! Hanging on Koh Tao! It's funny how my "short" travels seem to end up being a lot longer than originally intended!

At this point though, Tao has me trapped! While the cost of living on the island is rather cheap (think dinner for as little as $1.20 US), I'm getting paid a living wage here, sooooo not exactly racking up the American dollars. Making enough money have a grand ol time in Thailand, but when I do the conversions of my paycheck, its a little sad. But that should hopefully be turning around in the near future! Everyone says that June - September is crazy hectic. We're talking no days off for weeks on end, unless you need a visa run!

Speaking of visa runs, Mike and I ran off to Koh Samui last week to visit the immigration office and have our visas extended. Most people would go to Samui for the beaches, the fancy resorts, the waterfalls, the elephants... We went for the movie theater, the mall and McDonalds. Koh Tao is great, but as far as entertainment goes, there's not much around here except for drinking and diving. That's normally not a problem, but after four months it was really nice to have a bit of a change. We wandered around a fancy shopping mall, ate soft pretzels and window shopped. We caught a movie at the cinema... it didn't even matter what movie we saw! I was just thrilled to sit in an air conditioned room for two hours and eat popcorn. The movies here are even different from back home. After the previews, but before the movie, an anthem plays and you have to stand to honor the king. He is incredibly loved here, so there is no question about whether to stand or not to stand.

It's quite funny how much you miss things like movie theaters, malls and "normal" western things like that. Mostly, I also miss food. We have a good variety of food here, but its things like macaroni and cheese, Mexican food, mashed potatoes, Reese's cups, cookie dough ice cream... those things are a bit hard to find. But a Spanish restaurant just opened up that makes the most excellent paella, so now we've got that!

Nothing much on the horizon at the moment. We need to do a big visa run to Malaysia at the end of the month,  but that won't be exciting, mostly just time consuming. But hopefully once busy season kicks in, we can save enough money for a week in Bali! It's just around the corner, it'd be a shame to miss out! That's all for now!

Love and fishes!

Songkran!

So, as promised, April has been quite wild so far! We had the celebration of Thailand's New Year, also called Songkran. It's a water-based festival where throwing fresh water on people symbolizes a new beginning and washing away sins and fresh starts. What it really becomes is a free for all water battle where everyone shoots water guns and throws buckets of water at unsuspecting passerbys. There are no rules... doesn't matter if you've got luggage, if you're riding a scooter, if you're dry...

Hopefully this video will explain a little bit:

 

Here's the link if the video doesnt work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u6nYgc1Lmc

We started drinking and celebrating around noon and the party lasted all day. One bar had a water slide hooked up that led from the bar into the ocean, which was pretty awesome although slightly dangerous with a bunch of drunk people. There were massive pool parties, lots of water guns and lots and lots of beer! No one was dry all day, if you weren't wet on land, you were in the ocean. It was such a fun day and I really enjoyed this New Years celebration. I think I like it better than American New Years celebrations! Maybe I'll try to get this one going next December 31st.... hahaha. 

In other April news, a few days before Songkran, I saw my first Koh Tao whaleshark!!!! I was fun diving with a friend from Australia who's been working in Phi Phi for the last few months. Dylan came out for a few days on his way back home and I took him fun diving... he must have had good luck because on his first dive on Koh Tao, he spotted a 4m whaleshark cruising by! I almost missed it, but luckily I turned around at the right minute! Hopefully this is the start of the season for them, so I might be seeing them more often! Fingers crossed! 

That's all for now! 

Love and fishes! 

Yikes, one blog post a month? I'm not doing so hot with the updates, am I? In my defense, there hasn't been a ton of new things going on... I'm still a dive instructor, I still live in Ko Tao, I still live in the same shabby guesthouse, but its all good! It's a fun place to hang out, that's for sure!

Lots of fun people keep turning up to visit, so that's fun! When I was living in Cairns, I met a lot of non-Aussie divers also on a working holiday visa. Slowly but surely, lots of them are winding up in Thailand now! It's great to see friends again. There's five of us now that used to hang out at the diver's bar in Cairns that are now hanging out at diver's bars in Koh Tao! It's awesome and I love having so many international friends!

