The divers from the 5 day trip. Me and Billy are on the right hand side. Kris took this photo and it was so funny as everyone gave him their camera to take a picture with. We posed for this picture about 15 times! lol :-)

Unfortunately our camera battery died when the group picture for the 10 day trip was taken so we are waiting for that to be emailed to us.

Kris our dive leader and Swing the crazy cook.

Hans and Shu Hang at the dining table, the other members of our dive group and our fellow outsiders :-)

Our cabin.

"Peek a boo"

Our 100th dive. It's a little hard to see but the slate says "100"

Do you like my hair, I was going for the quiff look that day :-)

The rubbish bay! I took the picture from where the rocks were.

The beach where they filmed The Beach in the Koh Phi Phi islands. We stopped in the bay one lunch time and a few of us went ashore in the dingy. It was really nice, beautiful white sand and turquoise water but about a million boats and tourists. It was still great to see though. We went a bit in land also and followed a sign to another bay which when we got there was just a puddle surrounded by rocks! It was the most rubbish bay I have ever seen. LOL :-)

A friendly Green Turtle who stayed round the boat for ages whilst we had lunch. I snorkeled with it whilst some others were also feeding it banana. It was so amazing, it would just come right up to you and then swim by before coming back again.

A sleeping Anemone with 2 Clown Anemone fish inside. I love the beautiful colours.

The Magnificent Nudibranc. (that's what these particular ones are called) You can see their little antenas on their heads and at the back is their lungs which look like tenticals! Cool :-)

The Ornate Ghost Pipe fish. Looks a bit like a pipe cleaner I think.

My favorite fish. The Porcupine fish. It's so cute, I want one :-)

This particular one is called a Blotched Porcupine Fish.

A rare Angler fish. We got so carried away looking at this fish we went in to decompression (where the nitrogen limit in your blood is very high and can be dangerous if proceadures are not followed but it just means you have to do a longer safety stop to release the nitrogen)

The dive boat "The Flying Carpet", our home for 2 weeks.

Diving fun

I'm back! Wow can't believe the two weeks diving has come and gone already though it did seem to last a long time when we were on the boat. Out of 40 dives I did 36 and Billy did 28 (due to an ear infection which stopped him from diving at the end). The diving was quite intense, some days there were 4 dives, dive 1 7:00, 2 10:30, 3 2:30, 4 either 5:30 or 7:00 and others 3 dives a day and occasionally 2. It wasn't too bad but it was very hard to sleep on the boat. The cabin had enough room to fit the gym mat (mattress apparently) and enough room to sit up in without hitting our heads on the ceiling and incredibly hot and noisy, needless to say sleeping wasn't that easy and getting up at 6 - 6:30 everyday was quite tough, but we soon got woken up by the cold water lol :-) We did go to some lovely dive sites, most of the diving was in the north on the Similan Islands but also down south around the Koh Phi Phi area which we loved. The Similans are made from Granite boulders and most of the dives sites has many boulders and swim throughs and attract big stuff! We saw our first Manta there which was amazing. However we always seemed to be chasing the illusive whale shark! The captain would get reports that there was a whale shark at a dive site, the day before of that morning so we would then go there for the last dive of the day, by of course that time it had gone (if it was ever there). It was quite frustrating as they were around just not when we were! We did think we saw one once, a diver from another boat swam by who must have been 20 stone+ in a neon orange wet suit! he was enormous, nearly the size of a whale shark lol and definitely drew attention to himself with his wet suit, shortly after on the same dive we saw another diver just wearing pants and they were not keeping much in, if you catch my drift!! strange dive indeed :-). The prospects of big stuff did mean that the main objectives of the northern dives was to look out for the big stuff which mainly never came so we kinda felt a bit disappointed at the end even though it was a good dive. Also the currents were a bit of a bitch so we definitely earned our food some dives. One dive in particular was quite bad. I had been ill the night before and so we both missed the first dive. We did the second dive but the current was so strong. It was like swimming into a brick wall. I didn't have the energy to fight it and near the end i really struggled, i just had my head down and swam has hard as i could. Billy was also struggling and was hanging on to a rock in front of me. Our dive leader and Hans a Dutch guy were head and still swimming. Billy was trying to get their attention by shaking his rattle but they didn't hear, he then looked at me and gave me the signal for out of air! He took me octopus (spare regulator) and started to share my air which luckily i am quite good with air consumption so had enough for both of us but as we had stopped fighting the current to sort the air out we got swept away with the current in to the blue. I then started to panic a little as i didn't like being out of control and being taken way from the reef so we grabbed a rock that we happened to be drifting past and hung on whilst we did our safety stop (something you have to do at the end of each dive to release some nitrogen). It was really difficult to hang on though and i didn't have a glove on so my hand got a bit cut on the rock, Billy had a glove and was able to hold on to me so there was no fear of slipping or anything. After 3 minutes we surfaced and luckily Billy has a safety balloon so inflated that and got the attention of a dingy who came over and asked us who were diving with and he then radioed over to our boat who came to pick us up. There were many dive boats and divers in the area so there was no danger of being lost or anything but it was still pretty scary and i was upset to say the least. Obviously Billy was also a bit shaken as running out of air is something you don't want to happen whilst diving. It knocked both our confidence for the next couple of dives but we were soon over it. It was good experience to know that in the event of a problem we knew what to do and we handled everything correctly, followed procedures and we were fine. In over 100 dives, 1 bad dive is not bad really and it can only make us better divers as we will be able to avoid that situation in the future by knowing the signs and just knowing when its too much, stop its not worth it!

