Finally it was time to say goodbye to Thailand. We spent our last baht at the airport on snacks to take home. Even found some seedless Tamarind - safe for import. :) We were relieved when we checked in that we had seats together on the plane. No delays and no problems getting home. Perfect.
Why is it in a country with a 0.5 % Christian population that we are listening to baby Jesus music in the department stores? We've exported Christmas as a shopping holiday.
We took a day bicycle trip outside of Bangkok. One of the highlights was having our guide buy various treats for us to try. We never would have been brave enough to try these on our own...
on the train: lime wedges dipped in hot chillis
along the road, a stand selling fried bananas and taro
another roadside stop, a stand selling a local speciality: cocounut milk and meat mixed with rice and sugar, wrapped in a leaf and grilled. Sticky and delicious.
on the train home: candied tamarind, sticky and full of huge shiny seeds. We loved it!
In Phuket, our tourist brochure warned that helmet laws for motorbikes are strictly enforced. We saw that was the case. Coming up behind a motorbike pulled over because the driver wasn't wearing a helmet, our taxi driver slowed and sneakily fastened his safety belt. He looked back at us and said something about police, so I guess not wearing a seatbelt as the driver is also illegal. We slowly drove past. But once clear of the pending danger of a ticket, he again unclipped the belt, sped up and went on his way. I wonder what he thinks seat belts are for? Observing the motorbike riders... it seems only the driver is required to wear a helmet. The three year old in front of the driver and girl riding side saddle on the back don't need one. On every motorbike in Phuket there are two, three, or more people, and very rarely is anyone but the driver protecting their head. Seems like not much is accomplished by the helmet law.
While eating dinner at a sidewalk cafe in Patong, we watched a bright light go up over the bay. Another flair? No - turned out to be a lucky lantern! After dinner we crossed the street to check it out. "You light lucky lantern?!" How much? 200 baht. Hesitating... is it really worth $6? Ok - we don't know how to bargain, so our hesitation does it for us. 150 baht. Sold! The man brought the paper lantern down to the beach and started to light the paper fuel in the middle. Then he told us to hold it for two minutes while the lantern filled with hot air. When we let it go, it went up quickly; we could see the fire burning inside as it rose, and then it was just a bright dot. Straining our necks we watched it through its whole journey; it caught the wind higher up and drifted far away, then finally the little light flickered and winked out leaving us to wonder where the paper remains would land.
We went to Patong beach last night and saw all the action. Curtis wanted to see all the "night life". Its even harder to walk through that area than Bangkok. "Do you want a suit? We have an expert tailor. Please come inside." "Picture with Iguana! Picture with Iguana!" (You wouldn't believe how many people have that gig!) "You light lucky lantern!" "Tuk-tuk? Tuk-tuk?" "Ping pong show! Come to ping pong show!" ... We sat at a bar on the beach and had a drink and I was amused by how many different roving vendors were trying to sell us stuff. We could have bought a watch, a dress, swim shorts, scarf, henna tatoo, a wooden harley, a flute, an elephant carving, sunglasses... all without getting up. When we were tired, we finally indulged one of the people trying to offer a taxi ride to get us back to our hotel. But he had no idea how to find our hotel. After four phone calls and pulling over for directions twice, luckily he had made it close enough that we could see the sign. There's only one main road and we tried to get him to just keep driving straight until we saw the hotel, but he was determined to look for it himself and kept making U-turns because they told him it was by the 7-11 and there are a billion 7-11's here, so he was circling around the wrong one. Finally made it back though. Whew!
On the last night of our dive trip we were on the deck enjoying dinner when Curtis exclaimed "There's a flare!". We all watched the flare on the horizon but there wasn't a huge amount of concern. About 15 minutes later another flare went up. This time the captain radioed the coast guard and we found out that a fishing boat had sunk, but that someone was on the way to pick up the people. We didn't hear much more about it. The next morning, we were back in the water for the last two dives of our trip. After the second dive, we came on board to find unfamiliar faces. Then we learned the whole story. It was a small fishing charter that had sunk. It went down very fast, so the guys aboard didn't have a chance to grab anything, just get on the life raft. One guy happened to have his camera which happened to be in an underwater case, so he has proof it all happened. They spent the night on one of the islands, and, since our boat was going back the next day, our captain agreed to take them back to the mainland. So much irony... Curtis had been reading a book on wreck diving that was in our boat's library, so he handed the book over to the guys for a laugh. They said they hadn't really caught much - making me all the more glad I'm a diver! Why stay in a hot boat waiting to hopefully catch a fish, when you can go down in the refreshing water and see all the fish you want??? Of course, they do get to drink more beer - no drinking and diving. After chatting with them a bit, we found out they were software engineers. Curtis naturally offered to try and recruit them and offered his card. He was just imaging filling out the referral form. "How do you know this person?" "I was on the boat that rescued him from a shipwreck."
