TJ in Thailand?!?

finally getting SCUBA Open Water certified!!!

Kamala Beach, Phuket. Warm water, crystal clear sunny days, niiiiiice

view from our room, longtail boats are ready to take you wherever you'd like to go...unless you just wanna plop down on one of those chairs

Folks, how are we all doing? I hope well, though for most of you it's the middle of winter eh? Bummer. Although if you have been snowboarding lately, winter can't be that much of a bad thing. However, summer is always fun, and in this part of the world, it's summer A LOT! The last time the bad guy half of your favorite bargaining duo was around these parts, the tsunami was changing a lot of lives for the worse. 5 years later, you'd never know this devastating event took place. Every hotel, guesthouse and resort has been built back up, in fact, you'd never realize there was a worldwide recession taking place with all of the construction. On every oceanview hillside, there's a new 5 star resort being built complete with dramatic views, infinity edge pool and butler service. Amazing. However, deals abound b/c our PADI instructors were telling us that a lot of them are empty b/c tourism has started off really slow this high season. Hmmmm, here comes that recession talk again. In fact, one of the guys on our boat said he was staying at the Chedi, which is normally $500 a night, but he's paying $225...good deal. We're staying oceanfront for $30, which was supposed to be $60, but to each his own, we both seem happy with the deals we got.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself. In the bottom pic is the beach in front of the bungalow place we stayed in for the first two nights. Quiet, no one around at night, but a little too quiet. I mean, there wasn't a 7-11 for kilometers!!?!?? 7-11's btw, are the markets of the small beach towns. Don't pay $2 for a Chang on the beach, go to 7-11 and get one that's twice the size for a buck then saunter to the beach and enjoy yourself twice as much. Ok, enough about 7-11. Wait, one last thing, most of them DON'T have slurpee machines. Yes, when it's 30+C out with 90% humidity, a slurpee would really hit the spot, but didn't come across one until Ko Phan Ngan, bummer. ANYWAY, it was a great beach to hang out at, but we jumped in the bus and headed up to Kamala Beach, just north of TJ....I mean Patong Beach. Seriously folks, on the drive through Patong, we were both having flashbacks of the quiet city just south of San Diego. Bumping bass pouring out of trashy bars full of sunburned Euros...classic. We thanked our lucky stars that we weren't staying here and headed over the hill to quiet Kamala. Just around the corner was a dive shop so we signed up to get Open Water certified. This was a 3 day course including some time in the pool, and then 4 boat dives. We agree, if you don't SCUBA, you don't get it! Come on people, the earth is 70% water, go check it out! It's a great feeling to be 40' under water...and breathing. The visibility in the area was great (we think, though we have nothing to compare it to...besides snorkeling with leopard sharks in La Jolla or Mexico or the Carribean...wait, the Carribean was pretty clear...:) and there were scores of fish, or shall I say schools? Probably the coolest animal we saw over the 4 dives was an octopus. So interesting, when our instructor got close, it would retreat a bit back towards it's hole and change colors lightning fast. It would go from dark blue to white and back again in less than a second. Definitely a great defense mechanism. We dove just off the coast for the first two, then the next day we motored out to a rock island and then over to a wreck. Cuttlefish, lionfish, parrotfish, razorfish, barracuda, eels, porcupine fish...to many names to remember, but we'll attach photos off our dive CD later. All in all, this was definitely a trip highlight.
What is a trip lowlight is the tailor shops with pestering guys out front. I don't know how many times we have said no to a tailored suit or dress in the last few days. Thank god we already picked up a couple in Hoi An, Vietnam. Every day we walk down the street towards our dive shop, it's 5 No's and 4 "we already bought suits in Nam." One guy was impressed with the price I paid in Nam for my suit and said he couldn't beat that anyway...good to know though tough to believe as there's lots of competition.
Phuket is gorgeous and worth a visit, just avoid Patong, Kata and Karon beaches, unless you are into things like getting your hair braided (not an interest for this guy), henna tatoos and tours that you could do yourself with a moto and map.
Off on a bus and ferry across the pennisula to Ko Pha Ngan...
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