July 23, 2009
At 9:45 last night I thought that I was going to have a nice sleep in and lazy morning. At 9:46 I was going diving with 4 Irish lasses – all friends – 3 Discos and a Refresher. As horrible as it is, nationalities have stereotypes and some stereotypes are true. It might be a bit racist, but let’s be honest, stereotypes do stem from somewhere.
My 4 lasses were lovely girls, the 3 discos all took me by myself at some point during our walk to voice their fears of sharks and other big bads that lie beneath the deep blue sea. I assuaged their fears best I could, told them I would hold their hands (unfortunately I only have two hands and I need my feet for finning). One of them had done a DSD in Turkey and had a bad experience – they just threw them in with no instruction at all (could be true, but it was her recollection). She was thrilled when I briefed everything we’d be doing in great detail.
We were the last off the boat following two other groups who were needing the float. After getting all geared up and ready to jump in, I get myself in, I get Refresher girl in – GREAT – I get DSD 1 in – super, like she’s done this before. DSD 2 steps to the swim platform, looks down and REFUSES to step off. Her friends try to encourage her, I try to encourage her. She’s having absolutely NONE of it. Okay, take her gear off, toss it in the ocean, let her sit on the swim platform and gently place herself in the water while almost smashing her head on the swim platform. She puts her gear on in the water. DSD 3 gets in no problems.
We swim to the float. I’ve briefed the skills. Refresher girl goes first and does wonderfully fantastically great. DSD 1 goes next – she’s the one afraid of sharks and wants to get it done before she changes her mind bopping at the surface. We get her down a couple feet and do mask clear – works pretty well. We do regulator clear. Works okay. Then we go down a bit further for a reason that still escapes me (wasn’t my decision, but I guess that’s what I get for trusting that two well executed skills is indication that I can let go of her and trust her to find her way to the surface in a rational manner). Then for some reason, we decide that it’s a really really really good idea to spit out our regulator and go madly bolting to the surface. Why? Because we had a bit of water in our mouth. While I realize that can be a bit daunting, how is spitting out the reg and inhaling an ocean full of water going to improve on this?
Holy crap, we’re on to DSD 2. I demo mask partial flood and clear. And then we sit on the line staring at each other. I give her the big okay sign. She gives me the Fonzie thumbs up. I give her a big okay sign. She gives me another Fonzie thumbs up. All the while she’s looking perfectly sedated. We do this a couple more times and finally I take her to the surface. Nope, she won’t do the skill. Can’t tell me why, but she won’t do it. I do explain to her that if she’s okay she does need to give me the okay and not the “I want to go up” sign.
We move on to DSD 3. I hope DSD 3 will get certified because she did exceptionalize the stereotype. She did really well and had a big grin on her face throughout the whole experience (except on dive 2 when her BCD tried to bend her, but even after that, she was still froggy to change gear and jump back in).
When we finally got everybody down after trying to once more get DSD 2 to clear a mask, we actually had an okay dive. They stayed as a group. I held DSD 2’s hand or BCD the whole time mainly because I knew she’d be bouncing between the surface and the bottom if I didn’t. 20 minutes later (about) we’d been at this for over an hour and a half and it was 10:30 and I needed to start their surface interval.
We debriefed. We made suggestions for finning techniques, staying horizontal and what not for dive two and reminded everyone to stay as a group and to stay at or above me. Every indication was that Dive 2 was going to be just fine.
Dive 2 rolls around. Again, we’re the last ones in. This time it’s going to be a wall dive. The bottom, while greater than 40 feet is still not super crazy deep and while I’d have preferred something with a 40 foot bottom, there are fun divers on the boat and I can’t do two dives at Table Coral City.
DSD 2 dons her gear in the water while the other three give me beautiful giant strides. Then it was like trying to get an octopus into a net. I’d get three down and one would float back up. We’d all get back down again and go a little ways and then #3’s BCD tried to bend her. We all go back up to the surface, I do a couple of tests on the BCD which went from slowly leaking air to inflating uncontrollably, so we get out and quickly change out her BCD while the other lot are floating at the surface. We go back in and all play the up and down game a couple more times before finally completing a 10 minute dive. Since one of them had to catch the 2:30 ferry back to Phuket, I pretty much had no choice than to cut the party short.
Later that evening, at dinner with Gee, he told me that if you get a group of Irish women for Disco, at least one of them will refuse to jump off the boat and one of them will bolt. Good to know.
July 26
I don’t like Discos! It’s good money but it’s bloody hard work. And it’s not the hard work that scares me. I think there is a distinct possibility somebody might be so stupid they’ll die on me. Yesterday was a new experience. Every disco is a new adventure. Just when I think I’ve got all the problems figured out, a new one joins the party. So I ask, “Are we done yet?”
Yesterday I experienced somebody sucking down 80 CF of air in about 20 minutes (most of those 20 minutes spent above 20 feet - also note that MOST people will go about 40 minutes to an hour on 80 CF of air). I had to step back for a moment and consider equipment malfunction. He wasn’t nervous. And he wasn’t a particularly big guy. But no equipment issues. He sucked down air that fast. One minute he had 150 bar, 10 minutes later he had 20 and my eyes right near bugged out of my skull when I saw his SPG. That is lower on air than I would obviously EVER let anybody get.
I’m guessing Suunto was not real pleased with me when I blew past a 4 minute safety stop with a 10 foot ceiling to get this guy to the surface before he ran out of air.
Later during the debrief, I learned that he’d been looking at his depth gage, but couldn’t figure out why it had two needles and which one he was supposed to go by. I’m wondering why it didn’t faze him that his SPG didn’t go to 200 and why it had registered lower than 12 the entire time he’d been looking at it, when during his buddy check we’d clearly seen that it was at 200 bar.
Then I have to think that it’s me – that my briefings aren’t thorough enough, that I ought to be covering the entire Open Water class in the 20 minutes or so that I have to brief them. Then I’ll tell someone like Gee who’s been doing this for a while what new and exciting adventures my day brought and he’ll pretty much tell me that the problems exemplified by my Disco (here they call them DSDs, not pronounced as 3 individual letters, but as a word), are stereotypical of that nationality.
I guess the lesson here is to learn the stereotypes and anticipate them better.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Friday, July 24, 2009
Trials of a PADI Instructor
There are days when you have customers who make you want to scream (and you do, underwater, in your reg). There are days when you tell yourself you don’t get paid enough to deal with customers like those. There are days, you look at the time and it’s only been a 30 minute dive and you think it was a waste really (and if you had to rinse your own gear, you’d be pissed). Then there are those days when the customers are such a pleasure and good divers and no work at all and you get out of the water and you can’t believe that you actually get paid to do this.
