Ending Movember

I think there was someone untoward in the vicinity of my block of apartment units last night. Dogs barking galore at 5:33 a.m. Apparently Tim and Natalie’s dog, Padi (I know, how keen is Tim, he teaches PADI, lives PADI, breathes PADI and rather than take a break away from the office, he names his bloody dog Padi. Going to have to have words with that lad before I sign out of here) started it. Before you know it, one dog barks, then there are 5, 6 or more dogs barking. A howling, barking cacophony that lasts 30 minutes. During which time fireworks begin popping. At least I am hoping they were fireworks. Hopefully they weren’t gunfire from the civil unrest currently affecting Bangkok.

Kidding….they were undoubtedly fireworks, although why someone would be setting off fireworks at 5:33 a.m. is beyond me. Kids, eh? From what I hear, though, the police have now given up control of Bangkok to the protesters. Interesting policy. As I mentioned before, if someone has more news/understanding of what is going on in Thailand right now, please pop me an email. As far as I can tell in Koh Tao, nothing is bad.

Oh yeah. And when Padi went nuts last night/this morning, I tried looking out of the window to see if I could see someone prowling about. It was pitch black. I would have turned on the outside light, except the power went out at about 12:30 last night. I was sitting in bed after getting home from the Assistant Instructors celebration/snorkel test, finishing one of my last knowledge reviews when blam, the lights went out, the fridge stopped humming and my ipod stopped playing on the speaker. It went very quiet very fast. Until the noise of the crickets, frogs, bugs and everything else reached my ears with their dulcet tones. Did I mention yet that these things keep me up.

Ah well, nothing to do but go to sleep….at least my alarms are battery operated so no fear of them stopping me from waking up. Oh, yes, wait, no fear of that, we have Padi-alert, the new wake-up call of choice.

So, up super-early again today, but it’s ok, this is something I have come to live with in my first week on Koh Tao. And get this. No seriously, some of you will fall out of your chairs at this. I went for a run this morning!!! I felt fine for the first five minutes. Positively dandy. And then it hit me….running fucking hurts. Especially in 28 degree humid heat while running up and down quite severe hills. Oh yes, I must have left my brain in Beijing…..here I am on a hilly island in the gulf of Thailand trying to run up and down hills with 35 degree angles. About 15 minutes into the run I feel like puking. 20 minutes in I am praying to Jesus. 35 minutes and I have run to Sairee and back and I am on the verge of passing out and having a heart attack simultaneously. I sit on the steps up to my apartment for 10 minutes waiting for the spinning head to stop. Finally feeling brave enough to stand up, I turn around and stretch my legs on the steps. I think I pulled something. Well something definitely pops. I sit back down for another ten. Still hurting. I start walking up the steps, screw stretching, who needs that shit anyway. It is at this point that I remember how bloody steep the stairs are up to Chez Chris….perhaps this should have given me a clue as to how hilly it is around here.

I come to appreciate the lack of electricity in my apartment. No electricity equals no hot water (the water goes through a small box heater by the shower that runs on electricity), so I take an ice cold shower. It seems to slow my heart, but this is a good thing. Crap…..got to stop turning into a fat bastard.

I will have to go running more frequently. Infrequent runs seem to possess the ability to almost kill me.

I suppose having beers almost every day doesn’t help. Like last night when I had about three or four and some nasty after eight tasting shot that Natalie foisted on our table. Last night Carroll, one of the other Sunshine DMT’s also completed her snorkel test. This is the second time I have witnessed such stupidity. I am getting slightly anxious about this whole situation, because it is quickly apparent that Tim has adopted me as a good buddy. I am thinking Tim wants to completely kill me on my snorkel. Natalie on the other hand has taken a motherly approach I think (alright with a bit of a piss-taking edge), but I know she is going to have her arm completely twisted by Tim and she will also partake in the effort to poison and disgust me at my snorkel test as well. Carroll’s was, in fact, quite tame…..mostly juice, but it still completely fucks her up. I have a feeling mine may include pubic hairs.

Oh yeah…..so it was pitch black in my villa after the power went down and I tried to get it up and going again a couple of times. When I woke up this morning, there was a cockroach by the electric panel. A squished cockroach. I think I could identify the swirls from my big toe on its back (it was a BIG cockroach). Nice to know I likely have cockroach guts on my bed somewhere now. Ah the rustic tropical life….

Before you say it, no, I do not have nasty hygiene habits encouraging cockroach motel in my room. This is only the second one. The first was in my toilet on the day I first moved in. So I think the landlady placed it there after checking the room prior to my acceptance. It wasn’t doing backstroke by the time I moved in. But there are gaps under the door and all over the place in Chez Chris. I am surprised I haven’t woken to see a monkey sitting at the end of my bed.

Oh that reminds of a strange and perhaps the saddest sight I have seen since I have been here. It was actually a couple of days ago. As I was on my way to Sunshine I rode past a guy with a moped and a side car that is like a little flat pad on the side of the bike with a railing. He was being chased by about four dogs barking like nuts at his passenger in the sidecar. A monkey looking over the railing in considerable concern at the yapping dogs. It broke my heart. Why do people have to try to domesticate monkeys? Leave the poor fuckers alone.

Ok rant done, but a sad moment.

Given my early start today I also managed to finish all of my chapter reviews (well almost … I am dilly-dallying on my physics chapter) for my DM. Slowly but surely chipping away at the old block.

I also splurged on breakfast today, no rice and eggs for me….mushroom omelette!! Yummy. And I got my phone working properly!! I had my first call from home this morning. Good to hear from the missus, even if it was 10:30-11:00pm for her on a Saturday night. A 40 minute call too!! I hope to make this a more frequent occurrence now.

I have gradually started uploading photos. Unfortunately I cannot post them … or at least I cannot figure out how to upload them to this blog. They won’t even email well. So I am uploading them slowly on facebook instead. Those of you on facebook can see some shockingly poor photos from my first week in Koh Tao. You should be advised that a) they are poor photos, b) I am so not photogenic and c) I really don’t pull the camera out enough. Something I will have to address.

So, Carroll, Ted and myself went out on the boat this afternoon. Perhaps the worst visibility yet. We were hoping to get our mapping exercise out of the way (as part of the DM course we have to map a dive site). Carroll bailed on the dive before we even descend. Ted and I tough it out. But as viz is so bad we give up on mapping and instead I lead a navigation dive (another course requirement that these two have already completed). I get us to our destination. Unfortunately I leave my computer on deck, so I have no idea how long it took to reach the location. I at least try to count kick cycles, but on the way back I must have buggered up somehow, as we end up about 20 feet from the line when we surface. That’s not so bad though, so I qualify as a pass.
Ted laughs at my poor navigation. He offers to lead the next dive (which is actually part of the first dive….my nav and the viz was so bad we just take 20 mins to get to the dive location and back. But we still have most of our air, so we go back down. He gets us hopelessly lost and we end up surfacing about 40 metres from the boat and downstream. It is quite the kickback to the boat, but I am giggling at his bad nav.

Then I get asked by John (who is working for Ban’s today on an advanced open water) to help him with his student. This would be the student who just puked getting out of the water on her first dive. She bails on the second dive and will do it tomorrow instead (my day off suddenly gets booked for three dives tomorrow). So John and I go out for me to lead the fun dive. I lead John on a square in zero viz, but we get back close to the boat. More notches on my belt.

Ahhhhhh, so much for relaxing on the weekends around here. Must head off now…..going to watch a bunch of guys shave off disgusting moustaches. Apparently half the island took part in Movember. It is an Aussie charity drive…..although here there is no charitable gain, the guys just all grew moustaches. So off to Ban’s momentarily to watch a bunch of drunk guys remove one month’s growth….

See you tomorrow, batfans…..

A normal day at last

So round two of today’s blog. Today was actually a pleasant day. Woke up at 7:30, had a nice shower, popped into town for coffee and posting the old blog, then stop off at home for further ablutions, a quick plate of rice and eggs at Fishy’s and then over to Sunshine for 10:40. Enough time too to even get a couple more knowledge reviews out of the way. Almost done the knowledge reviews.

Tomorrow I have to map a dive with Carroll and Ted. Things are coming along swimmingly….tee hee. My goal is to have my DM complete by December 15 so that I can move on to my instructor’s courses. Hang on. Map a dive site? Has anybody noticed my references to almost zero visibility so far? This should be an interesting exercise in futility. I suppose if we can pass our DM skills in these types of conditions, then we should be bloody brilliant in perfect conditions. I suppose what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger…..except I am not such a big fan of mixing “death” with diving. Seems like juggling with a razor sharp set of handleless knives to me.

