Racha Yai

We start the day with a cup of cappuccino for me, and waffles for Ryan. I don’t know what made me think that I’d be having to give up coffee once we got here. As Gar likes to say, “you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Starbucks.” Trying to stay away from there in favor of local shops.

We’re slowly getting over jetlag. Since we’re not on any schedule, it’s actually harder to get over than when we went to Philippines for example. If we had to get up for diving every morning we’d probably be over it by now.

Mostly we’ve been exploring and checking out the local dive shops. Sunday we walked the whole length of one of the main streets – Rat-U-Thit Rd. The streets are covered in street vendors (selling t-shirts, clothing of all types - jeans, swim shorts, underwear, nice shirts, you name it - bags, Thai souvenirs), food carts, taxi and tuk-tuk drivers selling their services, tour operators selling trips to Phi Phi or James Bond Islands or Elephant Treks, massage parlors, tatoo parlors, bars, discos, couple nudi bars, restaurants, 7-11’s, Family Marts (7-11’s competitor) and electrical wires. The other main strip is Patong Beach Rd, which has more of the same on one side and this gorgeous stretch of beach on the other. It’s Disney World for adults.

The food is sensational and so so cheap. We’re averaging a little over $10 per meal for the two of us and doing about two meals a day. Mostly we’ve had Thai food – I found the world’s best Pad Thai on Sunday and it was $2. We’ve also had Indian food once – that was our expensive dinner at $25 for two. My vow to stay vegetarian has somewhat gone out the window. Those of you who have gone to Dusita’s with me will know how much I love the duck curry, so you’ll understand that when faced with duck curry on a menu here I crumbled. Thai food in America, by the way, is surprisingly authentic. I’ve also caved in on chicken – they’re probably healthier than the chickens back home anyway – not pumped full of hormones and fed their own feces.

Sunday we spent upwards of 2 hours in a dive shop – Sunrise Divers having struck up conversation with the two managers. We’d gone into every dive shop on Rat-U-Thit and this was the last one (and I’d seen their website as directed by PADI’s website). We were actually on our way to my $2 Pad Thai and were diverted in our quest. One of the managers approached us asking us if we were instructors – not sure what screamed out “instructors” about us. I did have my little PADI backpack, but I’m pretty sure all that screams out is that I got a PADI cert that paid enough dues to get me free swag. Any hoodles, we ended up chatting with them for over 2 hours and got some really good information that we now need to research. We also both walked out of there saying that this was the kind of shop we wanted to work for and I think it’s the kind of shop that would appreciate the level of quality training we’ve received at Diver Dan’s. I realize that sounds a lot like I’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid, but when you hear these horror stories of how they churn out divemasters and instructors around here, you realize quickly that quality training is a rare commodity and not necessarily a given.

Information they shared with us – some of the islands are party central – divemasters and instructors are kids living “the dream” on mommy and daddy’s credit card, partying it up with lots of drugs. That of course has zero appeal to Ryan and me. They also feel that the level of instruction in some of those places is completely sub-standard – down to giving students the answers for the final and what not – it’s more about giving them a c-card than teaching them how to dive. I refuse to do that. Ryan’s on the fence – depends on how many baht they slip him.

It looks like we may have to go through the hassle of getting work visas and that’s something that we have to look into fairly quickly because rumor has it the process takes three months. The other thing I’m uncertain of is whether we can indeed stay 30 days, leave for a couple of days and then come back for another 30 days without raising eyebrows at customs. I’m inclined to do everything the legal way as this is pretty much guaranteed to lead us to zero problems. We shall be visiting the immigration office tomorrow to see how they recommend we proceed and also to get an outline of the procedure from A to Z. We also want to look into getting extended tourist visas so that we can stay beyond the 30 days without any hassles.

Yesterday was Ryan’s birthday and we went diving. It was a very interesting experience. We’ve been spoiled – our most recent experience of a dive vacation I think ruined me for life. I am now a resort snob and I also am well aware that there’s much fancier out there than Atlantis, so I haven’t even experienced the choosiest of resort diving!

We’d organized our dives through one of the shops listed on PADI’s website called ScubaCat. They told us we’d be picked up at our hotel at 7:30. We were indeed picked up by a songthaew (baht bus) – it’s a pick-up truck with a bench on either side of and a canopy over the top of the bed - don't even get me started on the lack of seatbelts (which nobody wears here anyways). The bus picked up a number of other passengers – some tourists like us, others dive staff from various shops. We drove south from Patong, through Kata and Karon Beach areas and over to Chalong. The bay of Chalong houses one of only two ports on the island and it’s where all the dive boats depart from, as well as many of the tour boats going to the Phi Phis and other islands. Without all the stops it’s probably a half hour drive from Patong.