This pretty much sums up the past two days of diving I’ve had. Yesterday’s Discos right near drove me out of my skull. First of all, they were both just about climbing on top of me. Then, one of them thought he was leading the dive. After telling him to get back behind me a bunch of times, I finally had to get angry and let him know that unless he knew where he was going he needed to stay behind me. Don’t know if he heard me, but he got the gist and behaved the rest of the short short short dive.
Today, I got to dive with our two star pupils, Claire and her brother Richard, who’ve now done EFR, Rescue and two specialties with us. We had a lecture on U/W Digital Photography yesterday and today they took the cameras out and did their two dives. They’re decent enough on air for newer divers; they listen real well; and have a good couple of brains between the two of them. I led them on two gorgeous dives watching them click away through three leopard (zebra) sharks, many nemos and a turtle. We did my two favorite sites today – Bida Nai on dive one where we saw the three sharks – they were thrilled since they hadn’t seen a shark yet and doubly thrilled that they’re able to take photographic evidence home with them. Our second dive was on Table Coral City which is quickly becoming one of my favorite spots. More often than not, I’ve seen turtles there and it’s a really pretty series of coral formations with lots and lots of critters. It’s fishtastic. I came out of the water feeling like I’d just done two fun dives. Today was not work.
Ryan is working with an open water student who wondered into the shop yesterday and I have the rest of the day off. I’m feeling a bit like a nap coming on, but I’m also wanting to get back out to the tattoo place to see what they’ve come up with for my Thai ocean tattoo. A couple of our students got matching his/hers tattoos – very very pretty and really nice work, so I’ve found a tattoo artist I like. Claire, Richard and I went to seen them the other day and they’re drawing me a tattoo. I haven’t had a chance to go back there yet to see what they’ve come up with.
Consider for a moment how different a well loved Pixar movie would have been if it took the following into consideration:
The biggest clownfish on an anemone is female. The next smallest is male and is 20% smaller. All the others are 20% smaller than that and are equally male. When the female dies, the “first” male changes into a female and each of the smaller ones grows by 20%. Not sure what happens if a male dies, but by this logic, it stands that all the others just grow to fill in whatever gap that male has left.
So consider then the opening of that well loved Pixar movie in which little Nemo has lost his mum. When suddenly his dad is his mum. No it’s his dad. No it’s his mum. The rest of the story would have been vastly different starring Glen Close as Ms. Tuttle Turtle the child psychiatrist (in this one she doesn’t boil bunnies).
This pretty much sums up the past two days of diving I’ve had. Yesterday’s Discos right near drove me out of my skull. First of all, they were both just about climbing on top of me. Then, one of them thought he was leading the dive. After telling him to get back behind me a bunch of times, I finally had to get angry and let him know that unless he knew where he was going he needed to stay behind me. Don’t know if he heard me, but he got the gist and behaved the rest of the short short short dive.
Today, I got to dive with our two star pupils, Claire and her brother Richard, who’ve now done EFR, Rescue and two specialties with us. We had a lecture on U/W Digital Photography yesterday and today they took the cameras out and did their two dives. They’re decent enough on air for newer divers; they listen real well; and have a good couple of brains between the two of them. I led them on two gorgeous dives watching them click away through three leopard (zebra) sharks, many nemos and a turtle. We did my two favorite sites today – Bida Nai on dive one where we saw the three sharks – they were thrilled since they hadn’t seen a shark yet and doubly thrilled that they’re able to take photographic evidence home with them. Our second dive was on Table Coral City which is quickly becoming one of my favorite spots. More often than not, I’ve seen turtles there and it’s a really pretty series of coral formations with lots and lots of critters. It’s fishtastic. I came out of the water feeling like I’d just done two fun dives. Today was not work.
Ryan is working with an open water student who wondered into the shop yesterday and I have the rest of the day off. I’m feeling a bit like a nap coming on, but I’m also wanting to get back out to the tattoo place to see what they’ve come up with for my Thai ocean tattoo. A couple of our students got matching his/hers tattoos – very very pretty and really nice work, so I’ve found a tattoo artist I like. Claire, Richard and I went to seen them the other day and they’re drawing me a tattoo. I haven’t had a chance to go back there yet to see what they’ve come up with.
Consider for a moment how different a well loved Pixar movie would have been if it took the following into consideration:
The biggest clownfish on an anemone is female. The next smallest is male and is 20% smaller. All the others are 20% smaller than that and are equally male. When the female dies, the “first” male changes into a female and each of the smaller ones grows by 20%. Not sure what happens if a male dies, but by this logic, it stands that all the others just grow to fill in whatever gap that male has left.
So consider then the opening of that well loved Pixar movie in which little Nemo has lost his mum. When suddenly his dad is his mum. No it’s his dad. No it’s his mum. The rest of the story would have been vastly different starring Glen Close as Ms. Tuttle Turtle the child psychiatrist (in this one she doesn’t boil bunnies).
Monday, July 20, 2009
More Late Night Brain Dump
I’ve had two fabulous dives with Ray Gasapin today. Ray is also an instructor at Diver Dan’s and a couple days ago, Ryan comes to see me all excited to tell me that there were three Diver Dan’s instructors on the island. He told me about Ray and then I asked him who the other two instructors were that Ray was with. Yeah, I didn’t quite get that the other two were the two of us! Ray and his wife, Jelena, are here on vacation and are absolutely delightful people.
Actually, it’s quite funny how they found us. When you get off the Pier onto the main street, the first dive shop you’ll hit is Hippo Divers – that’s the shop Ryan and I were diving with when we first arrived, and incidentally how we ended up with them was exactly because they were the first shop we hit on the strip. And Andy was nice and friendly, so we ended up diving with them. Anyway, Ray, just like us, went into Hippo and was talking to our other buddy there, Gee. Gee, of course, asked them where they were from, they said California and Gee pointed them in our direction. They came on the boat with us yesterday and today and today I was able to go diving with Ray. Jelena is currently not allowed to dive, but I’m sure she’ll make up for it in a few months. It’s been nice to have someone from home to share stories with.
Well our two weeks is up at Princess Divers and Marcus the manager has asked that one of us stay on for another two weeks. He’s given us the choice as before to either split it or have one of us stay and the other go. It’s been super busy, so there is actually the remote possibility that there might be work for both of us in the coming weeks. I do intend to start going around to some of the other shops to introduce my face again though in case other possibilities open up since the gig at Princess is still being billed as temporary.