Apart from that the rest of the dives were great. We managed to tick 2 things off the wish list:

Wish list:

Whale shark
Manta ray - Ticked
Dolphins (whilst diving)
Hammerhead shark
Octopus - Ticked
Sea horse
Sea dragon
Mandarin fish
Bora Bora (Sun fish)

We saw about 4/5 mantas and loads of octopus. On one dive we saw two octopus mating! It was amazing. The bigger male had one of its tentacles in the female and they were just constantly changing colours, going really pale then bright to dark to spiky! It was stunning. I also had a fab encounter with a cuttle fish. I swam by it and was wiggling my fingers at it to try and communicate, it swam right up to me and looked me in the eye and then turned its back on me and swam underneath me right by my chest and started flashing loads of colours and putting its tentacles in the air, it was so cool but i had to leave it as the others had swam off, i was gutted.

The dive sits in southern Thailand we completely different. The islands down south and made from lime stone so a totally different landscape and the chances of big stuff is less common but there is lots of little stuff to see. It was so enjoyable going on dives and having so much hard and soft corals to explore and try to find interesting things. We saw a few ghost pipe fish which are the same family as the sea horse and are really amazing. I also saw a angler fish which are very rare and a rare nudibranc (sea slug) which unfortunately we didn't have the camera so haven't got a photo of. The dives were so much fun, looking under rocks and in crevasses, we saw an enormous nurse shark in one cave and loads of cleaner shrimp which clean your hands if you put your hand in the crevasse, though i got the wrong type of shrimp the first time i did it and the bloody thing bit me! it didn't hurt but made me jump! the next time i got it right though and i had one cleaning my nails lol! Apparently you can also take out your regulator and let them clean your teeth but we didn't like the sound of that, 1, kinda need the reg to breath plus you have to constantly breath out of you take out your reg so not sure how that works, 2, how do you get them out of your mouth when you really need to breath! We'll stick to the old fashioned toothbrush and tooth paste thanks :-)

Out of the water we mainly sat about and ate food and drank lots of water. Unfortunately it was a German company with German crew and German divers, not that there is anything wrong with Germans, they were all lovely people but it was difficult to interact and join in with their German parties. Luckily there was also Hans a Dutch guy and Shu Hang a Chinese guy on the boat so us outsiders sat on the deck at the back and had our own mini parties (well just talking really) after 5 days some of the crew changed and Chris a guy from Belgium came on board and took over as our diver leader and he sat with us and really made us laugh, he was a funny guy and great to dive with. We did dive with him briefly on the first trip so kinda knew him anyway .

The Thai staff were also great. The cook who's name was Swing was totally mental. When she would bring out the food she would shout as loud as she could "ACTION". It was amazing what she did in a kitchen the size of a cupboard. She had to cook for 20 people plus 4 Thai staff. She was great. There was also Ole and Bo, two young lads who filled the dive tanks and did maintenance on the boat but also helped you put on your gear and help you out the water etc. They didn't speak a lot of English but didn't need to as they understood your drift and were still able to have a good laugh with you. Then there was the Captain, who i left alone as he looked scary. What was scary was the tv he had to watch movies on whilst driving the boat!! I ignored that bit lol. He did make for us one night sushimi (if that's how you spell it) from some tuna that Ole had caught whilst we were going to a dive site. It was delicious.

