A Couple’s Journey

Again we know we are bad about posting pictures so below are a couple pictures of our new place that we so love.. Hot shower!! What a change… Still a manual toilet but that is not really a big deal once you learn how to use it.

So we have been in Koh Tao for over a month now and I have not driven the motorbike once, but yesterday I was determined to.  After a long discussion with Jared he reluctently gave me the keys before he took off for a fun dive giving me hours of time to do what I wanted to do. So after I was done with my class I got on the motorbike, and was off. Oh wait first I have to tell you that someone else had to start it for me first… :)  So now I am off. I got off to a great start.  I was sailing along so happy I was finally in control.  But as luck would have it.. Everything did not go as planned.. Or not as I planned I guess it was pretty much as Jared had planned.  I tried to stop so I did not run right in to a bush..  Dont know how that thing got in front of me. It just came out of no where! I tell you those things move fast.  I put my foot down to help slow me down. Yes I really did this!  And well feet dont work as well as breaks as I found out the hard way.. Dont worry everyone I just have a small abrassion on one foot it is really not that bad. 

Jared here - Unfortunately Maryanne and I have been a bit sick lately which really sucked as we were supposed to meet Kabbi in Koh Samui (a nearby island) Maryanne has a sore throat and I have a sinus cold.  Well after Maryanne’s dive it has gotten worse and well as for me…. Okay now they tell you in your first diving course that anyone can end the dive as it is ultimately up to the individual whether they will dive or not.  So as a divemaster we need to reassure them that there is nothing wrong with not diving if you don’t feel safe, comfortable, sick, etc  Well apparently that applies to EVERYONE!  So yesterdays dive, I felt fine in the morning, I could breathe well and had energy to do my morning workout.  So I thought I would go diving.  They were going to a new site so I was naturally very excited.  Well as soon as I jumped in I had a little pain in my head, but I tried to ignore it.  It was a relatively shallow dive so I could do it, so I thought.  6m down I was in a lot of pain, but the coral and the fish were amazing.  So far the best dive site yet.  However after about 24 min the pain was too bad to tolerate, man my dumb butt should have stopped diving right away.  I came up and had some blood and a bad headache.  Apparently some capillariars in my sinus broke causing the blood.  You would think after 50 dives I would have been smart enough to just stay out of the water.  So now a day later my head hurts as well as having a lot of pressure on my sinuses.  So if you have a head cold stay out of the freakin water!!!  I so hate when I have to learn the hard way!  Sorry Kabbi my bad we couldn’t come see you :(  Althought on the bright side I can use this story to help teach the new divers what not to do.  I am out of the water till probably wed cause of this damn thing!!  At least I have a nice hammock to lay in see pic below!

Ok so here are some pictures

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Well today me and Jared did our last two deep dives down to 40 meters, on a wreck called the unicorn, for our deep dive speciality course.   I had an absolutely marvolous time as I was “Narked” (Nitrogen Narcosis) for a good portion of the dive.  The first dive, I was actually laughing out loud.  So loud even that the other people I was diving with could hear me.  So for about 5 mins I was in pure utopia.  It was amazing.   Jared was not so lucky and he did not feel a thing.  It was a great dive, the wreck was massive and the visibilty was pretty good.  Loads of Jacks and Baracuda!!

 The second dive was just the same for me.   I was as happy as a clam.   Jared’s went the other way and he was very paranoid, I will let him tell you his story. The wierd things that go through your brain when you are “Narked” is just astonishing.  I was thinking to myself on the dive, why is Jared diving up there it is so much fun down here!  Well he was only a foot above me and the visiablity was really not all that good on the second dive so exactly what was more fun than where I was.. Oh that is right cuz I was “Narked”!   

So needless to say I had a wonderful time at the wreck the question is though did I even see it.. Or was it all just in my head!!!! Hmmm I may have to think about that for a bit.

