Day 93- I Need To Work On My Disguise Skills.

With Colleen out on her final diving expedition, I was left yet again on my own to try and entertain myself.  Shockingly, I actually managed to get up before 9:30am, which for me with no real commitments is a minor miracle.  After attacking the breakfast buffet solo, I decided the punishing walk I had subjected myself to the previous day was not torturous enough and I thus ventured out on another solo hike.  This time I opted to head north instead of south and made my way up to the Nang Yuan lookout.  All-in-all it was an  hour and a half round trip, and like my previous trip it was full of perspiration and panting galore.  It was a solid reminder of why all the smart people were driving mopeds, and only IDIOTS(!) like myself would dare to walk such hilly routes in these extreme temperatures. 

Around lunch time I headed up to the Roctopus headquarters to round up my amphibious girlfriend.  This turned in to me sitting around for over an hour waiting for her as their dive boat was having technical difficulties.  When she finally did show up, we celebrated the fact that she had not drowned by having one last lunch at the adjoining restaurant, Mint Kitchen.  While I'm sure Colleen was going to miss the diving when we departed Koh Tao the next day, I was going to miss the deep fried chicken with cashew nut that they served there.  I'm not a huge Thai food fan, but this shit was Deadly.  And yes, that is deadly with a capital "D". 



The end of diving...and underwater selfies.



 

That afternoon we met up with Colleen's friend Ashley from Kamloops and her boyfriend Joel.  Since Colleen and I are both gluttons we decided to go out for a second lunch with them complimented by some adult beverages.  By this point in the day I was already starting to reach my "outdoor quota" and after our second lunch we retreated back to the hotel to enjoy the splendors of air conditioning before our final night on this beautiful island.

Once we gathered ourselves and decided we had abused our air conditioning enough, Colleen and I sauntered down to Chopper's for the last time.  It was a safe assumption that it was going to win the award on our vacation for the "most visited bar".  It would probably win in a landslide come to think of it.  After meeting up with our old buddy Prat, and Ashley and Joel, it was time to take advantage of the two-for-one beers and two-for-one daiquiris.  My father always told me that half price beers taste twice as good; and I can't say I can argue with him on this point.  Shortly thereafter we said our teary goodbyes to Prat and headed out into the night with Ashley and Joel.

Before we checked out the nightlife, I got Ashley to take us by their accommodations to show Colleen the kind of places I had thought we would be staying when we first landed in Bangkok a couple of months ago.  For 300 baht a night ($10 Canadian) they had a private room.  Mind you, they had a shared bathroom, no A/C, a mattress on the floor, no TV and probably an assortment of creepy crawlers; but hey it was 1/10th the price of what we were paying!  Needless to say the words "budget accommodations" are not a part of Colleen's vocabulary. 

After our sightseeing of how "real backpackers" travel, the four of us decided to do a tour of some of the local beach bars.  A couple of the places were offering promotions like "ladies night" and "one free drink".  Wisely, Colleen and Ashley were able to exploit one of the bars' "one free drink ticket per customer" policy by reentering the bar a second time with disguises on.  And by disguises I mean they slightly altered their hairstyles.  But hey, whatever works.  Not surprisingly, this same strategy did not bode so well for Joel and I, and alas the men were made to pay for their drinks.

 On our way back to our hotel we stopped and had what would probably be our last "street pancakes" of our vacation and some pad Thai.  On an unrelated note: we also saw a dude almost get run over by a moped.  While we were walking home, a heavily intoxicated guy on a scooter hit the guy walking in front of us on the footpath and proceeded to just keep driving.  I'm not sure what the drinking and driving mopeds on pedestrian walkways law is, but I'm sure it can't be legal!

~Brentski~

Day 75- And You Thought The Sleeping Conditions In Day Care Sucked...

Now that Colleen and I were officially advanced divers (unofficially I was still a pathetic excuse for a man when it came to diving), it was time for us to leave Koh Tao and travel onwards to everybody's favorite Asian city-state, Singapore.  We actually had to leave Koh Tao though because our 30 day Thai visas were up, and quite frankly Southeastern Asian jails scare the living shit out of me.  Colleen was quite sad to be leaving, as the island was most definitely her choice for best locale we had visited since leaving Canada five weeks earlier. 

