3 weeks in already!!!

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At long long last I get a chance to update everyone on the first 3 weeks of my trip/journey. It's been a hectic few weeks hence the long break in communication ... well apart from the last couple of day but I'll get to that later.

Where to start? I guess the journey over would be the best place. Firstly I highly recommend JET Airways to anyone travelling to this part of the world. I flew with them from Heathrow to Mumbai and then connected to Bankok. The first half of the flight (H to M) I had extra leg room plus 3 seats and the most delicious curry, the second half of the flight (M to B) was a bit more interesting! There's obviously a big difference in attitudes towards personal hygiene in India to the west, not that I was particularly fresh at that point but MY GOD that was the stinkiest plane i have ever been on, not to mention the frog call of burping, farting and flem coughing going on. I guess its all a matter of local perception which came as a shock to this prudish English woman ... l most had to ask them to give me an "embarrassed face" 😊

At Bangkok I met a great guy called Jon who has moved to Patong to start a sales business, we've kept in contact and hopefully I'll go over to visit him after I leave the Island. After Bangkok, I caught another plane to Koh Samui and then a boat to Koh Tao, arriving about 24 hours after setting off.

I'm doing my DiveMaster training (DMT) with Big Blue Diving which having been on the Island a while now i think is a good choice. There is a great bunch of people here who are all really like an extended family and there attitude towards safe, fun diving is really refreshing! The company is highly regarded by other dive shops which is always a good sign

My first week here I spent doing my EFR & Rescue Course, they are basically the first aid courses that you have to complete before starting your DMT. I learnt about on-land resuscitation and how to deal with problems underwater as well as on the surface. It was hilarious, during my time doing the course people would literally throw themselves on the ground and pretend to be unconscious and I would need to revive them, or swimming underwater they’d freak-out and start removing their gear and I’d have to try and calm them down but invariably they pretend to pass out and I’d have to bring them up to the surface and perform CPR whilst towing them back to the boat. The more inventive ones even used tomato ketchup to simulate wounds and chewed up banana which they would pretend to spew up at an inopportune moment!! … It was all great fun and a brilliant way to meet people.

During my second week I decided to do my Deep Diving and Nitrox specialism’s before moving onto my DMT. This basically gives me a license that I am proficient at diving up to 40 metres deep and also that I can use Enriched Air which is 32% or 36% Oxygen unlike the air that we breathe on land which is 21% oxygen. Diving with Nitrox allows you stay at deep depths longer than with normal 21% mix.

Anyway that’s enough about diving, so what’s life like on the Island?????
For the first 2 weeks I stayed at Big Blue which has some accommodation on-site. I stayed in a little beach bungalow just set back from the beach. The sea here is so clear and crystal blue and the sand so white it really is a tropical paradise. BB is situated on the West coast on Sairee Beach. Although the Island isn’t that much bigger than Utila a lot more of it is inhabitable which means that its far busier and more commercial which has both its benefits, in that there is more choice on things to do, but also its draw backs in that some of its natural beauty has been taken over.

My first week here I spent acclimatizing to the weather and time difference … the humidity here is a killer. I met some girls on the boat ride over so we hang out for a bit and I also met Jay who became a great friend of mine and who I’ve been hanging out with probably every other day since. Although he’s left now and I missed saying good bye to him  so Joe if you read this … Bye and keep in touch xxx

At the beginning of this week I moved out of BB and into a house/Bungalow with a fellow DMT Mer. It’s a bit off of the beaten track, in fact it’s in the middle of the jungle! It consists of two bedrooms, a kitchen (if you can call a sink and a fridge a kitchen) and a bathroom which you access from outside of the house and that also doubles as a local wild live reserve I think. At night you often find spiders the size of your hand, huge gecko’s and even the odd snake or two in there… it’s interesting to say the least and to be honest not really my style 

Because it is out of the way, I hired a motorbike in order to get there easily. On the morning of the second day I was leaving for work on the bike. In order to get to the main road you have to navigate a dirt track. The bike slipped out of my control and we both went tumbling to the floor. In the fall, I smashed the wing mirror and then skidded over the top of it, cutting my knee. Having picked myself up with the help of a neighbor and headed to the clinic I had to have 17 stitches in my right knee!!! Luckily, it’s healing really well but I still have to spend 10 days out of the water which is so annoying when I’ve only been doing my DMT properly for a couple of days after all of my other courses. Its giving me loads of time to concentrate on the theory part of the course though and I’m hoping to get the majority of that finished so that when I can get back in the water I can just dive, dive, dive!!!

It’s been a bit of a disastrous week at BB really. Deano dislocated his shoulder, Barry has an ear infection, Filip has an infected foot and last night Simon fell over drunk and broke his elbow so all in all we really are the walking wounded.

So that’s a really compact (or not so) overview of what’s been going on over the last few weeks. I’ll try and write more often so that I can fit in all the funny stupid things that go on here … I know that’s what you are really interested in 

Hope everyone at home is well, thanks for all the messages xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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