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……