It’s been a great experience so far. The first week was super slow – lots and lots of shop hours, surfing the net, playing backgammon and sitting on our hands. This past week was insane though – we took 10 students through open water, two students through EFR and Rescue and a speckling of fun divers and DSDs and Refreshers in the mix. I think that I’ve been on the boat six of the past seven days which I’m thrilled about.
Learning how to do Open Water the Phi Phi way led to about three sleepless nights for me, but now it’s over and I feel a lot more confident that I can do this without violating PADI standards and only mildly bending them. There are challenges though. For starters, in my opinion, we do confined water in more challenging conditions than open water. Our confined water area is in the ocean and depending on the tide it can be rather surgy and the viz is generally crap and definitely crappier than in open water. Which begs the question, how do you demonstrate CESA and no mask swim when the students can barely see two feet past their regs? I’ve demonstrated fin pivots where the students can definitely not see as far as my fins.
Phi Phi, while much more low key than the much seedier Patong where we were previously, still has a lot of bars and beach parties and a lot of very young people come here. I’d say a good chunk of our clientele is backpackers doing a “gap year” before or during “uni.” Most of our clientele is European of some flavor or Aussie and most anyone with an American accent comes from west of the Rockies. They’re young and I was feeling old yesterday, certifying all these kids who were born the year I graduated high school or later.
Things are much more laid back – people don’t necessarily show up when they’re supposed to or even on the day they’re supposed to. But that’s how it rolls. We’re both off tonight and we went to visit our buddies at Hippo after dinner. Andy was finishing up 3 advanced students – first thing he said to them, “Good job showing up today, I didn’t think you were going to when I saw you at the bar last night.” I chided him that he should put it in a more PADI appropriate way – “I really liked the way you showed up this morning. A better way to do that might be to show up less hung-over.” I’d say that it would probably sound rude, he says it with that British accent, it sounds charming.
And there’s something I have to get used to. I have absolutely no problem telling my students at home that they shouldn’t drink alcohol the night before diving, here it’s a bit different, people are on holiday and I can’t be telling them they can’t hit the buckets the night before, even though for their own good, I don’t think they should.
Which brings me to the buckets…
Twenty years ago, I might have thought this was a brilliant idea, but now, not so much. You can buy buckets here and it’s just like what it sounds. It’s a bucket, filled with bottles of the fixings of a massively large cocktail. People love ‘em coz they’re economical, because lots of places have some sort of 2 for 1 promo and I’m quite sure that just one can bring you pretty close to some degree of alcohol poisoning. Beer here sucks (i.e. all of it’s about the equivalent of Bud) and by island prices is expensive, but the buckets are comparatively quite economical. I think I’d balk at spending 50TB on a crappy beer when a meal costs me 80TB.
Working at the shop and getting a paid meal every day we’re on the boat has made my daily meal cost drop dramatically. On most days, I spend about 80TB for a curry over rice – that’s $2.50. On days that I splurge and have a Euro meal, it’s more like 110 to 140 TB. Today we got paid, so tonight we really splurged – I think the most expensive meal out we’ve had – Ryan had a burger and I had a proper salad with chicken and bacon and blue cheese. I could’ve had two curries for the price of that salad, but I do have to say that every bit was delicious - I’d been craving a proper salad with good lettuce for quite some time. They do Italian very well here – some favorites – gnocchi with four cheese sauce – it’s your caloric and dairy intake for a week, but so good; pizza – I like the margarita, Ryan likes the salami; the tuna melt from the coffee shop next to the shop – gooped up in mayo just the way I like it and with wonderful and proper English Cheddar on it and served up with bacon potato salad.
My favorite restaurant for curries – Papaya – makes the best Mussaman I’ve ever had – has kittens. The mommy cat had five little wee ones and they’re all in a cage, though mama is allowed out of her cage to go hang out in the fridge where she has a nap box (I know, Nicole is having heart palpitations as she’s reading this). I guess it cools her off and she must like it because she gets into the fridge voluntarily. The kittens barely have their eyes open and are barely able to get around on their little legs yet, but they are for sale for 5TB each. I told Ryan I want to get one and call him 5 Baht.
There’s a cat that I love who hangs out around the shop – he’s got a great little personality and I call him Junior because he looks and acts a lot like a little Kermit. I’m not sure who he belongs to, but I picked him up and was hugging him the other day and the lady from the massage parlor next door says to me, “you like him, I give him to you.” I’m not sure he was hers to give so I didn’t take him. I would, but I’m not sure about how all the territory works and since they should all be outdoor kitties, I’m not sure displacing them from their territory is such a good idea.
The cats on this island are very well cared for (though they should probably neuter them a bit more and bring in some fresh blood from the mainland every once in a while so they have something to mix with other than their brothers and sisters). On our property, there’s a cat bungalow, at least as big as our room, open air (concrete bottom walls, top walls made out of wiring), filled with cat cages and food bowls and obviously very well tended. I like that. I no longer feel bad for all the kitties. They get plenty of food and plenty of love.
Actually, it’s quite funny how they found us. When you get off the Pier onto the main street, the first dive shop you’ll hit is Hippo Divers – that’s the shop Ryan and I were diving with when we first arrived, and incidentally how we ended up with them was exactly because they were the first shop we hit on the strip. And Andy was nice and friendly, so we ended up diving with them. Anyway, Ray, just like us, went into Hippo and was talking to our other buddy there, Gee. Gee, of course, asked them where they were from, they said California and Gee pointed them in our direction. They came on the boat with us yesterday and today and today I was able to go diving with Ray. Jelena is currently not allowed to dive, but I’m sure she’ll make up for it in a few months. It’s been nice to have someone from home to share stories with.
Well our two weeks is up at Princess Divers and Marcus the manager has asked that one of us stay on for another two weeks. He’s given us the choice as before to either split it or have one of us stay and the other go. It’s been super busy, so there is actually the remote possibility that there might be work for both of us in the coming weeks. I do intend to start going around to some of the other shops to introduce my face again though in case other possibilities open up since the gig at Princess is still being billed as temporary.
It’s been a great experience so far. The first week was super slow – lots and lots of shop hours, surfing the net, playing backgammon and sitting on our hands. This past week was insane though – we took 10 students through open water, two students through EFR and Rescue and a speckling of fun divers and DSDs and Refreshers in the mix. I think that I’ve been on the boat six of the past seven days which I’m thrilled about.
