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…..