Please open this link to view a slideshow of some of the fish we have seen while diving.
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Koh Tao - Happy Sonkran
Friday 13th April in Thailand is the start on the Sonkran festival - Thai New Near. We're not entirely sure about the origin of the festival but basically everybody goes out in the streets armed with water pistols, buckets, barrels - basically anything that holds water - and drenches each other all day. In most of Thailand it lasts for 3 days but in Koh Tao it is basically just a one day thing.
We went out the night before and lost our bucket virginity (in Thailand they sell cocktails in small buckets so you get very drunk very quickly and everything is blurry after about 10pm!!). At midnight the water started getting thrown. We were at the Lotus bar on the beach in Koh Tao - our favourite bar (cheap G&Ts) - and people were just standing in the sea and throwing buckets of water over us. We staggered home at 3am (about 6 hours past our bedtime) and woke up with blinding hangovers!!!
We made it into Sairee village for brunch at 1.30pm and got soaked as predicted. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the weather is 30-35 degrees every day, Sonkran was cloudy and miserable and it periodically pissed down with rain so we were cold and wet and hungover and frankly couldn't face partying all day and night so slunk off home to get dry and have a hot shower. It is great to see all the locals - young and old - out to get drenched and to drench others!!
We ventured out again in the evening and met up with some friends but all we managed to do was watch a movie and slope off home at 10.15pm. We did get to say goodbye to our dear American friend, Nathan, who we sorely miss already, but basically the whole day was a bit of a washout (pun probably intended!).
Needless to say because of the wet and cold many people in Koh Tao have been coughing and snivelling the past week or so and I (El) have gone down with mild tonsillitis which is a bugger in 30 degree heat with broken AC.
Still, we're having a great time. We can't believe we've been here for over 4 weeks now, and expect to be here for another 6 or so. Time flies by when you get into a routine, but we're meeting lots of lovely people and getting lots of diving in so can't really complain.
Kieran nursing a hangover
Friday, April 06, 2007
The Kids of Ko Tao
So although I am starting to get into my diving (Eleanor here) I am still keeping my fingers in a few other pots. I'm trying to go to as many yoga classes as I can (about 3 per week at the moment) and I have certainly re-gained a lot of my flexibility. Mira, my flat-tummied yoga teacher, is really fun to work with and is really encouraging (although she is no Veronica!).
I am also working at The Secret Garden, a community conservation project-cum-bar that organises beach cleaning 3 times per week. It takes 4 people about 1 1/2 hours to get about half-way along the beach and it is quite depressing how many plastic bags, bottle tops, wrappers and other random items are discarded or find their way onto the beach (I found a pair of lacy knickers the first time - luckily I was wearing my rubber gloves!).
The guy who runs Secret Garden, Bee: an Italian, tattooed dude, is also running a summer camp project for the primary school children on Koh Tao. These kids actually only go to school for 4 months of the year and so Bee is running a project for 6 weeks during their summer holidays consisting of a 2-hour English camp during the weekdays, plus one day on the weekend of games and sports - all conducted in English. If they can get a good grasp of English it gives them a much better chance to do well in life as they can work in the tourist industry that Thailand is almost wholly dependent upon.
I did two days this week and was basically the English teacher for a small group of 9 kids between the ages of 6 and 12 who all spoke OK English. To start with we went though alphabet, numbers, colours, etc. and although their vocabulary is quite good, their grammar and sentence-building and understanding is poor. This means that just doing basic vocab is a bit boring, they don't really understand the more complex concepts. For example, they know the words for plastic bottles, glass bottles and cans, but they don't understand when I talk about recycling.
As a total novice teacher with zero training and literally no idea about how to structure the class it is a very exhausting 2 hours. The kids have attention spans of about 2 minutes and keeping them interested and learning is really hard. Even though they are keen and sweet and well-behaved: it makes you realise how much discipline is instilled in us in school these days.
In any case it is immensely rewarding and I hope to be able to work with them for one day a week or so and do my bit.
I am also working at The Secret Garden, a community conservation project-cum-bar that organises beach cleaning 3 times per week. It takes 4 people about 1 1/2 hours to get about half-way along the beach and it is quite depressing how many plastic bags, bottle tops, wrappers and other random items are discarded or find their way onto the beach (I found a pair of lacy knickers the first time - luckily I was wearing my rubber gloves!).