 Alright Jared here, my second dive was rough.  Well for one the Air tasted really different.  The boat that we went out on, the MV Trident, has a compressor on board that filled our second tank.  It was actually pretty sweet tasting, if air can tasted sweet!  Well when I got down to 40m it of course seemed like I had bad air, so I was worried about that.  At one point I lost track of one of the people in our group and I thought he was lost.  I looked at both instructors and was shocked that they didn’t seem to care he was “lost” (lost as in I couldn’t see him lost)  Then I worried the regulator was going to fall out of my mouth so I held it in my mouth, sometimes with both hands.  Occassionally I pressed the purge button by accident sending lots of air into my mouth which made a lot of bubbles!!  So that freaked me out.  Then I look over at Maryanne and she is pretending she is an airplane underwater!!  I would “lose” her occassionally too.  Then I constantly was checking all my guages, way more than normal!  Plus it was cold, etc, etc.  Man it was a tough dive and was happy to be going up when we did.  I did go into Decompression on the dive, but lucky it passed as we went up and didn’t have to do a longer safety stop at 5m than normal.  Although for part of the course we had to switch to the “drop tank” regulator and breath from that during our safety stop.  I didn’t mind it a bit as it was 100% O2 and helped me relax!  Anyway it was a great experience once done.  The boat we dove from was plenty big and the Technical divers we went with were fantastic.  They are going to teach our Wreck Specialty course!!!  So we get to head back to the Unicorn next Thursday, mostly cause Maryanne wants to get Narked again lol!!  Just kidding, it will be cheaper to do the course here, which we will need when diving the Wrecks in Micronesia.  Anyway loads of fun.  Oh the MV Trident was the boat that found the SS Lagoto, in the Gulf of Thailand.  It was a US Sub that was sank almost 60 years ago.  Just a piece of trivia for you guys.  Our thanks to Wilco and Ayesha for a wonderful dive!!

Ok so as everyone knows that has been reading this. Me and Jared are working on our Dive Master Cert. One of the things that we have to get signed off on this is called Equipment exchange or as some people call it Stress test.. How this is done, you have to swap gear (BCD, Fins and Mask) With someone eles while underwater doing buddy breathing while Neutrally Bouyant. For those of you that dont know what buddy breathing is, it is where two people breath out of the same regulator. Take two breaths pass it to the other and so on. All while changing gear while trying to not float to the surface. Which is by far not the easiest thing to do. After several attempts and lots of water being drank by all. We finally finished. Me and my partner were the last ones done. Thanks to me of course because I was the one drinking all the water try to fight for air. Jared and his partner finished right before us.. So dont let him fool you with he was not last. He was not that far behind. Jared had a very small french women as his partner. Talk about a site, Jared in a pink mask, pink BCD and pink fins. Where was the camera when you needed it. To bad I was busy swapping gear with someone else. So this is what I think of this test. Pass or not.. Why in the world would you breath off of one regulator when you have 4 good ones. This is just crazy. I did feel good when it was done though. And as weird as it was after several failed attempts when we finally did it, it was so easy. We had no idea what the problems were all the other times cuz we just clicked and it was done. Pool water tastes like crap!!!

Okay so now that exams are over we have decided to branch out and try some new things!  One of them being a Nitrox course which basically allows us to stay underwater longer.  You can’t go too deep but at least we can do a nice long 26m dive!  So we already finished the course work for that thankfully now we just have to do the diving portion.  Awhile back we blogged about attending a Technical Diving Lecture and trying out the gear at the pool.  The Tec Divers do something called Wreck Wed, were they take you out with normal gear to dive a wreck at around 40m.  So we chatted with them and since we had already planned to get our Deep Diving Certification, we worked it out to combine the Wreck Diving to count for our last 2 deep dives to get the cert.  Sweet huh?!?!  I think we also might do the Wreck Diving Course, which will be 4 Wreck dives.  Basically we are going to be doing some specialty course so we can get our Master Scuba Diver rating and then at the end of our course we will also be Divemasters.  Mostly cause some people confuse the two so if we get both ratings then it doesn’t matter what they call us lol.  Alright that isn’t the real reason, just a bonus.  The real reason is that when we get to Micronesia, there are lots of Wrecks, Deep Dives and Drift Diving.  So they are certs that we are going to need anyway.  Another one we are looking at is the Equipment Specialty, so we know how to service our equipment and just have more all around knowledge. 

Now I know you all really enjoyed the stories of me getting attacked by wildlife, really thanks for the support!!  However friends of ours found the nice little place to stay, so we checked it out and fell in love.  Mostly cause of the hot shower, frig, microwave and big soft bed.  So we decided to move!  Last night was our first night, it was amazing.  Woke up this morning and had a bowl of cereal on our big porch that has a table and chairs.  Since we are up on the hill there was a nice little breeze.  Now with the frig we can eat at home  more often which will help with costs.  Okay not like things are really expensive but it is nice not to always go out to eat.  We even got a cat out of it! It seems like every bungalow comes with an animal.  Our friends Caroline and Ryan have a dog and we have a cute cat! 

