Another Sunny Christmas

Good dives, Bad boat. The little hooks in the fishing nets kept sticking into my feet.

Tsunami destruction along the Khao Lak beach.

Coming to grips with the fact that I really suck at putting sunscreen on my own back.

Jason and I watching the animated Robin Hood and listening to Christmas carols on Jodie's fancy iPod.

After leaving Chiang Mai, we bussed back to Bangkok and arrived to a sleeping Khao San road at about 4am. We caught up on sleep until 10, and then went about doing our different Bangkok chores. Because I'll eventually be heading north up through China and Russia, I've been dealing with the tasks of obtaining visas for these illustrious nations. Chinese one was simple and after picking my passport back up, I started in on the Russian visa. The Russian tourism system is a little silly in that it requires you to have an invitation from someone in the country in order to obtain a visa. After buying one on the internet from a shady Moscow travel agency, I set out to find the embassy. Following a good hour of arguing with my tuk-tuk driver about not wanting suits and gems on the way there, we finally pulled up to my first taste of Russia. As is usually the case, the first experiences of a country are often found in one of it's embassies or immigration buildings and after seeing the wonderful world that was the Russian embassy (including what I imagine are legitimate Cossack guardians), I'm quite looking forward to that part of the trip.

After that pleasantness was finished, we all headed over to the train station to catch a ride south to the town of....I don't remember, Champong? Could be, I have no map and I'm too lazy to google one. From there we caught an early morning ferry back over to Koh Tao, the island having remained the same from my last trip there several weeks ago.

Instead of drinking, the purpose of this trip was to do some diving and get the younger members of our group certified. We spent four days on the island for free (thanks to our dives), relaxed, played some volleyball, looked aimlessly for Spark, dove and ate from the giant BBQ that we neglected last time. The weather around the island was hideous and resulted in horrid visibility during our dives and a shortage of supplies reaching the island (leading to restaurants running out of the majority of their common ingredients). After our fourth night, we jumped back over to the mainland and bussed to Khao Lak, where we are now.

Jason, James, Trevor, Jodie and my Aunt Jill (everyone except for me) departed for a 3 day island cruise the next morning, leaving me to my own whims for the next few days (I declined an invitation to go due to financial restrictions). Yesterday I headed out on some dives of my own, and after loading my gear into a fishing boat, we puttered off to a wreck a few kms offshore where I did two of the best dives I've had. Because we were out in the middle of the blue, and not around any islands or the coast, we were pleasantly surprised to find the entire site run over by huge schools of some deeper water fish. The divemaster explained this happens once in a while and it should lead to some leopard sharks being nearby. Unfortunately there were leopard sharks around, but were scared off once a ship load of loud Germans dove in and startled them. Still it was an awesome dive, and I don't think I'll ever see that many fish again. At points I couldnt see anything around me because the massive schools of them would envelop each of us, and we would have to fight through the mobs in order to know that the other person was still beside you. Very cool. After the dive we drove out to a huge Thai navy gunboat that was washed up in the tsunami and now rests 2kms inland in the middle of a farmer's field (Khao Lak was the hardest hit area of Thailand).

Woke up this morning (Christmas eve!) and am now awaiting my companions to return from their boating trip. I'm glad that I have some family in Thailand to share Christmas with, but am starting to get quite eager to hit the road. As you can probably tell from the frequency of my blog updates, life has slowed down a bit here and I'm looking forward to seeing some more places and picking up the pace in the new year. In an effort to entertain myself during this somewhat lonely Christmas eve, I hosted the first annual "Go" for Charity event. Attendance was described by event organizers as being "lower than expected":




I've spent the rest of the afternoon drinking eggnog (water) and listening to some carols (Led Zeppelin & Wolfmother) while sitting around the tree (my bag). To those who I won't be contacting directly, Merry Christmas!