Normally we just see the head of a Moray, peering out from its home and observing us casually. On one of our night dives, for the first time we saw Morays completely out in the open. Two very large ones were having and eel argument while we hovered over with our cameras and lights. At one point, a diver was taking a movie of one of the eels, completely unaware that another very large eel was swimming close to him from behind and eyeing his let. Mmmmm. Might be better to put a little distance between us and an eel on the hunt.
I'm fascinated with the various symbiotic relationships on the reef. An easy one to spot is the cleaner wrasse who helps/harrases all the other fish by removing parasites. They were so plentiful around the Similan islands... watching one chasing after a puffer, I suddenly felt a strong nip on the corner of my mouth. I jumped back and saw the little cleaner swim away. Ahhhhh. After the first encounter, I tried to encourage them and again one came back and started trying to clean me. I was laughing under water. The dive masters said that sometimes the cleaners try to go in their ears which is not so welcome. :)
The dive was at a pinnacle, so no chance to drift dive, and warnings that the current can really scream at this location. I sat in my wetsuit and gear hesitantly. Did I really want to go on this dive? The current was one of my biggest fears on this trip and so far it hadn't been a problem, but the way the divemasters were talking I just wasn't sure I was up for the dive. At the last minute I decided Yes - I'm going to go for it. Put on my fins and jumped in. As it turns out, the current was very mild at that time. We descended about 10 meters down the mooring line, but then didn't need it and swam freely down the side of the pinnacle, reaching a depth of 30 meters and then working our way up and around the mount. It was a beautiful dive, so many schools of different fish, some swimming peacefully, some being pushed into tighter groups by a predator darting back and forth. Tiny glass fish, snappers, goat fish, blue and orange damsels, and higher up a few large baracuda keeping watch on it all. Then our dive master signaled to get our attention. Something unusual was happening. He pointed his arm for us to look left. An enormous school of snappers was swimming up towards us. He pointed his arm for us to look right. Another school of fish converging on our location. At that moment all the world we could see was filled with fish and as he brought his arms up in the sweeping movements of a conductor a third or fourth school joined in and all came together, streaming past us in a symphony of colors and flashes of light. We hung suspended in the magic of that moment, completely filled with awe as we watched the living keleidescope move around us. As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The fish had finished their dance and gone back to their usual business, while the three of us floated there revelling in what we had experienced. Back on the boat, our dive master was exstatic saying that even for him has a guide that was something completely unique we had experienced. It was the most memorable moment of all our dives.
There in the sand bottom and coral rubble, ignored by most divers because there's "nothing there", one can find a number of holes, a goby at the door of each one, sitting and observing their view of the world. By drifting along slowly and looking more closely at each goby, a sufficiently stealthy diver can observe movement in the hole and a moment later, a little cloud of sand rubble emerges, pushed along by a shrimp. Excitement! We saw the goby and shrimp team in a nature film, and here it was in real life. Once this treasure was discovered, my journeys along the sand bottom became even slower as I quested to capture the pair with my camera. Time and again I tried to film them together, but always just as the shrimp was due to appear again the goby would flee and I'd have to hurry to catch back up with the group. Sometimes the other divers would stop to obsserve a "more interesting" animal like a large morey in the rocks and I could take my time, and finally got a shot that I thought had them both. After the dive, sitting on the boat and reviewing the movies I'd taken, I watched and said "there's the goby... AND THERE'S THE SHRIMP! I GOT IT!" Drawing head turns from the other divers. :) And on the one dive I missed, Curtis decided to try his hand at it as well, and came back with a quite nice video of the pair.
Slowly drifting past a reef, a blenny slinks down inside his little rock home until only his head remains shyly out, observing me. I hover there watching him size up the situation, his little eyes darting back and forth, sometimes ducking a few milimeters further into his hole, then back out again... is it safe? not sure! yes! maybe? no! And with a quick movement, he is gone.
