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Hi everyone!
Well, we're going to sleep now after two days of SCUBA training here in Koh Tao! It's amazing...yes, I need to find some new superlative words...now more than ever, cause this place is monolithically incredibly awesome!!
...you will see from the pics!
Sorry we've been away from email for a few days. Here's what we did!
We left you at Koh Phi Phi. Here are some more pics of our time there. We walked to the beach on our last day there, and it was at low tide. Funny what ya miss when ya leave your hotel room at 4pm! Weeee!! We hung around the beach until tide was back in.
We really could see the results of the tsunami. There is much construction gong on everywhere, and an obvious lack of old permanent structures along the beaches. No shortage of activity though, or people. Things were jumping day and night, and the businesses are thriving...and building!
We met up with our British mates and our Danish pals one more time. Many funny catching-up stories from their adventures the night before...and a humorous lack of crazy plans for that night for all of
them. Our Danes stopped at a bar near our hotel to watch a movie, and we did the same. Back to our hotel for an episode of "Dexter" and early sleep. We were leaving at 7am.
Next day as we left, a woman was making the daily "flower garden" in a barrel near the front desk...pictured below. This day was pretty much taken up by travel (2 hr boat, 5 hr bus, 2 hr boat, 1 hr taxi) so we watched more "Dexter" and took in much scenery along the way too. We had a wonnnnnderful dip in the ocean upon arrival at Koh Samui at sunset, some dinner at our hotel's beach/pool side bbq (grrreat steaks!), and crashed. Ahhhhh...
Next day's 7am pickup happened after Nina took a morning dip. I took some breathtaking pictures...a few included here! Gulp!!
We traveled again, this time to Koh Tao, arriving at 10am. We're to be here for 5 days, four of which is for our PADI SCUBA Open Diving course! We were picked up under the name "Teffrey", different from Chaing Mai's "Jepp" and Phucket's "Feffrey". Nina just reminded me to share my other two nicknames from our
recent travels. The British blokes from Phi Phi called me "Big Fellah" and now our scuba instructor has taken to calling me "Tiny". I'm honoured, as my 6 foot 6 inch dad's nickname was "Moose"...I'm continuing the tradition dad!! Yayyyyy!!
We were loaded into another truck and taken to "Crystal Dive Resort". During check-in, they let us know that they JUST won "PADI Best Instruction in the World" for a resort, and were runner up for two others..."Best Dive Location in the World" and "Best Nickname Giving Resort". Nina's nickname has yet to be finalized. They're deciding between "Smartie", "Smiley", and "Jeff's Brain".
We have finished our two days of course work and take our final written exam tomorrow morning! We also spent 4 hours in the pool today with equipment doing tons of underwater skill drills and safety learninging. We're READY! Many of the last few pics from this blog are from our sunset tonight, spent firstly with our instructors and a few other divers, beer, and deck lounging, watching the sunset and getting exciting advice on what's to come for us tomorrow, and the next day! We'll go for two open water dives tomorrow afternoon! They
told us about so many fish and fun games to play with them while diving! Then we do two more dives the next day, and then we're certifiable...er...certified! There will be a videographer at our last dive that day, and we can get together in the bar and watch the video!
After tonight's discussions though, we think we'll do a night dive that night too! Aaaaaand then maybe two more dives the last morning cause we can be done diving by noon, and we don't leave for Koh Samui until 3pm. Those dives could extend our certification to being able to go deeper than our "Open Water" certification allowance of 18 meters...all the way to 30 meters! Almost 100 feet deeeeeeeep! There's tons more to see, so they say...
We are so excited about tomorrow! We'll give you a full report!! You might notice in the last few pics that I shaved. This is being done again because I wanted Nina's Grandma to enjoy my appearance if she picks us up at the LA airport on the 10th. I didn't want to have a tan line so I thought it best if I shaved now so as to-------yeah,
ok, sooooo the water kept coming into my scuba mask because of my whiskers, so it was shaving or using vaseline all over my mustache. I chose, ummm...I forget.
After our hang on the beach, we wandered through town, and got to the restaurant our instructor Claire suggested to us. It was called "Whitening" and it provided us with the best Tom Kah Gay soup we've had here in Thailand! We're gonna try to bring some home! The Soup, 4 plates of food, brownie sundae, beers, and a big tip came to about $30!
The place was so beautiful...everything was white. Tables, chairs, candles, and much white silk surrounding us. We ate 10 feet from the shore, and a pier jutted out in front of us with a few dozen beautiful white lanterns hanging, creating a fantastic romantic setting.
Time to bid adieu so Nina can wield her brain for both of us in tomorrow's exam! Wish her luck...for both of us!
Love,
Jeff (and Nina)
PS- it's now the next morning and we finally got internet. We just passed our tests and will be heading out in 45 minutes!!! YAY!
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CAMom
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You've surfaced!!
Good to hear from you again! Yea for blogs! Nina, I've sent you e-mails but you aren't receiving them. Just sent one from g-mail. BEAUTIFUL photographs!