No tsunami in Bangkok

Well we made it to Bangkok with no problems.  We are staying at a little place called Bangkok Loft Inn that’s really cheap and pretty nice.  Super friendly and only a 5 minute walk from the skytrain that will get you various places in Bangkok.  I didn’t even realize there was a tsunami alert until I was watching BBC news last night.  We are dry other than the sweat…it was 36C here yesterday and based off 9/5*degreesC + 32 that comes out to like 500F….with 110% humidity.  Warm…and damp.

Sophia has already left for the airport.  Her flight to Hong Kong (couple days there and then she goes to China for 8 days) leaves in 2 hours.  I had a great time traveling with her.  Hopefully I wasn’t too annoying.

As I was eating breakfast this morning, I realized I had tried some new fruit that I hadn’t shared.  Yes, this is the pre-picture, wordy, boring part of the blog.  Anyway, new fruit: dragonfruit and jackfruit.  Dragonfruit is pink on the outside and then the flesh is white with little black seeds.  To me it was pretty tasteless…but apparently high in fiber and low in calories so go for it!  Jackfruit on the outside looks like a  big green football (or maybe rugby ball).  The part you eat, however, are fleshy bits that surround the seeds inside it.  Sort of yellow and shell-shaped.  Jackfruit almost tastes like bubblegum.  First bite is a little off putting, but it does grow on you.  Give her a try!  Otherwise, it was your typical pineapple, watermelon, papaya (yuck!) and mango (awesome!!!!!!)

Oh, I guess I should talk about the 2 day trip to Phi Phi.  It was okay.  For sure, Sophia and I both agreed, had we known better, we would have stayed and done another live aboard in the Similan Islands (where we did the first one).  Much better diving, visibility, people, etc.  I guess you can’t win them all.

First of all, our dive guide, Tom, was awesome.  Really personable, helpful, pointed out cool fish and what not.  Really enjoyed diving with him.  We did 4 dives the first day.  None of them had a ton of fish other than there seemed to be lion fish around every corner.  Visibility ran from “meh” to “don’t look away too long or you will lose your group”.  We did a night dive as the 4^th dive and “cluster fuck” doesn’t begin to describe it.  Its dark (obviously), tons of shmutz in the water to make it low visibility even if it were light, then we all basically dove along a wall down and then back.  Theoretically, they were putting us in the water in spaced intervals, but there was an Asian dude who went in before us who was busy taking pictures and moving at a snails pace so we caught up with and were held up by him.  Then there was a group from Estonia (not saying this is because they were Estonian…just giving you the local flavor) that was all over the place.  Not too many dives, probably shouldn’t have been doing a night dive…and they basically crashed into all of us when we were looking at some seahorses…literally…crashed into…as in slamming into our backs.  Fun times.  That turned out to be a theme with them.  We would be placidly swimming along and then chaos would come paddling through…which is cool.  I understand the excitement and everything…but made it suck for the rest of us.

Anyway, saw some seahorses and some squid that dive.  Didn’t take my camera cause I was holding a flashlight…and it was so chaotic and dark and what not, I wouldn’t have taken photos anyway.  The next day we did 3 more dives.  One of them was on a wreck that had hella current and fairly low visibility.  But it also had some nudibranchs which I think have become one of my favorite things to search for.  They are little so if there isn’t a ton of large stuff to look at, searching for them makes the dive interesting.  We finished up with another wall dive at Koh Doc Mai…an island that rises straight up (and goes straight down in the water – hence “wall dive”).  It was a decent dive…saw some neat stuff…but had the Estonian chaos blow through our group about midway through.  I saw them coming and just backed off until they passed.  Good times :-D

I am now killing time till I need to leave for the airport.  My flight leaves at 7:30 tonight…and lands in LA at 9:30…tonight…only a 2 hour flight!  Plus a date line and 17 hours in the air, but who’s counting?!?!  I stay over in LA this evening cause there isn’t a connection to Portland that late.  In N Out!!!  I will probably do one more blog then just to try to include other bits and maybe more movies….

I tried uploading videos, but the upload speed here is slooooooow.  I will try again once I get to LA (if I am no completely dead).  Until then..here are some more pics:

Blue spotted sting ray half buried in the sand.

I got all macro with the camera on this purple coral.  This was maybe 3 inches high...got some fine details though.

Fish was just snoozing away sitting there.  Thought  it looked pretty cool.

Scorpion fish laying there.  Its funny, with this white balancing, you can totally see the fish.  In natural light, I was about 2 feet from it before I saw it.  Always startling because they are so well hidden...and poisonous.

Lion fish swimming away.  Still pretty cool opened fans.

A couple of clown fish hanging in their anemone.  You can tell, from the anemone strands there was a bit of current going on.  Not too bad.  I like that I got it just as one peaked at me.  Clown fish move around a LOT so getting a good photo of one is just chance.

Love to all

Our time, the people’s time!

Jim