This place is just too relaxed to be writing blogs. Its almost the opposite of Koh Phangnan even though we sat on the beach there for three days. Phangnan was full of hippies, smelly hippies and seemed like it was more of a drugs and party under the moon kind of island. Here is much more commercial. It is a dive island for sure, but also the shops all around our area are all boutique type shops selling going out clothes, clean looking stuff not hippy stuff. Its much nicer here than down at the quiet beach. We have been doing the dive course for a few days now and did our first open water dives today, numbers one and two. The first was about 12 metres and lasted about 45 minutes, not the most comfortable... poor Regina couldnt stop floating to the top, I couldnt stop sinking to the bottom. Eventually we met in the middle and swam around and did our skills. On the second dive we were down for about 50 minutes and it was much more recreational. We saw loads of fish, angel fish, barracudas, and even a school of squid... among many others. It beat the Great Barrier Reef out of the park anyway.

I should have more to say really, maybe I still have some Nitrogen flowing through my fingers. The course is great, the gang are all very young and the instructors are all insane but its still great stuff. Food here is great too as usual, and cheap for the rest of the world anyway. Tomorrow we do our last training dive and then we do one proper recreational dive where they are going to film us I think. Looking forward to it.

In a way this place is kind of not like Thailand, as in it doesnt have that same exciting buzz, perhaps because it is resorty. There is a very holiday resort feeling to the place, small streets lined with shops and cafes. Still though, it is a tropical jungle island. It is covered in mopeds which assume full right of way over people on the roads and wont budge an inch for a pedestrian. It would be a great place to go exploring if we had more time. The sun set on the beach in the evening is beautiful. There are long tailed taxi boats in all colours moored up just off the beach. Its a real dream holiday resort, diving in the morning and cockails on the beach in the evening.... stay here forever or go home straight from here.... that would be a good idea

Anyway, back to the diving tomorrow, football on telly tonight.... for sure baby!!!!