We met at 5:30pm for a briefing before getting on the boat. There was a huge thunderstorm raging, and we found out they had to park the boat at a different port the night before because the seas had been rough, so we had a two hour bus ride before reaching the boat. They weren't sure if we'd sail that night or in the morning. I was nervous. So afraid that I'd feel sea sick and be miserable the whole trip. I'm really not sure why I worried so much - I was always fine on the boat with my dad. We made it to the boat, had dinner, and went to bed. Once I was down inside the enclosed cabin I felt a little queasy, but it soon passed and I never felt sea sick. Whew! Time to relax and have fun! Here was our daily routine:
wake up at 6am and have a light breakfast
dive
have a bigger breakfast, chug a liter of water, and take a nap.
dive
have lunch, chug a litre of water, and take another nap or share the last round of pictures with your new friends
dive
cookies and coffee, another liter of water, enjoy the sunset
night dive
a hearty dinner, and... another liter of water, and then to bed around 9pm!
Repeat for six days.
Diving with Sea Bees on the Marco Polo was a great experience. Excellent food and excellent dive masters. It was the easiest diving we've ever done in terms of work to fun ratio. I'm sure will be planning another liveaboard trip soon!
Getting ready to head to the airport to fly down to Phuket. Completely wore ourselves out yesterday walking in the hot sun and sweating like crazy. We drank a lot of water but I swear it was just down the throat and out in sweat before you even knew what happened. We didn't realize how exhausted we were - like a couple of cranky kids we dragged our sorry selves back to the hotel and fell sound asleep at 6pm. Heh. Well, at least the next part of the trip will involve a lot more chances to cool off since we can go swimming and diving several times a day. We've been laughing at these tourist promotion videos they keep showing on the TV here. They show the happy smiling couple touring the grand palace and having a relaxing massage and eating gourmet food.
Curtis says we can make a parody with what you really experience in Bangkok - at least if you are us - walking in the hot sun, fighting off the touts who approach you every time you stop and take out a map (fighting isn't the right word... they are very friendly but annoying), getting a massage in a crowded shopping mall, and mixing with throngs of tourists to see the sights. Street vendors everywhere selling every kind of food - none of which we feel safe to eat - its really hard to find a real sit down restaurant here - so we end up searching everywhere for food when its all around us. Haven't exactly figured out what the touts are after. Everything we'd read said they would tell you the tourist attraction is closed, but then try to take you somewhere else instead.. they really haven't done that, They usually tell us the place we want to go is closed, then they ask where you are from, then they ask if you have a map, then they start drawing stick figures of all the Budha's you can go see. Only one has gone so far as to try to take use there though. He said it was our lucky day because today is the only day you can see Golden Budha for the whole year! Wow! The tuk-tuk driver kept following us down the street saying "why you no want ride?" but he eventually gave up. At least we feel very safe here - aside from guys wanting to give us a ride in a tuk-tuk, most people hardly pay any notice to tourists. Such an adventure. Ok - heading out to the airport. Love you all!
Besides diving, our favorite activity in Thailand was shopping... well... looking at the shops. We'd spend a morning at one of the large outdoor markets admiring all the handmade crafts and a bazillion other things you can buy there, then head to the air conditioned comfort of the first class shopping malls. Such a huge contrast. You can spend as little or as much as you want in this country.
Thailand is known for its amazing food. Its also the first country I've visited where you shouldn't drink the tap water. All vaccinated up and ready to go, we arrived in Bangkok midday and immediately went out walking. They say you shouldn't. Take a taxi. Take the sky train. But walking and exploring on foot is what we enjoy doing. We were soon hot and pouring out sweat as we navigated this new place. At least water was plentiful - roadside stands everywhere selling a bottle of water for 10 baht. That first afternoon we soon came to the realization that we were surrounded by food... street vendors selling everything imaginable - from beautiful cut fruits to flattened dehydrated ducks.
But none of it met our guidebook description: fruit you peeled yourself, food served to you steaming hot. We were pressed to find a real restaurant as opposed to the countless makeshift sidewalk cookeries. We decided this was one time where we would go with the restaurant recommendations in the guidebook, and used it to locate a restaurant tucked away at the end of an alley we would have never thought to walk down. Seated for our first meal and thinking of the wonderful Thai cooking awaiting us... I ordered the prawns in coconut milk (thinking bowl of curry type meal). Curtis said "I'll have the same." And what we got was... three giant with-the-head-on prawns. Not quite the comfort food I'd hoped for after a long journey and our first day in the city. But... they look cute in the picture. :)
Curtis and I took a two and a half week trip to Thailand in Nov. 2009. We spent our time between Bangkok, Phuket, and on a diving liveaboard around the Similan Islands. These are some of the memorable experiences from our trip.