So, finished a couple of reviews and then it was off for the afternoon dives. I was helping Emily again today with her open water student on her last two open water dives. Sadly for the student, the visibility today was the worst it has been so far. I couldn’t see past her fins and I was RIGHT behind her. And she had to do a few skills while we were out there. I felt a little bad for her. At least I am here for a while and will get to see nicer waters (fingers crossed).

And it was sunny all day!! Bummer.

Back to the resort, wash and dump my gear, home for a shower and then to the pub to get internet connection. All in all not so bad a day. Tomorrow morning I am out for a run early, then some studying, then more dives. Things are fairly quiet, so I hope to take advantage of it to get some of my exams out of the way. And work on my business plans for when I return.

There is another event tonight, although not a 30th this time. A celebration for a group of assistant instructors passing their exams. I’m currently drinking a diet coke. I don’t think my drinking will extend much past that tonight. A couple of days ago should see me though for a little while. Except there is yet another event tomorrow night over at the Ban’s bar. These ex-pats need to slow down!!

Now there have been some requests for photographs to be posted. I have a bberry cable, so I will try to download pictures from the camera onto the laptop. I have no idea how to post pictures into the blog, but I will see what I can do. Now I just have to take some pictures.

I also took the opportunity to register with the Canadian embassy in Thailand today, seems a smart thing to do with the civil unrest currently taking place in Bangkok. Although outside of the occasional comment here and there, not a single bit of it seems to be affecting anything here.

So my first day of relative normality. Not much to report today space rangers, but I will be back tomorrow…..

Vomitoriana (WARNING ... this blog contains gross vom stories)

Yesterday arose shockingly quickly. Yesterday was sunny. Yesterday didn’t rain once, a first for my time here in Koh Tao so far. A perfect start to the day. Except I was wishing it was yesterday, yesterday. I would have hummed that oh-so-famous Beatles song, if I didn’t already have the Toronto philharmonic orchestra crashing out some squealing Dvorak-like melody in my head.

Oh, I felt pain. Pain like a million lancing needles through my eyes, a bout of Delhi Belly all mixed in with complete disorientation.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Carroll’s 30th celebrations got moved up to Thursday night. We succeeded in helping Carroll partake in that age-old rite of passage into Thirtydom…..getting completely tanked. Heather you would have been proud. The slight problem with the mission was that ALL of us got completely hammered in the process.

The slight problem with me getting as smoked as the rest of them, however, was that I was the only one getting up early to go out on a student’s OW dives 1 & 2. Yesterday was to have been a very long day without booze. I was sched’d to go out on the morning dives, a fun set of dives with Ted and Carroll in the afternoon and then a night dive with John and our advanced student.

Stumbling into bed at 1:30 after stopping at Fishy’s for….can you guess?….that’s right! rice and eggs…..only to wake at 3:30 from something making a big noise and me feeling like I was riding the good ship Bed. Roll into the loo and give my porcelain friend a good hug. Back to bed and the alarm goes beep beep beep at 6:30. I have to be at Sunshine by 7. Lots of time, except my drunken ass falls back to sleep. So it is 6:52 when I reawaken. Uber-fast shower to wash off the vom that I missed by the corner of my mouth and some crusty something affixed to my knee and brush my teeth. Yep, in my befuddled state I use the tap water. I quite possibly now have some form of tropical bug from hell setting up shop in my lower intestine. I’ll let you all know when he rings the bell for first call.

I ride my moped like Francis Poncherello (go on, name the show….Heather, yes, if you get this one too you earn yourself another Singha….just pick up your redemption voucher from the Boss) and make it Sunshine for 6:59. Impressive indeed for my totally fucked state.

This is my first dive with a different instructor, Emily. Not wanting to look like a complete jerk, I explain to Emily that I got virtually no sleep last night. I think she sees right through my little ploy and gives me the “shure shure” nod of knowing disgust.

There’s only one student, so off we go. The truck ride over to Ban’s already makes me feel like we are at sea. Yet I keep up a good face and even engage in some pleasant conversation with the student, in between appearing to look over my shoulder at the scenery, where I am in fact gagging and trying to hold back Barferama (oooooh, Barferama…….name a movie where that one has been used!! Heather, if you get this first, I warn you, you will get drunk and the “Heather’s tanked” moniker will be deservedly placed on any photos that get taken).

We get on the boat. So far so good. I haven’t puked or …..STONE LOOK AWAY LOOK AWAY!!! …..crapped myself, which oddly my gagging sensation seems to threaten to unleash.

OK STONE ….you are back in…..

Off we go through choppy seas to our dive destination. I set my gear up and assist the student to keep my mind of things. Into the water. It is only 13 feet deep at its deepest point. And it is wavy on the surface and surge-crazy underneath. Oh Joy. So, I do some regurgitating at the surface and boom….seconds under the water and I have dry-mouth from the air.

And round and round we go in the washing cycle. Which is certainly not helped by the glowing gloom surrounding us providing approximately 7-8 feet of visibility. Luckily we are so shallow that I can always see the bottom, thus preventing vertigo from kicking in…..something I am sure would have fed my regulator…..

Back on the boat. I haven’t chucked since 3-something a.m. and I feeling pretty chuffed with myself, even if I still feel like shit. The waves pick up as we head to the second dive site. I try to keep up a conversation with the student and Emily, but the greasy fumes belching from the boat and the smoke wafting my direction from Emily’s cigarette (oh yes, do Ex-pats like to smoke….particularly diving instructor ex-pats) have me feeling particularly queasy. I excuse myself on the pretence that I am simply so tired I must lie down. I know Emily is not fooled, but I cannot do anything about it at this point. I pass out for 30 minutes on a rolling roiling boat ride. Oddly, momentarily I feel a lot better when I am woken up by Emily. It is short-lived…..having already decided to bail on the afternoon “fun” dive with Ted and Carroll I am advised by Emily that Natalie texted here and wants me to assist on the afternoon dives with another Sunshine instructor, Greg. Vernacular time…..FUCK.

Luckily, Emily takes compassion on my sorry arse and lets Natalie know that I am completely toast and that I should sit out the afternoon dives. Before I can do that, however, we have the second OW dive. Pop. In we go. Water is mildly deeper…..I think our deepest depth is 22 feet, but whereas viz was shit before, it is now non-existent. I basically have to swim with one hand on the student’s tank to keep her in sight. And she is virtually eating Emily’s fins trying to keep her in sight.

Thankfully, the student is actually very very good and a quick learner. She passes her skills with ease. We do the out-of-air exercise and she uses my octo to head to the surface. We are supposed to maintain eye contact as we go up, but I am forced to look away as I come within micro millimetres of filling my reg. She seems to look on with a caring eye, but I still feel a little guilty. I know I will say this now and I know I will break it, but please, everyone, remind me not to get completely smashed the night before morning dives. Not a pleasant experience.

Anyway, we finish the dive and still no pukey-pukey!!

Until I am onboard and packing up my gear. Stone, you’ll enjoy this. I manage to reach past the tanks and extend myself clear over the side of the boat as I launch a stream of bile off into the ocean to be enjoyed by our fishy friends.

I turn around. The student is not near and has not noticed. Neither has Emily. Yippee, I am free of embarrassment. Until I turn a little more……to see Tim, my uber-instructor, creased up and pissing himself at my troubles…..

To his credit he passes me a cup of water a he asks me if I am up for a beer tonight. I offer him my middle digit in return, which only causes a further bout of hysteria on his part. I sit down while Tim engages in some theatrics for my benefit. He points at me and mimes a small flapping bird. He then points at himself and mimics a big flapping bird. I can only presume he is trying to say I am weak. Ahhhh, yes he is, because now he points at himself and flexs his muscles and points to what an exaggerated bulging bicep. He then points at me and again shows the arm flex and points below his bicep in a sagging motion.

I applaud him with two middle digits. At least he has the decency to put an arm around my shoulder and tell me it’s alright.

Back at Sunshine, I pass out in the hammock for two hours.

Dick around there for another hour, then a quick snooze and shower at home. Back in time for the night dive.

We got to the same site as the second morning dive. If anything, visibility has worsened. And our advanced student is in a near state of panic as we descend and follow John in the dark. I am now positively seasick in the surge, obviously accentuated by my continued alcoholic toxicity. The student continuously bangs into me as he flails after John. Oh I am not having fun on this dive. John and I see a ton of fish as they suddenly appear around us in the dark. The student sees none. Not a single one. He confesses that he was so focussed on John’s fins that he in fact saw nothing else.

Ah well, at least he is now a certified advanced open water diver. Back to Sunshine on the jalopy ride that is the Sunshine taxi (they call it a taxi but there is never a fare, so I am not sure why they call it that)….turns out that Chai, our driver, has a date. So he traverses the island at break-neck speed. Luckily for Chai, I have nothing left to hurl. John wants us to go for a celebratory drink with Muscles. I gingerly sip a diet coke.