It was a great trip, hard work but good. We do have to say we are happy to be on land again and be able to walk around our bedroom and have proper English conversations. We are in Lanta now, we arrived yesterday after spending 1 night in Ranong with Hans and Shu Hang. Our friends Peter, Debbie and Tony are hear from home which is great. It is Debbie's birthday tomorrow so we are going out for that and then her and Peter get married on Friday, the same day as the Lanta festival starts. So it should be a fab week. I will post more on Lanta though another time.

Koh Chang

After an overnight stop in Ranong we got the early boat over to Koh Chang which is not to be confused with Koh Chang in the Trat province this is the one in Ranong province. It is very laid back and quite undiscovered by tourists. The villiage consists of a cross roads which has a shop on each side and is about 1km away from our bungalow up the tsunami evacutation route!! through a rubber plantation and some jungly areas! I was trying to find some cool animals but i only managed to spot a butterfly and a lizard which actually nearly ran me over as it ran infront of me at some speed and made me stop!

It is very hot here about 34 degrees, even i am hot! though i am not complaining. It is a beautiful island with a gorgeous beach. There is only electricity between 7-10pm and the rooms are basic but everything you need. I feel quite chilled so to speak, which is nice as tomorrow (Sunday) we are starting our first live aboard where we will do 12 dives have one night on shore and then do a further 28 dives which will take us to 25th Feb. So this maybe my last post for a while.

I have attached some pictures, the obvious beach and our bungalow and then the road leading to the villiage and the villiage itself which luckily is the Tsunami evacutation shelter so i'm safe for now :-)

Good bye Bangkok,

Finally we left Bangkok and even though it was good it was a little sad also as it was probably the last time i would be there. We got up at 6 and had breakfast which was cold :-( and then checked out of the hotel. we got a taxi to the bus station after a 5minute discussion with taxi drivers to find out if they knew where it was, we kept saying Southern Bus Terminal, we're going to Ranong and showed them our tickets. After 5 mins diliberation they went "you go southern bus terminal to Ranong" Er yes! "you have ticket?" OMG have you listened to anything we said! finally we got going!!

We arrived at the bus station with plenty of time and waited to board the bus. It was very comfortable and we set off on time.

After about an hour and a half travelling suddenly the bus slammed on its breaks and started skidding up the road. Then it hit the back of this dumper truck and the bus then turned sideways so we were actually now skidding up the road sideways i really thought it was going to go over on my side, it was quite scary to say the least. The bus then went in to a small ditch on the side of the road and came to a stop. Everyone sat on the coach for a while whilst the police came and the damage did not look too bad, we could see a panel and some glass which we figured was a lugguage door and the head lights. After a while we were all told to exit out of the emergency exit at the back, which was out of a small door and down some step ladders. I went to the front of the bus and had a bit of a shock, There was no windscreen and the passenger side was totally caved in, some how the bus boy who was sat in that seat survived with only a cut to his arm, evryone on the bus wanted to see his Buddha charm he was wearing under his shirt and patted him on the back. We all got moved to the other side of the road and the emergency services tended to the people who were injured, no one had any serious injuries just a couple of cuts and bruises but they were relaly good and stayed with us until the new bus arrived (which only took 20 mins!), they also instisted on bandaging my arm as i said i had hurt it a little on the side of the bus when it was skidding, it wasnt bad at all and was fine by the evening but they insisited anyway! One of the ladies then gave us all some weird herbal tablets to take, when i asked what they were she pointed to her throat! So we took them but they were fowl, they were like citrusy cat biscuits yuk! The rest of the journey was pretty rubbish, the driver was still driving quite fast and often breaked quite hard which scared me to death and the last part was on dark windy roads up in the hills and the driver was going so fast i thought we could easy end up going over the edge, the coach felt jinxed but we made it!

Culinary experiences part 1

This is the wonderful food court in the MBK centre. There are all types of food from Japanese to Italian, Thai to Indian which is all cooked fresh infront of you. The dining area is really nice with leather seats and a live singer with band. A good meal and a drink costs about 2 pounds! bargain.