So life is awesome at the moment, granted I am very glad we are doing this trip.  However I do wish I would have done this a few years ago!  I dont think I ever want to go back to a real job!  Just kidding mom, I promise to grow up in a few years!!  Miss you all!

Maryanne is diving this afternoon, but I am sure she sends her love and may add to this post later.

Okay so it has been a bit since our last post…sorry!  Well we are almost through with all our course work as far as lectures and exams go! Yippie  We have passed all the exams that we have taken so far.  I have already finished but Maryanne has to take 3 exams.  The night before those exams Maryanne had a bit too much to drink.  It was open mic night at the bar and a bunch of the girls where up singing.  We stayed pretty late as the cheering section, but Maryanne and the other girls got a little carried away.  It was a great thought.  So Maryanne was pretty much useless the next day.  So while I went to class with a little hangover, someone else stayed in bed!  We also missed a day where we were supposed to do a proper map of a dive site.  The night before the mapping dive, we were begged to come on an all day sailing trip to sail rock.  Apparently they were going to cancel the trip due to a few last minute cancellations.  So we decided to go along, were we glad we did!  Sail Rock is a dive site about 2 hours away between Koh Tao and Koh Phanagan sp? We pretty much saw all the same things that we do on closer dive sites, but there are way more fish and they are bigger.  Deb was our DM and made the experience even better it was such a relaxing dive! We saw some massive Grouper and man can they move really fast when they want to!  There were big schools of barcuda that circled us and some giant baracuda.  There was even a tall chimney swim through that was fantastic.  We did take pictures so we will get those posted soon.  So we dove that site twice and then headed to another site.  The morning was very beautiful, but then the rain and wind came in the afternoon.  Boy was it miserable, all of us couldn’t wait to get back underwater. 

Other than that we have just been relaxing and hanging out with friends.  Last night about 20 DMT’s (Divemaster Trainees) and some instructors went for bowling.  It was a good chance to meet some of the new DMT’s and just get to know people a little better.  This morning we were in the pool just doing a skill circuit, basically we practice demonstrating all 20 Open Water skills as we would when assisting OW students.  We pretty much have to make them all look super easier and point out the important parts to the students.  I am so glad we were in the pool!  Yesterday we went on a small boat in choppy water to do rescue assessments.  Trying to rescue an unconscious diver is a lot of work, we were so exhausted afterwards!!! 

This still beats a day at the office!!  Gotta go pick Maryanne up from her massage and go have a beer!! LOL  life is good! :)  Miss you all!

Okay here are a few things we have been up to.  The Technical Divers on the island have partnered with Buddha View to show us the gear and allow us to try it.  They are even incorporating our Deep Diving course with a chance to dive our last 2 dives of the course to see a wreck at 40m!!  Yeah so after trying on the gear I think we are game to try it!!  It was so cool.  Especially if we can get the Nitrox course done then we might even have twin Nitrox!!!  Yeah we are excited.  Okay for you non-divers Nitrox basically allows us to go down for a longer period of time!!! 

Like I reported early we did go to Myanmar and here is the proof!!  LOL  (Yes mom this mean Laugh out Loud)

We also passed our first round of exams, only 6 more to go.  Today we did an additional course which allows us to legally provide 100% O2 which some countries require.  Anyway it was a good class, worth having I think if we do decide to get a job as Divemasters!

Oh Maryanne started getting a little sick (collective sigh from you all for her, since I know you feel more sorry for her than me by evidence of some of your recent comments!!!) 

Last night we played in another Texas Hold’em Tournament, yep you are looking at the Champ!  Well if not click on a picture of me and then you will!!  Yep won 14000 Baht, enough to pay for some of our recent gear!!  Well that is it for now, gotta run and study for tomorrow’s test!!  This one I think will suck! 