As you will have noticed, I blogged late and I blogged short last night. It was 9:30 by the time I got downtown. Sitting in Café Del Sol, all I could feel was a swaying motion, as if I am still standing on the boat. Interestingly enough, I am now sitting in Café Del Sol and still feeling that way. Perhaps I have a temporary inner ear imbalance. Perfect. That should make today’s dives feel like arse too…….go Scuba Chris….goooooooo……just don’t puke today. Please.

Oh….and there are two social events I have been asked to attend tonight and tomorrow. Time to start practicing the old look like I am drinking while spitting it out trick. This old man’s body can’t take it. I know I have at least 5 dives over the course of this week.

Hey!!!! I’ve been here a week!!! Time flies, compadres, see you tonight for today’s blog…..

Diving with Hangovers

Uncle Chrissy is a little under the weather today. Uncle Chrissy got blasted last night, got to bed at 1:30am absolutely smoked and spinning and was awake again at 6:30. Uncle Chrissy has storys of diving and puking and bailing and oily greasy engine fumed fishy smell vom following a night dive in 2m viz but you lucky kids will have to wait until Friday night (early Sat. a.m. for my UK fans) when Uncle Chrissy posts today's blog on the Saturday morning. Uncle Chrissy is hurting. He only got to the cafe and online 20 minutes ago and just realized that the room is still swaying. Uncle Chrissy is going to log off and rest his head with a cool facecloth over his forehead.

Manyana, amigos.

Losing students in murky waters on Day 6

The instillation of normalcy, in relative terms, is beginning to take place at Chez Chris and in my daily routine. Routine is rote and I suppose routine may be the wrong noun to utilize in this context because everyday has the ability to be completely different on Koh Tao. So, perhaps a better description would be to say that life is settling into more recognizable patterns. Good. Now that the grammar lesson is complete, you may all take out your English Literature texts, also known as the remainder of the blog.

You watch, some smart Alec will now come along and completely attempt to correct me on some nuance of the above paragraph. Heather, you know you’re itching to do it, so fire away. Besides, that was a lot of thinking on my part for 8am, so fuck off. In a nice way of course. And if you insist on being anal (and not in a good way) I will enrol you in the Canadian Underwater Navigational Technicians course upon my return.

Now I have confused a bunch of people (which is a common occurrence in my blogs methinks), avaunt and let us continue…..

Normalcy, that’s where we were. Ahhhh, the trick worked….a hot hot shower this morning. Enough to scold the little hairs on my bummy bum bum. And moments later irritate the shit out of my 1,000,000 mosquito bites that are now so crowded around my ankles they are in fact cankles. It was ridiculously mozzie land last night at Easy Bar, where the drinks are flowing and the girls are glowing….well not so much, it was mostly a sausage-fest of DMTs and bums, but it’s cool, it is mere steps from my dive resort/office and so it was easy for Natalie (my instructor extraordinaire) and myself to grab a couple of quick Singhas.

A few moments of fun and reflection upon Easy Bar:

1) It seems to me that all pharang here (including the ones who have gone native) partake in a minimum of two beers a day. Aside from the cost factor, my biggest concern is that I will not only have to dive four times + each day, but I will also have to run and possibly go for a swim while lifting weights if I want to prevent the inevitable lifebelt from growing around my mid-section.
2) Easy Bar teaches me life with the Thais is not “easy”. Last night there was a switch in bartenders. We’d had a few beers and I was paying for mine as we went along. As we get up to leave, the bartender starts getting shirty saying I owe for beers. Nat steps in and gets him to chill out. He seems decidedly hostile to me (and from the tattoos up and down his body and the odd scar here and there, he looks like he only recently gave up his former pastime of Dread Pirate Roberts – [name the movie, movie buffs, there’s a Singha in it if you get your butts down here]), but Natalie tells me that he has communicated to her that he is not angry at me. We leave and Natalie tells me that Thais will often get angry at someone when there is positively no reason for it, because they are in fact angry at something else. Turns out the bartender and the one he switched shifts with got into a big fight weeks ago. Another common Thai trait is apparently holding Prometheanesque grudges.
3) We get my cell phone working!! Yay. Well, yay and grumble grumble. Not my cell phone. Natalie has given me her old cell. A very very nice gesture and I am hugely grateful. There is, however, a reason, why she gave me her old cell. She has a new one. And why would someone get a new cell……because the old one doesn’t work very well. So, we’ll have to see how it goes. But it does completely piss me off that some jerk in Toronto is sitting in his booth in Dufferin Mall smiling and holding my fiddy in his grubby hands for the little chip he sold me that would apparently unlock my bberry. I’m bringing a lady-boy back to tear him a new arsehole. Hopefully he won’t enjoy it too much.
4) The sun finally made its first appearance since I have arrived on Koh Tao. There was a massive celebration at the bar to welcome it….almost like something tribal….I could see Lord of the Flies taking place so fast if things went south in Thailand…talking of which, apparently a bunch of protesters stormed the airport in Bangkok. If any of you know what is going on, please let me know. The news here is somewhat “unreliable”, as in they show a picture of the King on the telly and pipe in some soothing music. So if there is in fact a coup or anything, I would be grateful if someone can let me know.
5) I discovered a new game…..even if it will be a somewhat short-lived game. One of the other DMTs (let’s call her Carroll) has an Italian boyfriend. Apparently he is the jealous type. So my new game is to see how much I can wind up the Italian Stallion before he leaves. He’s a good bloke, so I won’t take it too far, but man, it is certainly reaping mirthful rewards so far. She isn’t helping him any by announcing to the entire dive crew at Sunshine how she just bought a new bikini that is padded and, to quote her vernacular, “makes my boobs look brilliant”

On to today. Did my first three exams this morning and aced them. Theoretically, I am doing just fine. My bigger tests personally will be my buoyancy skills and the swim tests. So not looking forward to them. I will have to swim 400m in under 10 minutes, I have to snorkel 800m as fast as possible, tread water for 15 minutes, the last two of which have to have my hands in the air and then tow a tired diver 100m. That may not sound a lot on paper, but it is seriously daunting to me.

Oh…went out on a dive with our advanced student again. John let Muscles and I head off on our own. Luckily Ted was following. We did alright letting Muscles lead for the first ten minutes. Until we hit complete soup. Then Muscles forgot his brain behind. We head deeper, but none of us can see each other. Finally, we get his attention, get him to stop and head back a bit. Except in the heading back we lose Ted in the murk. The only one who knows the dive site just went somewhere else. So what happens? We get lost. The student insists we are at position X. I ask him to indicate to me how he knows where we are (quite the feat underwater with my hand signals) and he understands and accepts that he has no clue where we are. This must have panicked him a bit as he consumes a bunch of his air in moments flat. I get to use my sausage (no not my dick you dirty buggers), a surface signalling device….and we ascend. Luckily we are only 20 minutes from the boat. We get to the boat, just as the Captain starts the engine. After stopping our student from getting sucked into the propeller, I move him away from the boat. Turns out Muscles is in fact a heavy bastard. The Captain moves the boat 400m away and we swim over again. Long fucking swim…..

If you recall, in a previous blog I discovered that my towel is in fact a blanket. You wouldn’t believe how surprised I was this afternoon to get home and find a plastic bag on my doorhandle with another towel in it!! Given the fact that Mamma didn’t see fit to provide me with a towel in the first place, I can only presume that Mamma is either: a) completely disgusted with me for being such a useless tool as to confuse a blanket cunningly disguised as a towel as an actual towel; or, b) has a mad crazy Thai lady crush (and no, for you hoping so, she is not in fact a lady-boy….at least I don’t think she is … she looks like she has boobs, but I guess anyone can fake it…..) on me. Let’s hope it’s the latter, I could use the flattering, even if she is ridiculously old.

Also found out my schedule for tomorrow. I will be assisting on an open water (i.e. the ocean as opposed to a pool) portion of an open water course with Emily. I then chose to go for two fun dives in the afternoon with Ted and Carroll to gain more experience. This has since come back to bite me in the arse. I was supposed to be on a night dive right now in fact, but the water visibility and surge is so bad that it has been postponed until tomorrow. This is seriously compounding things and I will explain why.

