"Diver! Diver! Are you ok?" Christmas and rescue diving heroics.

Well I have been told that I need to update the old blog. I am sorry to keep all of my fans in such suspense. It really hasn't been lack of time causing my delay… but rather lack of anything interesting to report. Days spent idly reading and nights spent lounging on the Carabou floor, sipping pineapple shakes and taking in a movie hardly qualify as blog-worthy adventures.

Christmas kind of came and went without much fanfare. I think a few of the guesthouses put up some sad looking 3 feet plastic trees. Since I decided to enroll in the Rescue Diver course, I spent Christmas morning in lecture. Lecture!? About 2.5 hours on scuba equipment: how it works, what can go wrong, and how to prevent that. Surprisingly interesting. Sure beats lectures on the shearing strength of red clay.

Then in the afternoon I went out on the boat with my instructor, my classmate, and our "victim" to a shallow site called Mango Bay. Its apparently called that b/c there is one mango tree in the area. We jumped in and practiced how to handle problems at the surface and how to handle problems underwater. Then we went through the complicated procedure of pulling an unconscious diver up from the bottom, towing her to the boat and then hauling her up the boat ladder to O2; all while maintaining rescue breathing. Definitely not easy, especially that hauling people of the boat ladder part. Hurray for getting the smallest victim available. And Alli, though will never read this, I really didn't mean to drop you on the boat like a sack of potatoes. Honest.

After all the strenuous exercise and strenuous thinking; I capped the day in typical fashion on some axe pillows on the Carabou floor. I was going to need all my faculties ready to go back out on the water the following day. I'm a rescue diver! I've got people to save. The day started with Frank and I happily munching on some pineapple. Our boat was bobbing at another shallow dive site called "Japanese Gardens", when we vaguely hear something off the port side of the boat. We leisurely investigate. When I finally get there I see its Alli calling "PIZZA! PIZZA!"... which doesn't mean she wants a Little Caesar's stuffed crust, but rather "HELP! HELP! I'M PRETENDING TO DROWN!" I leapt into action. My first response was to throw her a floatation device. Turns out our boat only has a few and they seem to be permanently attached. On later thought, this didn't make me feel all that safe. But being a quick thinking rescue diver in training I mustered all my track and field skills to throw her a rope so we could pull her in. Phew. Crisis averted. Then we went under water to practice navigating search patterns. Once I got a working compass I was able to navigate flawless expanding squares. Then after we found the missing weightbelt we were back to munching on leftover pineapples.. when there's Alli calling for more pizza. She's passing out on the surface and we watch her go under. Poor girl is having a rough day. Heroically Frank and I gear up, jump in, locate her and try to descend. That's a big no go. Turns out we forgot our weightbelts. For you non-scuberers...w/o a weightbelt you are a floating duck. So I send Frank back for his... and in the interim Alli would have drowned, but eventually we get her up to the surface. And since I had the opportunity to beat up on poor little Alli some more, I took full advantage by dropping a fin on her nose while she was supposed to be unconscious. After all the abuse I dished out I thought I certainly owed her a Carlberg... which is the preferred currency of the diving staff at the Budda View. However I woke up the next morning w/ a sore back and my shins peppered in bruises, so I decided my debt was repaid. She never got her Carlsberg.

And on the 27th I rested. Well first I passed the rescue diving exam... so now I am a PADI certified Rescue Diver. Talk about badass. But after that... I did absolutely nothing... again. The course was strenuous, I needed to recover. By the 28th I was recovered and wanted to get atleast one more fun dive in before I had to leave... so I decided to make it a night dive, b/c night dives are cool. We went out to a site called White Rock, which is the one where the barracudas hang out and eat the little fishies. Well I didnt see any. I did see a blue spotted sting ray moving about. During the day they just chill under rocks, but at night they come out to eat. Rays are cool b/c they dont swim like normal fish... they "fly". But the absolute coolest thing about the night dive was the plankton. Yes I am for real. In the Gulf of Thailand and especially around Koh Tao the plankton phosphorescence glows at night with every movement you make. It was so amazing. It was like being surrounded by stars. And I'll take plankton over snow any day.