Anyway miss you all, hugs and kisses!!!  Maryanne says hi, in a sickle voice, I think she is just trying to get sympathy….. What What yes dear I am coming……

Ok so before all you guys start freaking out cuz you told us not to go there. This place is all set up for this stuff.   This was no Rambo retake! So our evening started with a night boat to Chumpon from Koh Tao. No problem,  We arrived on the boat at 9 which gave us plenty of time to get a bed.. If you get there late no bed for you.   I slept like a baby on the boat like always, but Jared on the other hand was awake the whole way.  He said the boat broke down a couple of times through out the night.. Hmm I don’t seem to remember that!   All is well we made it to our destination.  Now I must say if you are going to travel from Koh Tao to Chumpon the night boat is the way to go. Cheap and a very comfy bed.   I believe it is more comfortable then the bed we have in our little bungalow.   So we make it to port and off we go into a nice van with AC, what luxury.  It is amazing what we take for granted.   It was a 2 hour trip in a van with a crazy driver!  He seemed not to know what side of the road he was suppose to be on. It was crazy we were going up and down hills like mad the roads were curvy as hell and all kinds of blind spots but there he was driving on the wrong side.   What a ride! We just kept bouncing from one side of our seats to the other!  But we made it safely. Maybe a little queasy from the ride but safe none the less. So we get to customs in Thailand check out and get on a very small boat. Not to bad so far. On the way people are waving to us like crazy. I mean 10 white people on a boat we don’t stick out at all right?  Well this goes on for a while with guys waving, blowing kisses this sort of thing. All is fine. Until we see this nice little kid on his porch waving at us. We do the friendly thing of waving back and what does he do. Grab his toy automatic gun and point it at us. Well lets just say I don’t want to see that kid in 10years. :)   We make it to Myanmar and go from the pier straight to customs. On the way to the customs office we have people trying to sell us things like normal, now I would not normally even put this in here, but it was not that they were trying to sell us things what I found was funny it was what they were selling.  “Whiskey, Cigarette, and Viagra”   They keep chanting like a broken record.  Cheap Cheap.  Well none of us bought anything which I think upset them a little.  We made it back to Thailand checked back in with Customs. Back to the pier and on to the high speed boat to Koh Tao.. Now let me explain something here. There is a big difference between the high speed boat and the non-high speed boat. What took us 7 hours there and only took us 1 1/2 hours on the way back. What a difference that is!

Jared’s thoughts – Okay don’t really have any, Maryanne pretty much said it all.  Except two bits, one the Myanmar people look a little like Thais and two we can pass for Swedish people in Myanmar.  How awesome is that, “YA I am from Sweden”!  Anyway we are happy to be back to Koh Tao.  The next two weeks will be a little rough since we have lectures and exams for our Divemaster course.  We have three exams tomorrow, wish us luck. 

Oh on a side note, a couple of days ago we attended a Technical Wreck Diving seminar which was quite good.  A few days later they came to the Dive school with their gear and explained how it worked and let us try it out in the pool!  So Maryanne and I gave it a try.  Feels quite weird to have twin tanks on.  They had us do some out of air drills, so we could see what it was like to have to reach behind us and shut off one of the tanks and then swap to the other mouth piece.  It was really cool!  They offer a one day wreck dive experience, going to 40 – 45m so I think after we going through the Nitrox course next week, we will give that a shoot. Anyway I will get pictures posted soon so you can see us in all that gear!

So today we got to go to a dive site that we have only been one time before, I was assisting a fun dive. And man if you are assisting you really need to know where the hell you are! Cuz as luck would have it one of our divers ran out of air and I was suppose to get them to the buoy line to bring them back up. Well if anyone did not know this already I suck at navigation. This is Maryanne by the way.. Yes I know Jared is great at navigating but he was not with me. So I am off in the direction that the DM told me was the way. Straight as an arrow. Into the wide open spaces. After about 7 mins of realising that there is no bouy line in this direction. I signal to the guys that we are going up. Well we missed the bouy line by a long shot!! We had a nice swim back about 4 boats away. But no worries we were still the first on the boat and the customers were not mad at me. As I did apoligize like a hundred times. I got a nice talking too. Sarah the boat Dive Master was very sweet. As I already knew I did wrong no need to tell me again. She told me what to do next time I cant find the bouy line, everything was all good though. On the other hand, she and the rest of the group tired to chase me. And because of it, they got to see a shark. So all in all not bad! It all ended well but next time, I am going to know where that line is, I tell ya!!!