Learning how to do Open Water the Phi Phi way led to about three sleepless nights for me, but now it’s over and I feel a lot more confident that I can do this without violating PADI standards and only mildly bending them. There are challenges though. For starters, in my opinion, we do confined water in more challenging conditions than open water. Our confined water area is in the ocean and depending on the tide it can be rather surgy and the viz is generally crap and definitely crappier than in open water. Which begs the question, how do you demonstrate CESA and no mask swim when the students can barely see two feet past their regs? I’ve demonstrated fin pivots where the students can definitely not see as far as my fins.
Phi Phi, while much more low key than the much seedier Patong where we were previously, still has a lot of bars and beach parties and a lot of very young people come here. I’d say a good chunk of our clientele is backpackers doing a “gap year” before or during “uni.” Most of our clientele is European of some flavor or Aussie and most anyone with an American accent comes from west of the Rockies. They’re young and I was feeling old yesterday, certifying all these kids who were born the year I graduated high school or later.
Things are much more laid back – people don’t necessarily show up when they’re supposed to or even on the day they’re supposed to. But that’s how it rolls. We’re both off tonight and we went to visit our buddies at Hippo after dinner. Andy was finishing up 3 advanced students – first thing he said to them, “Good job showing up today, I didn’t think you were going to when I saw you at the bar last night.” I chided him that he should put it in a more PADI appropriate way – “I really liked the way you showed up this morning. A better way to do that might be to show up less hung-over.” I’d say that it would probably sound rude, he says it with that British accent, it sounds charming.
And there’s something I have to get used to. I have absolutely no problem telling my students at home that they shouldn’t drink alcohol the night before diving, here it’s a bit different, people are on holiday and I can’t be telling them they can’t hit the buckets the night before, even though for their own good, I don’t think they should.
Which brings me to the buckets…
Twenty years ago, I might have thought this was a brilliant idea, but now, not so much. You can buy buckets here and it’s just like what it sounds. It’s a bucket, filled with bottles of the fixings of a massively large cocktail. People love ‘em coz they’re economical, because lots of places have some sort of 2 for 1 promo and I’m quite sure that just one can bring you pretty close to some degree of alcohol poisoning. Beer here sucks (i.e. all of it’s about the equivalent of Bud) and by island prices is expensive, but the buckets are comparatively quite economical. I think I’d balk at spending 50TB on a crappy beer when a meal costs me 80TB.
Working at the shop and getting a paid meal every day we’re on the boat has made my daily meal cost drop dramatically. On most days, I spend about 80TB for a curry over rice – that’s $2.50. On days that I splurge and have a Euro meal, it’s more like 110 to 140 TB. Today we got paid, so tonight we really splurged – I think the most expensive meal out we’ve had – Ryan had a burger and I had a proper salad with chicken and bacon and blue cheese. I could’ve had two curries for the price of that salad, but I do have to say that every bit was delicious - I’d been craving a proper salad with good lettuce for quite some time. They do Italian very well here – some favorites – gnocchi with four cheese sauce – it’s your caloric and dairy intake for a week, but so good; pizza – I like the margarita, Ryan likes the salami; the tuna melt from the coffee shop next to the shop – gooped up in mayo just the way I like it and with wonderful and proper English Cheddar on it and served up with bacon potato salad.
My favorite restaurant for curries – Papaya – makes the best Mussaman I’ve ever had – has kittens. The mommy cat had five little wee ones and they’re all in a cage, though mama is allowed out of her cage to go hang out in the fridge where she has a nap box (I know, Nicole is having heart palpitations as she’s reading this). I guess it cools her off and she must like it because she gets into the fridge voluntarily. The kittens barely have their eyes open and are barely able to get around on their little legs yet, but they are for sale for 5TB each. I told Ryan I want to get one and call him 5 Baht.
There’s a cat that I love who hangs out around the shop – he’s got a great little personality and I call him Junior because he looks and acts a lot like a little Kermit. I’m not sure who he belongs to, but I picked him up and was hugging him the other day and the lady from the massage parlor next door says to me, “you like him, I give him to you.” I’m not sure he was hers to give so I didn’t take him. I would, but I’m not sure about how all the territory works and since they should all be outdoor kitties, I’m not sure displacing them from their territory is such a good idea.
The cats on this island are very well cared for (though they should probably neuter them a bit more and bring in some fresh blood from the mainland every once in a while so they have something to mix with other than their brothers and sisters). On our property, there’s a cat bungalow, at least as big as our room, open air (concrete bottom walls, top walls made out of wiring), filled with cat cages and food bowls and obviously very well tended. I like that. I no longer feel bad for all the kitties. They get plenty of food and plenty of love.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Late Night Diarrhea of the Brain
Today was insane. There’s been a storm brewing since early yesterday and last night the deluge finally started. We went to bed and woke up to plus 30 knot winds and buckets of water falling out of the sky. The thundering of the frogs this morning (and right now) sounds more like a motorcycle race. It’s super late and I’ve no idea 1. how Ryan is sleeping next to me, and 2. how I’m going to fall asleep to this Indy 500.
Incidentally – here I go, off on my first tangent - all the creatures that give me the creeper jeepers inhabit this tropical paradise we’ve moved to. Besides the abundance of skeeters who don’t give me the willies, but do feast lavishly and nightly upon my naked flesh, there is an insane number of bats and frogs. And all these creatures come out to lurk in the dark when I can’t see them. Bats are blood-sucking chupa cabras and they flit and flap around and I’m scared shitless one of them is going to land on me.
I feel the same way about the frogs, they’re slimy and hoppy and unpredictable and you never know where they’re going to land and I’m scared shitless one of them is going to land on me.
I was walking home in the rain the other night and I got to the pathway to our room and my steps startled them and it was an avalanche of frogs. Tonight I walked home with Ryan and I made him walk ahead of me, open the door and turn on the porch light so I could see where I was going and make sure that I wasn’t going to step on one of those slimy bastards. I’m going to start taking a dive light with me for when I walk home alone at night.
I never thought of myself as a city girl – I’ve spent enough time in the country, on farms and around wild animals most people wouldn’t find particularly agreeable, and I have no issues diving with sharks and sea snakes, but maybe the bats and the frogs give away my true nature. You can take the girl out of the Louvre, but you can’t take the Louvre out of the girl apparently. Thank God there’s no frogs in the ocean - I think I’d go mad.
Ryan thinks I’m insane, of course.