Oh the issues of a required social life. Now, instead of four dives (of which the two morning dives would be shallow, therefore not so threatening) tomorrow, I am doing five. Five dives in a day is quite a lot. But on top of that, we were supposed to go out tomorrow night to celebrate Carroll’s 30th birthday. Carroll’s 30th is actually tonight, but her boyfriend was to take her out for a romantic celebration and tomorrow was to be the rat-arsed portion. Turns out that Carroll’s boyfriend has some significant back pain and so he has bailed on tonight. This in turn means that there is sort of an impromptu celebration happening tonight. So now, I am sitting in Choppers in Sairee feverishly trying to finish the blog because a group of Sunshiners are heading here for 7 to get rat-arsed. Then I have to be at the resort in the morning for 6:50. Followed by two morning dives, two afternoon dives, a night dive and the second round of celebrations for Carroll’s 30th involving those unable to make tonight. Tomorrow promises to kick my butt. Oh. And I have my second skill set on Saturday. To quote my Chosen friends, “Oy vey” (ok….Carroll is reading this over my shoulder as I type this and had no clue as to who “Chosen friends” were. So for you dumb gentile fuckers out there, “The Chosen People” are God’s Children….i.e. Jews. Hang on Carroll wants a quick word………Feck off being mean to me – its my birthday – grrrrrrr ….thanks, Carroll, now fuck off my blog).

Changes of plans seem to occur about as frequently as your trips to the loo do during particularly virulent bouts of diarrhoea do. This may also mean that I am simply not have time to get a post in tomorrow, so you lucky fuckers may get two for the price of one on Saturday ….. oh my God, I know what you are thinking …. this will be a marathon session!!!).

The whole cluster-fuck of my plans also throws another brilliant idea I hatched yesterday evening totally down the shitter. Last night I had 230 baht. I planned on making absolutely sure I could last until Friday night subsisting on that amount before I hit an ATM. 240 baht is … give or take currency fluctuations…$8 CDN. I was doing well until 20 minutes ago. I had dinner last night, a couple of beers, a diet coke, breakfast, lunch and bought two bottles of water. I still had half my money left. Getting f***ed tonight completely puts the kybosh on that. I just hit the ATM and feel like a complete heel.

What was I saying about routine at the beginning of this blog…….

Diving with Blinkers on Day 5

And the blazing heavens shone with hallowed light, the gloried angels sang “Hallelujah, hallelujah, let us sing in praise”. Oh the humanity. I fell asleep at 11ish last night and woke today at 7:56 a.m. Yes!! I’ve broken the no sleep zone. Fingers crossed I can try and get two nights sleep in a row. Having said that, last night I was mildly tipsy, so I seriously hope I don’t need to be in a state of inebriety every time I want to get a night’s sleep. BUT, it gets better!! On top of sleeping the night through, I also woke and had a tepid shower! Huzzah!! Champion, mate.

Man, looking at that last paragraph, I have to scale back on the use of exclamation points. The problem is, and you will be acutely aware of this if you have read the last few days of my blog, for a wide-eyed Westernized pharang (most likely spelt wrong, I am going purely on phonetics here) in Koh Tao there are simply too many things that demand both a state of shock/surprise/Oh-My-Godishness and /or outrage/indignation. So, until I am used to the zaniness of this place, I suppose we will have to expect a slough of exclamation points.

It is now 8:35 and I am showered, perky and ready to rock and roll…..yummy, time for some rice and eggs. Then a quick pop into town to get some internet connectivity and over to Sunshine to survey the scene. I know I have to assist on the advanced course I helped set-up, but that is not until this afternoon. If I guesstimate rightly, I can finish brekkie by shortly after 9. Getting on the internet always takes me longer than I anticipate, so I hope to hit Sunshine by 11, still giving me a couple of hours to get through some more of my DM materials and start getting ready for a couple of my exams.

Oh and despite my promise and housekeeping rule of yesterday, I feel that I am compelled to break it for one short moment already. Even though it is only day two of the new rules.

So STONE (and by Stone, I hope you know who you are), if you are reading this DO NOT READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH.

Check this shit out (well literally in this case, sorry Stone, but if you read that line anyway, you have already ignored my warning above, so how bad should I feel really?), I used the “bum gun” this morning!!! “Bum gun” being a term lent to me by Tim, my instructor, who is oh-so-proud of his expertise. In fact, he has now gone so native, that when he goes home to visit family in Canada he has to time his toiletry ablutions with his shower times. Messed up, dude, messed up. It is amazing how much people will share on this topic. Anyway, despite giving it a shot (ha, shot, get it), I can still safely say I am currently not a fan or a likely convert.

Ok, STONE YOU CAN RESUME READING FROM HERE.

Oh, yeah, I went to the “graduation” of 8 DM’s last night from their training. Seriously, how is it that no matter the sport, people figure out ridiculous ideas that involve alcohol to prove that people have finished? In this case, “graduating” student DM’s have to complete the “snorkel test” in order to gain recognition from their peers. The snorkel test involves a bucket that appears to hold approximately 6-8 cups of liquid. Imagine one of those crayola buckets (yeah the big one the snooty kid on your block had). Now fill it with a disgusting concoction of unidentified alcoholic liquids and mixes. In fact, in some cases, add eggs and other food stuffs (luckily not last night). Then take a water bottle, and cut the bottom off. Now take a hose, attach the hose to the top of the bottle at one end and attach it to the end of a snorkel at the other end. You’re getting the idea here, I know it. Make the graduate put on a mask with the lenses blacked out and have the snorkel, with the now inverted McGyvered bottle attached to it, put into the graduate’s mouth. Empty said bucket into the top of the snorkel contraption and watch said graduate struggle to down a bucket as fast as possible while being unable to breath through their nose.(hence the mask). This is what I have to look forward to. You have no idea how many of the “graduates” puke. Lovely.

Get to Sunshine and off we go…yep, my two hours of study time disappear in about the time it takes to say “get your shit together, we’re heading off”. Our advanced student, who was one of our open water students yesterday, is actually a nice guy. Brit bloke who is a schoolteacher back home. His girlfriend/wife/lover is not taking her advanced, but following this the pair are off to Oz for a while to live and work. Strange phenomenon, this is the third couple in three days who are travelling around, have stopped in Koh Tao and are now moving to Oz. All three Brit (although one half of one couple was Italian who lives in the UK). Apparently Koh Tao is the staging ground for a reverse ANZAC invasion. Who knew the land downunder was the world’s land of opportunity.

We get to the boat and there are 6 of us going out for a dive. Our student, John and me and Ted, a DMT (Dive Master Trainee) from BANS and a fun diver (someone just wanting to go out for a dive). Of course, this being Thailand, they send us out on the big boat. The diving is shite. And throughout we have to tell the paying student it’s not so bad. No, it really is shite. The first dive is the advanced’s deep dive. We head down to 83 feet. I can see his fins, but I can’t see his tank. This is like a night dive in the middle of the day. Without a flashlight/torch. It blows.

The second dive we do a few skills then the instructor says off you guys go. So I buddy up with the student and off we swim. We’ve agreed to do a straight square pattern ahead of time for the “free swim” because the visibility is so shit. We head out and kick for 6 minutes east. We then kick for six minutes south. Same for west. It’s when we head north and back to our starting spot that things go sideways. The student is on 80 bar as we head back to base. For our north American readers who are used to psi, that’s about 1000-11000psi. Plenty of air. So far he has been checking his compass too. But suddenly he seems to get bored with that and stops looking at his compass. Instead of heading due north, noob is now heading sort of east. I keep trying to get him to check his compass and head back north but he is oblivious to my protestations. After a couple of minutes I physically stop him by almost pulling one of his fins off. Check air and he has gone from 1100 psi/80 bar to 750 psi/50 bar in three minutes. 50 bar is the no fly zone on bar gauges (it’s 500psi on north American gauges which is actually a little less air in the tank than the bar system), so we have to pop to the surface. Shit kids, it is at this point I realize I have to get my running back in gear and soon…..the 200m swim back to the boat gives me a minor coronary. My only saving grace is the fact that the student can barely walk when we get on the boat. Ha, you fat bastard….I’m still standing!! Yes, I win.

As viz is shit, we’re done early and back at the resort before you can say Bob’s your uncle. Finish some more knowledge reviews, have Natalie check ‘em and they’re good. My first three exams are tomorrow morning. So I have to do some more studying tonight.

I am actually surprised that there was no real zaniness today. Everything seemed kind of normal. Tomorrow looks like it might be a whole other kettle of fish. After two afternoon dives (following my first three exams), we’re taking the student on his first night dive.