The hotels we have been staying in had breakfast included. The first hotel (Baiyoke Suite) had a sky lounge on the 43rd floor which looked out over Bangkok. It was really nice though the aircon was on full blast and even Billy was cold in there. The breakfast was buffet style with a choice of western style, Toast, fried eggs, cereals etc and Asian rice curry, fried vegetables (my kinda breakky :-)) though they would also through in some thing quite random like spagetti bolognaise!! do Italians eat this for breakfast! I did see people eating it too, it is one of my favorite dishes but not for breakfast. The new hotel (First Hotel) is pretty similar though they have less choice the quality is better. However on the first morning we were in there at 6:30 and they were playing Thai techno, Billy had a sweet pastry which after eating half found a hidden crab stick inside! We reckon it was the same person who put the techno on who made the pastries LOL!

One of the temples where only one Buddha still had it's head. You can see on either side of the big Buddha there are loads of smaller ones but only the bodies remain :-( it was like this over the whole site.

Billy by the Buddha head in the Bodhi tree

Giant stone Buddha at the first temple we saw at Ayuttha, there was another one on the other side also and loads of smaller ones surrounding the whole temple.

Bangkok train station. "Everyone stand it's 8:00"

Smelly diesel trains at Bangkok station.

Wow, we have not even been diving yet and found some mermaids already!!

The Golden Buddha

Crocodile Dundee eat your heart out LOL :-)

Reclining Buddha. It is enormous!!

Outside of the first hotel. There are market stalls in every direction.

View from first hotel room. This was taken at dawn. You can see the smog surrounding the city! We can't wait for some clean air :-)

Days 4 and 5

Day 4 - Monday we had to change hotels as we decided to stay on longer in Bangkok but was not able to extend our stay at the hotel we were in. So after a leisurely breakfast in the freezing cold sky lounge of the old hotel we packed and moved down the road to our new hotel, which is closer to the sky train so much easier to get to Siam Square.

After getting our bags we decided to have a very chilled day and went and relaxed by the pool and read our books. Plus I really wanted to try and get a bit of colour as I look like a milk bottle out here at the moment LOL :-)

We had planned to hit the streets for some street food but we decided on Pizza instead. Was quite good as we paid about 2 pounds 50 for 2 6" pizza's drinks and salad bar. i was so full after too. We had a quick look in a shopping plaza across from the pizza place and Lee would have been proud of my Thai haggling skills, i used the old "paing pai noy" (that's a little bit expensive) and "Gor lairo gun" (this is what i offer - kinda) which worked a treat, i only managed to get a further 10 baht off the asking price but the lady wasn't going to budge originally until i pulled out the lingo guns, i shall definitely be using those again :-)

Day 5 - Today we went to Ayuttaya. We got up at 6 and went for breakfast and then took the sky train followed by the underground to get to the train station. We had to wait about 40 mins for the next train but that was OK. We got to witness a strange spectacle at bang on 8:00. All the security guards stood in front of this picture of someone in old style army regalia, it wasn't the current king so not sure who it was but anyway they did some stamping and the whole train station stood to their feet whilst the national anthem played. I need to find out what is so special about 8am, when we went to the pictures we had to stand for the national anthem and watch some nice pictures of the king on the screen before the film started but i had not seen this before!

I also had to use the squat toilet for the first time today. I so didnt miss those, especially in the station as they stunk so bad. I have been lucky so far in that the hotels we have stayed in and the shopping malls toilets are all western style. Hopefully the trend has passed further south LOL :-)

Typically the train was 40mins late so it was about 9am by the time we set off and arrived in Ayutthaya about 10:20, we were very jammy though as the air con carriage tickets were 310 baht so we went for the normal tickets at 20 baht each. when we got on the train we got on the air con carriage not knowing at the time what carriage it was. When the conductor came round he saw our tickets and only charged us an extra 20 baht each to stay where we were! Result 310 baht seat for 40 baht, cant complain at that.

Unfortunately when we arrived we had forgotten to do our home work like irresponsible tourists! (slapped wrists) and were unsure of what to do. We visited the ancient city of Sukothai last time we were here and there it was a giant park type area which we walked round and visited the temples by foot so figured it would be something similar but in Ayutthaya the ruins were actually all around the modern day city. We didn't have much money on us so we took a one hour tour on the back of a pick up truck and managed to see 2 temples which were really impressive. (pics to come soon). One had a Buddha head in beaded in a Bodhi tree and then other was just huge with so many statues of the Buddha, it made me feel very soulfully calm, yes that's sounds quite hippyish but it's true. One sad thing though was that at the temple with the Buddha head in the tree about 90% of all the Buddha statues (and there were a lot) had their heads missing, which were most likely taken when antiquities became a major trade back in the day. Boo :-(

The train journey back was a mare as we had to wait an hour for the next train back to Bangkok which was then 40 mins late as well. Billy wasn't feeling well and i felt like i was coming down with something too as i ached from head to toe and the train was so uncomfortable, there was no air con section with comfy seats this time. The seats were really hard and the air con consisted of open windows, so you can imagine how dirty we were by the time we got off!! Plus this journey was longer as it stopped at loads more stations than the one on the way! I cant say i enjoyed that bit. Luckily we stopped at a train station which i recognised to be on the underground network so we got off there and instead of taking us a further hour to get back to the hotel it took 30 mins. i was very relieved and quite chuffed with myself for remembering the station was on the underground route (que big head).

