Run to the Border

Hello again, its been a while since our last update but even so there isn’t much to tell, not that that’s a bad thing. We’ve been enjoying our little island here in Thailand, which basically means, SCUBA, lying on the beach, kayaking, snorkeling, swimming…you get the picture. Well just in case you don't this might help.



The countdown is on, though, until we leave this paradise and head to the bustling capital city of Bangkok. Our last day is either Sunday, or Monday this coming week depending on how far our month rent lasts.

One thing of note was our 18 hour VISA run from here to Burma and back. I know I've mentioned it before but for those of you unfamiliar with the Thailand VISA run, every foreigner that comes to Thailand gets 30 days to visit before they have to leave the country. If you are staying longer than 30 days ie. Kendra and me, you have to cross a border somewhere and re-enter the country to get another 30 day visit. This little loophole allows some people to actually live and work in Thailand for years without having to immigrate, or apply for a work visa, all they have to do is get to a border and back every 30 days and they’re good for another month. Handy eh? You might think so except the Border runs are long and after several months quite boring for those that are live here. For Kendra and I, though, it was another mini adventure that came with added bonus of more VISA stamps on the Passport.

It starts with a boat to the mainland, we ended up on the cheap night boat that leaves at 11:00pm and gets in at 5:00am. We actually had to get there at 9:30pm to make sure we had a place to sleep which basically meant a spot on a bench and a spot on the floor next to the bench on the top deck of the boat. Needless to say sleeping didn’t come easy although when I couldn’t sleep I could enjoy the moonlit ocean and was able to see several flying fish jumping out of the water around our boat, pretty cool. The next Leg is the Mini Bus leg, which meant that several of us are crowded onto a minibus that takes us to the border. This took 2 hours and was especially uncomfortable for Kendra as she got stuck in the middle front seat, crappy! Kendra also had the misfortune of having a birds eye view of the driving techniques of our driver. It’s a harrowing experience sometimes when you are passing a car on solid double lines around a blind corner. My favorite was when our driver and another guy in front decided to pass a car both at the same time, we were 3 cars wide on a double line with oncoming traffic, crazy. Kendra learnt faster than the rest of us to simply ignore what was happening and try to sleep. We survived the ride to the border and went to Thai customs to receive the first stamp of the day. Next we had to get back on a boat to cross a rather large bay/river into Burma. We spent a grand total of 15 minutes in Burma and headed back to Thailand to get our new 30day VISA. Then 2 hours on a mini bus, another boat ride and we're back in Koh Tao. In total about 18 hours non-stop. Not much sleep was had, but hey, at least we got more stamps...I love stamps. Check out some of the photos.


Starting out on the Boat Ride, thats Burma in the background.


The pier at Burma, there was also a large market that we explored where you could buy live chickens...Kendra didn't want one.


Burmese immigration office...interesting.

OK, Till Next Time.
Mike

Moons and Parties

First of all, thank you so much for the birthday wishes and to Mike for the great day at the spa. Appartently all of the guys on the island usually go to the spa with their girlfriends and I found out why... let's just say boobies are not left out on the treatment list ... Mike all of a sudden has a new interested in aloe vera wraps, oil massages and facials!


Here's Mike and I at dinner for my b-day.

We've been really busy this week. March 14 was the full moon party on Ko Pha Ngan. For those of you who don't know, the full moon party is a huge event every month where thousands of people congregate on a beach to stay up all night to dance and do other things that are not pg rated for our family website. Along with 4 other people from our diving center, Mike and I set off for our 12 hour adventure armed with bug dope, our cheap film camera (those of you who remember Mike on St. Patty's Day 2005, know why), my serong and 2000 Batt. After a 2 hr boat ride, where poker was played and beer consumed, dinner at a bar where Simpsons played 24/7; we made it to the beach. The full moon was shimmering on the ocean water and was breath taking. Knowing we had to pace ourselves in order to last the full nite to catch our 7am boat back, we started at a reasonable pace. But this resulted in warm beer. Soon we were introduced to "The Bucket" - a medely of a Mickey, a can of coke, ice and a Red Bull. Mmmm!!! We walked the beach that was filling up with people, and found a bar that was pumping out great tunes. We actually stayed there all night dancing. At one point we looked out onto the beach and saw a sea of people dancing in the moonlight. At 5am, Mike and I were starving and stumbled along the beach, waking up our friends on the way and headed back to the pier. We missed the sunrise while we were gorging ourselves on burgers, but that's okay. What an amazing party!!!

Sorry no pictures developed yet for the party, but you can imagine, I'm sure.

What else have we been up to? We did another day dive yesterday at Sail Rock, one of the famous dive sites of Ko Tao. It has an 18 m chimney that you descend. Still don't have an underwater camera, so check out the link instead. This is a picture of the rock from 0 meter depth.


After logging the dives in our books (up to #19 now!), we got ready for St. Patty's day celebrations. Although we were lacking the green clothing, we didn't lack the spirit. We went to a bar on Sairee Beach (western part of the island) called Choppers with a bunch of people. Not an Irish bar, but they did have 2 for one specials and free Guiness (only for 5 minutes). Another great nite. Tomorrow is a border run day (I can't believe that we've already been in Thailand for 30 days).

Mike & I with our 2-4-1's.

Mike with two of our fellow Full Moon Partier's Matt & Tom.

Take care everyone, and Happy St. Patty's day!!!!