In the name of cheapness and trying to save a few bucks, we I had booked the "night" boat out that evening.  With that in mind, we had a full day to kill.  I can think of no better way to start off what was sure  to be a long and agonizing day in the scorching heat than to have your power not working which in turn forced me to have the coldest shower of my fucking life.  Needless to say, my now inverted penis was not happy about this situation. Colleen and I ended up spending the better part of the day bouncing between various restaurants and internet cafes as we attempted to seek refuge from the crippling heat.  Factor in that both of us had feet that were heavily bandaged and blistered from a combination of scuba diving, cheap sandals, and a moped accident and you my friend have a couple who were cranky to say the least.  Rather pathetically the highlight of my afternoon was watching a cat catch and subsequently kill the same mouse numerous times while I drank a smoothie and pondered why my balls felt like they were crazy-glued to my inner thighs.  As the sun began to set we made our way over to Chopper's to watch some other newbie divers' videos and say goodbye to some of the fast friends we had made.  I could tell Colleen really wanted to stay, and she was already talking about coming back in a couple of weeks after our trip to Singapore, but alas it was time to move on. 

As the evening continued to creep up on us, it was time for us to gear up for the "night boat" trip.  We had heard a few horror stories that week from other travelers who had been foolish enough to travel to the mainland using the overnight budget option.  I tried to remain as positive as possible, but Colleen was already starting to expect the worst when our shuttle bus showed up to drive us to the pier.  What I mean by shuttle bus of course is a pickup truck with benches in the back where the driver crammed an ungodly amount of us into said back of truck and then proceeded to  pile all of our luggage directly on top of us.  Comfortable it was not.  Thankfully we made it to the pier without losing any souls along the way, although things weren't looking overly promising on the boat front.  Let's just say we weren't exactly staring at the five-and-a-half-star cruise ship we had enjoyed so much a couple of months prior.  There were hundreds of people everywhere, a combination of backpackers and locals looking to take advantage of the cheap overnight ferry.  The best way to describe the boarding process would be to compare it to how they round up cattle en masse.  I had a feeling it was going to be an interesting night. 



Loading up the night boat. This should be fun...



 

Chaos and human-cattle herding aside, we eventually found our way onto the ship and the first thought that popped into my mind was, "holy fuck, this is what I imagine a floating concentration camp to look like".  There were literally hundreds of people lying everywhere, packed shoulder-to-shoulder on flimsy mattresses that reminded me of those mats we used to use in gym class in public school.  The thing was these mattresses were (presumably) dirtier and less comfortable.  By this point Colleen was in full on panic mode and I am pretty sure she was pondering swimming to the main land instead of spending her entire night on this human rights travesty of a boat. 



The Koh Tao-Suratthani Night Boat. Jail would have been a step up.



 

With our boarding cards in our hands, we marched up to the second level of the boat to find our assigned beds floor space for the night.  Seeing as how things were going so well already for us, it was only natural that a group of dirty ass Spanish hippies had setup shop on our living quarters.  This is what my life had come to: arguing with greasy, non-showering, unemployable Spaniards about who was going to sleep on this poor excuse for a mat.  Eventually they thankfully fucked off, but by this point Colleen had started to notice that there was a trail of ants near the head of her mattress and giant mosquitoes circling overhead just waiting for her to pass out so she could donate some blood.  I argued with her and attempted to calm her down, but alas there was no way in hell that she was going to rest that night.  Factor in all the characters around us drinking hard liquor and smoking weed and you have a recipe for a long night if you were attempting to get some sleep.  All of this started to send Colleen over the edge and the final straw came a couple of minutes later when a giant red ant came sauntering across Colleen's bed.  With that, Colleen proclaimed there was no way she could sleep here (I admittedly was pissed with her, but looking back I can't blame her) and we packed up our stuff and made our way downstairs to a picnic table at the rear of the boat.  The two of us ended up sitting there with a rotating cast of other people who were presumably afraid of the bugs and/or people for the next seven-and-a-half hours, often slipping in and out of consciousness while my arms and legs kept also falling asleep from the weird and contorted shapes I was making.  There also happened to be a lady who spent almost the entire night in the bathroom that was located a few feet away from us as she was throwing up excessively and could barely stand up.  Literally it was the closest thing to death I had seen since that time we got a Llama drunk on wine byproducts (that's a whole other story!).  It goes without saying that we barely slept all night, but hey at least we weren't killed by ants!



Attempting to sleep on a picnic table at the back of the boat.



How much does Colleen love her life right now?

Having travelled on probably hundreds of different boats on four continents, I can easily say that this was the most memorable boat ride of my life.  While it was terrible at the time, when I look back on our Asian trip it was strangely one of the things I remember most.  Having said that, I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT!!!

