Scuba Diving and Sailing

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We have had a really hard time keeping up with this blog. It takes at least an hour to sit down and write an entry and to top it off the internet speeds are from the stone ages! Plus we have been super busy during our adventures in Thailand.

Last time we wrote we were just starting our Padi course in Koh Lanta.
Everything went great and we are all now Padi certified divers for open water. Because the diving season is Koh Lanta is now slower we ended up on the GO DIVE boat for all our trips even though we booked through S-Cool Dive. I was told it was the only dive boat with the days food being prepared right on the boat. The food was prepared in the smallest kitchen I have ever seen and it was excellent! Every day we were picked up around 7am. We were fed breakfast and lunch on the boat. We made a total of 2 dives each day. Marcin and I booked an extra day of diving for a total of 6 dives each.

All 6 dives were amazing. We saw many schools of fish, corals, starfish, groupers, many species of clown fish, many species of shrimp, the black and yellow fish and all the usuals. Some of the more exciting things we were able to see on our dives were a couple of octopus mating and changing color, a total of 4 leapord sharks, a giant turtle, manta rays, lobster, trigger fish, lion fish, puffer fish and porcupine fish. One porcupine fish was so friendly he hung out with us for a good part of a dive. At first I was nervous because we were told if we give them a fright they will raise their spines and possibly have a heart attack. After swimming inbetween our legs and giving us many one eyed winks we soon felt a little more at comfortable.

It rained hard 2 out of 3 of the days coming back to Koh Lanta on the dive boat making the 1.5 hour trip seem like 3 hours.
The rain brought out many frogs around the hotel we stayed at. They were hopping around the patio tables at the restraunt eating as many flying ants as they could stomache.

While we were in Koh Lanta I needed to rinse my feet from sand off of our bungalo patio, I grabbed a bottle of water and headed outside to be greated with a bunch of thais yelling at me to get back in my bungalo. There was a HUGE snake just outside by our patio. One of the thai hand a bamboo stick and was wacking the snake on the head while the other thais were we shouting things and back up. Pretty soon things were taken care of and I was able to go out on the patio. Another thai came along with a rake and hauled the snake away on the forks. It was at least 1.5 metres long.

After our stay on Koh Lanta we headed back to Patong for a couple nights for our sail boat cruise with Captain Mark.

Captain Mark was wonderfull. Unfortunetly the winds were not too strong that day so most of our sailing was done by motor, lol. We were joined by a couple from Africa and a family of 3 from England. What an amazing day, Captain Mark's exclusive tour is not to be missed if you ever plan to stay around Phuket. First of all Captain Mark fed us wonderfull food non-stop, he had many great stories to tell of thai - english miscommunications with his wife and workers and funny tourist stories as well. He took us on exclusice tours through caves when others were not there. We first explored the bat cave. Of course it was completely dark, we were given flashlights to see the bats and there were so many! We explored a couple of caves with lagoons at the end which were amazing and the icecream cave where the walls sparkled. We had a picnic on a beach and did some swimming off the side of the sail boat.

We left to Chang Mai the next day.

We have had so many adventures in Chang Mai, but it has already been an hour and I have to run. I will write all about it within the next 24 hours or so, I promise 😉

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