The alarm went off right at 7am this morning. I jumped out of bed eager to scuba dive. I grabbed a yogurt at 7-11 and was on my way. On the way to the shop at least a dozen people ask, “scuba for you?” trying to sell me last minute trips on their boats. I smiled very pleased to be going, I met my scuba guide as well as the other people from the company and we left the scuba shop at 7:30am and walked to the pier only to discover that the boat was broken. It seems that this is a common happening here and didn’t seem to affect any of the boats crew or the scuba instructors. Everyone helped and we loaded our scuba stuff onto a different boat. I found out later that all of the companies on the island have a strong connection. Our group was going to the same place as a different boat so we just jumped on with them, “No Problem Man.” I was the only American on the boat. The scuba instructors and other divers were mostly all from Europe (London, Ireland, and Holland). My instructor, John, was from London, he was a nice guy in his 30’s who was sick of London and fell in love with Thailand. He is here as a student learning Thai. Every weekend he has to take 4 hours worth of Thai lessons and he is allowed to stay here and do whatever he pleases during the rest of the time. He said that when the customs officials asked if he works here, he says that he is only studying. Laws are definitely not the same here, and no one seems to care about illegal workers. In several of the restaurant we saw “help wanted” signs. Jess and I both have pondered the idea of staying and working.
John had a great picture book with all of the sea life that we may see on our dive and spend nearly 30 minutes describing everything to be, along with his hand symbols for all of the animals. I found this all very interesting. Next we got geared up and before I knew it we were ready for our dive off of Bida Nok! We jumped off the boat and made our descent. We had a great dive. I was very excited to see my first shark- a leopard shark which basically just sits on the bottom of the ocean. Leopard sharks don’t have any teeth, so it wasn’t scary, I got up close! We also saw a hawksbill turtle, boxfish, a snake eel, a bearded scorpion fish, a white eyed moray eel, and a chevron barracuda! We dove for nearly an hour and I enjoyed every moment of it. We had lunch and spend an hour of the boat to even out our nitrogen levels. I was very excited that we stopped to have lunch at Maya Bay. Maya Bay Beach is where the movie “ The Beach” was filmed. This was the movie that made me fall in love with Thailand, so it was great to see it in person I loved it! Our second dive, off of Malong, was equally was exciting. I swam through my first (and second) cave which was very neat. I had to make sure to kick carefully. If I kicked too wide I’d cut my legs. On this dive we saw several Hawksbill turtles, this time we got to see them eating the bubble coral which was really neat. We even saw one turtle that was missing a limb- wonder what happened to that poor little guy. We also saw clownfish, Harlequin Sweetlips, Jan’s Pipefish, Blue Ringer and Emperor Angelfish, Hermot crabs, and Titan Triggerfish. After the dive we headed back to the pier. I loved the whole experience. John got some great pictures and a few great movies on his camera, so I got suckered into buying a DVD which he burned for me for $!000 Baht.
I met Jess back at the Hotel around 1:30pm and we still had plenty of daylight and decided to take advantage of it. We grabbed our towels and were off to the beach. We decided that our time would be best spend on a long boat tour. We jumped on the 3pm sunset cruise and were off. Our first stop was at Monkey Island, which was obviously filled with Monkeys, and fun to watch.
Next we were off to Maya Bay Beach and got to spend some time enjoying where “The Beach” was filmed. We learned that all of the set was destroyed during the tsunami, which was too bad. The beach was beautiful, but it was quite obvious that it was built as a tourist spot after it became famous from the movie. We were at the beach for about 10 minutes and it started to downpour, just our luck. I think it was hardest and heaviest rain that I’ve ever been in. Many people took shelter under the rocks/side of the mountain, and some went into the water because the water was so much warmer than the air.
Jess and I decided to venture back to the boat and took cover under the small awning. This ended up being a horrible idea, because we got soaked getting to the boat and once we were under the awing we discovered that the rain was coming down so hard that there was no escaping it. We continued to sit and get soaked for nearly an hour while we waited for everyone to get back onto the longboat. Our next stop was a snorkeling stop. I was so cold, and since the water was warmer decided to get in.
I got some pictures with my underwater camera and warmed up a bit. Our ride back to Ko Phi Phi was choppy and freezing. We never did get to see the sunset. We were glad that we had splurged on the hot water shower and went back to the room to warm up.
After showering we went to a place called Papaya for dinner. I had pad thai for dinner again and loved it equally as much. We sat with two German girls who were very friendly and we shared travel stories. It was a great dinner. We were both exhausted from a long day in the sun and rain and went back to watch another DVD and call it a night.
Bye for now,
Love,
Katie.
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