The guy who runs Secret Garden, Bee: an Italian, tattooed dude, is also running a summer camp project for the primary school children on Koh Tao. These kids actually only go to school for 4 months of the year and so Bee is running a project for 6 weeks during their summer holidays consisting of a 2-hour English camp during the weekdays, plus one day on the weekend of games and sports - all conducted in English. If they can get a good grasp of English it gives them a much better chance to do well in life as they can work in the tourist industry that Thailand is almost wholly dependent upon.
I did two days this week and was basically the English teacher for a small group of 9 kids between the ages of 6 and 12 who all spoke OK English. To start with we went though alphabet, numbers, colours, etc. and although their vocabulary is quite good, their grammar and sentence-building and understanding is poor. This means that just doing basic vocab is a bit boring, they don't really understand the more complex concepts. For example, they know the words for plastic bottles, glass bottles and cans, but they don't understand when I talk about recycling.
As a total novice teacher with zero training and literally no idea about how to structure the class it is a very exhausting 2 hours. The kids have attention spans of about 2 minutes and keeping them interested and learning is really hard. Even though they are keen and sweet and well-behaved: it makes you realise how much discipline is instilled in us in school these days.
In any case it is immensely rewarding and I hope to be able to work with them for one day a week or so and do my bit.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Koh Tao - Swiming with Whales
OMG!!!!!!!!!
I came to Koh Tao knowing that this is the season for the famous whale sharks, sharks that feed like whales, largest fish in the ocean, but blocked it from my mind so that I would not get disappointed if I did not see them.
Pauliina hassled me yesterday to sign up for this morning's dive, I was tired after the physics exam, so I felt I deserved a lie in, so I owe her a massive beer tonight, as I swam with a little whale shark 5 times today!!
We went to Chumphon Pinnacle about 11km from Koh Tao. The first dive was suppose to be working on my mapping a dive site for my DMT, but Jason and I kind of got lost and we decided to go back to the boat. We had just seen a really big fish getting its morning clean from the cleaner fish and were quite excited at how big it was. It was then that I saw something behind him so I then signed to him that he had to look over his shoulder. A massive whale was swimming right towards us ARRRGGGH!!! (I said in a stream of bubbles). I was low on air at this point but no way was I going to let a little thing like safety and training get in the way of this, we swam with it for a while (while I kept an eye on my pressure gauge) in the end after 10 minutes it swam too deep for us to see so I signed to Jason that we had to go up. I inflated my safety sausage (a orange colored device that let people know that you are coming up) and after inflating it realized that no air was coming out of my regulator..... very calmly (I am proud to say) I signed to Jason that I was out of air and that I needed to take his second regulator, thank god for good training lol, all went well, I even managed to inflate my BCD manually. (Sorry it if this means nothing to most people).
I felt like a bit of a dick failing at safety on my first time leading a dive but hell you don't see a whale shark every day.
We then got on the boat shouting with every one else. "That was fantastic man, way cool, etc", when the boat next to us started pointing to the sea and all the people on that boat jumped in with snorkels, so of course we all did as well, The whale shark was so curious that he/she came back to the boat and let 20 odd people swim on the surface with him/her. It was the most amazing experience of my life: just fantastic. The shark was very calm and graceful and the eyes looked very intelligent. My hand accidentally brushed along its body and it had very hard muscle and rough skin like a snake or elephant.
This is a picture of a whale shark but not taken by us
We had to wait for an hour before we could go diving again, all of us thinking that it would have gone by then, at that point all the other boats had left and we were alone, of course people had been phoning and radioing shore so lots of boat were on their way.
Jason and I kitted up and we threw ourselves back into the water, and for 30 minutes we had no sign of the fish, but again it appeared and swam with all the divers for a while, just before I had to go up (I did not want to run our of air this time). The shark swam straight towards me and opened it mouth to feed... no not me, its a squid eater, but still it was amazing to look right into its mouth.
We all went to celebrate at the coffee boat and I met El's yoga, an ex-dive instructor that had over 3000 dives in Koh Toa and had never seen a whale shark, either she is incredibly unlucky or I am fantastically massively lucky myself.
Over the moon so I am sorry if this entry is a little rushed, or maybe it is just the large Chang I just had :-)
Some guys were down there with video and cameras, from other dive schools, so we are going to go on a massive hunt later and try to get some footage, it would be so cool to upload that to youtube! watch this space.
