A Couple’s Journey

Alright to set the day up for this tale of horror, it actually started last night.  We are sitting at the dive shop like we normally do when it is raining.  We chatted with one of the full time staff about assisting a course tomorrow and were told that there was a course being taught in Dutch in the morning but not to worry since no one talks underwater.  Well unless you are Maryanne and think the best way to get my attention is to yell at me!  Okay that only happened once and she was pissed at me :)  The catch to working in the morning is that the boat might be too full for me to get on since they saw whale sharks that day.  Most people who miss out usually sign up to dive the next morning in hopes the big fish will still be there.  Unfortunately they usually aren’t. Anyway we decide to go home early since we had to get up and dive.  Well that night it was really windy and rainy, I was half expecting the door to blow open it was that bad!  Needless to say I didn’t get much sleep :(  So when the alarm went off at 0615 I was not looking forward to getting out of bed.  But I did even though I knew I may or may not dive, which sucks cause who in their right mind would wake up that early if they didn’t have to.  So we slowly got ready and dragged ourself to the dive shop.  It was a little chilly and cloudy, not a day I really want to dive in.  When we get there, we find out that we can’t assist but the dive master said she would sneak us on the boat.  Cause she loves us!  So we get on the boat and straight away the captain is telling us that the Whale Sharks are at the site we are going to.  So we are all excited of course!  We were the first ones in the water and there it was swimming near the surface. So beautiful!  It didn’t stay long, but we enjoyed the rest of the dive and then saw it again doing our safety stop at the end of the dive.  Back on the boat everyone is all excited chatting away. Since we have seen them already we were like yeah there cool, last time was better blah blah :)  Inside our heads we were really having a party.  The staff decides to stay for another dive, fine with us.  Again we are the first in the water and there it is again.  Same thing as before we watched from a distance, amazing.  Then we go for a little dive, but Maryanne’s dive watch says we have to go up after only 30 min boy was I sad.  As we are approaching the boat, we are the only ones at the surface.  I happen to look in the water and there it is between us and the boat.  So we stay and watch, well apparently we looked cool to the Whale Shark and it comes for a closer look.  When I mean close, I mean I was touching a whale shark!  Only because it was interested in Maryanne and swinging it tail in my face!!  This thing is about 3.5 meters long WOW we have never been this close.  This think is really interested in us and wants to be right on us.  After chasing Maryanne for a bit, it turns its attention on me.  I comes right for me, mouth open and I literally had to put my hand on its nose to not get eaten.  This happened more than once for about 10 min.  What an experience!  Oh and I really did pop my head out of the water and said to Maryanne “Its trying to EAT ME!!”  Wow what a morning!  I am so glad we got out of bed!! YIIPPEEE

Okay we have hit another milestone in our diving adventures yesterday!!  Yippie  The last speciality we did was Peak Performance Bouyancy, basically it is a course that helps us to be better with our air consumption, keeping off the bottom and coral, and figuring out how much weight we really need.  So I was diving with 2.4 Kilos, but found that I really only need about 800grams.  Boy did I have a hard time with the first two dives trying to stay down for our safety stop when the tank was nearly empty.  Although my air consumption was so much better.  Maryanne dropped some weight as well but her booties  make her feet float too much which is quite funny to see :)  So I think we might get her some really small ankle weights.  With less weight her air consumption was as good as the instructors!!  Great for her but she still kicks my butt.  Thankfully though I pretty much run out of time before air now so it isn’t too bad for me.  I know I will get better with time now that I have only one weight, considering I had no problems on my last two dives with staying down.  Go Team America!!  That is what they call, there is very few Americans here.  After four dives yesterday we are taking it easy today, which sucks because the morning and afternoon dives show more whale sharks :(  Oh well at least we swam with them once already.  Alright that is all I got for now, tonight just a quiet night playing poker :)  Then probably diving in the morning, man diving the next morning after poker is rough.  I know you guys feel really bad for us, it is such a hard life!  :)  We are at 60 Dives!

Alright we just got back from our Visa Run.  I can’t remember if we told you what that really entails.  First we decided to take the day time ferry over to Chumpon.  This is a high speed catamran, it is really comfy, AC and shows a movie.  This differs from the Night boat which is like military sleeping barracks, 20 bunk beds and it smells.  So this trip was a pleasent one.  It only takes an hour and a half to get to Chumpon.  Once off the ferry there is a little man yelling out Visa Run so we follow him to a minibus AC again for the 2 hour trip to the Thailand border.  Once we get to the border the driver takes us right to the immigration place.  This time it was part of a resort, very nice.  From there we take a 20 minute ferry across some river to Myanmar.  The place we went to was a Casino Resort, so the boat over was very nice, as opposed to the small fishing boat we crossed with last time.  This boat had AC as well.  Okay so now we are in the resort for an hour, all about the duty free shopping.  Well for some I guess, I was more excited about the fact that in the bar they had POPCORN!!!  Yeah it is the little things I like :)  So we are with a nice group of strangers, whom we chatted with most of the way over.  There was even an American on the trip, nice guy from California Jeff.  He is a dive/rock climbing instrutor obviously not at the same time guys….  I know someone was going to get confused about that. Anyway there was a Dutch girl on the trip of about 18, very nieve.  She even asked Jeff if the US was a country!!  She thought it was just a bunch of States, wow and people think Americans Geography sucks!!  So we had a nice laugh about that.  So we hangout at the bar eating popcorn drinking beer, and watching a guy pretend to play the piano (the music as actually coming from a laptop)  He did sing but his hands barely ever moved, that is how we knew he wasn’t playing the piano.  Anyway so back on the ferry, back to the minibus and then to Chumpon.  We decided to spend the night, for the sole purpose of KFC!!!!  We hardly recongnized anything on the menu, very Asian!  But it was still worth it.  We found a little hotel recommended by Jeff.  He said they had rooms for 280 Baht a night ($8) however upon getting there we found we could get the Deluxe room (AC and TV) for $15 a night.  Yeah we splurgged baby!!  Unfortunately we had to get up early, cause the bed was so comfy! Oh well we got back to Koh Tao in time for Maryanne to get a massage and go for a dive in the afternoon.  Good thing too, cause I found a knife on the dive still in the sheath. Sweet, go me! 