So back to this morning…
We were at the shop bright and early amidst the buckets of rain pouring out of the sky to meet our students and divers. Ryan had three open water students that we’d taken to confined yesterday and I had two fun divers.
And now I’ll go off on my second tangent - I should go back a bit since I haven’t made any entries since we actually started work post-visa run. For the most part it’s been slow. We dove the first day more as a fun dive than anything – we followed Marcus, the manager of the shop as he took two rock-star DSDs (Discover Scuba Diving).
A few days later, after many many many hours of sitting at the shop surfing the web and me playing tons of backgammon, we finally both got out one day – Ryan with another two rock-star DSDs and me with an atrocious Scuba Refresher. The guy hadn’t been diving in 10 years and as it turned out, the only diving he’d done 10 years ago was his open water AND he was COMPLETELY spacially unaware. This led to the Facebook entry that some people really ought not dive.
I had a DMC (divemaster candidate) with me and she led the second dive and I rode his tank the whole dive and essentially navigated him and controlled the buoyancy for both of us. I was bumming ‘cause they were great dives – best viz EVER, saw tons of turtles, but he didn’t even want to hang out and watch the turtles for a while, just kept going.
In a 30 minute dive we covered more ground than I would cover in three dives with normal divers diving 60 minutes each dive. If it were just Ryan and I diving, it would easily take us four dives to cover that much ground doing 70 minute dives. Yes, he sucked through his air in 30 minutes.
And that had been it for the diving until today.
Of today, I will start by quoting Kirk who likes to say the following when conditions in Monterey are total crap: “you either have to pay someone or be getting paid to dive in conditions like these.” If you look at a map of Phi Phi, you’ll see that there’s two Phi Phi Islands, Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh and south of Phi Leh, there’s two tiny islands, Bida Nai and Bida Nok (I think that I’ve previously described this). Normally we do the first dive on one of the Bidas and the second dive on Phi Leh after a surface interval in either Maya Bay (scene of “The Beach”) on the western side or Phileh Bay on the eastern side.
Today we were headed for Phileh as the forecast was predicting 3 meter swells (yes, that’s about 10 feet). We knew there was no way we’d make it to the Bidas. We made it about one wavelength out of Tonsai Bay and the boat turned around and headed right back into the bay. For all our California readers – that’s like getting on the Escapade and diving Outer MacAbee. Though our first dive might’ve been more like diving Outer DelMonte.
So Ryan was off with the three open water students, two of which opted out of dive one because of a narrowly averted hurlfest over the side of the boat. And I was off with my two fun divers – one fairly new diver – had just done his open water and advanced on Koh Tao and one young Brazilian fellow who hadn’t been diving in a couple years. Both fairly good – just all the usual that you’d expect from newer divers – one was a bit handsy. But they were decent on their air and I was able to get 2 fifty minute dives out of them.
The first dive I felt awful – it was a wall dive but because of where we dropped and the currents I ended up doing the length of the wall three times. There was just nowhere else to go. On most walls, I wouldn’t feel bad about doing that – you can do a nice multilevel dive and have lots of stuff to see. But I did feel bad because the wall just wasn’t that interesting. Thank goodness for the couple lionfish and boxfish I found and warty slugs (or whatever they’re called). And damn it, you go diving with me you WILL like nudibranchs – if you didn’t before, you will after!
The second dive, we dropped in the middle of the Tsunami Memorial where somewhere there’s a plaque buried to commemorate all those who perished. To keep things interesting, I said I’d buy a beer to anyone who found it. Noone did and we were off onto a very very very pretty reef, but again, other than the fact that the dive was “fishtastic” we didn’t see any of the really interesting critters that wow the tourists.
I’m critical, but my divers just loved it. And that’s what matters. I always forget that for newer divers, stuff that we take for granted is still really new and exciting for them.
Unfortunately one of my divers is leaving tomorrow, but I told the other one to commit to doing one more day of diving before he left. I told him to check in with me every day and we’d pick him a good day to go – he really wants to see the sharks and for that we have to go down to the Bidas.
Ryan had a much more challenging day than I did as he was doing students at sites he wasn’t familiar with, in conditions that were more challenging than normal and with at least one student who has her own set of challenges. And yes, doing a full open water with three students in 3 days is also challenging, especially when the conditions are challenging and the students have challenges. Have I said challenging enough in this paragraph?
With a bit of luck and Neptune getting a good night’s sleep and not waking up on the grumpy side of the ocean, Ryan might have better luck tomorrow.
I will not be on the boat tomorrow. I will be getting a nice sleep in AND I don’t have to be at the shop until 11 – very luxurious. I do have two students for EFR in the afternoon. They’ll also be doing rescue with us. It’ll be a bit more leisurely though as they’re in no rush to leave the island and seem perfectly content to let me tell them where to be and when.
I mentioned earlier that I’ve been playing a lot of backgammon. I used to play tons in college. When Ryan and I first started dating, I’d gone to Toys R Us and bought a backgammon set thinking that I’d get back into it and we could play. What I didn’t know at the time and subsequently found out is that Ryan has absolutely no interest in backgammon. So I don’t think that my backgammon set’s ever been cracked open. But the divemistress at the shop is crazy into it and we wheedle away the afternoon hours playing game upon game upon game to much stricter rules than normal. Checkers is also a big pastime at the shops, but I tend to think that checkers is boring – and there’s not necessarily a winner at the end – you can just keep going around and around the board avoiding the other guy’s checkers until somebody gets bored of looking at the board. Haha I made a funny, kinda, you think?
Something I’ve noticed is that Ryan and I are of a rare breed that actually dove at home and were dive professionals at home. Most people didn’t do any diving at home, left their homes and jobs on a whim (that part much like us) to come do all of their diving training here. One of my divers pointed it out to me today – told me I was the first person he’d met in Thailand who actually dove where I came from.
Paige, a divemistress at another shop, who’s frequently on our boat is from L.A. and is going home in November. She’s toying with diving Catalina when she’s home, but is put off a bit by the water temperature. I’m trying to convince her to have a go at it. She might – she’s dying to see otters, especially after I showed her a picture of Mr. Whiskers. I don’t have the heart to tell her that she probably won’t see otters off of Catalina, but she’ll see other really great stuff.
Same thing with my diver today. He’s from England. I told him there was great diving in England – told him I wanted to go dive there for the basking sharks. Of course, his ears perked right up when I mentioned sharks. When you consider how few people dive, it’s a shame. When you consider how few people dive places other than the tropics, it’s an even bigger shame. It makes me really grateful that I did give California diving a try and that now, there’s pretty much no place that I wouldn’t consider diving.
