Ryan Matthew in Thailand

Not a whole lot to report for the day. I went out on the afternoon with an open water class on their first two open water dives. On the second dive one of the students came really close to getting hit by a boat!! Like 3 feet close. Other than that…not a whole lot of excitement today. I have a feeling that the student will be a bit more careful about his buoyancy control tomorrow. In retrospect both the instructor and my self knew better than to not put up the safety sausage. But the class had been doing quite well about not floating up towards the surface. Well I am heading back to my place to watch a movie again tonight.

I didn’t do a whole lot today. I came down to the school around 9 and we didn’t end up going out for the open water dive till 2. So I just chilled out at the school all morning. After the dive I just went home and got a shower. I am going to get some food and head home and watch a movie.

Here is the view of AC and Phoenix from the boat

View from the porch on my bungalow

View from the porch zoomed in

My mom wanted to see a picture of the bike I am riding

Got up early again today for the morning boat. I didn’t end up going on the first of the two dives because my friend really wanted to dive at the site that the boat went to and there was not enough equipment for us to both dive.

This afternoon I went to Freedom beach and finished up my book work! Now to study for and take the exam. I think we are going to have another physics lesson from one of the instructors in about a week or so. So I will wait to take the test until after that. Then it was back to the school for the movie that is made for the open water students. It is done by a company here on the island. Every time I see them I am always amazed at what a good job they do with them.

Its Tuesday…so it was steak night…I went and had an absolutely fantastic steak. I am beginning to really like this steak night thing. After the steak I came back to the school to post the blog for the day…but the internet was not working and I ended up hanging out with some guys that are diving at the school and a couple other dive master trainees. The internet is obviously working again now…I took a ton of pictures today that I will try and get posted tomorrow. I need to head home and get some sleep right now. I need to be back in the pool with the new open water class in 9 hours from right now.

I got up this morning and headed down to the school. I jumped in the pool and did the first open water session skills with 2 students. The girl was having a hard time with the skill where you have to put water in your mask and blow out with your nose to clear it. She finally got it after we worked on it for a long time.

I got out of the pool and had less than a hour till I jumped on the boat to help out with another open water class that was doing the first dive in a shallow bay instead of the pool. I ended up hanging out most of the dive with a kid that was having a really hard time relaxing and learning how to breathe through the regulator. Before the class got in the water we had a few minutes so I did another swim test. This one consisted of a 400 yard swim with no equipment. I only have two more swim tests to go and they should be a lot easier than that one.

The island is so busy right now that the generators that power the island keep cutting out. The surge of people have flooded the school with new students. We have more new students right now than we have had in past three weeks combined. Last night pretty much every resort was full and there were people walking around with their big backpacks just trying to find any place to stay.

I got up early again today and went out on the morning dive. both were nice dives at sites that I have not been to yet on this trip. I helped the Burmese boat boy with his english again today. He is 14 and super funny we are always joking around. Its crazy how much some the young Burmese boys work around here. They work the entire day everyday. The kids over at the restaurant work from about 7am till 10pm. I have talked to them and they send a lot of the money they make back to their families in Burma (Myanmar now). Its crazy to think about how working 12-13 hours a day everyday is actually a better life for them.

The full moon party was 2 days ago and tons of people showed up here today. It seems like the population of the island has doubled in one day. Two big classes of open water students start confined dives tomorrow. I am going to be assisting on both of them so I will be working with new students all day tomorrow.

I got the bungalow that I had wanted last week today!!! So I spent my afternoon getting that all sorted out and packing everything up and moving it up there. Its a bit of a gloomy day with rain off and on so I didn’t take any pictures of the view yet. But I am hoping for a bright sunny day tomorrow so I can take some pictures of the view and get them posted.

I got up at 6:15 am to catch the morning boat. I went on an amazing deep dive down to 30 meters (a little over 30 yards). I got back from that and took a nap. Chilled out for the afternoon and then went on the night dive tonight. I just got back from that now. I am going to eat some dinner and head to bed.

So it has come to my attention that at least one person really counts on seeing that I posted a blog everyday. I missed yesterday because the internet was not working when I had a chance to write and post the blog.

Yesterday I finished up with my rescue dives. Last night I just chilled out in my bungalow and watched a movie. Nothing too exciting went on last night.

Today my ear was feeling a bit messed up again so I went to a different clinic and had the nurse take a look at it. She said she could see some swelling and gave me some pills that really made it feel better. In light of all this I didn’t dive today to give it a rest. I did go out on the boat and got some reading done. In addition to the reading I helped everyone get in and out of the water, helped the Burmese boat boy with his english lesson, got a ton of sun, and did a bit of swimming.

To make up for the lack of a blog post yesterday I took a video of the walk from my bungalow to the Phoenix deck. I also posted some pictures from the red rock dive site that we were at today and of the sunset tonight.

Today I assisted with a rescue course. It was a lot more fun being the person that needed to be rescued. We did two dives this afternoon mixed in with the rescue chaos. It was a new dive site that I had never been to and aside from the visibility not being all that great it was a really awesome dive. I saw a blue spotted stingray and a puffer fish. I saw some other really cool fish but I have no clue what they were. The boat ride back was pretty rough. I am taking a guess that some of the swells were close to 10 feet. A little german girl that was doing a discover scuba diving course got pretty sick. I actually thought it was pretty fun. I guess I am getting used to being on the boat when the waves get big.

I just got back from dinner. I went to some place way on top of one of the mountains and had a fantastic steak in a red wine sauce. I was a little skeptical of how good it would be judging from my experience with steak and Thailand the last time I was here. But let me tell you this place was so good!! And the road going to it was a bit of an adventure seeing it was closer to an off road trail than it was to a road. To top off the adventure of the night there was a police road block on the way back where they stop you and search you and your bags. To make the stop interesting of course there was some sort of dirt or something on the bottom of my bag that looked like weed when it fell of on the seat of my bike…I saw the cop looking at something so I looked too and yeah it looked like weed…I told him it was dirt and apparently he agreed because after a thorough search of my bag I was on my way again.

Last night I ended up going to a little drum and bass night. I figured I might as well go out and listen to music that I like…seeing that I was going to be listening to the music from the party at AC if I stayed home. I had a pretty good time. The DJ was pretty good it was unfortunate that there were not very many people there. It is a little bit out of the way and I think every tourist on the island was at the AC party.

Today seemed really long. I got up this morning and headed to the supermarket towards the south of the island to get some rope for my safety sausage. I am not sure why I didn’t bring any with me…but I have it now. After that I helped getting ready for the afternoon dive trip. It has been really busy at the school this week so the boat has been full of open water students all week.

I helped assist with an advanced open water class this afternoon so that consisted of him doing some navigation skills and a wreck dive. On the first dive there was some confusion about the navigation and where we were supposed to be ending the dive. This resulted in us having to swim about 300 yards back to the boat in 2-4 foot swells. It was kinda funny for the first 100 yards then it got really old for the last 200.

This evening a couple of us walked north a mile or so to the village just north of the dive school and got dinner. I got pad thai…I just can’t stop ordering it. I think I have had it for one of my meals pretty much everyday I have been in Thailand.