Morning! (..or is it afternoon ??)

I am now an official Advanced Open Water Diver! with currently 11 dives under my belt! Of the 5 dives for the course we started with the 30m deep dive to perform simple tasks, I wasn't subseptible to Nitrogen Narcosis, but I deep see a 3m Bull Shark!! (this type of shark are very aggressive and are the shark that nearly all reported shark attacks in America are Bullsharks, apparently! However, the Bull Sharks in Koh Tao are the only in the world that are not aggressive?!). Night dive was really exciting, saw some blue spotted rays, sea snakes and so many others, much sealife can only be seen at night. The buoyancy skills were quite a fun dive, swimming through and around hoops etc. The final dive was a photography elective I chose, and seemed to proof more differcult than imagined, you tend to not concentrate on your breathing, buoyancy and navigation. I had to surface earlier than usual as I was canning my air. Of 130 photos I took, only maybe 10 where worthy!

We left Koh Tao to travel to the mainland, across the mainland and reach our next destination of the Phi Phi Islands in the Andamen Sea. The journey was a 2 hour ferry, 5 hour minibus and then a second 2 hour ferry. Phi Phi is split into two main islands, Phi Phi Don being a newly rebuilt settlement recovered from the Tsunami, there are no vehicles and only pedestrainised pathways. The other island which has little inhabitants, but hundreds of day tours as this is 'the Beach' island, Phi Phi Le. I really Liked Phi Phi Don to chill out, it is full of market style shops and bar restaurants right on the beach.

Of course we couldn't resist to use our new certified padi cards on a fun dive!! Phi Phi has much better diving than Koh Tao but much more expensive (OW diver course was another 50pounds!). The fun dives are about 25-30 pounds for 2 dives, this included all equipment, lunch and they even set all the gear up for you while chilling out on the sun deck! TArry, Al and I were led by a 'divemaster' its like an underwater guide rather than an instructor. The diving was absolutely fantasic, great viz, colourful corals, pufferfish, triggerfish, yellow box fish, black tip reef sharks and Hawsbill turtles (really big too!).

After the dive, I was wandering down one of the pedestainised paved walkway among shops and I glance into a dive shop storage backdoor, I then stopped, backtracked as I thought I recognised this guy putting away some scuba tanks, it was my flatmate from the first year at uni Ashley Curtis! couldn't believe it! We caught up for 15-20mins as he was working at the time, then straight after work was off to see his brother in Bangkok. I will try and catch up for a beer in Bangkok if he is still there in the next few days! Ash was travelling quite like me and loved Phi Phi so much he decided to do the Divemaster course which takes months to do, now been there 4 months! He did do marine biology and uni and worked in an aquarium so this job is just up his street. weird.

The storms have been quite infrequent, but they are really really heavy when they come! Last time I was reading my book in an open bamboo beach hut enjoying the weather and a rain storm came from nowhere! Within minutes we couldn't see 10 feet infront of us and the horizontal rain soaked us! After 15mins the sun was back out and everything was resumed to before! We then made a move into the village where I experienced the hottest curry of my life! Penang curry was its name, I only managed half and drank 1 beer and 3 bottles of water during that torturous meal! no curry for me for a while thanks! phhooar!

Since the 3 days in Phi Phi we have arrived in Krabi for a day or two and will venture 4 hours south to Hat Yai where we can pop to the Malaysian border for a visa run to extend our thai stay. We will be located on the main train line to Bangkok and arrive in the capital in time to watch the community shield on sunday! Play up Pompey!