March has been a pretty uneventful month so far. It's been rather quiet on the island, but still getting work! Teaching everyone to dive! April should be a bit more eventful... we've got Buddhist new year coming up next month which involves a giant water fight throughout all of Thailand! From what I hear, all of Ko Tao shuts down (except the bars, thank goodness!) and every holes up and shoots water guns, throws water balloons and dumps buckets of water on each other. Driving a scooter requires a dive mask and apparently the best part of the day is soaking all the unsuspecting tourists. So looking forward to that!

Other than that to look forward to, its been about the same around here! It's getting alllllll kinds of hot though! Miss everyone back home lots! Sending lots of love!


Love and fishes!

Apolgies from a Dive Instructor

The life of a dive instructor certainly seems glamorous, and in many ways it can be. The opportunity to travel the world, meet a million new people and see amazing things underwater, yes, it's incredible. Changing lives by introducing the weightless, alien underwater world is incredibly rewarding. However... there are some things that get slightly neglected, so in this blog post I would like to shout out some apologies.

Firstly to the friends and family who think I've fallen off the side of the earth/gotten eaten by a giant squid. I'm sorry I don't call/text/write/send smoke signals or carrier pigeons. My head gets too full of water and I fear using a phone will cause sparks and possibly a hair fire. No but really, I do wish I could chat with family/friends more often. I miss you all a lot and being on the other side of the world is hard. I wish I could teleport all of you out here because I love you all and miss you dearly.


I'm sorry I have a better idea of what two dive sites looks like (ahem... Twins and White Rock, I'm looking at you) than I do of what this island looks like.

I'm sorry to my poor hair, that gets caught in a mask or a tank valve and ripped out so often I'm going to start going bald soon. I'm also sorry that it turns slightly greenish from time to time due to the over-chlorination of the pool...

I deeply apologize to my body for feeding it on a diet of peanuts, Coke and cookies when I don't have time for lunch. But even when I do have time for lunch, I'm sorry I only feed you fried rice. But its so good and cheap!!

I also apologize for feeding it more beer than water. Especially since its Thai beer. There's nothing more painful than a Chang hangover. A Changover, if you will.

I'm sorry I seem to forgotten what "healthy eating and lifestyle" is. Are there other ways to exercise besides doing 10 minutes of treading water with your students once every three or four days?  I walk to work... doesn't that count? Move some tanks around on the boat? The fact that I can't touch my toes anymore because I'm so inflexible? Ehhh... we'll just ignore that little tidbit.

I'm sorry to all the other clothes I own that aren't bikinis, board shorts and my work shirts because they no longer exist on a day to day basis. I walked into work the other day after having an afternoon off (yes, just an afternoon... whole days off are too hard to come by at the moment) and I had showered and put on real clothes and my coworkers nearly didn't recognize me. Apparently I look weird when I'm not in my black work shirt. I can wear other colors I swear!

I'm sorry to that college educated me that used to live around here. The one who could do math without a calculator and read books for fun and knew how to write papers... ain't got no time for that now! I have to remember how to properly teach an emergency swimming ascent or neutral buoyancy and generally teach people to dive without killing me or them. And identify all the fish. At least that knowledge hasn't gone anywhere :) I'll show you alllllll the fish.

I'm sorry I've taken more certification photos of my students than I have of anything else on Koh Tao... and I'm also sorry to my computer desktop which is now covered in student pictures, temp certification cards, teaching guides, instructor manuals and dive videos.

 But really, all kidding aside, things are great out here. I'm working my ass off, yes. I've had four days off in the last month and one of them was a border run, so does that even count? Haha... I'm teaching so much I dream about briefing my students about the skills they're doing that day... like every single night. But I get to spend my time diving and teaching others to dive. Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating and challenging, but it can also be so rewarding. I've had a couple really great groups of students in the last couple weeks and that makes all the frustrating dives worth it. Especially when one of my Open Water students came in two days after the course finished and signed up for his Advanced course. I start teaching that one tomorrow :) I'm really happy with where I'm working and the people I'm working with. I'm not making millions, not by a long shot, but enough to survive and buy beers, so I certainly can't complain! :)


All the love and fishes! 

Working hard... no really!!!

Hooooo boy, do I owe an update!

So Mike and I relocated to Koh Tao. It's beautiful here... my favorite place in Thailand so far. The beaches are beautiful, there's lots of fun jungle roads and the town is small, but big enough to have room to wander.