Shades of my first night dive in Brockville are coming back to haunt me. That dive was super-retarded and not evening a nice Rainman kind of way. Four groups (or was it five) of 5 people waded out into the St. Lawrence river in the pitch black. So picture zero surface visibility in a shipping channel in very cool water. Now picture the first group going off for a lovely swim with NOTHING to look at. Now picture 20 or so other people heading off behind that group in ever increasing silty water and seeing NOTHING to the degree that you are barely able to even see the person’s fins in front of you. We’re talking close enough to bite the person’s fins in front of you. Oh, and then the fun increases ten-fold when you lose your buddy because you thought they were right by you. It’s an odd sensation when your buddy is a five foot nothing petite blonde and then when you look over she has morphed into a 260 pound spotty geek called Dave. Who smells like stale farts. Yes. Even under water.

So that was my first night dive in Brockville. Made me think night diving was bollocks. Until the Caymans, when I saw some very cool night critters out in the sea. Then night diving became cool again. Except I had two dive buddies. One, the same petite blonde who likes to set the rules and swam ahead and the other who likes to daydream (you know who you are Nova Scotia, you know) and swim 200m behind the rest of the group. I guess this is why I am trying to complete my DM course. This mothering worrying nature of mine constantly trying to make sure my buddies are ok. I ended up swimming about twice the distance of the rest by having to keep the group in sight and then heading back to grab Ms. “Ooooh, look at the underwater daisies”.

They tell you a night light in the water can be seen from way way way away. It’s bollocks. 200m and the light is not so bright. Not that Nova Scotia was overly concerned. She saw a squid while I shit a brick.

Oh……talking of shitting a brick (no Stone, don’t panic….we ain’t talking real shit here), I totally did this morning on my moped on the way to the resort. Oh Lord. Hit a sand bar in the midst of one of the temporary rivers that currently straddle the one road here and then squawked and instant prayer to that bearded dude I haven’t really believed in for years (no not Castro) as my bike swerved and swirled all over the fucking place. I have to say, I was quite impressed with my motor reflexes and my flexibility (which I thought was dead) as I basically had one knee on the ground doing 40 kph and the other leg paddling soupy sand to keep upright. One quick gun of the engine and I burst out of the River Kwai like that picture of the bat on the bike on the front cover of Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell. Before any of you think it, and I know you are thinking it, knowing a Meatloaf album cover does not make me gay. Look, I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s and Meatloaf was not a gay iconic band then, they were strictly for people in the closet. But in answer to your other thoughts…yes, me in a bright orange raincoat and on a very manly cherry red fully automatic moped flying out of a VERY wet sandbank probably did look quite hysterically pathetic. It was probably helped by the look of sheer terror on my face.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Anyway….the night dive tomorrow is likely going to make that night dive in Brockville look like a walk in the park. Visibility is set to get worse overnight. Yay. John is also thinking of giving me a half tank of air for tomorrow. Our student is pretty bad at his buddy checks and looking over to ensure his buddy is close by. So John is thinking that he will give me half a tank of air. The logic is that if the student doesn’t keep on checking, I will run out of air and then will have to use his octo. This seems like a fucked idea to me. I am hoping John is kidding. A) knowing this guy is bad at checking on his buddy likely means I will have to swim twice as hard to keep in his line of vision, thus using up my air twice as fast and b) his octo….being a rental octo…is likely to taste like the arse end of rancid camel. Ahhhh the life of a disposable DM.
Oh….got some news flashes today. One was very helpful, the other ridiculous. My days of tepid showers are over. I can now enjoy lukewarm showers. On a side note, can anyone tell me why mildly warm water is called “lukewarm”? I always assumed it was because the water “looked warm”, hence “lukewarm”, but a) how does water “look” warm (steam???) and b) why would the spelling change from “look” to “luke”? And if that isn’t the reason, then what the hell has “Luke” got to do with the temperature of water? Is that some weird biblical reference?? Please mystery blog-reader, fill me in. And if you quote wikipedia I will track you down and put very uncomfortable nipple clamps on you….Wikipedia is not a reliable resource. For fuck’s sake, you didn’t know that? Noob.

Oh shit….talking of Wikipedia, I totally forgot to work on my uni application. Now that I called you noob, please mystery blog reader, remind me to get going on my application on the weekend. Thanks. I promise to get a shout out to you in the next few weeks.

Is it me or am I totally rambling in today’s blog? Must be the excessive sleep I had. It’s going to my head. Ok…back to the two pieces of info that I learnt today. One is that if I don’t turn the water on all the way, I can get hotter water. So my choices are now …. Have a dribbling shower and mildly warm water or have a full shower that is slightly warmer than nut-freezing cold.

Second piece of news. The towel I have been using that could dry a family of five is so big because…….it is not a towel. In fact it is a blanket masquerading as a towel. It may be made from the same material as a towel, it may smell like a towel and it may dry like a towel, but as Mamma so eagerly pointed out to me today as I walked down my steps …. “hey, big towel no towel it blanket”. Using the age old Thai saying, I suppose it is “same same but different”. Shit. Now I have to go out and buy a towel.

Oh…..head’s up. Friday’s blog may roll into Saturday’s blog. And Saturday’s blog may roll into Sundays depending on how fucked I get on Saturday and how many things I have to complete on Saturday. One of the DM’s at Sunshine turns 30 tomorrow, so we’re having a 30th celebration for her on Friday night. Then I am going to a second skill set on Saturday to continue to improve my skills. So I may not have time to post on Friday and I may be exceedingly hung over on Saturday morning and then in the pool for hours and then absolutely shagged by Saturday night.

I also plan on going on my first run on Friday morning in the tropics. Yum… sweaty bastard gets even sweatier…..

Und jetz, the blog for today is over…..I am tired and need to read for my exam tomorrow. Guten nacht meinen freunden, I will speak to you all tomorrow providing I survive my half-tank dive and subsequent pitch-black “cor blimey guv’nor, it’s a real pea-souper”.

Day Four in Delugeville

A new low. 3:56 a.m. This keeps up, I think I will actually wake up soon a mere few moments after I lie down! Joking aside, I am beginning to get some colossal morning headaches. Bring on the advil/Tylenol/ibuprofen(or Ibbu-Prof-fen in a French accent, shout out to you there Peter) or whatever you call it. It was raining when I went to bed, it was raining when I awoke at 3:56, it was raining as I dozed for the next two hours and it is raining as I arise at 5:55 a.m. Shit. Tired, the air is damp, my head has a hundred hammers and anvils going (like a commie propaganda movie playing in my skull) and I know I am going to get drenched putt-putting to the dive resort. Another 7 a.m. tee off.

Ok, two points of housekeeping:

1) So far, I have been compiling my blog at the end of the day and trying to remember all of the good stuff. Today I am trying a new approach. I am going to turn on the trusty laptop throughout the day and try and update it frequently, then use my evening wireless session to clean up the blog for posting. I hope this enables me to get in all of the juicy fun, so that anyone bored and sick enough to be reading this can more fully share my day with me.
2) From today onwards I am making a promise to a very good friend of mine (someone I hope realizes I value his friendship extremely highly) and I will refrain from toilet habit discussions. With a caveat. If something truly spectacular or bizarre happens and I simply cannot write the daily blog without reference to it, it will end up in the blog. I will try to remember to put a spoiler alert at the top of the blog and immediately preceding said potty discussion, so that say friend can avert his eyes appropriately. You see, such discussions both annoy and revolt my friend (they probably aren’t the most favourite part of my blog for a number of you anyway). As I am typing this particular rule early in the morning, I also add the reminder here to myself to remember to email my Coptic friend to apologize to him profusely and say “Buddy, I am out of air, please, may I share your air and will you please continue to read my turgid blog?”

Oh, interesting discussion with a man named Stu last night. Stu is a tech diving instructor/group leader. Something I generally have not had much interest in. But now Stu has me slightly interested. Apparently Stu and his business partner discovered a downed US sub in the Gulf of Thailand (downed by depth charge no less) about 2 years ago. That may sound very uninteresting to most of you, but to me….hey!! Uber-cool. I don’t know if O will have any opportunity to do much about my tech-diving abilities before I leave, but I confess, I am now avidly interested and this could be a dangerous thing…..I’ll keep you posted. If any of you happen to pop by Koh Tao for a cup of tea in the next three months, remind me to show you a hand-drawn sketch of said sub, lovingly adorning a nook in Dirty Nellie’s Irish Pub.

Was at the resort for 7, yet another day of rice and egg for brekkie, Fishy’s staff are starting to recognize me. Bit of a rush for it though, cooked and eaten in a matter of minutes, all the while being tortured by one of those Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson movies where Chan’s a Chinese guy (well, obviously) and Owen is some kind of cowboy in the late 1800’s.
Packed up, grab the noobs and we were off in the water an hour later. Visibility not bad, considering the fact that we have had torrential rains for the majority of the day. Probably 30 feet. Enough to make sure I can follow the students and still see John the instructor up front. It’s kind of cool seeing the improvement in the students from day one to two. They are so much more comfortable in the water after only one day. Not nearly as many monkey bars or torpedoing….. Even convince one of the students to take the advanced course … yes, secured one of my advanced assists!! (I have to assist on two open waters and two advanceds, as well as one rescue).

