So it has been awhile since I have posted. It was the end of the semester and I had been
busy with planning both a Summer Camp and my vacation. Summer Camp is more like Summer School and
for me it was five days long with only teaching from 9:00a.m. to 12:30p.m. Funny thing about Summer School is that I
never had more than two students. They
didn’t want to be at school learning English.
Right after Summer School I took my vacation. My destination was a country known as
Thailand.
I left Seoul, Korea on the morning of August 1st
and ended up in Phuket, Thailand around 11:00p.m. I did have a long layover in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia. Anybody planning future
vacations avoid a long layover at that airport because I was able to walk
around the whole airport in ten minutes.
Anyway I did make it to Thailand and right away it was known that I had
never been to Thailand before this time.
This is because I tried to get into the taxi on the driver’s side. In Thailand they drive on the opposite side
of the road than in the United States or even Korea. With driving on the opposite side of the road
that means the driver side is actually on the right hand side when looking out
the front windshield. After making it to my hotel basically the next morning
(it is about 60km from the airport) I went out and found some food. Even though it was a Thursday night/ early
Friday morning there were still a lot of people out on the town. Now Phuket is actually the name of the whole
island and my little area where I stayed is named Patong Beach. It didn’t matter what day it was there was
always people out all night long. The
next day it rained majority of the day.
I was busy seeing the town and making payments on some reservations for
scuba diving.
Yep, the main reason for going to Phuket was for the scuba
diving. It was well worth the trip. Saturday was the first day of diving. With the company I booked with they picked me
up at my hotel in the morning. We
finished picking up more people eventually ending up at the dock (about 30
mins. away with traffic) where the boat is located. The boat is a pretty good size boat and there
were multiple shops using the boat each day.
So the very basic safety briefing (never mentioned about life jackets)
and off we go towards that day’s destinations.
While heading out breakfast is served and after every dive there was
food served. Saturday there was still
bad weather hanging around from the day before so it was long rolling waves as
if we were on the roller coaster. People
were warned and motion sickness medication was offered but there were still
some who did get seasick. All the days
diving I didn’t get sick once. Also with
the company I booked it comes with a dive master. So each day on the ride out to the site I was
being briefed with the dive master about the location and the various fish that
we might see. That first day there was
one other diver and me with one dive master.
That boat ride was close to two hours and once we did get out to where
we were headed it was possible to hide behind the island. In doing this it was like glass and looking
over the side you could see all the way down to the bottom. We did two dives at this location moving a
little bit and then headed backed towards an island we passed on the way out to
dive a shipwreck. Every dive I did
throughout my days of diving I did see: schools of fish, banner fish, clown
fish, coral, puffer fish, snapper fish, and different tropical fishes that I
don’t know the names. Those fish just
listed I basically saw every single dive.
Other notable marine life I saw the first day was a big leopard
shark. She was sleeping on the bottom
and was easily 6 feet long and the dive master said she looked pregnant because
of how fat she was.
Second day of diving was at a place called Phi Phi
islands. We did two dives there and then
one at shark point. The shark point dive
had a strong current that day so a lot of swimming for the last dive of the day. Ironic thing is I didn’t see any sharks at
shark point but instead at Phi Phi. On
one of the dives I saw three black tipped reef sharks. This was towards the end of the dive so we
also saw them while we were on the surface waiting for the boat to pick us
up. Plus the second day I saw a school
of barracuda fish, lion fish, sea snake, triggerfish, and a sun starfish. The third day of diving we went to the same
islands as the first day, but we did dive different locations. That day I had the same dive master as the
first day and so we were looking for the leopard shark again. This is the only day I didn’t see a shark of
any type. Instead saw the fish listed
above plus a couple blue spotted rays, a few moray eels, lion fish, scorpion
fish (hiding very well and extremely poisonous), triggerfish, and sea urchins. The fourth and last day of diving was to a
completely different location. This day
it was bad weather again and so the rolling waves with more wind so it was
crashing more often. It definitely made
it interesting getting back on the boat the whole entire day. The first dive was on a wreck by the name of “King
Cruiser.” There was no island for
protection but the boat was hooked up to a buoy. This wreck was quite a bit bigger. For the second dive we ended up doing shark
point because it was a little bit more protected but still pretty crazy getting
on the boat. If you didn’t time it right
you would be thrown from the ladder and it was best to just be thrown and not
try to stay and crash again with the ladder.
The last dive of that day we hid behind an island and did a wall
dive. The current was strong again but
we just floated with it and didn’t try to fight it. That day I saw three bamboo sharks (look like
small nurse sharks), four seahorses (of coursing hiding in the coral), eels,
lion fish, trigger fish, sea urchins, two colorful lobsters, big sea fans, and
three good size squids. Overall it was
some real good diving and I saw a lot.
Only thing that I missed was a turtle.
On one of the days there were a couple divers who did see a hawks bill
turtle but I had no luck. No complaints
though and any day of diving even in the bad weather is a good day in my
opinion. I hope the pictures do turn out
and that it does make some of you jealous.
After getting back to the hotel around 6:00p.m. at night I
usually had dinner and simply relaxed. I
did try some of the local beer which one of them had an interesting name. It was called Tiger beer. It wasn’t the best one but not too bad. On the boat I did meet this American couple
who also live in South Korea too. They
were on vacation too and so one night we went to a show together. This show was at a place called “Simon’s
Cabaret” and in fact it was a lady-boy show.
If you didn’t know this fact before you would have never known the
difference. It was a pg show with a lot
of music and a little bit of comedy. They
kept changing the sets and doing something from a different country and so when
Korea came up it was pretty funny.
Afterwards we went out on the town and ended up at the Hard Rock Café in
Phuket.
Originally I had planned on doing a jungle trek one of the
days while down in Southern Thailand. I
never did it though because it seemed like it was constantly raining. It is the rainy season and so it wasn’t too
surprising. So I have yet to visit a jungle
yet. I eventually left Phuket on an
airplane on Tuesday night going to the big town of Bangkok. In Bangkok I wasn’t able to see much. I blame it on something I ate the first night
I was there. Bangkok is the capital of
Thailand and is a huge city. Like I said
I didn’t see much. What I did see was a
lot of buildings, a lot of people selling stuff on the streets (clothes, custom
made suits, souvenirs), lots of people (both local and foreigners), and a lot
of street food vendors. It did have the big
city smell which isn’t that pleasant. As
far as Bangkok goes, maybe in the future I might end up back there but it isn’t
on the list of places to visit again.
I ended up back in Korea on the 11th and back to
my house kind of late. So with visiting
one other country I did get four more stamps in my passport (this includes
leaving and entering both Korea and Thailand), and some more travel experience
in Asia. Currently I am at work this
week but with no students. It is known
as desk warming which isn’t that hard to do with the temperatures in the 90’s
and the humidity hovering around 90 percent too. For the students school will start on this
upcoming Monday. I will only be here for
that Monday and then I will need to go to a mandatory orientation which will
last for six days. So I basically miss
the first crazy week of school. I will
rest up this week and then get ready for the start of the semester. I will write later.
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