Back in Bangkok!

Hello everyone. After a brief 10 hour busride we arrived in Bangkok. I can feel the divingabstinence kicking in already.









So this is how it's been. As you can see, Koh Tao was a tropical dream, we kicked back at the restaurant by the beach (we lived about 1 minute walk away from the beach) when we didn't have anything better to do. Diving started at 07:30 so we had the whole afternoon and evening off. We saw he annual diving festival.
As you all know, Micke and I decided to do the open water course and You're all pretty well updated except for the last night of diving...
The 11th:
the adventurers woke up after a calm but warm night. No side effects from the day before (as diving was in the morning, it was not recommended to drink alcoholic baverages in excess the so close to the diving). we met up with our excellent instructor Alex, the the briefing and went into the water. First dive was a Deep dive which I combined with Nitrox. The downside with nitrox was that I had to carry to heavy as hell tanks from the diveclub to the boat + my own diving equipment... Not a fun story.
We prepped, did the buddy check. The buddy check is simply to check a few things on your buddy diver. BCD, Weightbelt, Releases, Air, Final Ok. BWRAF for short or any of the following phrases to remember it easier: Bruce Willis Ruins All Films, Blonde Women Really Are Fun, Big White Rabbits Are Furry or whatever is easiest to remember. I think you guys can guess which one was the most popular one...
After the Buddy check, you jump in the water in whichever way is comfortable for you (given you don't lose any of your equipent that is, that usually irritates the instructors somewhat).
The deep dive was awesome. We did a mathquiz on the bottom to see who was intoxicated by the nitrogen (I wasn't) and then just swam around and enjoyed the view and all that.
That dive was followed by a Navigation dive, where me and Micke got to practice our elite compass skills (ahh the good ol' days of navigation at Bladins). Pretty fun but there are more awesome things to do.

After the dive I went on to do an exam in Nitrox handling (got 100% right) and then just relaxing at the beach.
The Night.
The final dive on Koh Tao was the notorious Night dive. As tradition goes, we bough a few beers, loaded everything into the boat and sailed away to watch the sundown from the boat. After the sundown and it was darker than Bokskogen during winter, we geared up and went into the water with a torch.
The darkness engulfed us as there wasn't even anything that the torches could shine on. The only thing that could be seen was the divebuddy and a weak reflection from Kytes silver fins. but at 6 meters all that changed. There was bottom. We could actually see it on 12 meters depth. We swam down and were welcomed by: sleeping fish!
We saw trigger fish sleeping by the bottom, bat fish swimming around, BIG Barracudas hunting for Batfish. It was great. Everything was the same but totally different. Everything reacted to the light from our torches. The barracudas used us to find fish (using the light from our torches to zero in on fish) while most other fish avoided the ligh (most likely due to the barracudas).
When we switched off the light, the light was illuminated by flourescent algae. You could see the algae shining up whenever we moved. Quite an experience.
But all good things must come to an end, especially our very limited air supply so we went back to the boat and celebrated our AOW certification.
We had a few beers with the instructors and went back to shore.
Now... Here is the thing. This was our last night on Koh Tao, we didn't have any diving the next morning so we figured it was time to hit the bars and clubs.
We had a beer or two at Buddhaview together with Phil (he was at Chiang Mai aswell), Jenny and Chilts (plus two really drunk swedes) and then went on to some other bars. Alot of dancing, some drinking and alot of philosophising. It was a great time. at 04:00 we started to get alittle tired so we decided to head back and go to sleep. Now, it was a bit difficult to find a taxi for the regular 50 baht so just walked on until...
Micke and I found a cab that would take us for 50 baht per person. That is a pretty good deal so call for the group but what do we see? Chilts had found a car with the keys still in it (owned by some other diveclub) and of course started it up and pulled up. In my resonably stable logic I decided that Grand Theft Auto wasn't the way I wanted to end my Koh Tao stay so Micke and I had to pay for taxi... Well back at Buddhaview, we met Phil and Jenny and we could only see the dust from Chilts stolen car as he drove off to get rid of the vehicle somewhere. I bet the diveclub he stole it from is going to wonder what happened to their car but that is none of our concern

now.


What a night I tell ya.
Well, now its time to see what Bangkok has to offer.

Until next time

Cheers