Under the Sea at Phi Phi!

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So the rough life i lead continues in a famous little spot called Koh Phi Phi. It is the small island that the movie "The Beach" was filmed at. It is a pretty cool vibe. The island has no motorized vehicles...no tuks tuks, no scooters, no cars...nothing. A nice change. We landed a decent room at a good price considering that everything on the island is almost double the cost of the mainland. When i say a good room...it is a small room with no air con, just fan...no hot water but it isn't really needed because it is so hot...and this is better than the last place because i actually get a bed not a mat thrown on the tile floor. So please take "good room" with a grain of salt. Oh well, for 200 baht per person it is not bad. That's about $6-$7 a night.
This place is basically a haven for tourist looking to cut loose and others looking to scuba dive. I fall into both of those groups so i liked it. Jeff and I decided to take the open water coarse here because you pay about $360 and you get to dive at extremely nice dive sites while learning. Where as at home, you will pay over $500 to dive in a pool at Sport Chalet. The open water coarse is a 3 day adventure that gives the successful student a lifetime PADI certification. Meaning, i can dive for a lot cheaper and go a lot deeper than your average Joe. We had homework and tests as well as having to perform our newly acquired skills underwater. We had to do things that we might encounter along the way like, losing your mask and getting it back on...losing your air an getting to your buddy or the surface safely. We had to do a bunch of buoyancy control skills like hovering underwater without kicking or swimming..just using your lungs to keep you level. It was a lot of fun and we are lucky to have picked a great place to learn. Our instructor James was a cool Englishman wish a ton of dive experience. He was really helpful and we were pretty lucky to have him. On the first day of our open water dives we had 2 dives. First a few skill tests then fun. During the fun we encountered a Leopard Shark that really wasn't bothered by us being there. He just cruised by us looking intimidating as all hell. Underwater you see a million different forms of life and some very dangerous but non as intimidating as a shark. The way they move, the way the look it is amazing. On the second dive of the first day again, some skills, a swim test...then more fun.

So there we were just cruising along at about 15 meters checking out some reef and some cute little Nemo's (clown fish)..when James turn up to see a huge school of much large fish swim over head...he pointed in there direction and then we all saw something even more massive above them...a whale shark! as we looked up into the sunlight we could see the HUGE silhouette of a whale shark swimming over us. It was amazing! James immediately starts banging a metal clip on his tank to alert the other divers that the big one is here. This is what everybody wants to see but some never do. We quickly swam after the Whale Shark and followed it for a bit until it turned back around and swam directly at us! Jeff and i were side by side watching the massive being...about 14 feet long...swim right by us. It was about 5 feet away which is enough to see it in great detail. It then swam, off faster than we could keep up so we said our goodbyes. Incredible! I guess as a kid you never realize the things you will later be able to experience but for some reason this one stood out to me. I remember being young and my dad showing me a newspaper article about a skin diver that could hold his breath for almost 3 min and was diving next to a whale shark. At the time i didn't even know what a whale shark was...is it a whale or a shark? I remember being amazed by the size of it and how it dwarfed the swimmer in the picture. Now, probably close to 20 years later...i am that swimmer. I am the one next to the whale shark. Don't ask me how or why i am here and able to experience all these unbelievable things because i couldn't tell you myself. But i am...and i appreciate it. Dream life, i tell you, dream life. Some people dive their whole life and never see a whale shark. We met a photographer that had well over 1,000 dive at Phi Phi and still hasn't seen one. We were the only three on the boat to see it but it was later spotted at another island. Unbelievable

After the amazing day of diving we started it all again at 7 am the next day. We passed our written test and our open water skills and were now officially Scuba divers. SICK! We had to go out on the town to celebrate our successful adventure so of coarse we helped our selves to buckets! We hadnt really done much up till now other than dive everyday. We had to get up early and make time for homework in the evenings after the dives so we didn't have much of a social life. One night i went out solo just to get a beer and a break from the books. I walked in to a mess called the Reggae Bar. This is a place where they have a Muay Thai ring in the middle of the bar. Friends or strangers can fight each other in front of everybody. It gets pretty messy. i watched a few guys dazed and confused after a fight...one of which was on our boat the next day wit a black eye. HA! idiot! I stuck around long enough to watch one of the coolest fights of the night. One GIANT English guy and another good size Brazilian go toe to toe. These are not skilled fighters...they are random drunks that don't know each other and are ready to show off in front of a packed bar. Every mans dream...win a bar fight in front of everybody...every mans nightmare...being on the losing end of that fight. The fight started of just how i pictured...the chiseled Brazilian dancing and moving like a pro and the Englishman built like a linebacker using his brute force to overpower the show off Brazilian. After the 1st round the Englishman's friends were all at the bar enjoying his performance but all failed to realize that he needed somebody to give him water. He cant open a bottle too well with gloves on. Some how i ended up being the closest one to this guy so i was now his new corner man. I thought to myself "this guy is massive and is going to hurt somebody, so i might as well get on his good side before he does." I grabbed the water and poured it over his head like they do on TV. "Get stuck it! Don't let him pull this cute sh*t! You can over power him every time! don't worry about his kicks just use your hands and keep him close where you can throw punches." Holy sh*t! did i just say that?! i am really acting like his coach and he is eating it up! HAHA! next round he did exactly what i told him and he pounced on the guy! It was perfect! Then round 3 came...it is funny how your mind changes when you get tired...you don't think clearly. The fight started to get pretty scrappy and was taking a turn for the worst when the Englishman was thrown to the mat by a head lock. I could tell he wasn't happy about it. The crowed raged as Goliath fell...i thought, "uh oh...this is int good." He popped back up ready to kill...he put his glove out as to tape gloves with his opponent to acknowledge the mistake. As soon as the Brazilian dropped his guard and went to touch gloves the English blasted him with a huge right cross to the chin! no no no...you don't do that! You just don't do that! The crowed became enraged and i found myself standing in his corner. This is the last place i wanna be right now. A full fledged fight broke out... i even watched the ref land a good blow to a spectator! this was insane! I had to get out of there before somebody associated me with the Englishman. I slipped quietly out the door and made it home. HAHAHA! normally this might have had a different outcome if it was actually a friend but i am not going to stand in for and idiot that throws a cheap shot that is a complete stranger. No sir. plus this guy was big enough to handle himself...me, not so much. peace out!

The End...off to Phuket!

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Photos

"The Beach" beach
everybody but Leo decided to show up that day.