After i showered and took some paracetamol i felt a lot better. Billy still is a bit sniffly but we have a lie in tomorrow so hopefully should feel much better by the time we leave on Thursday morning. Tonight we are definitely hitting the street vendors, which I'm really looking forward to.

Day 3

Today we decided to take it easy and hit the shopping malls, we were going to go to Ayuthaya to see the temple ruins but as we are still slightly jet lagged we thought we'd leave it until Tuesday. First we started off at Siam Square but as it is Sunday no where really opened until about 11 so we took a walk to MBK. I cant believe how many hours we have spent in here. It is now 16:30 and we are still here though taking a break from walking by sitting down on the internet :-)

We figured there was not much point in going back to the hotel to come all the way back again for tea so we are going to watch a film to kill some time (there is an entertainment floor with a cinema). The film we are going to see is called "The Curse of the Golden Flower". looks a bit House of Flying Daggers/Crouching Tigery and is in Thai with English subtitles but it should be good. Beats sitting in the hotel room doing nothing and the trailer for it which has been playing on huge plasma screens in the mall itself does look good.

Obviously this evening we shall be eating in MBK and then heading back to the hotel hopefully via a Thai Massage shop as we both ache like hell from all the walking we have done over the past few days.

Day 2

We had a very busy day on day 2. We decided to go and buy our bus tickets from the southern bus terminal to Ranong for Thursday so that we had them and knew what time the bus was etc, as we were in the area we went to the Grand Palace to see the reclining Buddha. It was pretty spectacular. The size of it was just incredible, it looks big in the pictures but nothing like what it is in real life. The room it was housed in was also very beautiful. From floor to ceiling there were paintings on the walls depicting life at the palace centuries ago, there were also many pillars which were also beautifully decorated.

The Palace grounds itself was also very impressive. Everywhere you looked there were temples and pagodas which were intricately decorated. I was quite surprised to see a strong Chinese influence in the architecture and in some of the statues, some of which did not seem very Thai at all.

After the palace we took a river boat down the river and then a tuk tuk to go and see the Golden Buddha. Again pictures did not prepare us for the real thing. The Buddha gleamed from head to toe and was stunning to look at. It is hard to believe that not so many yeas ago it was covered in concrete and no one knew it was actually solid gold underneath!!

From the Golden Buddha we went on the new underground rail system, took the sky train and did some window shopping before heading back to the hotel to relax for a short while. Though we had a bit of an incident as we decided to walk back but went in the wrong direction and after 45mins of hard walking we realised that we were miles from the hotel, so ended up in a taxi anyway! Oh well it burnt off some of the tons of food I have been eating lol :-).

The previous day we found this amazing place to eat in the MBK centre (my favorite shopping mall in the world). There are many choices of cuisine to choose from and you just pick what you want and they cook it fresh before you. We had to go back as it was so good and for about 2 pounds we had Thai green curry (the best one we have ever tasted btw) and spring rolls for starter, whilst a woman sang some English songs with a live band! Can't really get better than that. Hence we shall most likely eat there every night until we leave on Thursday.

Hello Bangkok

Day 1:
It was a very long day waiting to go to the airport. We left about 4pm in the after which just seemed forever to arrive. It was a good run to the airport though and we got there about 6:15! Then the fun started. We had to que for 2 hours to get checked in, the process was so slow, everyone was about 10-15 mins each at the check in desk, we were exhausted by the time we got to the departure lounge!
We did have a really good flight though. I managed to get some sleep and watched a couple of films and then the flight was over. We got to the hotel by 6ish Thai time, showered and then hit the streets. I was in culinary heaven, i think i could have eaten my way through Bangkok.
We didn't stay out too late, I fell a sleep at 10pm and woke at 7:30 am! which i was quite impressed with, strangely i didn't feel too great but when we worked it out i went to sleep 3pm uk time and got up 00:30!