Out of the water and back to BAN’s. Ted, one of the other DM trainees, is sticking around to take a “fun” dive. We have to have 60 dives to complete our DM. I have 37, so another two in the afternoon would be a great thing. Particularly as viz is supposed to get worse over the next couple of days because of the constant rain (boring info…..rain causes run-off from the island, which then enters the shallows around the island and pushes a cloud of silt out quite a way into the ocean). Get confirmation that the boat leaves at 1:30 and to be ready for 1:15. Except it turns out that the boat actually left at 12:45, so while Ted and I were grabbing lunch, the boat left. It then buckets it down, so although I will miss out on the viz, things aren’t so bad. I instead attend a physiology lecture (I have to attend that and then a physics lecture too, read a shit-load of crap about both subjects, then take exams on those). So not all is lost.

I head back to Sunshine. The road is flooded. And by flooded, I mean that there is a river running through it (sans Brad Pitt of course). There are also sand banks, currents and a tidal system. There is a LOT of water on the road. I am particularly concerned about how I am going to ride my moped back to Chez Chris. I don’t think they were designed for surfing.

Ah well, I have to watch yet another cheesy PADI video that will suck up a couple of hours, so hopefully the floods will have subsided a wee bit by then…….

Back at Chez Chris after a scary moped ride home…..blew a shoe at one point and had to park the moped in a river as I chased my quickly disappearing flip-flop that was being washed downstream…..the sand made the wheels pop all over the place and sometimes my feet had a nice grit/sand/microbe-soup bath in a couple of the deeper spots. My biggest fear was my exhaust getting water inside it, but after gunning it through some of the tougher spots I survived and made it back in one piece.

To arrive at some brilliant news. Well, apart from there being people in my place when I just want to chill for a few minutes…..I HAVE HOT WATER!! Civilization comes to Chez Chris!!! You have no idea how happy this makes me. Especially as I have been soaked to the skin for the better part of the day. After hanging my sodden things up around my gorgeous room, I have noticed that mondo-liz is back in behind the grate. Ahh well, if he kills the nasty critters and doesn’t break into Chez Chris proper, I’ll be happy enough.

I am off again shortly though, just as soon as I have the chance to have a hot shower!! I am popping down to Choppers to get some wifi action and update this blog and then get onto my 1001 emails that are gradually building up unanswered. Then I have to attend some drinks thing half a village away.

Must get onto my business emails though, or things will be where I left them by the time I get back.

Somewhere in all of this I have to try and read a couple of my manual chapters too……

Ok, in the pub, where it is happy hour and beers are two for 80 baht (i.e. $4CDN) and waiting for penne pasta. I’ve had enough rice for the day (x 2 meals a day is sufficient I think). The place is pretty busy, as is Sairee Beach generally. AND OH MY GOD, you have no idea how happy I am. I had my first hot shower in days. Ok, hot might be stretching it. Let’s say a warm shower. Ok, still stretching it, so let’s just go with not cold shower. It felt fucking fantastic. Pumped fails to describe my emotions.

Let’s get this puppy posted and I will tell you how tonight goes tomorrow……

Day 3 of DM to the rescue……

I give up. What the F*** is it with this island??? Maybe it is me and the rest of Toronto. Maybe we have such good insulation and have gotten so used to the regular sounds of the City that we can now sleep through the night and wake up at a decent hour of the morning. No such luck for day 3 of my 3 month hiatus from normality. Yep, another 5am start for ol’ Chrisaroo.

To be honest, I have no clue what in particular it was that woke me up this morning. It could have be the rooster chorus-line, it could have be a neighbourhood dog, it could have been the slight drizzle that misted by, the mother-trucker Donald’s Revenge (who really was back with a friggin’ vengeance …. probably pissed that the storm yesterday morning took away his moment to shine …. little shit), whatever it was, I tossed and turned under my sheet for 40 minutes until I decided to jump up for freezing cold shower Number 6.

Let’s talk about the sheet for a second. I know we sort of touched on the “basic” element of the room, but I forgot to mention the linen side of things. Mamma, who would be the landlady of my little slice of rental heaven, provided me with two fitted sheets, two gorgeous palm-leaf, Hawaiian shirt styled pillow slips and a towel that could dry a family of 8 in one go. You heard me. Two fitted sheets. So one is on the bed. The other is my top sheet to keep me warm (in a tropical clime nonetheless, but oddly I still feel a need to cover myself at night, go figure). Both sheets are disgustingly patterned. One of which also appears to have a series of red stains near the bottom that have the effect of making the sheet look like it may have been used in the clean-up following a mafia hit. I’m reminded of Harvey Keitel a la Pulp Fiction, except he’d be about two foot shorter, have less teeth and be Thai and smile scarily at you as he wrapped up the body.

Ok, so I am a wee bit grossed out by my room, but in a masochistic way it is growing on me in its simplicity. One needs to get back to grass roots sometimes to appreciate how nicely pampered our arses truly are in T.O. Actually, late last night and this morning started a whole new appreciation of how shit-scared I am of my room. So, I get back to my room last night and a dog had left a nice message for me on the rug outside my main door. Luckily it was a nugget, so all I had to do was pitch it off the balcony using the rug as a catapult. Weeeeee poopie. No sloppy stains for my rug thank you very much.

Oh, yeah, the rug. Before you even get to the rug, did I mention you are already walking barefoot? Canadians and Thais seem to have something in common after all. You know how it is not polite to walk into a friend’s home in Canada with your shoes on (thereby tracking shit, dirt, snow, etc. into your buddies pad), well the Thais also remove their shoes. Except they do it barefoot and usually a few steps away from the actual bloody door. And everywhere is tiled. So you walk a couple of metres barefoot before you even get inside (oddly enough a distance within which I invariably attract a crapload of sand onto my feet and earn a disapproving look from my host). This is a trend even extends to the grocery store! You walk up to the store to see 20-30 pairs of flip-flops in a mass before the front door. And then you walk in to a store where mice wander the aisles. Yay, go Weil’s disease….I may come back slightly f***’ed up, just a head’s up.

Damn, side-tracked again. So I open the door after my interim spotlighting as a canine sanitation worker and bam! Something flies up the wall to my left. After I squeal like a small schoolgirl seeing a spider and moisten my undies I spot a gecko flying across the wall behind me seeking refuge behind my bed’s headboard. Ok. Freaked. But how do you capture a gecko. Those fucker’s are fast.

Not much to do. Go in, shower in sub-artic water, brush the teeth and clamber into dead-man sheet bed. AND DON”T FALL ASLEEP FOR HOURS because I am picturing a god damned gecko nibbling on my fingers. Yep. It was a long day yesterday (read my previous blog, I am not repeating it here). It’s 12:30 and I was awake early. I went to bed at 10:30. I’m still wide awake and cursing our little newt friend (if any biologist/nature freak wants to correct me that it is in fact not a newt, please, refrain).
I must have passed out at some point, as I wake in the fetal position at 5. Still freaking out that the gecko has now somehow nestled alongside me in my sleep, I leap out of bed. Quick pee with a flush by bucket approach and I realize it is bloody early and I have to assist on an open-water test in the ocean this morning. I probably should get another hour or so of sleep. So I batter the shit out of the sheet with the broom (well a bunch of twigs tied together and kindly left in my room …which turns out to be quite handy actually when I swat the living shit out of a freaky big flying “thing” in my room 30 minutes later….some waspy/mozzie/insecty thing). No gecko. Climb back in and try to doze. Too late. Now I am completely aware of our friends the roosters and Donald’s Revenge has piped up. I’m awake, there’s no two ways about it. So I do some stretches on my bed in the near dark (hey, back off…I’m getting older and I ache now) and get up 20 minutes later.

Take yet another freezing cold shower (thanks for the promised hot water, Mamma, glad I paid the extra Baht for you to laugh your arse off at my discomfort). There’s a nasty looking bug trying to get into the bathroom. Across the top of the entire apartment are blocks with gaps in them. Close the windows or not, there’s always air coming in from outside through the gap blocks at the top of the room. Luckily they are covered by screens to prevent critters getting in. So I grab the shower head and try to drown the nasty flying bug thing or at least make it reconsider its attempts to enter my room.