I’m off to bed now. It’s pushing midnight. And those slimy frogs are louder than ever. Frick!
Incidentally – here I go, off on my first tangent - all the creatures that give me the creeper jeepers inhabit this tropical paradise we’ve moved to. Besides the abundance of skeeters who don’t give me the willies, but do feast lavishly and nightly upon my naked flesh, there is an insane number of bats and frogs. And all these creatures come out to lurk in the dark when I can’t see them. Bats are blood-sucking chupa cabras and they flit and flap around and I’m scared shitless one of them is going to land on me.
I feel the same way about the frogs, they’re slimy and hoppy and unpredictable and you never know where they’re going to land and I’m scared shitless one of them is going to land on me.
I was walking home in the rain the other night and I got to the pathway to our room and my steps startled them and it was an avalanche of frogs. Tonight I walked home with Ryan and I made him walk ahead of me, open the door and turn on the porch light so I could see where I was going and make sure that I wasn’t going to step on one of those slimy bastards. I’m going to start taking a dive light with me for when I walk home alone at night.
I never thought of myself as a city girl – I’ve spent enough time in the country, on farms and around wild animals most people wouldn’t find particularly agreeable, and I have no issues diving with sharks and sea snakes, but maybe the bats and the frogs give away my true nature. You can take the girl out of the Louvre, but you can’t take the Louvre out of the girl apparently. Thank God there’s no frogs in the ocean - I think I’d go mad.
Ryan thinks I’m insane, of course.
So back to this morning…
We were at the shop bright and early amidst the buckets of rain pouring out of the sky to meet our students and divers. Ryan had three open water students that we’d taken to confined yesterday and I had two fun divers.
And now I’ll go off on my second tangent - I should go back a bit since I haven’t made any entries since we actually started work post-visa run. For the most part it’s been slow. We dove the first day more as a fun dive than anything – we followed Marcus, the manager of the shop as he took two rock-star DSDs (Discover Scuba Diving).
A few days later, after many many many hours of sitting at the shop surfing the web and me playing tons of backgammon, we finally both got out one day – Ryan with another two rock-star DSDs and me with an atrocious Scuba Refresher. The guy hadn’t been diving in 10 years and as it turned out, the only diving he’d done 10 years ago was his open water AND he was COMPLETELY spacially unaware. This led to the Facebook entry that some people really ought not dive.
I had a DMC (divemaster candidate) with me and she led the second dive and I rode his tank the whole dive and essentially navigated him and controlled the buoyancy for both of us. I was bumming ‘cause they were great dives – best viz EVER, saw tons of turtles, but he didn’t even want to hang out and watch the turtles for a while, just kept going.
In a 30 minute dive we covered more ground than I would cover in three dives with normal divers diving 60 minutes each dive. If it were just Ryan and I diving, it would easily take us four dives to cover that much ground doing 70 minute dives. Yes, he sucked through his air in 30 minutes.
And that had been it for the diving until today.
Of today, I will start by quoting Kirk who likes to say the following when conditions in Monterey are total crap: “you either have to pay someone or be getting paid to dive in conditions like these.” If you look at a map of Phi Phi, you’ll see that there’s two Phi Phi Islands, Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Leh and south of Phi Leh, there’s two tiny islands, Bida Nai and Bida Nok (I think that I’ve previously described this). Normally we do the first dive on one of the Bidas and the second dive on Phi Leh after a surface interval in either Maya Bay (scene of “The Beach”) on the western side or Phileh Bay on the eastern side.
Today we were headed for Phileh as the forecast was predicting 3 meter swells (yes, that’s about 10 feet). We knew there was no way we’d make it to the Bidas. We made it about one wavelength out of Tonsai Bay and the boat turned around and headed right back into the bay. For all our California readers – that’s like getting on the Escapade and diving Outer MacAbee. Though our first dive might’ve been more like diving Outer DelMonte.
So Ryan was off with the three open water students, two of which opted out of dive one because of a narrowly averted hurlfest over the side of the boat. And I was off with my two fun divers – one fairly new diver – had just done his open water and advanced on Koh Tao and one young Brazilian fellow who hadn’t been diving in a couple years. Both fairly good – just all the usual that you’d expect from newer divers – one was a bit handsy. But they were decent on their air and I was able to get 2 fifty minute dives out of them.
The first dive I felt awful – it was a wall dive but because of where we dropped and the currents I ended up doing the length of the wall three times. There was just nowhere else to go. On most walls, I wouldn’t feel bad about doing that – you can do a nice multilevel dive and have lots of stuff to see. But I did feel bad because the wall just wasn’t that interesting. Thank goodness for the couple lionfish and boxfish I found and warty slugs (or whatever they’re called). And damn it, you go diving with me you WILL like nudibranchs – if you didn’t before, you will after!
The second dive, we dropped in the middle of the Tsunami Memorial where somewhere there’s a plaque buried to commemorate all those who perished. To keep things interesting, I said I’d buy a beer to anyone who found it. Noone did and we were off onto a very very very pretty reef, but again, other than the fact that the dive was “fishtastic” we didn’t see any of the really interesting critters that wow the tourists.
I’m critical, but my divers just loved it. And that’s what matters. I always forget that for newer divers, stuff that we take for granted is still really new and exciting for them.
Unfortunately one of my divers is leaving tomorrow, but I told the other one to commit to doing one more day of diving before he left. I told him to check in with me every day and we’d pick him a good day to go – he really wants to see the sharks and for that we have to go down to the Bidas.
Ryan had a much more challenging day than I did as he was doing students at sites he wasn’t familiar with, in conditions that were more challenging than normal and with at least one student who has her own set of challenges. And yes, doing a full open water with three students in 3 days is also challenging, especially when the conditions are challenging and the students have challenges. Have I said challenging enough in this paragraph?
With a bit of luck and Neptune getting a good night’s sleep and not waking up on the grumpy side of the ocean, Ryan might have better luck tomorrow.
I will not be on the boat tomorrow. I will be getting a nice sleep in AND I don’t have to be at the shop until 11 – very luxurious. I do have two students for EFR in the afternoon. They’ll also be doing rescue with us. It’ll be a bit more leisurely though as they’re in no rush to leave the island and seem perfectly content to let me tell them where to be and when.