~Brentski~

Day 74- Deep Sea Diving, A Ship Wreck, Night Diving, And A Swede In Search Of A Naked Pool Party.



Sinking to my certain death.

Throwing up peace signs like its 1996.

#Selfie. Yes, I just said that.

 Customary to our time on Koh Tao so far, we were up bright and early as we had a 45 minute boat ride out to Chumphon Pinnacle for our first dive of the morning.  You know what is the best way to ruin a lovely boat ride first thing in the morning?  Answer: seasickness.  Thanks to the choppy conditions on the water that morning I was not overly eager to jump in when we finally arrived at our destination.  As mentioned in my last post, we were partaking in the Advanced Adventurer course where we were practicing different skills.  This morning our first dive was to be a "deep dive", where we would descend to a depth of approximately 30 meters.  To add to the excitement for the day, Colleen had rented an underwater camera so that she could capture photographic evidence of us doing something cool (you know, for the future grandkids).



Shove a regulator in her mouth. That's one way to keep her quiet.



Chillin' on a ship wreck, no big deal.

Once my stomach settled down, our group of five divers hit the water and started our descent to the ocean floor.  Unfortunately, the visibility was piss poor, which naturally had to occur on the day that we decided to rent the camera.  Once we reached the bottom of the ocean (32m/100 ft), our instructor Amber pulled out an egg (guessing she just casually carries them with her everywhere) and proceeded to take the shell off.  Due to the intense pressure at such depths, the raw egg was able to maintain its shape as we ping-ponged the shell-less food item back and forth.  I had to go and ruin the fun for everyone when I swatted the egg a little too hard and thus proved that muscle trumps science every time!  The low visibility made it hard for us to keep track of one another, and as we were swimming near some huge coral walls I suddenly realized that Colleen was nowhere to be seen.  There were other groups of divers in the area, so I assumed she had gotten mixed up with some of them, but nonetheless I instantly started to panic.  Because one panic attack under the water that week apparently wasn't enough for me.  Eventually, everyone else in our small group caught on that Colleen was missing and we all started looking for her.  Thankfully, she reemerged seemingly out of nowhere within a couple of minutes and was wondering what everyone was doing.  I guess she could see us, but none of us could see her.  Oh well, nothing like a near heart attack to start the morning off!  Thanks to my heavy oxygen intake, Colleen and I had to surface early, which sucked because as soon as we left they saw some cobias, which neither of us had seen yet.  Oh well, I guess I should just be happy I found my girlfriend alive. Meh.



Amber looks significantly cooler under water than Colleen and I.



Two tickets to the gun show.



For our second dive of the day, we would be diving a shipwreck site.  Sadly, it was not some cool pirate ship from a billion years ago, but was in fact a ship that was intentionally sunk for divers a few years earlier.  While the underwater visibility still wasn't the greatest, we were able to capture some pretty cool photos.  Colleen and I actually both cut ourselves on various parts of the ship as we were maneuvering in and out of the entrance ways and such.  It was definitely a much more bad ass "cuts and bruises" story then the story I was currently rocking entitled: I'm wearing socks with my fins because the plastic  is cutting up my ankle! As if scraping her arm on a sunken ship and wearing Fruit of the Loom socks in the ocean weren't enough, Colleen managed to bump her head pretty good going through one of the ship's doorways.  That was our cue to surface.  On the way to the surface, Colleen got our instructor-in-training, Martin, to take a picture of us kissing.  The first attempt was straight out of the junior prom yearbook as "Awkward Colleen" knocked my scuba mask off.  On the second try we got the picture she so dearly wanted, but I ran out of air immediately thereafter and had to surface faster than a teenage boner. 



Cowabunga dude!



Walking on sunshine.

Having survived just about everything that can go wrong underwater, Colleen and I rested up that afternoon for our final dive that night.  I believe we also cleared the local 7/11 out of their entire stock of band-aids, as both of us had ankles that were a complete mess.  I guess, we've got sensitive skin!  With our ankles heavily plasticized, we rested up as that night we had our final dive before we were scheduled to leave the island the following day.



Group shot on a cannon. That's a first.



Hot make-out session under the water.



