A Couple’s Journey

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!!

Alright so here is the deal!  After we finished up on our Rescue Course we had sometime before our Dive Master course starts, so we decided to practice our new skills and just get more comfortable with diving.  So we have been doing Fun Dives. The first couple were pretty nice, we went off and did our own thing with only a compass and our dive computers.  We did learn after the first dive that it might be a good idea to ask someone about the site before just jumping in so we know where to go and what to see.  So then we started going with other Dive Master Trainees.  All was fine until yesterday. Well with the exception of me learning to not use my air so fast, cause man do I breathe a lot!!!  Anyway so yesterday we are swimming along, I am determined to control my breathing.  However today was not my lucky day, first of all there was a strong current and we were diving around shark island (cue Jaws theme song in my head, yeah thanks a lot for making that dumb movie!) So my breathing was a little faster than I wanted but no worries I said I can do this.  So we round the bend to a side of the small island that doesn’t have much current, I get control of my breathing and now glide easily throught the water looking at the Bat fish, Angel Fish, Cleaner Wrasse and other fish.  All good now or so I thought.  I move a little away from the island to explore some smaller coral at about 14 meters.  Then out of no where here comes a Big A@@ Trigger Fish!!  He is going straight for my legs.  Now I had seen these things attack other people from a distance and it looks funny, amusing even!  However now that I see one of this fish up close coming after me, there razor sharp, jagged teeth trying to take off my leg, I am now sorry I ever laughed at someone getting attacked.  Damn Karma!!!  At first luckily enough I can fend him off with my flippers, although I am breathing really fast cause he is circling around below me.  So I fight hard to keep him in my line of sight to perry his attacks.  But then this seeming dumb vivicous fish, swims up and starts his brutal attack from above!  Now I am really freaked, I don’t have a knife so I start swinging my arms. But then it dawns on me that this is a bad idea cause those teeth would do a number on my arms.  It feels like this has been going on for awhile now, my watch starts beeping at me cause I am going up too fast.  I look at it and it says that I am at 7m. Wow all the heavy breathing has made me go up 21feet!!  This damn thing is still chasing me.  I look over near the islands and see the other DMT’s staring at me and waving me to come to them.  I thought this was a brilliant idea, even though I am sure those bastards where laughing like crazy at me, if I move further away from the Trigger Fishes territory then I should be safe.  So I swim like mad towards the group with this evil evil thing still biting at my fins.  I make it back to the group.  Luckily the most experienced diver diverts the attention of the fish so I can control my breathing.  Now this guy looks like he is fending off a little kitten, he is laying on his back occassionally waving his fins at the big bad fish.  In my defense though I think I tired him out!!  I check my air and realize I used about a quarter of it fighting off this damn fish.  I guess I know which in the group is going to run out of air first, yep me again!!!  I did learn later that the Trigger Fish aren’t really agile in the water so you don’t have to move to much to protect yourself.  Yep information that would have been handy an hour ago!!!  I am so going to get a spear gun, go back there and take on that bloody fish again!!  Thankfully though I did better with my air consumption on the next dive, thankfully no rabid trigger fish on that one.  Bloody Fish!!!  Luckily though Trigger fish are more aggressive than Sharks, otherwise I might cut short my diving adventure! 

At least now we are assisting an instructor in the pool teaching Open Water students, I think I should be safe today!

Maryanne Here..  Well I guess karma is going to get me. cuz sure enough I was the one on the side lines laughing my butt off at Jared getting attacked by the Trigger fish.   I wish I had a video camera so you all could watch and laugh.  Well we must be off. Students are waiting for me and Jared to show them how this stuff is done! 

Jared and I bought a fan last night for our room. WOW what a difference that made. I got a really good night sleep last night. I even got a little cold. Crazy huh.  The fan that was in the room was just a small standing fan.  We had to put it on a chair just so we could feel it when we were in bed. But it was not that big and did not give much of a breeze. But now we bought a proper stand up fan that really works..  It was nice.  Then again what do you expect for $150 a month!

Today we went for a dive and we saw the biggest Stingray I have ever seen outside an aquarium that is. It was probably about 2 maybe 2 1/2 meters wide.  We also got to see some big Grouper and Giant Puffer fish. What a day!  Well worth getting up at 630 for.  

 The other night all the DMTs and IDCs students (Dive Master and Instructor trainees) got together for some bowling.  You have never been bowling like this before.  When you knock down your pins a guy at the end of your lane picks them up and puts that back on for you.  They even cheat alittle and move the pin around to help you out..  🙂  I wonder if this is what the bowling alleys use to look like. We will have to take a picture of it for you guys to see.  And we all do this bare foot.  Can you believe we even go grocery shopping barefoot!  We are quite crap about bring our camera with us when we go out. 🙁 

Jared here – Okay for all of you who were wondering, we love our new dive watches, compass and fins.  Boy do they come in handy.  Mine even shows a graph of the dives I do.  It logs the depth every 20 secs so I can see how long we are at certain depths when doing multi-level dives.  It is amazing!! 