I mentioned earlier that I’ve been playing a lot of backgammon. I used to play tons in college. When Ryan and I first started dating, I’d gone to Toys R Us and bought a backgammon set thinking that I’d get back into it and we could play. What I didn’t know at the time and subsequently found out is that Ryan has absolutely no interest in backgammon. So I don’t think that my backgammon set’s ever been cracked open. But the divemistress at the shop is crazy into it and we wheedle away the afternoon hours playing game upon game upon game to much stricter rules than normal. Checkers is also a big pastime at the shops, but I tend to think that checkers is boring – and there’s not necessarily a winner at the end – you can just keep going around and around the board avoiding the other guy’s checkers until somebody gets bored of looking at the board. Haha I made a funny, kinda, you think?
Something I’ve noticed is that Ryan and I are of a rare breed that actually dove at home and were dive professionals at home. Most people didn’t do any diving at home, left their homes and jobs on a whim (that part much like us) to come do all of their diving training here. One of my divers pointed it out to me today – told me I was the first person he’d met in Thailand who actually dove where I came from.
Paige, a divemistress at another shop, who’s frequently on our boat is from L.A. and is going home in November. She’s toying with diving Catalina when she’s home, but is put off a bit by the water temperature. I’m trying to convince her to have a go at it. She might – she’s dying to see otters, especially after I showed her a picture of Mr. Whiskers. I don’t have the heart to tell her that she probably won’t see otters off of Catalina, but she’ll see other really great stuff.
Same thing with my diver today. He’s from England. I told him there was great diving in England – told him I wanted to go dive there for the basking sharks. Of course, his ears perked right up when I mentioned sharks. When you consider how few people dive, it’s a shame. When you consider how few people dive places other than the tropics, it’s an even bigger shame. It makes me really grateful that I did give California diving a try and that now, there’s pretty much no place that I wouldn’t consider diving.
I’m off to bed now. It’s pushing midnight. And those slimy frogs are louder than ever. Frick!
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Penang Visa Run
Penang Day 1
We’ve been in Thailand just about a month and that’s all we get from immigration. So we had to do a visa run. It’s the biggest racket ever. I would gladly give the allotted amount of money to each individual who profits from this racket if my ass could be spared the 10 plus hour van ride from Krabi to Penang. I now feel like my butt is where my neck used to be.
And it makes Ryan grumpy.
We had a busy evening yesterday as we had to get our stuff over to Keira’s, meet her landlady, go meet with the manager from Princess Divers and get our tickets squared away for the trip. And Ryan had arranged with Gee at Hippo Divers to meet with computers and back-ups to do a little trading.
Ryan’s not figured out yet that there are kinder ways to wake me up than pulling at my toes or jerking my leg. It makes me grumpy and that’s how I woke up this morning.
We trekked into town and had some breakfast at P.P. Bakery then tried to steal some free wifi from our old hotel, but it was down. We headed for the ferry. It promptly left the pier at 9:00 headed for a 90 minute crossing to Krabi. The Krabi coastline is gorgeous – lush and dotted by little islands. My Son Krabi van service picked us up at the dock in Krabi to take us to a shop from where we got another van which took us to Hat Yai. In Hat Yai we had a layover which allowed us to hit the 7/11 for some snacks. From there we got another van that took us to customs.
Customs was great. We first passed through what must have been an old defunct checkpoint. It had all the look of a checkpoint, but we drove straight through. We were a bit confused – we’d been given paperwork to fill out and I was fairly certain a few agents needed to put stamps in my passport. About a mile or so later there was another checkpoint. The van parked and we were told to go to kiosk 4. This was Thai immigration checking us out of Thailand. Just like coming in, I gave the agent my passport, stood where I was supposed to stand and waited forever for him to fiddle on his computer. He gave me back my passport without saying so much as boo to me. We got back in the van, drove 100 yards, got out of the van and proceeded through Malaysian customs. God forbid they put it in the same building. I mean, you don’t have a choice. You can’t go through one without going through the other. You can’t stay in the no man’s land that is the 100 yard stretch of concrete between the two buidlings. What are you going to do? Check out of Thailand and not check into Malaysia? You don’t have a choice!
Once through Malaysian customs where this customs agent also did not say boo to me, we played musical vans based on our destination in Penang. We were kicked off the somewhat comfortable van onto a much less comfortable and smelly one. This van was the one that finally dumped us off at Banana Guesthouse, Chulia Street, Penang, Malaysia. I’m not sure why we had to play musical vans because both vans ended up at Banana Guesthouse.
All of the vans were highly lacking in shock absorbency and leg room. They did have a wee bit of air conditioning which helped cut the mugginess. Ryan read a whole book and I finished the stupid Dan Brown book I was reading. I’m glad to be done with him – only really liked Angels and Demons. Now I’m back to Richard North Patterson.
We arrived at Banana which was one of our possible destinations. It is a one stop service for all you Malaysian needs – room and visa. It was with a huge knee-jerk reaction that I did something that every fiber of my being told me not to do. I gave my passport to the hotel to take to the embassy to get the visa all squared away. We’ll get them back tomorrow afternoon with the visas all squared away. It goes against everything I know, but everybody does it. That’s how it’s done. I keep telling myself that at least I have my French passport. Banana showed us our room, sat us down and had us fill out the paperwork for the visas, took our passports and our passport photos, arranged our return to Phi Phi, took our money and it was done. Now we have a day to kill.
Penang Day 2
After a very late sleep in, we left the room around lunch time, grabbed a map from the hotel lobby and randomly headed out. We ended up at the mall where we had some lunch and walked around a bit. The mall was massive and as it turns out, we only saw half of it. One level was completely dedicated to electronics – mostly computer and/or cell phone stuff. At the end of our tour, we hit the supermarket to find Cadbury’s and also found large bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a new toothbrush for me.
Our passports were due to be back from the consulate at 4:00 so we took a break in our little tour to retrieve them. A very small little hiccup when Ryan’s passport ended up in the “wrong” pocket or drawer or whatever caused a huge panic in my head as I had “don’t ever ever ever ever give your passport to anyone” running through my head. But it all turned out fine and both our passports were back in our possessions with shiny new tourist visas.
It wasn’t quite dinner time yet and I didn’t want to stay in the room with no windows so we went back out and wandered around aimlessly again, ending up at the chocolate factory. It is, of course, my idea of heaven! We were toured around by a really sweet little “gramma type lady who kept opening bins and giving me chocolate. How could I but think she was the best?
Dinner was a repeat trip to the fabulous Indian restaurant we’d stumbled into at 10:00 p.m. the previous night. We’d shared a wonderful vindaloo on night one and this time shared a tikka masala. All that with vast quantities of delicious naan.