When we got to Koh Tao, we knew we were on the job hunt. All this travel has been great, but the bank accounts were certainly starting to look wounded. If we ever wanted to leave Thailand, we were going to have to hunt for work. We spent a few days just getting our bearings on the island, renting a scooter and scooting around town. We found a place to stay for a month and moved on in. We're about a 15 - 20 minute walk from the main part of town... depending on how fast you walk! We're in a little guesthouse... its not much, but its enough. We've got a fridge, a fan, a bathroom with a warmish shower... all the best amenities here in Thailand!

After a few days of playing, we started pounding the pavement looking for work. There are around 40 dive shops in Koh Tao, so it took a couple days to hit them all, and there's still some we didn't make it to. The first day we handed out resumes, Mike got a call from a shop! He's been working there as a freelance instructor since! It took me an extra two or three days of pavement pounding, but I finally got a call and have been working flat out! I really like the shop that I'm at, but damn is it a lot of work! Not that I'm complaining... I'm making money!

I started with three Open Water courses back to back... and I mean back to back! I would finish one course at midday and start another one the same day at 4pm. It's been really challenging... the water was pretty rough for my first two courses, so the visibility has been pretty poor, making my problem students even bigger challenges than they normally would have been! But it's been good, I've certified 9 students in as many days! Today the viz finally cleared up and we had a really really nice dive for our last open water course.

I finally have a little free time today and tomorrow morning (nearly 24 hours off!!!) but then its back to the grind teaching a Rescue course! It's one of the most challenging courses to take, and its the first one I'm teaching so... eeeeek! I'm a pile of nerves! But hopefully it'll be fun. When I took the course 1,000 years ago now (aka 2010), it was really really fun, but a lot of hard work, so I hope I can create the same thing for my student! I only have one, so that should make things a bit easier.

But life on Koh Tao is good... its a lot of work, but I think we'll stick around for a little while, try and make some moneys before we run off on the next adventure. I'll try to update again soon, but if I run away for a while its because I'm working flat out!

Love and fishes!

Elephant rides and cave kayaking!

A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

I had a very eventful holidays... and I got a great Christmas present! My parents turned up late at night Christmas Day, so we postponed Christmas and celebrated on the 26th. We tried to cram as much Thailand fun as we could into the week they were here, and we were pretty damn successful.

It started out with elephant riding and ATV riding. We drove ATV/dune buggy type vehicles up one of the mountains to see big Buddha and along the way did some serious 4-wheel driving. Mom and Dad were in one and Mike and I were in the other. I let Mike drive the first leg, which may have been poor decision making on my part, since Mike doesn't drive 4-wheeled vehicles. I understand my parents fear of teaching me to drive!! He does much better on a scooter. But we survived, dusty and bounced around. After that we headed up to the elephant camp!

 

Mom and Dad on their elephant! 

Elephant family photo! 

There was also a baby elephant named Lucy at the elephant camp... we bought bananas to feed her and took some photos as well... but those were on Mom's camera. When she hugged you, she wrapped her trunk around your head and made very silly fart noises on your neck. I'm glad Mom went first, so we got to see her scream a little bit and were more prepared! Riding the elephants was really cool. We had a bit of a wander around the camp, and contrary to the photos, our elephants did have drivers. But at one stage I did get to sit on his head and walk around while our elephant driver was on the ground. Mom and Mike also had a chance to try elephant-head-sitting, but Dad wasn't so game for the idea! 

Our next days adventure took us out on the high seas! We booked a sea kayaking and caving adventure that turned out to be a lot of fun. The best part was, just like the elephants, we had a kayak driver as well! It was the best kayaking I've even done! I didn't have to paddle once! It was a beautiful area up north of Phuket. The first cave took us into a protected lagoon area only accessable by the one small cave.

Entering Cave #1

We spent about an hour paddling around looking at the wildlife and gorgeous rock formations. We saw monitor lizards, lots of birds including a hornbill! The cliffs were amazing and the photos don't do them justice.

Pretty cliffs and islands!

Our second cave, they warned us, was going to be darker and smaller than the first and may require that we lay down at one stage to make sure we can make it into the next hidden lagoon. They certainly weren't joking. The second cave's entrance was about as big as the first, but it quickly got much much darker. There was a sizable family of bats living in the cave as well. When we got to the other end of the cave, we thought it was a dead end. The other opening of the cave was so small, our inflatable kayaks had to be partly deflated and we had to lay on the bottom. The ceiling of the opening was nearly touching my face.

