What lives in Shark Bay?

SHARKS!

The first week here in Thailand has been pretty great on a vacational level as well as a personal level.

1. It was great to see Cameron after not seeing him for 4.5 months.

2. It was great to see Kristen after not seeing her for 4.5 months.

3. Even though the last couple of weeks at Maple Leaf were anything but stressful its nice to be on vacation where you get to sleep in when you want and swim in 36'C oceans chasing sharks around the bay.

4. I got into Physio School!

It has been an eventful week and a bit. My flight from Surabaya was fine and the night in Kuala Lampur Airport was even manageable and arriving in Phuket was a trip. The flight in was amazing actually. It was beaches and granite cliffs and blue water for miles and miles, all with the sun just coming up, probably one of the prettiest flights that I have ever been on. And the taxi in was okay too, not as stressful as I thought that it would be.

Phuket was pretty nice. We stayed at a great little boutique resort at Patong beach. It was actually like a 20 minute walk to the beach through dog infested side streets, but other than that and the 30'C plus heat it was fine. It was funny, my traveling companions were not used to the heat but I was pretty much acclimatized. We spent our time there eating the ridiculuously delicious breakfast, lounging by the pool, and spending some time at the beach. As well as enjoying our first delicious tastes of Thai cuisine. But before we knew it, it was time to make our was to Ko Tao for our diving extravaganzaa.

The trip to Ko Tao from Phuket was fine, at least it was fine for me. My traveling companions would disagree as they both were car sick and a bit sea sick. We took an afternoon bus than an overnight ferry boat. And by the time we arrived in Ko Tao they were both done. We took a taxi to Sairee beach and after having breakfast because it was too early to get into a hotel we found a place with a couple of beds where the invalids flopped down and didn't stir for several hours. In the afternoon though Kristen was feeling better so we went snorkeling off the beach and then ate fruit and drank fruit juice listening to classic rock as the sun went down.... ahhhhh.... Thailand :)

Our dive course started the next day back by the pier and we managed to check into our bungalows and get set up there just fine. We met our super awesome guide "Sergi" from Barcelona and spent the next three days learning to become SCUBA divers because "SCUBA divers have more fun" according to our PADI text books. Its true. Besides the book learning and the mountain of homework we got the first night we had a blast. It is such a neat feeling to breath underwater. We did spend a lot of time doing skills like taking off our equipment under water, taking off our masks, floating and buddy breathing etc. But we also had time to cruise around and look at a bunch of interesting stuff. I can't believe that as somebody who studied marine biology a lot in University that I never did PADI before. but now I did and my "life has been changed forever" (according to the PADI book again).

After our PADI course we went to shark bay for a day where we snorkeled and I saw my favorite: the black tipped reef shark. They are so neat. It was probably only 4 feet long and didn't like hanging around me too much but it was awesome. I haven't seen a shark for 2 years since the galapagos, so it was great to see one again. We dived again the day after that and snorkeled off the dive boat in a cool area seeing lots of Ko Tao's fishes and even a lobster and sea slugs which are very beautiful. Then it was time to leave for Ko Phangan. We were all tired after our busy day diving and all passed out on the boat.

We got to our bungalows alright and Paul arrived within an hour of us getting to the bungalows. SO we got to have dinner with him. We also had our first experience with Thai wiskey in the form of "bukets" which is literally a sand castle bucket filled with wiskey, coca cola and redbull.... and mountains of thai food that paul had been craving.

today its off to the beach for some snorkeling fun and some sun! Even though I haven't been suntanning once yet I am brown. Sunscreen everyday!