As the sun began to set, Colleen, Amber, Jon, Martin, and myself set sail with some beautiful weather and the entire boat to ourselves.  Out on the boat we were given our briefing on what we would be doing and we were all given torches/flashlights.  There were no other boats out on the bay that night, so we had the water entirely to ourselves.  As we made our way into the water and the sun started to set, Colleen's fear of the dark started to creep in.  The dark, spiders, and cracks between couch pillows.  These three things will be the death of her.  Colleen would not swim near the bottom of the ocean, although in all fairness she was not that far above us.  We got to see some pretty cool stuff, including glowing plankton and a couple of spotted stingrays.  We were told that many of the fish were already asleep, as they were apparently resting up to harass stupid tourists the following morning.  Due to my ongoing problem of consuming oxygen at an extremely rapid rate, I was forced to vacate the dive earlier then I would have liked.  Martin came back to the ship with me, while Colleen, Amber, and Jon continued diving.  As my shitty luck would have it, they ended up seeing a family of puffer fish.  All I got was a beautiful view of the stars as I laid on my back in the bay and admired the beauty before me.  Such a rough life, I know.



I love the air... clearly.



#Selfie...again!

Having completed our five dives in the last two days, we were now Advanced Divers (at least on paper!).  We celebrated by taking out Colleen's dreads/hair monstrosity as we had no swimming engagements in the immediate future.  With my girlfriend now looking more like a woman and less like Madeline Brewer in "Orange Is The New Black", we headed out for the evening to meet our newfound photographer buddy, Prat.  After meeting up at Chopper's yet again, we had a few drinks before moving onto another venue.  Foolishly, Colleen left me there as she wanted to go back to the bungalow to rest her severely mangled foot.  Naturally I fed her my famous line of  "I'm just going to have one drink", which is Brent code for see you in a couple hours.  Prat and I ended up hanging out and drinking far beyond my one beer allowance. 



Socks and flippers. It's a new thing I'm trying.



We survived!

 After saying my goodbyes to Prat, I started to stumble on back to the accommodations where my lovely girlfriend was waiting.  On the way I happened into some Swedish guy who was asking me if I knew where the pool party with all the naked chicks was.  I assured him, that I had only ever seen such things on the internet, but he was hell-bent certain that he was on the right path to this party.  I wonder if he ever did find it?  While I may not be sure what that Swedish guy found after he left me, I can assure that all Colleen found was her boyfriend in a slightly inebriated state.  She assures me of this because I kept asking her to quiz me on my multiplication tables, which I always do in an attempt to prove my soberness.  I mean, shit, if you know the answer to 8x7, there is no possible way you could be drunk. Is there?

~Brentski~

Day 73- Buoyancy. Like "Coccyx" It's Not Nearly As Dirty As It Sounds.

Following three straight days of having to wake up early for diving school, we were finally afforded the opportunity to sleep in as Colleen and I were not scheduled to start our Advanced Adventurer Diver Course until after lunch.   Sadly though, I could not sleep in as my "real world" habits of an internal alarm clock and such were starting to creep back into my system.  If there's one thing I don't like, it's the real world.

Sadly, my attempt to sleep in failed, but things could only improve.  Unless I intended to commit suicide 50 feet below the ocean's surface as I had attempted to do the previous day, it was inherently going to be a step in the right direction.  For our Advanced Adventurer course, there was no classroom work.  It was strictly diving.  To receive our credentials we would have to complete a series of five different underwater dives, each highlighting a different skill set.  We settled on navigation, buoyancy, a wreck dive, deep water dive, and night dive.  Unlike when we did our beginner's course, Colleen and I were not alone this time.  In addition to our instructor Amber, we had another student, Jon, and Martin who was in training to become an instructor.



Our Advanced Adventurer crew. Jon, Colleen, Amber, Myself, and Jon (left to right).



For our first dive of the afternoon, we headed over to a shallow dive spot where we were set to practice our navigation skills.  Jon, Colleen, and I were given compasses and had to navigate our way to certain spots under the water.  Thankfully, Jon was a much more experienced diver than Colleen and I, so we just kind of followed him  and pretended to look at our compasses as if we actually had a clue as to what the hell we were doing.  Jon was definitely an alpha male type of guy, while Colleen and I were just fish in his school.  I apologize for the shitty pun.

