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Published: March 15th 2008
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Big puffy sea star!
I'm sure it has a name other than big, puffy sea star but that's what it looks like! And by them I mean my underwater world friends! From Chiang Mai we took a flight to Phuket. A representative from our dive company picked us up and delivered us to the dive shop to get our equipment. From there they drove us to the boat which was back north PAST the airport. It would have been much more pleasant if they could have just brought our dive equipment to us! During the drive we had a brief glimpse of Patong Beach and I think we were all happy that we would not be spending much time there. It looked like a tourist trap and a half! They had Starbucks, Subway, you name it. It looked like the perfect place for college age students to get drunk and have a great time. Oh my gosh, I think we are getting old!
We made it to the M/V Parinee around 8 pm and met our new Swedish friends! He is a doctor and she is a nurse; it was a pleasure being on the dive boat with them. The other diver on the boat was a Korean man who was on a vacation from guarding the Korean Embassy in Iraq! He
Amazing color!
We were all happy to find that the reefs were full of animals and seemed to be healthy. liked his job aside from the fact that the Korean Embassy is near the United States Embassy! He said that kind of sucked! I can only imagine. Just after leaving the dock we heard this deafening noise coming from the front of the boat. We peered around the edge to find one of the deckhands lighting fire crackers off the front the boat. We looked at our dive master with questioning faces and she simply responded "It's a tradition"! We were all anxious to get a good nights' sleep and get in the water the next morning. That didn't work out too well. The boat was rocking so much that none of us could sleep. I'm not sure about the others but I just couldn't wait for it be morning!! Getting in the water made it all better though!
We did a total of 10 dives during the following 3 days! Two of those were night dives and that was new for Yuri and I. It was like a totally different world at night. For one thing we saw TONS of sea urchins at night and none during the day. We also got to see some of the fish
A view from above
We were quite happy to get a chance to go on land for 1/2 hour! We hiked up to the top of this rock for a view of the amazingly beautiful blue/green water we were diving in! sleeping. The puffer fish were the cutest! However, our dive master told us that we shouldn't shine our flashlights on them because once they are awake they are not able to fall back asleep! My goal was to find a parrot fish in its mucous "sleeping bag". I have learned, and even taught people, that parrot fish create a mucous bag around them at night to hide their scent from predators. Unfortunately, I was not able to find one and neither was our dive master. Each dive seemed to get progressively better. We were all surprised at how healthy the reefs looked.
Because things were getting progressively better, the last dive site was amazing! We had the option of moving on but we all wanted to stay there. My big hope for the trip was to see a whale shark but it was the wrong time of year so my chances were very small. However, manta rays frequent this one particular island where we were. Yuri and I had the opportunity to see a manta ray in Bora Bora on our honeymoon and it was unbelievable as you can imagine. They are enormous but still manage to look graceful.
Never felt anything like that before!
The sand was SO amazingly soft. I wish our sand felt like that! Yuri likes them so much that he has a tatoo of one on his shoulder and, during one drunken evening, made up a song about them! For the right price I will share it with you. I caught it on video! ANYWAY, we were blessed with yet another giant friend during our very last dive of the trip. About 7 minutes after jumping in the water a zebra shark swam about 20 feet away from us. I saw him first so I was trying to get everyone's attention but they were focused on something else, a manta ray! He was pretty far away so we couldn't see him very well but at least we got to see one! A few minutes later we saw two big octopus hiding in caves and we were just about to go to the surface when he arrived! Another manta ray that was at least 12 feet across swam by us. I mean within 30 feet of us! Then, he turned and came back around us on the other side! THEN, he turned again and swam by one last time. It was unreal!
We had an amazing time on the dive boat but I
Millions of tiny fish..
in front of a big grouper! think we were all looking forward to some stable ground! That night we stayed at a hotel near Patong Beach called the Bamboo Club. Before going to Thailand, everyone was asking me if I was going to get a Thai massage. After our experience in Kerala, I was a bit hesitant but figured that I shouldn't leave the country without getting one. Yuri, on the other hand, was NOT interested! The hotel had a sign offering them so I signed up. Just before the massage was supposed to start, I realized that I wasn't sure where the spa was so I called the front desk to ask. He said "Oh no, there is no spa. She will come to your room!" Of course my dad and Yuri had plenty to say about what kind of massage THAT would be! It was too late to cancel it because she was already on her way. Having the massage in my room was not an option because my dad and Yuri were watching Rambo or something like that so that wouldn't have been very relaxing at all! The only other option was to have it on a lounge chair near the pool. The
pool area was gorgeous and it was a great night so I thought that it actually sounded nice! That is until the mosquitos started eating me alive. A "live" demonstration of the massage would be better but I will do my best to explain it. It went a little something like this: rub the shoulders, SLAP, rub the arms, SLAP, rub the legs, SLAP!! The poor girl was not only giving me a massage but she was killing the mosquitos as they landed on me. Needless to say, it was not a very relaxing massage!
Our last adventure in Thailand, and of the entire trip, was to the Kao Sok National Park. On the first day there we kayaked down a river and saw several snakes curled up in the trees! However, because we were in the rainforest, it started to rain really hard so our trip was cut short. On the second day we went to a man-made lake in the park and got to go swimming. Before we left someone told us that it was not a good idea to swim in fresh water on our trip. We couldn't remember if that was in India, Thailand or
both but we figured that we were going home in a few days so if we "caught" something the doctors here could fix us up! The lake was huge and used to be forest! They built a damn and let the river fill it up! On the last day we went on a hike through the rainforest and even though it wasn't difficult, we were drenched in sweat! It was just amazing how humid it was on the forest floor below the roof of a canopy! On the way to the park we passed several trucks that smelled terrible. Our guide explained that it was from the rubber. Although rubber trees are not native to Thailand, they are everywhere now! On our hike we got to see how they actually extract the rubber from the tree! It smelled there too!
That afternoon Yuri and I were delivered to our last hotel and my dad had to go straight to the Phuket Airport to begin his long journey home. We spoiled ourselves for our last evening and stayed at this amazing resort that was fairly secluded from any hussle and bussle! However, we had some gifts to buy so we
did end up taking a taxi to the nearest town for some goodies!
We spent our last few hours in the morning at the beautiful beach. The sand was so fine and soft. Although I'm sure terribly illegal, I brought some home in a zip lock baggie (: At around 1 pm that day we started our long trek back to Los Angeles. We flew from Phuket to Bangkok, Bangkok to Hong Kong and then home. A mixture of feelings were running through us but mostly excitement to see family, friends and dogs!
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