So we have several new dive partners now, but two in particular that we had our Rescue Course with.  Ryan and Caroline, very nice people.  Although with Ryan being Scottish his accent sometimes gets me just smiling and nodding.  Malcolm you remember how I used to look at you when you talked.  Yep same thing.  Man and I thought I was getting so good at understanding English with accents.  Oh well guess I still need Maryanne to translate!  Caroline’s accent isn’t too bad but to hear her say “Diver Diver, I am a Rescue Diver, inflate your BCD” now that is just cute. Then again she is French, but speaks english sometimes with a Scottish accent.  So weird huh!! Any divers are such cool people!!

We are at 19 dives, almost feel like a pro!  We did have to do a skill test and swim though recently, man was the swimming long.  The skill test we had to basically do all the skills the people getting there Open Water Cert have to do, but we have to do it as if we were demonstrating it to them!  That was a bit different, but again we are pros so it was pretty easy. 

Alright enough boring stuff, off to buy pillows!  Yeah 150 doesnt get you nice pillows, this so isn’t the Ritz!!

We we have done it, we are now certified Rescue Divers!!  Thankfully we will now have sometime before the Dive Master course starts, no more late night studying.  For now we will be just doing fun dives, helping out the instructors a little (more for familiarity than being graded) and just enjoying our time here.  We have moved to a new bungalow, it is a bit quieter but I sure miss the AC last night was hot!  Oh well thankfully our shower is freezing, yeah no hot water, so it keeps us cool.  Yesterday we did a bit of shopping, mozzie spray, towels, etc.  Just to feel a little more comfortable.  Today is a big day, cause Maryanne is letting us get Dive Computers, which tell us all sorts of cool stuff about our time, depth, ascent rate, saftey stop and such.  Mostly since we are saving so much money on accomidations, okay plus it isn’t mandatory, but highly recommended to get one for the course.  So needless to say a new gadget, I am so excited!!  This afternoon we have some skills to day, 400m swim, 1000m swim with fins, 100m towing someone and treading water for 15min.  I think I will need a $2 Filet Mignon when this is all done.  Just might be too tired for the fun dive afterwards, but then again we are going to Japenese Gardens Dive site, which I really like.  So it should be a great afternoon.  We have been doing the course with a very nice couple, so it has made for another nice course.  Although everyone we meet has been fantastic, what a great interesting group of people.  We did go to a pub yesterday for lunch, mostly cause Maryanne saw a sign for Yorkshire pudding!!  She ended up having Toad in a Hole, for you Americans reading it is sauguage cooked into yorkshire pudding.  It comes with mash potates and a rich gravy, very good!  Anyway the point of the story was that there was this american guy there, wow what an ass!  No wonder why most foriegners don’t like us.  Loud, obnoxious and full of himself, thankfully not all Americans who travel are like this but he wasn’t being a good ambassador for our country.  Such a shame really.  Anyway got to go get a dive watch :)!! 

Well we are finished with Advanced and are working on our Rescue Diver course, which we should be done by tomorrow. So far we have been busy busy busy. This is not feeling to much like a vacation, but who needs rest right. We have been diving pretty much everyday since we got here. Today was very rough seas and the boat ride was quit an adventure, to say the least. It felt like that boat could tip over at any min and Jared was planning his excape route the whole time. I dont know how they go out during Monsoon season. They are crazy! Well we did our night dive last night and Jared was not all that crazy about it. It was kind of hard to see things and there was quite a few of us out there, so it was a bit confusing with so many lights all over the place. All in all it was not a bad dive. We did see some Baracuda, Spotted Sting Ray, sleeping Trigger fish and a bunch of other smaller fish. (Jareds take) Also for our Advanced course we did Navigation which the instructed said mine was wicked, yeah I am that good LOL.  There was a Deep Dive down to 30m which was awesome, the visibility was much better than expected.  No sharks thankfully, especially since I don’t have my 2 dive knives yet!  No if only I can get better at breathing slower, man I can go through some air! Although everyday I dive I do get better! 

Oh by the way trying to get someone on a boat all by yourself is not easy. Today me and Jared found out that if we were the only ones on a boat and one of us was hurt or drowning we could not get the other one on the boat by ourselves. Well I guess we have to work on our muscles a bit more. Go ahead try it at home and see if you can do it.. Oh wait did I forget to tell you that first you have to pull the person to the boat while giving then rescue breaths and taking off all the gear.. Then you have to carry them on the boat. Well I hate to say it but I only could make it up one step and that was it. So Jared would have died I guess. 🙂 Maybe tomorrow I will be better.  Jared here, well we actually decided to read the chapter covering this tonight and found out we weren’t doing it right. So tomorrow for the test, I think it should be easier.  Man reading the material really does help!!

I did do one nice thing for myself today. I got a massage. It was definatly needed as my arms and legs are killing me.  Jared is still afraid of the Thai massage ladies as two 40 year old thai women basically beat me up for a half hour last year.  Massage my ass, it is a lot like torture, but no one asks you questions to find out information!!!! 

