From Thailand to Indonesia

So, I've just spent the last week and bit in Thailand and have since flown to Indonesia.

The last week in Thailand I spent about 5 days on the island of Ko Tao doing some Scuba diving. Now, I figured "oh yeah, sure I'll go try scuba diving, that will be all right I guess." Well it was more than all right, it was unreal! I did the four day open water certification, which was super fun. Spent the first afternoon doing some lectures, followed by more lectures the next morning. Then in the afternoon we went into the pool to practice some skills. Being in the pool was enough for me to get a kick out of. Taking your first breath underwater is a bit of a surreal experience. At first everything in your body is telling you not to breath. But you trust your regulator and take that first deep breath, followed by an exhale which is almost weirder as the bubbles seem at first a bit violent when they rush past your face mask streaking for the bleary surface. Once you get over the initial weirdness of it it becomes more natural and relaxing. The next morning was more lectures (who knew there was so much theory in SCUBA diving?) followed by our first open water dives in the afternoon. We hopped onto the boat half not knowing what to expect and headed for Mango Bay. We checked and rechecked our equipment and made sure we were all good to go and then took our first Giant Leap off the boat into the water. The diving was amazing, we had about 15m of visibility, which isn't as good as it gets there, but was still really clear. We did two more dives the next morning going down to a depth of 18m. On all the dives I saw the most amazing things. From brightly coloured anemones to sea snakes, to clown fish, barracudas, eels, manta rays, and a million other neon fish. Not to mention the Coral. Scuba diving really introduces you to an entirely new world. So much of the planet is covered by ocean and it's amazing to think about the seemingly unknowable diversity in life which inhabits the big deep blue.

After Ko Tao I headed for Bangkok for a day. Didn't get around too much as I had only really heard bad things about the place. Mainly just stuck to the touristy district I was staying in and took a "tuk tuk" around to a few different temples. I also managed to see a Muay Thai kickboxing fight that night which was really cool too see.

But, my unplanned 12 day excursion to Thailand came to an end on 20th as I flew out to Hong Kong and then onto Bali, Indonesia, where I currently am. I essentially came here for the surfing as it is world renowned. I'm in a really big tourist city called Kuta. The surf here is pretty sweet. A nice mellow beach break, perfect to hone my skills on my newly acquired board. The city of Kuta itself is a poorly planned, overly crowded and confusingly layed out trap set up for people to suck money out of you via osmosis. But I found myself a bungalow somewhat near the beach for 8 dollars a night (including banana pancakes for breakfast)and met some cool people. So that's sweet. I plan on being here for a couple of days, and then I'm going to head out to a quiter island called Lombok. We'll see what happens as far as that goes.

Either way, I can't really complain too much. After all, the water's warm, the surfs up and bikinis are still in style.