Okay Jared here - Maryanne forgot to tell of our friendly visitor two nights ago.  So to set the scene, Maryanne is in the bathroom getting ready for bed like normal.  As she was drying her face, she looked up and screamed her head off.  She ran into the bedroom crying her eyes out (okay that was my take lol)  She told me of this huge spider staring at her in the bathroom and that I should go in and take care of it.  Like a good man, I confidently walked into the bathroom to sort it out.  Well now, I thought she was just exaggerating the size of the spider…..  boy was I wrong, this thing was huge!!!  It was also brown, the only brown spider in the US that I know of is poisonous!!  Since I am not a native Thai person, I did not know if this thing could EAT ME ALIVE or not, I wasn’t taking any chances.  At this point I need a clean pair of shorts as I look around and can’t find anything to kill this thing with!!  Maryanne is peaking her head out of the bedroom through living room and into the bathroom asking me why I am being a baby and just kill the thing already!!  Yeah she is supportive!!   So with my manhood no longer in tack, thanks… I starting crying, just kidding, I started to figure out how to improvise a rudimentry tool that would allow me to kill this bastard from a distance!  Not to easy when you travel only with a small backpack.  God I hate nature, it is all around us!!!  So here I am with the bathroom plunger, the only weapon with length to it readily available.  Okay spiders have 8 legs, which apparently makes them quite fast!!  Imagine how fast we could move with 8 legs….okay anyway.  This thing didn’t want to die, it kept moving!!!  So with Maryanne telling me to hurry up, I had to change tactics.  Oh yeah and all the while I am holding a bathroom towel in front of me, in case this was a freakin jumping spider which at any minute would turn into the predator in this little dance of men and bite the crap out of me!  So towel in one hand, plunger in the other, tough call since I don’t want to let go of either!!!  There on the counter is a can of air freshener, sweet!  So I squirt the crap out of this thing till it falls on the floor.  Down with the plunger and he is trapped!  So I kill the thing, put it into two plastic bags, kill it some more and then wrap it in a black trash bag.  Don’t want any of his friends see that I killed him and throw the bag outside!  Man where is the Hilton Resort, we are so moving!!! LOL I wish.  Now we are back to taking showers with only frogs, lizards and centipedes.  Luckily two of the three creatures kills spiders and bugs, they are my new friends protecting the PANZYS

 Okay now my dive today was fantastic!!!  Got to see lots of cool fish on the first down as it was down to 30m.  The visibility was great!  The highlight of the dive was the second one, there were tunnels and swim throughs.  Man I was excited, all the way up till they told me there were lots of Trigger Fish!!!  You all remember what happened last time!  There were 5 of us going 3 boys and 2 girls.  They were instructors and DM’s so I felt safe, with the exception that one of them Mark loves Triggers and routinely chases them.  Thankfully Deb doesn’t like them and avoids them, so guess who I am following!  Well as we jumped off the back of the boat, which I thought was odd at first since everyone else went off the front.  I soon found out why when we hit the bottom and you could literally see 10 big a@@ Trigger fish.  I was a big nest.  I was scared, so the me and the 2 girls pretty much swam on top of Mark and Adam throught the pit of death!  Yeah I have no shame!  Anyway once passed them we ventured through the swim throughs, man was that cool.  Saw Scorpian Fish, Grouper, Spanish Dancer, etc.  The best dive I have had on the island!!!  Okay Maryanne said I have written enough, just trying to make sure I get that damn book deal!!!  Thanks Lamar! 