Walk into the main room and I throw a bag on top of the lovely MFI cupboard in the corner. And shit myself. Well, not literally, that would be quite nasty (although I did almost pee myself on my way home yesterday. 5 hours in a pool has that affect). Throwing the bag onto the cupboard scares the heck out of a one foot lizard that has somehow managed to squeeze through the little gaps in the block and is now hanging out in the 1 to 2 inches between the block and the mesh. Having scared the lizard into moving, I have nearly given myself a heart attack. After calming down and realizing that, although the lizard is bloody huge, it can’t get into the room, I turn around……to see the nasty flying bug thingy heading right for my head. I scream (again like a little girl), duck, grab the stick broom and show that insect who the boss is here. Yeah. I ruled. Squish. It’s down the toilet in a bit of toilet paper (yeah I know, no toilet paper in the loo….well sue me….this fucker deserved it). Except it is not down the toilet. It takes two flippin’ buckets before it finally flushes away. Oh the joys of the shitter on Koh Tao (also had a twenty minute discussion on the way to the dive today as well about the benefits of pointing a trigger hose up your arse to clean it instead of using toilet paper…..I’m still not convinced it is the right thing for me….sure for some it is likely a delightful experience, I can think of nothing worse then douching my arse and then letting it drip-dry).

So. It’s 5:40 and I have killed a bug, told a lizard to back-off and scared the gecko into hiding (I later learn that it is incredibly good to have a gecko in your room and I should in fact be encouraging more….they eat the mosquitoes and nasty flying bug things…..I am also informed, but I don’t believe, that Donald’s Revenge is in fact a gecko call…..no way, Donald on crack meeting scaletrix cannot be a tiny cute gecko). I already own this day!!

Read the rest of chapter 2 of the DM manual (which is ridiculously long….I mean PADI seriously, 66 pages for chapter 2 when chapter 1 was 10? Did someone forget to put in a break?) because there is fuck all else to do at this time of the day on Koh Tao and attempt a number two (still no arse hose). Oh. I forget. Well, I mentioned the grocery store where you have to take your shoes off….that was last night. I found out that I am going to need a lot of bags. You see, I am not keen on leaving a bag of used toilet paper hanging around for more than a day. That bag has to be removed each morning. It’s gross. So I asked the grocery clerk if they sell boxes of plastic bags. Might as well have asked if they sell small orange martians for the look on her face. She sends me to the back. There may well have been boxes of bags back there, but as there were hundreds of different retail items available in boxes which all display Thai labels, I ended up being a tad fucked. I gave up. Which means every time I buy even a pack of gum right now, I ask for a carry-bag to take it away in. I must look like a knob, well, more of a knob.

It’s now 6:15. I jump on my trusty steed and putt-putt down the road at a galvanizing 20 clicks. There is NO ONE on the road (which makes me beg the question, where the hell do all of those scooters hide that seem to wake me each morning?). I stop off at Fishy’s for breakfast. Despite the fact that I saw a rat here on my first night checking out the bottom of the cupboards in the kitchen area, it is the only place open 24 hours and thus at 6:17. I have my first Thai breakfast. White rice and a fried egg on the top. Sexy-time!! Actually, I quite enjoy it, even if I am dismayed at the price….50 Baht. That’s like $2!! I’ll be broke soon if I keep this up.

Eat brekkie and mess around with my new dive computer and get to Sunshine at 6:50. Quick cuppa coffee and wouldn’t ya know, I am the first one there. Start getting the students’ gear out, ‘cos I am nice like that. They show up a few minutes past 7. Then we are off to the main dive store in town to get the boat.

We all pack onto the back of a small truck that has been rigged with seats either side. Get down to Ban’s (Sunshine’s sort of parent company) and get ready to jump out. One of the students, a solid English chap, reaches over the back to pull the handle and drop the back flap of the truck…and breaks of the handle. Being a gentleman and shit, I jump over the side, almost losing the lads in the process, and help the students down one at a time. The ladies are almost comical in their inability to drop two or three feet of the back of a truck.

There are only four open water students in our group, John and myself. We get out to the dive boat, along with about 40 people from Ban’s. It is crowded.

First dive in the ocean for our group and I know I shouldn’t find amusement in this, but I can’t help it….I know I was also as likely panicky as these guys my first time too, but we have some serious jitters going on moments before our first dive. I’m wearing three kilo’s of weight, but I am carrying another 4 in case our students need them at the bottom. I am going to sink like a damn rock. John laughs and says “suck it up”. Alright then.

So we get the four to the edge of the boat. With the exception of one German girl (there are two German girls and an English couple), who is seems as cold as ice, the other three have eyes that would make a racoon jealous. No need to tell them to keep their eyes open, they’re almost popping out of their heads.

Boing. We’re in the water and the English bloke (let’s call him “Muscles” for his heroics with the door mechanism on the truck) is starting to relax. But his missus and the other German girl are still a bit freakish.

John gets us set up and we are on the descent line. We head down. Well almost. John, the Brits and the cold-eyed German lass head down. Freaked out girl and myself are still centimetres below the surface. She is having trouble descending because she weighs 90lb’s wet and because she is having trouble equalizing, even though we are basically at snorkel level. I get her to stop. Relax. Breathe. We go down a foot using the rope. Stop. Breathe. Equalize. It’s working and, even though her eyes are wider than saucers, she is slowly relaxing and thinking. It still takes 5 minutes to go down. During which I spot a couple of very cute yellow box fish checking us out. The rest of the dive is hysterical. Lucky that I did bring those extra weights. After playing monkey bars for 5 minutes (meaning I have to reach up and pull down floating students continuously), we finally dump weights into their BCD’s and they manage to stay somewhere near the bottom. It is during this dive that I learn a new sport though…..student torpedo…..if they start rising, it is a lot of fun to get above them and to shoot them back down using their tanks as triggers. With the exception of cool-hand Frau Luca and Muscles, the other two remain panicky throughout the dive, but get through it ok. Muscles is possibly not scared because he is tired from flapping his way around with his arms.

We get up. We help them understand some of their issues. Which are mostly expected.

Dive two. They do so much better, which is good for me…..a lot less monkey bars and, disappointingly for me now that I have found my new sport, student torpedoing.

And we are done!! My first assist for a two tank dive and no missing people or serious problems. Yay me. John even says “great job”.

Sigh….I’m on my way. Now I just have to figure out how to swim……..

Day 2

Day two of full-on diving school. It’s now coming up for 8 p.m. and I am sort of shagged. Long days here. Ok, so I thought dawn came early yesterday, well today (which is Sunday, I now have a grip on time again) was even more a kick in the arse. Shit, if the heavens didn’t absolutely torrentially and scarily explode at 4:something a.m. You see rain in the UK, you see rain in Canada, but southeast Asia rainstorms simply dominate everything.

Boom. I sit upright in bed thinking someone just kicked the bloody door in. Nope, no one there, but I check my undies in case there’s a present left behind (who am I kidding? In this heat I sleep Carly Commando style….sorry Carly, awesome tune, but your name just got abused). Crazy thing is, it wasn’t even a crash of thunder, it was just the rain splitting the sky in its instant deluge. I crawl upright in the near-darkness and peep out of the window. It’s dark, but I can see that the rain would obscure my view beyond a few feet in any regard. I think the rain continues unabated for the next three hours. I can’t say for absolute sure, because I keep dozing off, but seeing as I seem to wake up every 15 minutes or so and it is still bucketing down each time I am jarred awake, I feel safe to call the constant downpour.

So, yet another morning where I have sort-of been awake since the wee small hours. I get up at 7. Yesterday I participated in my first divemaster skill-set session, which lasted for about 5 hours in a pool. Today I have been asked to attend an open-water class being given by one of the instructors, John, to a few new hopeful-converts to the world of scuba. I am to observe and assist where needed and read three chapters of my materials at the same time. I end up reading just under two chapters, meaning that when I log off tonight, I still have the remainder to do. I am also expected to have read the following two chapters and completed the knowledge reviews.

I am at the scuba school at 8:30. The class doesn’t actually start until 9, but here’s the rub…..after I wake up, it takes me about 15-20 minutes to get ready. My room is Spartan. It is not like I have a lot to do in there (get your mind out of the gutter). The shower is still cold (yes I have been promised hot water …. In fact I have paid for it, but it won’t arrive until tomorrow….Monday, YES, I win…..so on top of the days of the week now). So, after I freeze my bollocks off in the shower for as short a time as I can make it and still get clean (it is amazing how fast you can soap and rinse when the water is frigging freezing), I realize it is shortly after 7 and I don’t have to be at the dive store until 9. Getting tired of the whole Green and Black’s nibble of chocolate for breakfast, I head over to Sunshine Divers early and grab a bite to eat.

I ride to the store in a light pattering of rain, but seconds after I get there the deluge from the early hours is back. God, but it rains. In fact it simply pisses it down almost continuously until 12:30.

