!!Yeeeaaa Buoy

I'm writing this in Dubai, where everything's right to left... so not sure how this'll turn out...

We left sunny warm Koh Phangan and headed for the even warmer Koh Tao. I locked in a Padi Open Water dive course with Crystal Dive who are a pretty sweet outfit. The package cost just under $300 and hooked me up with the dive course plus free accommodation for four nights, a free BBQ and t-shirt. they were probably incorporated into the costs, but i'm a sucker for freebees.

Russell (beer), Hamish, Me, Justin, Kerryn, Gintare, Ilma, Nic, Alex (beer)

We touched down in Koh Tao round 11am and my course started that afternoon at 1:30pm (4 hours in a classroom... atleast the classroom had aircon!). Our instructors were Nicola and Hamish, both English and real good sorts. We also had a dive master (Pete) join us for the actual dives, so we were pretty well covered. There were seven of us in our group, two lithuanian girls (Gintare and Ilma), a canadian girl (Kerryn), an american dude (Justin), an irish guy (Russell) and a german (Alex). All good value so there were some good laughs along the way. Especially from Russell and Alex, those two were hard cases. The actual learning videos were pretty boring, as was most of the classroom stuff, but the actual dives were AWESOME. My dive buddy was Justin and in our first two dives we mostly covered skills, with a bit of a swim round checking out stuff. The last two dives were less skills and more actual diving. Alex and Russell had a big night out the night and were seriously hung on for the last two dives. We saw heaps of different fish and coral and went down to around 17m. Was awesome. Pretty hooked on diving now! Pete (the dive master) got charged by a trigger fish - that was pretty awesome. What wasn't awesome was the early starts... most days we had to be up at 7am... wasn't as bad as Asty, he had to be up at 6am for his "fun" dives.

View from the lookout over Koh Tao

I had the last afternoon off from my dive course, so me and tuffy spent the afternoon having an explore round the island. We rode scooters up to a lookout that looked out over the western side of the island (the main part - Sairee and Mae Haad). Awesome view, but a bit of an adventure getting up there. My scooter was a gutless piece of crap, so had to walk it up some steep parts. I'm glad the brakes worked on the way back down though, otherwise things could have got pretty hairy. We got some epic rain on a couple days on the island. Massive thunderstorms with huge down pours. Got stuck in the restaurant... could've been stuck more worse places i guess...

Alex, Joslynn, Stacey, and Me

I got a message from Joslynn while we were on Koh Tao saying that her and Stacey were gonna be coming over for a night. Pretty confident they were starting to stalk us now... They'd booked flights from Phuket to Singapore, so wanted to check out Koh Tao while they had the chance. We met up in the afternoon and then again for dinner and a couple drinks that night. Was good to see them again. There was a massive earthquake off Indonesia that afternoon, so all these warning of tsunami were flying round. Koh Tao was sweet, but apparently Phuket was expecting a 9m tsunami. The girls were a bit worried about their trip, but the warning were lifted by the evening.

Sunset from the bus to Bangkok

The next morning, we got the boat to Chumporn, then transferred to a bus for the final leg to Bangkok. another full days travel, 10am to 8:30pm. We're pretty pro at long distance travel now, so wasn't too bad. Was epically hot that day, probably one of the hottest so far. The half hour wait between boat and bus was pretty sticky, but atleast the bus had good aircon. We were supposed to be dropped off at Khao San Rd in Bangkok, but because Songkran (Thai new year/water festival) was starting up, the roads were shut off. Some people weren't happy... one lady was screaming her head off at the bus company, but it wasn't gonna get her anywhere. We got a taxi to near Khao San and found a room asap, to avoid getting floured and water bombed.

Waterguns for sale...everywhere!

The next day was the official start to Songkran, but cos we were flying to Dubai, we weren't real keen to board a 6-7 hour plane soaking wet and covered in flour. Instead we boosted from the Khao San area to MBK where we could dump our bags for the day and just perch round the mall in the A/C. We were pretty low on Baht by this stage, so were trying to stretch our coin as far as we could. We went to see a movie tho. Battleship. entertaining, but equally as painful. It's based on the game battleship, so i'll let you make your own mind up about it. In thailand, at the start of each movie, they make you stand up and respect the King of Thailand. Everyone in the cinema stands up while a montage of the king is played. At first, I thought everyone was standing up to try find better seats...

Our flight to Dubai that night was packed. It seemed like a pretty long trip as well, didn't help that we had to circle for nearly an hour before we could land. We weren't sure if Vaughan was meeting us at the airport or not, but if he was he would have had to wait for an extra hour and a half, not ideal at 1 in the morning. We cleared customs and grabbed our bags. Asty thought it was ridiculous that the customs officials had to wear the full desert kit, i.e. white sheet, with white head towel and ring thing. Quote "the outfits would be ideal for a three day trek in the desert but not for sitting in a customs booth" "you wouldn't see NZ customs official sitting there in flax skirts". Anyways, we were walking out into the arrival lounge, scouting out for a white dude, and just as we got to the end, VPT was standing there amongst the taxi drivers in a red All Blacks training jersey and a sign with our names on it. Classic move VPT.

We're now perched up at VPT's pad. pretty nice place. Can't believe that our time in South East Asia is over. 5 and a half weeks has flown by! Gonna miss that place and the sweet weather, I will be back tho. Anyways, look out London, I'll be catching you pretty soon!