From there we boarded a golf car which took us all the way down the pier to the boat we were boarding. The boat was a behemouth twin hull, two story monstrosity. In all at least 4 shops were all on the same boat. Apparently, they all share boats, especially at this time of year when the tourist population is a bit scarce. There were 23 divers, two non-divers, probably about 8 dive staff and the boat staff. The ringmaster gathered the troups upstairs for the boat briefing which was followed by breakfast – cooked to order omelets, sausages, bacon, fruit toast. We then set up our gear and we were headed to Racha Yai. Racha Yai is a small island directly south of Phuket and the western coast seems to be one long stretch of little bays, all diveable and covered in Staghorn coral. The crossing was a bit rough – the ringmaster later told us that if it had been any rougher he would have called the dives that day – which was actually good to know. It was uncomfortable. We were introduced to our divemistress – Sarina - from an entirely different dive shop than the one we’d signed up to go diving with. I thought this was odd – we basically got sold to another dive shop. There was a member of the dive shop with which we’d signed up on board doing an Open Water class with one student, and he did make sure to talk to us and what not.

Sarina was a local – from the south of Thailand she claimed – she didn’t look Thai though, so I’m thinking she was of mixed heritage. To me she looked part Indian – absolutely stunning girl and incredibly sweet. She did our dive briefing in bars and meters which led me later to mistakingly tell her that I was at t-time turnaround at 150 bar at 18 minutes – oh well. We have to get used to bars and meters – only we in America would stay stuck on feet and PSI – really.

The diving itself was fine. It was actually quite beautiful and unique in that I’ve never before seen such a field of Staghorn. That’s truly all it was – a reef of Staghorn coral as far as the eye can see. No interesting reef formation with all manner of colorful things, but very pretty in its own right with lots of little critters hiding and thriving in the branches of the Staghorn. After dive 1, it took forever for the boat to come pick us up as we were bopping at the surface in probably 5 foot swells. I got tired of having swells go over my head, so I found a rock to drop back down on and waited for the dive boat below the surface which was much more comfortable.

We finally did get picked up and boarded the boat again. It’s a bit of mayhem when everyone’s trying to gear up to go in or gear down and change tanks. Lunch was waiting for us – a real diver’s lunch, not pissy little stale sandwiches – no – we’re talking Pad See Ew, rice, chicken yellow curry and some kind of shrimp and veggie stir fry. It was great. While we were having lunch, the boat moved us to our next dive spot and we splashed in for dive 2 which was very similar to dive 1.

What we did not see – a whale shark. What we did see - gallery.me.com/scubalex!

After dive 2, we broke down and rinsed our gear – incidentally the first time our gear has actually gotten a good rinse (i.e., dunked in fresh water as opposed to just hosed off) since before the Caribbean. The crossing back was much the same as the crossing over. Ryan and I talked to the ringmaster, Henry from Sweden. I call him the ringmaster because his job is to coordinate this clusterfuck that is getting a multitude of divers from different hotels onto boats with different shops and back to their hotels. Back on Phuket land, we took golf carts back to the port and were assigned a bus back to our hotel – this time an enclosed air-conditioned mini bus which was rather luxurious. We were back in the hotel room around 4:30. I protested, but Ryan insisted that we should go out for his birthday dinner instead of falling into bed and sleeping.

So we’ve decided that we are leaving Patong at the end of the week. We’ll take the ferry over to Koh Phi Phi and stay there for a while. If nothing else, the diving will be a lot cheaper and much more convenient. I’ve booked us a bungalow for two nights (we’ll extend it if we like it – didn’t want to commit to too many nights if the hotel is crap – the other thing is that we might be able to negotiate a better rate OR a better room for the same rate). It’s going to be very very basic as the ad promises a mattress, a fan and a shower! No air-con, no fridge, no TV. Oh, and no hot water, but I figure that with no air-con, I won’t care about taking cold showers! And we don’t need a TV – I’ve got six seasons of Sopranos to watch on my computer and I guess we’ll just have to live without Aljazeera Praise Allah TV. And I’m pretty sure that we can forget about free wifi at the hotel as well - have to catch up on Facebook with my morning coffee (yes, I'm a facebook crackwhore!)!

I’m also hoping for some shore diving – the hotel boasts that they’re on the beach, 50 meters from the coral reef. I can swim 50 meters, no problem! One of the things that I’m realizing more and more is that I have more fun diving when it’s just me and Ryan (or me and Chris and Ryan and John) than when there’s a divemaster hurrying things along. I like to be able to go at my own pace and spend 20 minutes taking pictures of the same fish if that’s what I want to do. And I came out of both dives yesterday with lots of no-deco time and about 1400 PSI. Why? Cause we’re on somebody else’s schedule. I think we really were spoiled in the Philippines because I don’t remember feeling ever feeling gypped out of bottom time. Meh!

Oh, I forgot, we got phones! The SIM cards were under $3 and included some minutes. We bought extra minutes. If you call us, it’s free; if we call you it’s pretty cheap!