I came to Koh Tao knowing that this is the season for the famous whale sharks, sharks that feed like whales, largest fish in the ocean, but blocked it from my mind so that I would not get disappointed if I did not see them.
Pauliina hassled me yesterday to sign up for this morning's dive, I was tired after the physics exam, so I felt I deserved a lie in, so I owe her a massive beer tonight, as I swam with a little whale shark 5 times today!!
We went to Chumphon Pinnacle about 11km from Koh Tao. The first dive was suppose to be working on my mapping a dive site for my DMT, but Jason and I kind of got lost and we decided to go back to the boat. We had just seen a really big fish getting its morning clean from the cleaner fish and were quite excited at how big it was. It was then that I saw something behind him so I then signed to him that he had to look over his shoulder. A massive whale was swimming right towards us ARRRGGGH!!! (I said in a stream of bubbles). I was low on air at this point but no way was I going to let a little thing like safety and training get in the way of this, we swam with it for a while (while I kept an eye on my pressure gauge) in the end after 10 minutes it swam too deep for us to see so I signed to Jason that we had to go up. I inflated my safety sausage (a orange colored device that let people know that you are coming up) and after inflating it realized that no air was coming out of my regulator..... very calmly (I am proud to say) I signed to Jason that I was out of air and that I needed to take his second regulator, thank god for good training lol, all went well, I even managed to inflate my BCD manually. (Sorry it if this means nothing to most people).
I felt like a bit of a dick failing at safety on my first time leading a dive but hell you don't see a whale shark every day.
We then got on the boat shouting with every one else. "That was fantastic man, way cool, etc", when the boat next to us started pointing to the sea and all the people on that boat jumped in with snorkels, so of course we all did as well, The whale shark was so curious that he/she came back to the boat and let 20 odd people swim on the surface with him/her. It was the most amazing experience of my life: just fantastic. The shark was very calm and graceful and the eyes looked very intelligent. My hand accidentally brushed along its body and it had very hard muscle and rough skin like a snake or elephant.
This is a picture of a whale shark but not taken by us
We had to wait for an hour before we could go diving again, all of us thinking that it would have gone by then, at that point all the other boats had left and we were alone, of course people had been phoning and radioing shore so lots of boat were on their way.
Jason and I kitted up and we threw ourselves back into the water, and for 30 minutes we had no sign of the fish, but again it appeared and swam with all the divers for a while, just before I had to go up (I did not want to run our of air this time). The shark swam straight towards me and opened it mouth to feed... no not me, its a squid eater, but still it was amazing to look right into its mouth.
We all went to celebrate at the coffee boat and I met El's yoga, an ex-dive instructor that had over 3000 dives in Koh Toa and had never seen a whale shark, either she is incredibly unlucky or I am fantastically massively lucky myself.
Over the moon so I am sorry if this entry is a little rushed, or maybe it is just the large Chang I just had :-)
Some guys were down there with video and cameras, from other dive schools, so we are going to go on a massive hunt later and try to get some footage, it would be so cool to upload that to youtube! watch this space.
Koh Tao - Eleanor is now much more advance
Second week on Koh Tao and father time is doing that funny thing after staying a couple of weeks in one place and is starting to race by, we have scoped out all the best places to eat: coffee boat for yummy crispy beef and green curry and drink, Lotus bar for happy hour 4-7pm, 50 baht for a G&T and the sunset is free, and the best route to and from work (Scuba Junction), up a jungle path beside Tommy's apartment. El does not believe me about the rattlesnakes in the grass, but I am sure that I saw them.
Eleanor finished off her advance SSI course last night with a "night" dive, I was very proud of her and we went out with the Junction gang and treated her to a veg lasagna as a treat. She decided, in the end, to scrap the teaching and yoga and just do diving instead.
The night dives here are a bit crap as a million divers plus loads of boat lights not to mention a near full moon, was not conducive to the night part of the dive, more like slightly muggy.
The advanced course means that she can now dive to 30 Meters and can proceed to the Rescue Diver course, where she gets to kiss a dolly and save people and carry them up the ladder into the boat. I think she would prefer not to carry me up, but so far has been too polite to say anything, most unlike her I thought!
We have moved upstairs within the same apartment block and now have a view and a sofa and hammock, the next morning after we moved I took a day off and did not move from the hammock apart from calls of nature or to fill up on coka cola.