Penang Day 3
Our 4:30 a.m. wake up call was a 4:00 a.m. rap on the door. And at 5:00 we were on the road again. We are reversing the course we did on Tuesday. From Banana to customs – first Malaysian, then Thai. The line at Thai customs was insane, but our driver found us a shorter line by lining us up as though we were cars. We’d have been there for two hours otherwise. I peeked at the screen while Ryan was going through customs because I was curious what takes them so long to process somebody. I still don’t know what takes them so long, but scanning Ryan’s passport brought up a “file” on him with previous scans and pictures – every time you go through they take a little picture of you.
From customs we went back to Hat Yai to the same travel agency we’d changed vans at on Tuesday. Now we’re on the van to Krabi. We finagled ourselves the front seats this time so we have a little extra leg room and can avoid being bent like pretzels and sandwiched between two seats.
We’ve been in Thailand just about a month and that’s all we get from immigration. So we had to do a visa run. It’s the biggest racket ever. I would gladly give the allotted amount of money to each individual who profits from this racket if my ass could be spared the 10 plus hour van ride from Krabi to Penang. I now feel like my butt is where my neck used to be.
And it makes Ryan grumpy.
We had a busy evening yesterday as we had to get our stuff over to Keira’s, meet her landlady, go meet with the manager from Princess Divers and get our tickets squared away for the trip. And Ryan had arranged with Gee at Hippo Divers to meet with computers and back-ups to do a little trading.
Ryan’s not figured out yet that there are kinder ways to wake me up than pulling at my toes or jerking my leg. It makes me grumpy and that’s how I woke up this morning.
We trekked into town and had some breakfast at P.P. Bakery then tried to steal some free wifi from our old hotel, but it was down. We headed for the ferry. It promptly left the pier at 9:00 headed for a 90 minute crossing to Krabi. The Krabi coastline is gorgeous – lush and dotted by little islands. My Son Krabi van service picked us up at the dock in Krabi to take us to a shop from where we got another van which took us to Hat Yai. In Hat Yai we had a layover which allowed us to hit the 7/11 for some snacks. From there we got another van that took us to customs.
Customs was great. We first passed through what must have been an old defunct checkpoint. It had all the look of a checkpoint, but we drove straight through. We were a bit confused – we’d been given paperwork to fill out and I was fairly certain a few agents needed to put stamps in my passport. About a mile or so later there was another checkpoint. The van parked and we were told to go to kiosk 4. This was Thai immigration checking us out of Thailand. Just like coming in, I gave the agent my passport, stood where I was supposed to stand and waited forever for him to fiddle on his computer. He gave me back my passport without saying so much as boo to me. We got back in the van, drove 100 yards, got out of the van and proceeded through Malaysian customs. God forbid they put it in the same building. I mean, you don’t have a choice. You can’t go through one without going through the other. You can’t stay in the no man’s land that is the 100 yard stretch of concrete between the two buidlings. What are you going to do? Check out of Thailand and not check into Malaysia? You don’t have a choice!
Once through Malaysian customs where this customs agent also did not say boo to me, we played musical vans based on our destination in Penang. We were kicked off the somewhat comfortable van onto a much less comfortable and smelly one. This van was the one that finally dumped us off at Banana Guesthouse, Chulia Street, Penang, Malaysia. I’m not sure why we had to play musical vans because both vans ended up at Banana Guesthouse.
All of the vans were highly lacking in shock absorbency and leg room. They did have a wee bit of air conditioning which helped cut the mugginess. Ryan read a whole book and I finished the stupid Dan Brown book I was reading. I’m glad to be done with him – only really liked Angels and Demons. Now I’m back to Richard North Patterson.
We arrived at Banana which was one of our possible destinations. It is a one stop service for all you Malaysian needs – room and visa. It was with a huge knee-jerk reaction that I did something that every fiber of my being told me not to do. I gave my passport to the hotel to take to the embassy to get the visa all squared away. We’ll get them back tomorrow afternoon with the visas all squared away. It goes against everything I know, but everybody does it. That’s how it’s done. I keep telling myself that at least I have my French passport. Banana showed us our room, sat us down and had us fill out the paperwork for the visas, took our passports and our passport photos, arranged our return to Phi Phi, took our money and it was done. Now we have a day to kill.
Penang Day 2
After a very late sleep in, we left the room around lunch time, grabbed a map from the hotel lobby and randomly headed out. We ended up at the mall where we had some lunch and walked around a bit. The mall was massive and as it turns out, we only saw half of it. One level was completely dedicated to electronics – mostly computer and/or cell phone stuff. At the end of our tour, we hit the supermarket to find Cadbury’s and also found large bottles of shampoo and conditioner and a new toothbrush for me.
Our passports were due to be back from the consulate at 4:00 so we took a break in our little tour to retrieve them. A very small little hiccup when Ryan’s passport ended up in the “wrong” pocket or drawer or whatever caused a huge panic in my head as I had “don’t ever ever ever ever give your passport to anyone” running through my head. But it all turned out fine and both our passports were back in our possessions with shiny new tourist visas.
It wasn’t quite dinner time yet and I didn’t want to stay in the room with no windows so we went back out and wandered around aimlessly again, ending up at the chocolate factory. It is, of course, my idea of heaven! We were toured around by a really sweet little “gramma type lady who kept opening bins and giving me chocolate. How could I but think she was the best?
Dinner was a repeat trip to the fabulous Indian restaurant we’d stumbled into at 10:00 p.m. the previous night. We’d shared a wonderful vindaloo on night one and this time shared a tikka masala. All that with vast quantities of delicious naan.
Penang Day 3
Our 4:30 a.m. wake up call was a 4:00 a.m. rap on the door. And at 5:00 we were on the road again. We are reversing the course we did on Tuesday. From Banana to customs – first Malaysian, then Thai. The line at Thai customs was insane, but our driver found us a shorter line by lining us up as though we were cars. We’d have been there for two hours otherwise. I peeked at the screen while Ryan was going through customs because I was curious what takes them so long to process somebody. I still don’t know what takes them so long, but scanning Ryan’s passport brought up a “file” on him with previous scans and pictures – every time you go through they take a little picture of you.
From customs we went back to Hat Yai to the same travel agency we’d changed vans at on Tuesday. Now we’re on the van to Krabi. We finagled ourselves the front seats this time so we have a little extra leg room and can avoid being bent like pretzels and sandwiched between two seats.
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