As I mentioned in a previous post we are assisting instructors now.  We just finished up an Open Water course.  It was pretty cool.  They let Maryanne and I both assist, which made it a little easier as it was new and nervous all at the same time.  Granted we had just gone through the class ourselves not that long ago, but to help new students!!!  Yikes!  The instructor for the course was a guy we hadn’t met before, so trying to figure out his style was a little interesting.  Of course as my luck would have it, his accent is a little thick.  Thankfully Maryanne was there to translate sometimes.  Okay now before you go thinking we are fully hands on with the students, I must tell you what we actually did.  The first time we met the students was in the pool portion of the class.  Before they showed up, Maryanne and I got all their gear setup for them. We then just hung in the background while the instructor showed them how to assemble the equipment.  When it was their turn we made sure they were doing it correctly, answered a few of their questions.  Just basic stuff.  Then I got their weight belts and put a couple of weights in my pocket in case they needed extra weight once in the pool.  The class was good, not really any issues.  We demonstrated some skills for them that day.  The following day was spent in the ocean. Again we got their gear setup and then off to the boat.  It was a shallow water dive about 4 meters.  We pretty much just followed them and looked at the fishies!!  Thankfully it was not like the rescue course where the pretend students would take off their masks, fins, BCD, etc or pretend to panic or just do other stuff a diver might do.  Our Open Water students were good, thankfully.  Most of the time I just worked on not using so much air!  Then next two days we were back in the water going deeper to about 18 meters.  The seas were quite rough and some of them got a little seasick, poor guys. The last day of the Open Water course students get taught the James Bond entry.  Which is a front flip off the front of the boat where you land on your tank.  Pretty nice to do in calm seas, however that day we had pretty big swells!  Maryanne pulled me aside beforehand and was like I hope he doesn’t expect us to do this!  Sure enough we had too.  I had to demonstrate it for them.  Man it was tough just to get to the edge of the boat!  Luckily I timed my jump as we were coming down so I didn’t have to drop too far.  When the boat was up it was about 3m to the water.  Anyway perfect entry, although I feared I might rotate all the way around back to my feet.  Maryanne like me had a tough time getting to the edge but no worries perfect landing!  We are old pros (29 dives as of today)!   So away we went with the students and videoagrapher!  Easy dive, Maryanne’s boob even made it into the video!  They have all these hand signals for the different fish the students will see, the one for Grouper happens to be like someone groping a women’s boobs (pan to Maryanne). Thanks Charlie!  So with our first assist out of the way, we feel a lot more relaxed.  The best part of that day was going to eat Indian food with Mark and Deb.  Okay to fill you in Mark and Deb are freelance Divemasters working here.  Mark has been fantastic showing us the ropes, answer questions and just a fun person to chat with.  Deb is just awesome!  They are a great couple from south of Perth.  Mark even helped me decide what gear to buy.  Oh yeah so since we are doing so much diving, we decided it would be best to buy our own gear.  So yesterday we went with Helena the dive shop lady and went shopping!!  We got regulators yesterday, our BCDs don’t come in till Wed.  Of course I was crushed as we were supposed to dive in the morning and after figuring out which one I was going to get I really wanted to try it out.  We were going to try to keep the cost down a little bit however Maryanne found this accessory that you put on your mouth piece to make it light blue.  Which would match her gear he already has.  Of course the piece was only for the more costlier regulator, so I got the puppy dog eyes and we got the more expensive regulators!!  Okay they were only 100 dollars more, but actually really good regulators!  After all the shopping what better way to spend the night then play Texas Hold’em!!  Now it has been raining a lot lately because of the storm that hit the phillipines last week.  So trying to get to this resort for the game was insane in the rain, in spain staying mostly on the plains…. sorry lol  First we had to drive the bike to the top of a hill only to walk down the hill through the woods, across the beach to another freakin hill.  Luckily there was a road however I don’t know what car could make it up this road.  It was so bad we had to take our shoes off cause it was really slippery.  Some parts we actually were crawling.  Thankfully we had someone to follow as there was no way directions would have helped. GPS coordinates maybe!  At the top of said freakin hill was the nicest resort on the island!  One night is what we would spend for 3 months in our bungalow.  Helps when one of the players is owner/manager!  It was good night though, we didn’t win but had fun anyway. 

Okay so that brings us to today!  Anyone still reading??? Man I will never go this long without posting again, my fingers hurt! Or if I do I will just be like yep the last 7 days were fun, the end!  Anyway so the new regulators rock!  Very easy to breathe, however our dive got cut short when one of the guys in our group disappeared/swam off.  What a wanker!  So we spent most of the dive looking for him, finally just came back to the boat after 30 min. Man were we upset!  Luckily one of the instructors sat him down for a chat, since he is a DMT like us and showed know better.  Problem sorted on our next dive he stayed with us!  Although our other dive partner had her compass stick so we got a little lost :(  No worries though I rock at navigation.  I got us to the coast to see fishies!!!  Then back to the boat. 

Alright not a bad day all in all though.  Okay Maryanne is yelling at me for writing a novel, saying no one is going to read this whole thing!  I disagree someone is still reading right…..right….hello….come on this took me a long time to do this for you I am sad, I will no drown myself in 2 for 1 buckets of Vodka and Juice!  Bye bye mom, cause you are probably the only one still reading!  And for the rest of you who skipped to the end…..well thanks for at least trying to read this!

Okay since we have been crap about posting photos here are pretty much the only ones we have taken recently.  Well with the exception of the first one which is our train ride from Bangkok!  I think the bus would have been better.  Click on the small pic to see a larger one.  Cheers  Oh and don’t forget to read my post from this morning below!!