Day 182 - 30 January 2010: jet skiing and a balcony party

It is Louise’s 40^th today, and 9 or 10 of us go for a birthday breakfast. The restaurant would win no prizes on Saturday kitchen as the omelettes take up to 40 minutes to produce…and never mind the muesli I order. By the time we finish, and after an hour on the internet, it is one o’clock.

Later, after staying out of the sun for most of the afternoon, I go Jet Skiing with Sam. Jen decides to hitch a lift with me too. At 110 Ringits (c. £20), it is the cheapest half hour price we have come across in Asia, and the Jet Ski has 130hp too. It is plenty quick. I am glad we go half an hour and not a quarter hour, as it takes me 5 minutes to get the confidence to go full throttle. When we do, it gets the adrenaline flowing and the shorts wedging up our bums. Also, these things are surprisingly safe. At one point, I accidentally turn too sharply, and the jet ski goes 180 degrees, and stops before I put the throttle on and go zig zagging through the wake I have just created. There was much wooping from both me and Jen. I never looked at my speedometer as I didn’t realise it had one, but Sam did on his, and his peak speed was 52kph. Even with Jen on the back of mine, our machine was actually outpacing Sam’s, so we at least did 55. Not a bad experience for my first time on a jet ski.

Afterwards, we gather on the balcony outside Louise’s room for punch her roommates have made. It is potent enough for me to be quite merry after two cups. I am wearing a t-shirt I bought on Jen’s recommendation, hoping it’s because she thinks I would look quite attractive in it. It is a comparative luxury item, having been bought from a Tesco’s in Thailand. However, any hopes I have on this matter are somewhat handicapped by the two and a half months I spent rooming with Laurie, possibly the most flirtatious girl in the world. I am still having to deny any goings on even now, despite her boyfriend now being with us.

Day 181 - 29 January 2010: Exit Thailand, to Malaysia and Langkawai for barracuda fillets

Thailand Pictures

Still being a little drunk (and Shay still being a lot drunk) I decide today will be a day of flirtation with Jen, our skinny, pale but cute Leeds lass. I give her a massage on the shoulders with the edge of my passport while we are waiting for the truck at the border crossing, which she says is nice. She tells me that now that I am an Advanced Open Water Diver, I am in with a chance of consideration….

Again the border crossing is very quick for the people, but slow for the truck. This is the last border we will have to do with the truck though, with it being shipped back after it drops us at the Singapore border in 10 days or so.

Belgian Sam (perhaps now the prefix is unnecessary), who is now feeling somewhat fragile, regales of events after I had left last night. They had gone to the ‘Pink bar’, where they found a sort of Karaoke going on, except the all female singers seemed to be ‘professional’. Shay and Sam decide to invade the stage to try their hand at it, only to find that all the words were in Chinese script, and the songs were Chinese too. There follows a bad and probably insulting take off of singing in Chinese (Mandarin?, perhaps not), with Sam inviting the audience to ‘come on, everybody!’.

After the border crossing, it is another few hours of drive time, which I pass sleepily, until we reach the ferry port to go to Langkawi, our next destination. The ferry is comfortable, although we are forced to watch an awful movie that was filmed on the island (and the ferry). It’s like a Malaysian remake of ‘The Three Stooges’, for those of you who have any idea what that was.

After the ferry, there is another 40 minutes or so on a bus to our hotel. When we get off the bus, I ask Jen which room we are in. ‘Not tonight’, she says.

Later I meet Gary and Laurie for dinner. To go to a place by the beach, but have to move tables to avoid the over bearing sound of a local band on a stage singing soft rock covers in Malay tinged English. I consider requesting some Black Sabbath numbers but decide I already know the answer. Myself and Laurie have Barracuda fillets, which are very good, but a little on the economy size. Gary’s meal doesn’t quite satisfy him either, so we head off to share a pizza down the road. We end up having two between three, myself having a Quattro Stagioni with pepperoni, olives, mushrooms and gorgonzola. The base is a little soft, but basically sound, and the flavours are good. 8/10.

Dessert is a biscuit base indulgent banoffee pie. mmmm

Day 180 - 28 January 2010: impromptu Karaoke and Hotel S21

Off the boat, I am approached by some Moto drivers, who offer to take me to the hotel. As I don’t know where it is, and they ask for only 30B, I don’t haggle.

At the hotel (Grand Thani) where the group slept last night, Lucinda has saved me a space in a room, so I am able to get a couple of hours sleep in. However, I am asleep for much of the journey to a town near the Thai-Malaysia border. We are waiting until the next day to do the border crossing.

We learn today that Essex will probably not be rejoining the trip, having left to do some volunteer teaching when we were in Vietnam. He’s a good drinking companion, but unfortunately his fondness for night time singing loudly, crudely and rudely in the hotel at 3am means not everybody on the truck will miss him.

