25th December... Christmas Day and I'm taking an exam at 9am... Easiest exam I've taken though.. A trained chimp could pass it. Although Yusif is still there re-taking it.. Our two dives today we went down to 18m but the visibility wasn't the best cause of the tropical downpour the night before.. Still saw some really cool fish and corals.. And now I'm an open water certified diver!! Woo. Now the celebrations really begin. We went to sunset bar which was just cr...

The accommodation at the dive school is really cool. Right on the beach with their own pool to do our practice diving in. On our first day we learnt the basic hand gestures to say if we're ok etc and how to switch to someone else's air supply under water if ours fails to work, take our masks off for a minute, find them and fill them with air again. On the second day we finished off the rest of general safety crap we had to do in the cold pool.. And then went out...

The travel from Bangkok to koh Tao was pretty exhausting. Catching an overnight train to Chumphon, then having to get up 4am to get a bus and ferry to the island. We decided to take a Valium to help with the horrendous train and timings. However we failed to really wake up at 4 and spent the rest of the journey like zombies..

Great to be back on Bangkok. I don't understand how people don't like this city. It's busy, always something going on so plenty to do. Treated myself with my Christmas money and bought a few things and went to see the new Star Wars film. We were invited by a couple of the Thai girls from the hostel to go to a Thai night club. Was definitely an experience. The only club where the dance area is at the back by the bar.. With the tall tables in front of the deck set...

Before crossing the Thai border into Laos we stopped off the Chiang Rai and went to the white Buddhist temple which was by far the weirdest to date. Outside was a life size model of the predator alien and inside it had paintings is Spider-Man, batman, hello kitty and loads of other random ones... No idea what it had to do with Buddhism.