It’s around that time I realize I need the loo. Now this may not be a topic of conversation considered polite by most people, but when you are a veggie, your daily bowel movements are not something to be trifled with. Back home, let’s just say that I am “consistent”. I realize at noon today that I have gone No. 2 about twice in four days. A seriously unhealthy state of affairs. Before most of you carnivores even think “but, hey, I only go once a week”, stop it. Dudes, seriously, that is NOT healthy for you body. You actually should be going once a day. Veggies often go at least two to three times a day. Before you think “gross”, you should know that a veggie’s chances of getting colon cancer are infinitesimally lower than that of a carnivore.

I also learnt last night that one shouldn’t use toilet paper and put it in the loo on Koh Tao. No, you are supposed to wipe your arse and then put the paper in a bag that gets chucked in the garbage every morning. I confess, this process and concept kind of grosses me out. A good man, who’s name I won’t mention here, advised me last night that many people in fact do not even use toilet paper anymore here in Koh Tao. They instead use the “arse hose”. Completely perplexed and baffled, I innocently inquired what the hell that was. Turns out the hose next to the toilet that I had been using to flush the loo is in fact a hose you are expected to point up your butt. A rudimentary bidet, if you will. Good God!

Accordingly, I am not as inclined to use the Sir Thomas as often as I might otherwise have been. I will consider this an experiment to see how messed up my digestive tract can get.

Oh, I should also mention that you may be spotting an increased usage of English terminology and euphemisms from me (well at least those of you who are more used to my Canadianized-approach to spoken English). Koh Tao, it turns out is actually yet another county in England that simply drifted away. There are SHIT-LOADS of Brits here. Having moved a lot as a kid and having my accent go all over the place as a result, I am highly influenced by the accents and terms used by those around me. So now I sound more Brit than I have in a while. Well perhaps Oz. Because there are also a bunch of Aussies here. Not a lot of Canucks. In fact I have met two and one Yank. Everybody else who is white is more often than not Brit. Ok and a few Dutch, Swedes and …yeah, actually that is the predominant mix.

Funny that I travel halfway around the world to become more Brit again.

Back to Day 2 of divemaster training gulag……so the class finishes. Now we have a pool session. Oh, I should mention that it was during the class that I also learnt that I would be playing a pivotal part in the open water test in the bloody ocean tomorrow. I am there to follow and circle the group making sure that there are no panics or freak-outs and to assist those students if there are so that the instructor can assist the rest. Yes, open-water and in the ocean with a bunch of panicking first-timers on Day three of my DM schooling. Oddly enough I am feeling fairly confident about my skills, but still, there’s no dicking around in this place. Get in and get dirty or bugger off.

After the classroom, John and I start to gather the gear together for the students. Which means sizing them up for their wetsuits, BCDs, etc. I won’t go into that too much on the grounds that it would be patently unfair to the students at whose expense I shared quite a chortle with John. All I know is that I have felt marginally out of shape in the last couple of weeks, but at that moment I felt Olympian.
Then it was off to the pool. Turns out the skill set session I attended yesterday was massively helpful. I was actually able to help John in the pool session. One student in particular had significant fear issues concerning her reg and the removal of it. While the rest did their tests, her and I were at the surface, where I got her to relax, go slowly and then get through the skills on a slower pace. A few minutes later she was perfectly at home with the skills and ploughed right through with John. Felt good. Yep, seems like giving up law for this might not be such a bad idea. A little glow and pat on the back for myself.

Good Lord……tomorrow I am jumping in the ocean with these guys …. Oy. Did I mention that visibility for the last few weeks has been one to two metres (6 or so feet)? Luckily I bought a sausage today. No, not the meat kind, but the emergency surface location device. I have a feeling the back two of the group are totally going to get lost tomorrow. Leaving yours truly to surface with them a fair distance from the boat…..wish me well…..hopefully I will be around to blog tomorrow night. Sayonara for today…..

Up and At 'Em

Dawn comes early in Koh Tao. 5:42 a.m. to be precise. It starts traditionally enough. A chorus line of roosters announces that dawn’s pearly light has graced some far distant horizon. Shortly thereafter the roosters are joined by one of the most grating and irritating noises I think I have yet to hear. Some weird insect-bird-Frankenstein’s monster of a creature starts a cacophony seemingly on my windowsill. A sound something of a cross between Donald Duck on crack and a handheld Scaletrix remote trigger control, circa 1978. Let’s call this new creature Donald Redux. Now, I am a nature lover and animal defender on all fronts, indeed, a vegetarian on conscientious grounds, but Donald Redux is pissing me off so much with that bloody buzzing whine that I am sorely tempted to get out of bed and hunt the bugger down. If I knew what it was, where it was and where the hell I am.

I should explain. I just arrived in Koh Tao last night at about 5 p.m. after approximately two days of travelling. Unless you are family or friend, you’ll have no clue where I am coming from. I was a lawyer in Toronto, Ontario. Having become completely disenchanted with the practice of law in general, I quit in July. My friend, former scuba instructor and now business partner, Peter and I are planning on starting a scuba-training business in Toronto in the early part of next year. To be on an even footing with Peter, I have left comfort of hearth and home in Toronto to live in Koh Tao for three months. While I am here I will be completing further dive certifications to reach Peter’s instructor level. That way we can equally share the teaching burden we hope comes with our new business.

Back to the story. I’m pretty knackered. It’s shortly before 6 in the morning. I’m not quite sure if it is Friday or Saturday (I eventually discover it is in fact Saturday), due to the fact that I lost track of date and time differentials on the journey here. I won’t bore you with the details of the journey itself, most of you have likely travelled and know how exhausting it can be. Besides, how many of you will have much sympathy for someone who splurged on points and flew the majority of the way in a pod getting slowly soused somewhere over the pacific.

Having said that, I think some sympathy should at least be forthcoming for the ferry ride from Koh Samui to Koh Tao yesterday. I will spare you the more finer details, but let’s just say that it didn’t seem a stellar idea for the crew to hand out clear plastic carrier bags as puke-bags for the passengers. Particularly when we travelled VERY rough seas on a wildly pitching catamaran whose engine broke down half-way across. Suffice it to say that I was quite proud of myself for not up-chucking while surrounded by 2/3’s of the passengers quite readily displaying their lunches in see-through bags.

Anyway, so, it’s 5:43 and the roosters and Donald Redux are having at it. They’re quickly joined by the birds, who in their multitudinous and slightly more melodic tones have also realized it’s time to wake up. Not to be outdone, the neighbourhood dogs join in, all 15000 that seem to live a short stone’s throw from my new apartment, Chez Chris. To round it off, scant seconds later a hundred or so mopeds start put-putting along the main road down the very short lane. To be fair, there is only one main road in Koh Tao, so it’s not like they have much option. Oh, and let’s not forget the guy who could be anywhere up to a mile away, who is so happy that he lived through the night to see another morn that he is glad to announce it to the world. A rousing start to the day. I look over at the alarm clock. It’s 5:56 a.m. Time to get up I suppose.

I enjoy what can only be called a “brisk” shower right around 6. Brisk because the hot water won’t arrive until mid-day tomorrow. Even if this is a luxury villa. Luxury, I suppose is a relative term. One man’s luxury pad is another man’s shitcan. Not that this is particularly a shitcan (I believe that definition is more apt for that hotel I almost stayed at in London, England, with grease hand-prints just above the headboard and an ominous stain on the mattress), but let’s just say that a Redroof Inn in upstates New York would be considered five-star in comparison.

I suppose it’s all a matter of adjustment and that I’ll think of my friends in Toronto as pampered in short order. Let’s just hope it’s very short order. Right now all I know is that I am freezing my tail off having my morning shower. Even Timmy my todger decides a receder is required for this bracing hello to the day.

It’s now 6:15. I walk and am in town by 6:24. Not a lot going on at this point in the main drag of Koh Tao. I sit on the beach and watch two of the million dogs on the island play. Nothing opens until 7:3o. As soon as The Safety Stop opens its doors I am in and ordering breakfast. The “veggie breakfast”. Where else would they serve spicy yam and veggies this early in the day.

It being my first full day here, I decide to rent a moped. I’ve never ridden one before. So shortly after brekkie I am off to see a man in lederhosen about a horse. A metallic one. A fully automatic metallic one. Apparently it is embarrassing to ride a fully automatic moped. I have no shame. I also travel the island at a leisurely 20 km/hour. It takes 7 minutes to get to the dive shop from the town. I suppose if I had the “cooler” semi-automatic it would take 6, but I can live with that.

And then I am thrown in the deep end. My first day of turning up at the dive shop and I spend almost four hours in the pool learning how to teach skills. Zoink, that’s a lot. A shattering day and I finish at around 7. A couple of pints and I am ready for bed……