We have a one night stay in a hotel that reminds me of the S21 prison in Phnom Penh, the beds used there as torture racks looking very similar to the ones we will be sleeping in. The toilets look a bit like a torture chamber too.

I join Louise, Mary, Caz, Big John, Tracy, Belgian Sam, and Shay for some drinks in the hotel reception, which looks like a backstreet café. After a while, Lou, Caz and Mary go off to eat, and not long after, Belgian Sam, Shay and I go to supposedly do the same. However, the first, last and every order is beer. We stop at one bar where there is a guitarist singer doing old covers, and we a unilateral decision that this is a Karaoke night. The singer doesn’t seem to mind us hogging his mic too much. I must say though that Shay is a particularly bad singer, drunk or not.

After a bout of shorts ripping, which seems to have become a craze amongst some people, I leave the boys to it, Shay pointing me in the opposite direction to where the hotel is. He is rooming with me tonight.

Day 179 - 27 January 2010: the midnight boat to Thailand

I am supposed to be meeting up with my truck mates today at Ko Samui, where they are catching a 5pm ferry to Surat Thani. I assume a ferry to Samui from Ko Tao at 3pm which gets to Samui at 5pm is the same ferry they are catching to Surat Thani. However, when I go to buy the ticket at reception, they tell me this is not the case, so I decide to go by night ferry direct to Surat Thani (9pm to 5am). This is only 50B more expensive than the ferry to Samui anyway. The final bill for my 2 courses and 6 nights’ accommodation plus the ferry is £375. There can’t be a better place to introduce yourself to diving than here.

I have time to kill today, so wonder to town for the first time, where there is not much to see. I realise at some point that I have lost my cash card (again!). Remembering that I got out some money at the ATM near the Australian bar last night, I go back to the bank to see if I left it in the machine. However, when I get there, I am told to come back at 1pm as the teller there doesn’t have the keys. It’s about 11 by now, so I go for some lunch - a very filling Tex Mex burger with Chilli con Carne - and then onto the beach.

When I go back to the bank, I am told to come back in another half hour. There was a 2:30 ferry I could have caught to Ko Samui, so it is a good thing I didn’t book this. Eventually, I do retrieve my card though and head back to the beach.

I choose a spot closer to the hotel under the shade near some beach villas. In one of these are a group of one American and two Chinese American kids. I say kids, I mean young men, but they have that annoying way of talking as if they were the coolest people in the world. A group of attractive Korean girls walk by in the beach gear, and the American calls out, ‘hey, you want some Rum & Coke?’, to which one of the Koreans replies ‘yeah, that would be great’. I am both annoyed and jealous of the nerve of some people. Anyway, there follows some loud irritating conversational questioning from the American like ’how do you like to party?’ and ’why do you sound British?’ (she doesn’t).

Meanwhile, I am lying near an attractive young lady who glances occasionally to me as if to say ’I wish they would shut up’. I wish I was staying another day…… The Korean girls are still with the villa boys when I get up to leave. It’s about 4:30, and I have to catch the hotel taxi to the pier at 7pm, so I kill some more time in the bar.

Why I have to go at 7 is unclear as I am the only one on the taxi, and the ferry doesn’t leave until 9. However, I am happy to hang out on the boat when I find my ’bed’ is next to some Dutchmen offering whisky. I will be sharing my not considerable mattress with one particular fat and bald Dutchman in his fifties, not unlike a typical sex tourist profile. However, the whisky means we are quickly friends. Not all the Dutch men and women know each other. It seems that three different Dutch parties have been allocated a Dutch corner, with me as the exception.

After a few whiskies, I fall asleep quickly, and do not wake up until 4:55 am, just as we are pulling into port, strangely almost exactly on time.

it's going to get cosy in here

Day 178 - 26 January 2010: Sharks pt 2 and then some

I have a fairly restless night, as I am considering whether I feel confident enough to do the dives today. However, I am glad I do, as I regain my lost confidence, diving with Becky on the first dive, and then with Tavis on the second. It is better just diving in buddy groups, as people don’t get in each other’s way so much. Also, I feel more in control of my own dive.

The dives are revisits of previous dives, but this time we are doing some speciality dives. This includes the multi-level dive, where we plan 20 minutes at 30m, and then 20 minutes at 18m. In reality we won’t have enough air for this, and vary the levels as we swim accordingly. This first dive is at Chumpon, the home of the Bull Sharks. In the back of my mind, I am conscious that I have a cut on my knee which is perhaps a little risky when swimming with potentially lethal sharks. However the herd excitement wins out again. This time, with Becks’ assistance I see up to 15 swimming within 10m of us. They won’t come too close as they are nervous of us, or they are just use to divers being there and aren’t in the slightest bit curious. On the dive yesterday, the only shark I saw turned and swam away when it saw me.