Mom and Dad sqeezing out of the tiny cave opening

We spent some time exploring this secret lagoon as well and saw a couple of monkeys running around. During this time, unknown to us, the tide was slowly rising. We nearly didn't make it back through the cave! Our kayak had to be so deflated that we started taking on water and when we got halfway through the opening, I had to inch-worm my way through to get to the more open area. A couple people chose to get out of their kayaks and just swim through, but my parents made it through the same as Mike and I did! We survived the cave!

Mike and I also showed my parents the chaos of Phi Phi Island. We spent one night out there. The first day we took a tour of some of the beaches around, including Monkey Beach, where the monkeys stole my Pringles. We took Mom and Dad to the nightly fire shows on the beach as well as the amateur boxing ring in one of the bars, but I couldn't talk Dad into signing up (not enough beer, I think). The next day we did two dives in the morning on some of the local sites nearby. We had some pretty eventful dives... no sharks like we were promised, but some cuttlefish, a turtle, lots of scorpionfish and nudibranchs. And it's always lots of fun to dive with my parents. Since I got certified at such a young age, most of the diving we've done together my parents have been more worried about me, but now that I've become an instructor, the tables have turned! Now I'm checking up on them! We had some great dives and got back to Phi Phi just in time to get lunch and catch our ferry back to Patong.

We spent New Years Eve day recovering from all the fun we'd been having. Lots of early morning tours and late nights of drinking, we were pretty beat. So we lounged around all day like bums to prepare to New Years Eve. New Years in Patong was hectic! We had dinner and then went down to the beach for the fireworks, it was packed and there was a DJ just on the beach so their was some silly drunken dancing. My dad initiated Mike into the family by waltzing with him. Mike hasn't run screaming yet, so I think he wasn't too scarred. We light off paper lanterns over the sea for good luck in the New Year. My parents retired shortly after the countdown and midnight fireworks, so Mike and I ventured down infamous Bangla Road... the home of all debauchery in Phuket. It was pure chaos. There was silly string everywhere and I spent most of the night picking it out of my hair, but it was definitely a wild place to be for New Years.

Unfortunately Mom and Dad had to leave us late at night on New Years Day, but not before first taking a ladyboy show. It was a cabaret show with only men in the cast, but you would never know it by looking at them. Many of them have had lots and lots of plastic surgery and look more beautiful than some Thai women. Case in point, Dad didn't realize they were all originally men until AFTER the show.

It was sad to see my parents go, but we had a really awesome week and I'm so glad they were able to come out to Thailand and explore this crazy place with me!

Now, as soon as my parents left, Mike and I had to go on a border run. His visa was up on the 3rd and mine expired on the 6th, so we decided to go together so we were on the same schedule. We booked a visa run with a company that organizes millions of these things, but that doesn't mean they explained what was happening to us. We got on a minibus with six other expats and drove about 5 hours to the border of Thailand and Myanmar. When we got there, we were met by about 10 other minibuses full of people. We got in line and they took our passports off of us and ran away. What? Where are you going with those? Come back! Meanwhile, we waited in line for AGES until they finally brought our passports back... they had been photocopying them to help expedite the process later on, apparently. They laughed at all our pictures. We waited in line forever and ever and ever and were stamped out of the country. We were then supposed to climb on a boat and motor over to Myanmar. We were literally climbing. There wasn't a proper dock, so we were climbing over all the longtail boats and other ferrys stacked in like sardines. When we got on the boat, they stole our passports AGAIN without telling us why or where they were going with them. It was rather stressful. I've found I get separation anxiety when my passports not in my hand. We puttered over to Myanmar (or Burma, whatever you'd like to call it), about a thirty minute drive. When we got their we were ushered in to the immigration room (literally just a room on the dock) and had our passports stamped again and handed back. We then had ten minutes to wander around before we went back to Thailand. Let me tell you, my Myanmar experience was very extensive, haha! We went back to Thailand, walked over 47 more longtail boats, got stamped back in to the country and finally all piled back into the minibus for another 5 hour drive. All that for another month on the visa! Phew!

Hopefully we'll be spending that month working! Today we took another long bus ride and a ferry over to Ko Samui in the Gulf of Thailand on the other coast. We're going to start seriously looking for work, since Phi Phi and Ko Lanta didn't pan out so well. We're on Ko Samui for a couple days before heading over to the dive mecca, Ko Tao, where there are about 40 dive shops on a tiny island, so hopefully we'll find something! Off on a new adventure!

Love and fishes!