Ryan Matthew in Thailand

I am back in Bangkok now. We got back last night. I will write more about the last  bit of time in the Islands when I get to a proper internet station. The one I am using now is not very good  to say the least.

Sadly I left Koh Tao yesterday afternoon and made the hour long boat trip to Koh Pha-ngan. we are staying on the North side of the Island on a pretty secluded beach. The ride from the south of the Island where our boat landed to the North was amazing. We were up and down all the mountains in the middle of the jungle.

The beach we are on is super chilled out and relaxed. And that is a great thing after last night. We took a long tail boat from our beach down to the full moon party. Let me start with the boat ride…It was a half hour of getting soaked. I had no idea that you got so wet riding in a long tail boat. Now the party was pretty insane. There were 8 bars along the beach all with different DJs playing mostly hard trance with with a couple playing hip hop and club hits. I would think there was around 10,000 people there….but who can count when you get to that number. It was a lot. Thankfully a French couple that was on the boat to come home had an extra rain coat. Jill and I hid under it the half hour boat ride home.

Nothing big or exciting planned for today. It is going to just be a nice relaxing day on the beach.

I finished up the deep diving course today. Yet another amazing day of diving. I am really wishing I had another few days to spend on Koh Tao and I would get another certification before I left. Today we got to see a sea turtle and just some really cool coral and rocks. Here is a pic of me from the dive today.

After finishing up my certification yesterday I just had to have more. Today I started getting certified to dive to 39 meters (I was just to 18 meters). So that consisted of 2 more dives today and two more tomorrow.

The first dive I went on today was just so amazing. There was a huge rock that went from the ocean floor to about 16 feet (5 meters) below the surface. We dove down to the bottom of it the total depth that we went was about 100 feet (32 meters). I saw  couple Black tipped sharks that were maybe 4 feet long. They don’t like divers so they were not very close, but I could still see them. We saw a ton of barracuda and a few tuna. And to top it off there was a family of clown fish, two adults and a baby.

The second dive was also really cool. We ended up only going down to about 75 feet (23 meters) but it was also a dive site with huge rocks under the water. There was a ton of coral and lots of little fish. The great thing about this dive was there are two places where a couple of the rocks form a tunnel and you can swim through it. They are only 10 or 15 feet long but it still feels like you are going into a cave.

I found a video on youtube for the school that I used.

Matee's Open Water course – Koh Tao

The last two days have been mind blowing. I always knew I would enjoy diving, but I had no idea how fantastic it would be. Yesterday I swam into a school of fish that was huge like 20 feet by 20 feet. Every way I looked all I saw was fish moving. Then today we dove at this place where there were all kinds of huge rocks ( about 30-50 feet high) covered by coral and there was a lot of fish around too. My teacher Neil Farmer for Phoenix Divers www.phoenix-divers.com for the class was so great…he is actually a course teacher so he is certified to teach people to be dive instructors.

Last night we headed down to the south tip of the Island for dinner. Here is a pic of the view we had for dinner…I have been pretty busy with diving so there is not a whole lot more to write about at this point.

After just my first day of class I am loving it. We just did a lot of pool work today. I learned what to do if my masks gets water in it or I drop my regulator…just basic stuff that you need to know. But either way I just from being in the pool I am loving it. I can’t wait for tomorrow!!

Tonight we ate dinner at another beach side restaurant while the sun was setting. I had the best Chicken Pad Thai for under two dollars…really…yeah thats right we both ate dinner for like 6 dollars…I am posting a couple pics of the view below.

I have been super busy. I was snorkeling all day yesterday then started my SSI certification right afterwards for my SCUBA certification. Then had to study last night to be ready for the class that I start in 5 minutes. I will get more updates on everything I am doing soon.

I didn’t get a chnace to do an update yesterday, but not much happened. I pretty much just layed around on the beach and in the room at Ark Bar www.ark-bar.com on Chaweng Beach in Koh Samui. Chaweng was ok, but it was a little too busy and commercialized for my taste.
Today I made it to Koh Tao. This Island is really my speed. We have a great little bungalow at a place called Blue Wind. I just got done sitting at this great little little beach bar called Fizz. They have a deck that is about 15 feet from the ocean with bean bag chairs around little tables, perfect mood lighting and great deep house music playing. I really can’t imagine I will ever find another place that fits  my personality better than Fizz. See the Pictures of Fizz below.

Another 10 hours of travel today taking the total to over 40 hours and I am on Koh Samui. There was a hour plane ride, a hour and half bus ride, an almost 2 hour ferry ride, and then half a hour in the back of a pickup truck (it had a roof and benches in the back). It was worth it though. I had an amazing dinner on the beach looking out into the ocean. I really have not had much energy to do much else. I am still dealing with a touch of jet lag. But I am pretty sure I am going to sleep like a baby tonight. Other than taking a quick 15 minute swim that about takes care of my activities for today. I currently am not going to be able to upload pictures. I will try and find an internet cafe where I can soon. Some of the pictures I got from the ferry ride over are pretty amazing.

I started my morning by throwing Fatboy Slim – You come a long way baby CD in my iPod and heading for the sky train. Let me tell you I don’t think I could have planned a better way to see Bangkok in the daylight for the first time. It turned into a funky surreal experience. It is one that I know I am going to remember forever.

The Chatuchak weekend market is amazing. It really blew my mind how huge it was. I was prepared for it to be big but really it was on the next level. I threw a link to a picture I took of the outside portion. Then there is so much more inside, 11,000 stalls in all. I ended up getting lost for a little while. It is pretty easy to when you start wondering around inside. They really have everything there. I saw everything from shampoo to puppies for sale. I can say that it was an incredible experience that I will be more than happy to repeat in a couple weeks when I am back in Bangkok for the weekend. I was really glad that I went early because it started getting a lot more busy around noon.

After the weekend market I headed off to the MBK mall to get the cell phone situation taken care of. Turns out I didn’t un-lock it correctly. Thats ok they have people there that will do that for you too. I haggled with the guy a bit and got it for almost half of what he asked in the first place. MBK was a awesome mall I can say I never been to anything like it. I am sure that if I would not have just had my mind blown by the weekend market I would have thought it was even better.

I think that the jet lag is catching up with me a little bit tonight. I have just been hanging around in my room relaxing. I think I am going to go wonder around the neighborhood that I am staying in after I get done here. Bangkok’s time square is just a few blocks away so my plan is to take a walk and go see that. I leave for Koh Samui very early in the morning. So my next update will be from there.