NOTE: If you are following this blog to track Chris Marsh, Jeff Carter, or Matt Martin, then don't bother reading any posts until: 7-10 Bangkok to Luang Prabang. I will be posting several of their pictures on a seperate post to precede the 7-10 post. We've split up for a week at this point. In short, they went to Bangkok, then North to Chiang Mai, then into Luang Prabang in Laos. There were some wild nights out and also 'sick as a dog' days in, which I will cover later on.
I signed up for a 2-dive refresher through Aquanats SCUBA dive shop, which came highly recommended in my Frommer's book and their SCUBA gear looked in good shape. $90 got me 2 dives with a Frenchmen named Eddie. It's been over a year since I've been diving, so a refresher was a good idea. We took a big dive boat that was a co-op between several other companies. Eddie has dove at the marine reserve islands of Koh Bida Nok and Koh Bida Nai hundreds of times, so he knows all the best spots to see stuff and it will be a very comprehensive day of refreshing my skills. Eddie was strict and details on what he wanted me to demonstrate and work on. I'm glad I paid my undivided attention during the topside briefing because there were over 7 different sets of skills I had to demonstrate, such as removing and re-covering a lost mask, buoyancy control, and swimming at 60' with all the air out of your lungs for 30 seconds while dragging Eddie's dead weight. Practicing buoyancy is actually pretty entertaining and relaxing. We had calm water and thousands of different fish schooling around and above us. We got into the lotus position (sitting legs crossed and hands down, like Buddha) and practiced controling our buoyancy simply through the practice of controlled inhaling and exhaling. Simply by controling the volume of air in our lungs, we floated motionless 1 meter off the sandy bottom, fish swimming all around us.
On both dives, we came nearly face-to-face with a leopard shark. They are incredibly graceful and beautiful with tan skin and leopard spots. Eddie went crazy with his underwater camera as one glided right in front of us, just 1 meter past his face. We also followed a giant morey eel as it snaked in and out of the coral, hunting for dinner. When it went out of sight into the crevices of the coral, we simply tracked it by the trail of small fish shooting up out of the cracks, trying to escape. After a total of 2 hours on the bottom, I felt like my skills were sharp again and I was so lucky to be diving at such a beautiful location. Black tip and whale sharks are sometimes seen here, but were weren't lucky enough to have them visit when we where there.
Once off the dive boat, I just had 1 hour to get my things at the guesthouse, book transit to Koh Tao, and make it back to the pier on the last ferry to Krabi. I barely made it, and it was a nice ride as I layed out on the bow of the boat, reading and listening to music amongst a bib group of sunbathing ladies. The bus from Krabi to Surat Thani was showing a counterfeited version of a new movie out (The Hangover) was a nice treat to break up the bouncy 5hr ride. I don't think there's a real copy of a CD or DVD in the whole country. From Surat Thani, we had a 2 hour wait for the 9pm ferry boat departure. The "night boats", as they are called, are not the 90min shuttles you take during the day. They are delapidated cargo boats with an enlosed upper dormitory area with 2 rows of beds, 60 in all, that are barely the width of my shoulders. I have no doubt the mattresses have been in use for a few years and never cleaned once. I wandered outside for a while at the nearby night market, snacking on some mangosteen and ice tea. I watched our "night boat", which also operates as a cargo ship, slowly sink lower into the water as a few hundred bags of all sort of provision was tossed into the hold. The ferry had been overbooked and I got one of the last beds. Several people spent that night on wood floors in 90*F heat. We departed at 11pm and began our slow journey to Koh Tao. The motor was merely idling the entire way there! Luckily I was dead tired and slept 8 of the 9 hours in those miserable conditions. In all, 17hrs and $36 got me from Koh Phi Phi on the West Coast to Koh Tao on the East Coast, so I didn't dwell on it!
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