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……..
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