Kendra and Mike

Happy Birthday Kendra

Lets all collectively wish Kendra a Happy Birthday! She's finally old enough to drink beer around the world, 21, Congrats ;) Still don't know why she hooked up with me, I'm like 7 years older than she is.

You will all be happy to know that Kendra is, at this very moment, enjoying a fine day of massage, aromatherapy, aloe vera wraps, and other strange things that make people feel pampered, at the Jamahkiri Spa & Resort (I'm especially jealous of the hot shower). The spa is amazing, on top of a hill overlooking a bay, great views while they treat you like a movie star. Check out the photos.

Thats the resort but if you want to get even more jealous (like me) check out the link.


The Birthday Girl right before the royal treatment, she looks happy.

Later on its dinner and a sunset.
So "Happy Birthday Kendra!"

As for Koh Tao, it has been so nice to us here we decided to stay for a month, thats right. We rented a small, but homey, room near the beach and will enjoy the following weeks by hitting the beach, doing some diving and enjoying what the island has to offer, should be great. Unfortunately that makes our photos kind of repetative as we won't have a bunch of different and exotic things to show you.

So in lieu of new and exotic things, for those of you who are interested on what its like to dive here in Koh Tao, I thought I'd put together some snapshots of heading out on a dive.


1) Start out at the shop (thats not us in the water, but thats where we learned)


2) Pile into the transport to the pier (we're close to the beach but not the peir)


3) Scramble over a couple of boats trying not to slip off into oblivion (its happened I've seen it...actually I've seen it on the video that the shop gives to everybody after your first dive. Maybe they include it to scare the crap out of everybody so they won't fall. So far its worked, but really its not that dangerous parents, really, look how well she's poised to jump the gap 5m over the water between the boats...oh I mean, its not dangerous...crap, this isn't going well.)


4) Put your equipment together (don't screw up or you won't be able to breath underwater!)


5) Jump off the side of the boat holding on to all equipment (don't screw up again, everyone is watching!)

6) Due to lack of underwater camera, there is very little that I can show you of what happens in a dive, however, picture fighting off sharks, dodging stingrays, and running out of air, and thats almost exactly what its like...


7) After the dive enjoy a nice ride back to the shore with some of your divemates (No more farmers tan!)


8) Enjoy a nice sunset and regail the near death shark attack experience with other great story tellers who lie equally as well.

There you have it a dive on Koh Tao in a nutshell. I'd better hurry back and pick up Kendra for the rest of her Birthday.

Cheers,
Mike

SCUBA Part Deux

Mike and I are now PADI Advanced Open Water divers!!!

As Mike mentioned previously, we had to complete 5 more dives to get our advanced certs. After a day of rest, and by rest I mean a 40 min hike to Shark Bay and 2 hour of snorkeling trying to see... you guessed it... sharks. We actually did see one, a reef shark called a Black Tip Shark. It was probably 3 feet long and looked very sharky. I figured if I was going to see sharks, I'd rather see my first one while snorkelling and having access to a beach and breathable air when I lost my snorkel in fear versus on the bottom of the ocean.


The AOW course started at 7:30am for the next 2 days (this was earlier than we had ever managed to make it into work!), but being the eager beavers that we were, time did not matter. Our first two dives were a Muli-level dive and a Peak Bouyancy Performance dive. The Multi-level was a bit scary because at 20m there was a huge theromcline where the water became really cold and murky... it felt like we were slowing descending into a black abyss. We only stayed there for a few minutes and then went to a better visable level. The second dive perfected our neutral bouyancy and our hand stand ability underwater.

Then came the NIGHT DIVE. Good god that was scary and talk about a comedy of errors. We get on the boat and I put on my wet suit. The zipper is broken, which means that I'm going to get a bad draft of cool water running though me. Mike sort of fixed it, but we knew it was just time before it would unzip again. Then after our lecture about how to work our "torches", what to do when we get lost, and what animals we're going to see underwater, we jump in just as the last sun rays dissapear. Suddenly I hear a hissing sound escaping from my BCD jacket and realize that I have a leak. Mike jumps to my rescue and turns off my tank to resecure all of the hoses, but forgot to turn the air back on (to Mike's fairness, our instructor did ask for me to swim over so he could take a look, so I'm assuming that Mike thought he would turn the valve back on).... just to let you know Mike's pretty defensive about this.... Then we started our free descent into the gloom. It was so surreal only seeing everyone else's torches and outlines of other things like rock, coral and people. With your own torch you could see the odd fish, sea urchine, eel, or sting ray at the bottom of the ocean. We had to make an emergency ascent as we lost 2 of our divers, but then after picking up 2 more diveres separated from their groups, plus our own guys, we went back down. At one point of the dive, we turned off the torches and moved our hands all around us to see sparkles of beautiful light (bioluminescence). As we ascended and swam back to the boat, we looked up at the sky and saw it sparkeling with stars and the moon.

Our final 2 dives were the next day. We did our deep dive at 30 m! To make sure that none of our group had nitrogen narcosis (too much N2 in your body that makes you feel drunk and silly), we had to do some math at the bottom of the ocean. (Didn't they know that we were on vacations?!). Our next dive was a navigation dive where we learned to use compasses. Then the next 20 min we had a free dive. Our instructor left and we were left to explore the coral and make it back to the boat. That was the coolest moment, when Mike and I both new that we had made it as divers!!!

That's pretty much it for now. We're still not sure where or if we are going anywhere. We are considering continuing with a divemaster program, so that we can become instructors and never come home. Just kidding, well sort of!

Kendra & Mike