   Ok Jared forgot a very important part about the dive that we did this afternoon we saw a turtle..  Yeah we are some lucky people in the last week we have seen whale sharks, Black Tip Sharks and a turtle.   Tommorrow I am going to be assisting a rescue course. I cant wait this is alot of fun.  I am going to be the one pretending to drown or get hurt.   I am really looking forward to it.  

Ok so there was really no shark attack but I got your attention didn’t I!! So we are on our second dive of the day and we are descending and what is right below us? You guessed it a shark. I am franticly trying to get down faster so I can have a better look, at this point I am maybe 6 meters above it. So I finally get down to maybe 2 meters above the darn thing and it swims off. In the mean time I am trying to signal to Jared and Brian (another DMT here) that I see a shark and for them to look down. It took them a bit but they finally joined my enthusiams of seeing the shark. About the shark it was a black tip reef shark maybe 3 meters long but man did it have a nice size body, nice and fat. Must have just had lunch, thanfully not a scuba diver! Well that was the highlight of my day. No whale sharks today sniff, sniff! Maybe another day. We also saw some big baracuda and all the normal stuff (angle fish, banner fish, grouper, jacks, travelly). Just another wonderful day in Koh Tao. But I would like the sun to come out soon. It is not raining today which is an improvement from the last 4 days but it would be nice to see some sun! I mean really I am on an island paradise, right? Ok enough complaining. I mean I am on a 2 year vacation, what is there to complain about.

We have already started our planning for our next adventure in a month when we finally leave this island. We will let you know where we are off to next when it gets closer. Tomorrow we are going on another Visa run and we have decided to stay over night in Chumpon so we can get some KFC. Ok Jared really wants Starbucks but we would have to go all the way to Bangkok for that so KFC will have to do for a taste of home!! He is quite upset about that.  Maybe Nate, Malcolm, Jade or Jenna can go for us and tell us how it is!  Or anybody really, it has been almost two months since our last fix!!!! 

Okay I know we just blogged this morning however this afternoon we went diving!  Low and behold we swam with two Whale Sharks!!!  One was about 3m and the other a little bigger than 4m!!!  We are so excited to say the least, it definetly has made the whole Thailand trip worth it!  Anyway we will post pictures soon, one of the girls that came with us took pictures!!!  What a perfect afternoon!

Well I know it has been a bit since we last posted but not a lot has been going on. It has been raining here like mad so we have been making good use of the hammock. Watch a lot of movies and have just been relaxing. We did however go diving on wednesday and got our wreck speciality, which makes four specialty certs so far and we are still working on our Dive Master cert. We did our wreck dives on the Unicorn which was nice since you only have a couple min bottom time at 40 meters it takes a couple of dives to see the whole thing. We have now done 4 dives on it and it will still take a couple more before we actually see the whole thing. However this time I got down to 41.3 meters and Maryanne got 43.2 meters due to having to tie off our line to the railing of the boat. Visibility this time wasn’t all that good but hey we are done with that speciality. Okay the specialities are important because if we get five speciality courses we are certified as a Master Diver (MSD) which is the highest non-professional rating we can get. So if we decided to work it looks better on us if we are both MSD’s and Dive Master (DM) which is our professional rating. Not to mention the courses we are taking go to just making us better divers and will come in handy when we go to other places. Sometimes we might go to a place that has a wreck at 36m, well if we don’t have the deep diver and wreck diver we wouldn’t be able to explore it. Well we could but if something happened then insurance wouldn’t cover it since is beyond what we have been trained. So since we have been trained now we are covered. Okay it might not be cool to some of you but it is pretty darn exciting for us!!! At this point thought I would love to continue and become an instructor, but I have to have been diving for 6 months, so maybe later. The guys that have been doing our deep and wreck training are the same technical divers from earlier blogs (Wilco and Ayesha), unfortunately they are leaving for August so I can’t do the Technical Diving Basic course So much to do, so little time! Just like life! Just as well or we would never leave Koh Tao! But we are bound and determined to make a break from here and see more of the world!

So sorry to you readers that we aren’t all that exciting at the moment, but like Maryanne said at the beginning of this post (yes a joint effort went into writing this) it has been raining We got another Visa run coming up in a few days… Our last one which will cover us till the end of August. Maybe I will let Maryanne ride the bike in the rain, then I am sure we will have something cool to post LOL

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.