I am still apologetic about releasing Becks’ belt yesterday, but we are confident that it will be retrieved. She is known around the island as the pink weight belt lady, so someone is bound to pick it up.

On the second dive, which is our ‘Fish ID’ dive, we are given cards to carry underwater to help us identify the fish. However, having chosen not to do the underwater photography because it was too expensive, Poli kindly lends me his personal camera to take down. He even produces a CD of photos in the evening for me to keep, including the photos of the bull sharks he took on the previous dive.

During the descent on this dive, my mask keeps filling up repeatedly, so I ascend to get another one. Poli isn’t diving, so lends me his, which works much better. Our instructors have been as good as we could expect and they have emphasised having fun on the dives.

To the evening, and we don’t spare much time until we retire to the bar. I am first there again, but am joined soon after. We don’t stay at Ban’s this time, venturing to dinner down the beach toward the town proper. I am with Stacie and JC, South African sisters, and their friend Nicola, and fireman Jimmy, Chris the tall handsome blue eyed Norwegian, and the shapely Mayke (pronounced My Kah) a Dutch girl who joined us for the advanced course. We go on to the Australian bar, where they are celebrating Australia day with live music and dancing on the tables. Poli joins us there too. Eventually we go down to the Lotus bar for late drinks, but it is too crowded and we go back to one a couple of stops up the beach. Later, I wake up on a bean bag there with everybody else gone. I get up, going back to the Lotus bar where I find Chris, Poli and Mayke waving goodbyes to Jimmy and Stacie, who are weaving down the beach back to the hotel. It’s closing time though, so I waddle back myself not long after.

Day 177 - 25 January 2010: Shark!....and a sinking pink weight belt

It is a good thing that the advanced class doesn’t start until 9:30am because there are plenty of tired people after the exploits of last night. I was one of the first people to leave last night, although I should also say I was the first person in the bar. I am not feeling very special today.

In the morning we do some short discussions on the specialty dives we can do, e.g. underwater photography and multi-level dives. With the underwater photography costing 2,000B extra for camera rental, I decide that I won’t do this, although I would really like some photos while diving.

We meet up for the dives at 1pm. We are going to Chumpon to do our 30m dive and swim with bull sharks. I only spot one, although I am told that there were a lot around the other side of the reef. However, having watched Jaws about fifty times before I was even ten years old and thus having been terrified of being attacked by sharks even when I was growing up on the beach in Florida, I am surprised that I even did this dive. I think it has something to do with herd mentality. If I had known at the time that bull sharks have more testosterone than any other animal and are responsible for more attacks on humans than any other shark, perhaps I wouldn’t have.

With the deeper dives, you use a lot more air. My breathing is not helped by the fact that I am hung-over. I actually gag at one point. I signal to Becky when my air gets to 50 Bar and we start to go back toward the boat. However, we do not ascend very much, and by the time we get to the buoy line to do our 3 minute safety stop at 5 metres, I am having real trouble breathing with my air down to 20 bar. I signal that I have a problem, and Becky signals to take her alternate supply line. I reach out for it, but I accidentally release her personal pink weight belt, which sinks down to the bottom, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I start to breathe slowly and calm down, and do the 5m safety stop on her alternate.

When I find out I had released her weight belt, I am apologetic, although I feel less so when she tells me I might have to pay for it. I did feel she was a little bit responsible for not ascending quickly enough when I signaled I was low on air, although I was probably using more air than even I normally would. It is surprising how much more air you use when you go lower, although we had been warned about it. I was only down for 25 minutes, when on the first course each of our dives was 40 minutes. Becky also tells me that I am underweighted and that I was using more energy because I was using my arms to much. For the next dive I add another kg.

The next dive I do is with Tavis, one of the Canadians, as we are now going on our own in our ‘buddy’ groups. Before we split though, we do some exercises including navigating using the compass to go in a square. For some reason, after going toward 30 degrees, I insist to Tavis that the right angle turn is at 260, and not 330. I am obviously not thinking straight.

However, for this dive I feel more personally in control, and I am regularly checking my air. We are only diving to a max of 18m for this one, so we use less. Toward the end of the dive, there is a swim through tunnel in the coral which Tavis signals towards. I go to follow, but stop to equalize, and I bang my knee against the coral cutting it deeply. Blood seeps out as we ascend, although it is not too bad as there aren’t many blood vessels in the knee area I guess.

After a one hour break on shore, we go to a night dive. Armed only with torches, we descend into the darkness, cruelly spotlighting resting sea life. We stop for a moment at the bottom, turn off the torches, and wave our arms to create luminescent bubbles, which reflect any moonlight that reaches down there. It is quite spooky, but I am with Cookie at the back of the group and probably see less than the others. Also, I am not feeling very confident after my first dives of the day, so am probably concentrating on myself more.