Bamboo Island Rescue and Last Morning on Phi Phi

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I rescued a girl from the sea today, and saved her life I would venture to say. I normally lead off from where I left off the day before, but I feel this story is worthy of leading this post.

A bit of back story before I get started; just incase you don’t know me all that well. I swim like a goddamn maniac. Ever since I was young I spent my life in the pool, I did swim team, and life guarded from the age of sixteen to twenty two. (Sub-back story: Not to sound like I am stereotyping, but I have found, in my experience on this trip, that the Japanese and Chinese are not very strong swimmers.)

We arrive at Bamboo Island and I am walking to the marked off snorkel area with my fins, mask, snorkel, and camera. As I am approaching the swimming area I hear someone cough and try to yell something. I look over to see a raven haired girl thrashing in the water, she is coughing and trying to yell something that I could not make out. There was a man close to her, about ten-fifteen feet, who I assume is her husband. I drop everything I have and run towards the water covering about twenty meters and passing people who are standing on the shore gasping and pointing now. I dive into the water and swim to her, past the man who can obviously not swim very well either. As I am swimming to her she goes underwater. I dive down when I reach the place that she had been. I swim down and grab her arm and pull her to the surface where I secure my arm around her chest and start swimming towards shore. People have started to gather on the beach at this point, watching the spectacle. I carry her to the shore once the water is shallow enough, thankfully she started coughing by this point and later to throw up sea water. I called out to the closest speed boat for “nam dom!” which means bottled water. The man I had swam past came up to me crying and bowing to me. The crowd started to cheer and clap and I got many pats on the back. I sat with them for a minute to make sure that she was okay. She sat there and cried for a bit and looked very frightened by the whole ordeal. She told me thank you and her, I assume, husband sat and hugged on the sand. I asked them if they were okay, they nodded yes and said thank you many times. I walked over, collected my things and went back into the water.

Now this has become the best experience of my trip. They only thing that went wrong at all was losing a contact when diving under to pull the girl up. Mai pen rai… This means no problem. I am glad she is okay. What a fantastic experience right?

Anyhow, back to where I left off yesterday. Sophie, Kirsty and I headed off to dinner. I was glad that Kirsty was feeling better, and it was great to once again have their company at dinner. Bamboo came and talked for a bit. I had her recount her story of the “mean monkey” to them; I just think that is so fantastic of a story. We talked a bit to the table next to us, a family from Israel, with the smiley-est little girl. I think we were all a bit tired from the day, Kirsty being sick the day before and Sophie and I with our day trip. They both promised to meet me for sunrise the next morning.

This morning I woke about 5:25 again and went for a run, Danielli had agreed to go with me the previous day. Danielli you may remember is one of the two Brazilian girls who helped me with my SCUBA diving. (Danielli is as beautiful inside as she is out. We shared many conversations on the boat to and from the dive shop, but one thing sticks out in my head that I will never forget. She told me a story of how she use to work in an office every day and, really, only met the people that she worked with. One day she just decided to leave it all and follow her, ((my words, rather, Paulo Coelho’s)), “Personal Legend. Now she is in Thailand training to be a dive instructor. But the thing that she said to me that really stuck out was, “I think in the bottom of our hearts we know what we are really supposed to be doing. I am much happier now.” I thought this was quite profound.) We ran and talked. I found out she has a brother similar to mine, that she is a yoga instructor, and that her dad also has run many marathons and encourage her to run at a young age. As we ran Danielli would periodically stop and pick something out of the sand. When we parted ways she handed me one shell and said “give this one to your sister," she handed me a second shell and said "this one is for you." She had shown me this shell after she had picked it up and told me that she liked that kind of shell very much and that she had never found a full one. Pretty great I thought. We promised to email each other and I was sad to think that may be the last time I ever see her.

I sat on the beach and watched the sunrise into the sky until all of the oranges and reds where gone. After I had gone back to my room I did a bit of packing as I knew I was leaving today, went to the lobby to get on the internet for a bit. Through the lobby passed quite a few of the people I had met while here: Headrick and Larissa, the two Aussie guys, the New Zealander who was very excited about my cliff dive, and the group for Romania I had gone diving with. About 10:00 I headed back to the room. I happened upon Sophie walking down the beach to come say bye before I left. Kirsty had stayed in bed, probably feeling a bit under the weather I think. My boat was to arrive about 12:30, so Sophie and I just walked the beach and talked a bit. It was very sad leaving Sophie as well, we had a great day together. It was nice to share the experience with someone, it really is too bad she lives on the other side of the world.

Okay, So I boarded the tour boat back to Phuket main with my same guide Sangwit. “Mr. Brent!” He yells out after I had called out to him. “This is Mr. Brent. He gets lost here for six days.” Sangwit tells the group he is leading this day. After everyone is on board we head to Bamboo island, where the story above took place. When we arrived back in Phuket main there was a bit of confusion of where I was supposed to be staying but I got everything squared away after a bit and made it to Kelly’s Hotel with no problems at all. www.kellyshotelphuket.com I took a proper shower and am now enjoying a beer at the bar with Tim the proprietor of the joint.

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Photos

Swing on the beach
It is above water at high tide.

My beach
So sad to be leaving