Well we did it. We went and got certified. We are on our way. We had 4 amazing dives and now we are starting our advance course. We even got video taped on our last dive so for you guys at home you can watch us messing about underwater. (Jared’s notes – I scored a 98 on the written part cause I studied a lot, Maryanne didn’t study at all and got a 92. I guess it helps to have 200 dives already!)

Why you should not fight over a couple dollars! Today we went to the north part of the island, to get there it cost us 200 baht. Once we were done sightseeing that area we went looking for a taxi to another bay. We found one and asked the all important question ‘How Much?” Which we received a response of “200 baht”. Well Jared thought this was crazy since we payed 200 baht to get from our place to there and we were only asking to go half way back. So we said no and we walked. The walk took us about 1 1/2, but would have been less then 5 mins by car. We showed him!!! Or did we???? Well it was good exercise Jared said!

Well we did make it safe and sound and we burned off all the food we ate so it was really not all that bad. Plus we found some nice spots to stop and mess around for a bit. So we did actually have fun. We even played mini golf, boy was the course tough!  Thankfully we had beer before and after the game!  Man is it nice to drink during the day!  I think we may look into renting a motorbike for a month!!

Below are some pictures of one of our dives.

Our Classmates

Well the train ride was crazy, very little sleep for Maryanne none for Jared 🙁  Oh well had to make sure our stuff was safe and that we got off at the right stop.  It didn’t seem that they would let us know what stop we were at.  So I was too worried to sleep, plus it was really bumpy.  Although together not too bad.  Now I wish I had done it during the day, I think the country side would have been really pretty.  Anyway we made it safe although a few hours late, which worked out quite well considering the ferry didn’t leave till 7am, we were supposed to get there at 330ish. So we only had to wait an hour or so to get a bus to the ferry.  The ferry ride out was awesome, beautiful water and lots of tiny rock formations in the water.  The island we were going to was just a little spot in the distance!  It took about an hour and a half to get to the island.  It looked so inviting as we approached! Our new home.  We got all our stuff off the dock and found that someone was there to actually take us to Buddha View which was wonderful, since we were both so tired.  Maryanne slept most of the ferry ride.  Well we got to the dive shop, got a little breakfast and then crashed for a bit in our room.  Well some might not call it a room as we all might know it but hey it was 6 dollars a night.  It was only meant to last a few nights till we found something more permanent for the 2 months.  The bathroom is setup so you can use the toilet and take a shower at the same time, very crazy. It also took us awhile to figure out how to work the toilet, as it doesn’t flush like a proper toilet.  You have to fill up a bucket of water and pore it in, gravity and pressure take care of the rest!  Once we figured it out it wasn’t that bad to use.  After a nap we looked at a few places to stay but figured we would decide tomorrow after a good night sleep.  Before we could call it a night, we had to watch a video on the first 2 chapters of our Dive Course.  Man was it tough to stay awake!  Luckily I was really excited to be diving soon, I think that helped me stay awake.  After dinner overlooking the bay, we decided to call it a night.  Man was it a rough night for maryanne.  The room has only a fan and the windows were open so a few mosquitos got in a did a number on Maryanne, that combined with the heat and the late night partiers down below she got very little sleep.  The next morning after some coffee she was at least able to attend the class in the morning, somewhat! 🙂  The class went pretty well, our instructor is awesome and extremely funny!  That afternoon we spent abouit 3 hours going over skills in the water. So far no problems.  I was surprised to find that the air coming out of the tank is quite cold!  I was just happy to be breathing underwater.  We meet up with the three other people in our group for dinner and drinks.  Buddha View has a lovely BBQ every night, which was fantastic.  For the two of us it was about $4, crazy huh?  Our group consists of a couple from Chile and a guy from Israel.  We ended up meeting a guy from NZ.  So it is almost like being back in Qatar with having a diverse group.  They are all really nice.  Last night was another rough night sleeping for Maryanne, thankfully we are moving to an AC so she should get a good night soon.  So today was the big day, we got in the ocean!!  Man was it cool, had a little difficulty with bouancy but only when we were swimming back to the boat.  Other than that no issues.  Maryanne at first couldn’t clear her ears but soon she was fine.  It was only about 2.5 meters but we were swimming with the fishes!!!!  Tomorrow we take our test and then do an 18m dive!  I can’t wait!  More on that later!

Oh the new room is much better!  We got AC and only $15/night while we are diving, not bad huh?!?!  We even have a proper flushing toilet! 

Alright today is our second day in this crazy city!  Since we were here last year, we really don’t feel the need to sightseeing and picture taking.  We have just been hanging out on Khao San Road were all the backpackers hang out.  Okay not much local culture, but just a place to sleep in, relax by the pool and just a pause before we really start our journey.  To us this is just a long layover!   At least the people watching has been tons of fun.  Some strange characters out there!  We also found a Starbucks today!!  So life is good!