Monkey is monkey does (fantasic wooden statue outside a bar)
I have been working hard on my divemaster course and have finished three exams so far. Today was the hardest and most interesting, which was the physics exam.
Example Question:
If you dropped an outboard motor weighing 120Kg to the bottom of the ocean, remembering that 1 litre of sea water weights 1.03kg (thank you Napoleon for inventing the metric system otherwise it would be in pounds and cubic feet, a bit harder) and the engine displaces 50 litres of water, calculate the amount of water you would need to displace using an air bag to make the engine positively buoyant (float).
One of the student could not "get it" and thus we had to sit there most of the afternoon until they did, so I missed the afternoon diving which was a shame as I was looking forward to diving in a new site.
We spent yesterday in the reef off the main Sairee beach, practicing demonstrating the 20 open water course tasks that we will have to show student divers. It was really funny being on the other side of the fence as it was, by learning to do what an instructor has been showing you in all your other courses. Most of it is almost like learning sign language as you have to be able to communicate under water with the students "You watch me, I am going to remove and replace scuba mask" for example.
Quite a laugh when someone gets it wrong (a South African called Jason) by removing his scuba unit the wrong way and nearly ripping the second stage (mouth piece that you breath from) from his mouth. Amazing how much information you can get from someones body language, in that case I was behind him with my shoulders going up and down, quite fast :-).
We are all working up to be able to lead a group in a dive while pointing out fish of interest, navigating back to the boat so they do not get lost, and keeping them alive if they are having problems. The group is a really nice bunch of people and the pace is nice and relaxed.
We are still loving the island and I am over the moon that Eleanor is doing the diving as it gives us a really nice common interest, but I am a bit annoyed that she is better than me at it, the first time she dived in Gillis was like she had been diving for ever, but then no one said that courting wonder women was ever going to be easy!!
Eleanor finished off her advance SSI course last night with a "night" dive, I was very proud of her and we went out with the Junction gang and treated her to a veg lasagna as a treat. She decided, in the end, to scrap the teaching and yoga and just do diving instead.
The night dives here are a bit crap as a million divers plus loads of boat lights not to mention a near full moon, was not conducive to the night part of the dive, more like slightly muggy.
The advanced course means that she can now dive to 30 Meters and can proceed to the Rescue Diver course, where she gets to kiss a dolly and save people and carry them up the ladder into the boat. I think she would prefer not to carry me up, but so far has been too polite to say anything, most unlike her I thought!
We have moved upstairs within the same apartment block and now have a view and a sofa and hammock, the next morning after we moved I took a day off and did not move from the hammock apart from calls of nature or to fill up on coka cola.
Monkey is monkey does (fantasic wooden statue outside a bar)
I have been working hard on my divemaster course and have finished three exams so far. Today was the hardest and most interesting, which was the physics exam.
Example Question:
If you dropped an outboard motor weighing 120Kg to the bottom of the ocean, remembering that 1 litre of sea water weights 1.03kg (thank you Napoleon for inventing the metric system otherwise it would be in pounds and cubic feet, a bit harder) and the engine displaces 50 litres of water, calculate the amount of water you would need to displace using an air bag to make the engine positively buoyant (float).
One of the student could not "get it" and thus we had to sit there most of the afternoon until they did, so I missed the afternoon diving which was a shame as I was looking forward to diving in a new site.
We spent yesterday in the reef off the main Sairee beach, practicing demonstrating the 20 open water course tasks that we will have to show student divers. It was really funny being on the other side of the fence as it was, by learning to do what an instructor has been showing you in all your other courses. Most of it is almost like learning sign language as you have to be able to communicate under water with the students "You watch me, I am going to remove and replace scuba mask" for example.
Quite a laugh when someone gets it wrong (a South African called Jason) by removing his scuba unit the wrong way and nearly ripping the second stage (mouth piece that you breath from) from his mouth. Amazing how much information you can get from someones body language, in that case I was behind him with my shoulders going up and down, quite fast :-).
We are all working up to be able to lead a group in a dive while pointing out fish of interest, navigating back to the boat so they do not get lost, and keeping them alive if they are having problems. The group is a really nice bunch of people and the pace is nice and relaxed.
We are still loving the island and I am over the moon that Eleanor is doing the diving as it gives us a really nice common interest, but I am a bit annoyed that she is better than me at it, the first time she dived in Gillis was like she had been diving for ever, but then no one said that courting wonder women was ever going to be easy!!
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