For our second dive of the afternoon, we boated over to a spot known as "buoyancy world".  I'll let you guess what skills we practiced here.  There were a wide assortment of obstacles, hoops, and other related crap under the water that we had to float through in an attempt to master the ever important skill of buoyancy.  Mostly though, I just like using the word buoyancy. Buoyancy. Buoyancy.  By far the most exciting part of the afternoon was when Jon was almost attacked by a triggerfish.  They are hyper-territorial fish that do not like it when people swim into their areas.  Needless to say Jon made that mistake and provided all of us with some free entertainment.  While we made it through both of the days skill tests unscathed, the one problem I was still suffering from was the fact that I was going through my oxygen supply at a far greater rate of speed than anyone else.  This in turn meant shorter dives for me, and less of a chance of seeing something of note under the water.

Divers' worst nightmare...the triggerfish. *Not an original photo

That evening was slightly more low key than the previous evening's affairs.  We hit up Chopper's again for dinner before retiring to our abode.  Colleen and I were both pretty banged up on our legs and our ankles were totally mashed up from the friction caused by the fins.  The ocean was trying to defeat us, but we were determined not to let it win!

~Brentski~

Day 72- Brent Has A Panic Attack 18 Meters Below The Surface. (What Not To Do When Scuba DIving)

Feeling flush with confidence after making it through the previous days' dives with relatively few problems, Colleen and I made our way to the Roctopus shop for the ungodly (at least on vacation) time of 7am.  This morning we were to complete our final two dives of our Open Water Certification course.  Not even two weeks earlier I would have thought this to be an impossible goal as Colleen was adamantly against ever trying scuba diving.  Thanks to a chance encounter with some strangers and the conversation that ensued, here we were on the Gulf of Thailand about to feed ourselves to Poseidon and all of his creatures.  The best part is that Colleen was loving diving, and admittedly better at it than me.  Funny how things work sometimes. 

With her new found love for diving, we loaded up the gear and got ready for our big morning.  Our instructor Amber, Colleen, and I were going to be joined on our dives by a videographer by the name of Prat.  Prat was a laidback Indian dude, who had actually spent time living in Vancouver and had even been to Churchill, Manitoba.  I'm not sure, what percentage of the population of India has been to Churchill, Manitoba, but if I had to bang out a guess, I would peg it at under 0.000000001%. And that's probably being generous.  Prat was there to film Colleen and I for a DVD that he would edit. If we wanted to purchase it, we would be given the option later that evening.  But let's be real, I'm dating Colleen.  That DVD was as good as sold before he even started shooting.

On our first of two dives that morning we were fortunate to have amazing visibility and saw a ton of fish.  We were also lucky enough to have a huge school of barracuda, numbering in the thousands, that was present for most of our dive and seemed to follow us wherever we went.  Colleen was in love and knowing how much she could care about most sports (see: not at all), it was great to see her enjoying herself.  But alas, I had to go and ruin the fun on our second dive.  Yup, Brent just had to go on trying to die!



Come back land, I need you!!!!



 

While the first dive went smooth as can be, things quickly turned bad for myself on what was to be our final dive before receiving our certification.  While Colleen, Prat, Amber, and I were descending to the bottom of the ocean to practice some skills on the ocean floor I started to experience some problems with water leaking into my face mask.  At the time I did not realize it, but the side flap on my mask was folded over and was thus allowing water to get in.  Warning: DO NOT EVER DO WHAT I AM ABOUT TO DO IN THIS STORY UNLESS YOU WANT TO DIE.  So, as we were descending, I started to freak out as my eyes were getting super irritated.  For some reason (it all happened so fast), I then proceeded to take my mask off and spit my regulator out of my mouth.  By this time, Amber has now thankfully seen what is going on.  I am in full on panic mode at a depth of 18 meters (over 50 feet) and am trying to semi-consciously swim to the surface as fast as I can.  At this point I was inhaling massive amounts of water into my lungs and was almost certain I was going to die.  Thankfully, Amber was there and as I was trying to swim away to my frantic and certain death she kept holding onto my vest and trying to jam my regulator back in my mouth.  I responded by trying to push her away and swim to the surface as my heart was now beating out of my chest and my instinct to surface was taking over.  Believe me, am I ever thankful that she was there to save my ass, cause the likelihood of me making it to the surface were slim to none! Eventually, after a ton of flailing around and me assaulting her semi-consciously, Amber was able to jam the regulator into my mouth and calm was somewhat restored.  Not to be forgotten is the fact that Colleen was watching this whole incident play out and was having a freak out of her own as she watched me.  Oh, and Prat was filming the whole damn thing!  I'm sure it would make great footage if he ever had to teach an underwater rescue course! Somehow, despite all the chaos I had inflicted on everyone, and all the salt water I had ingested, we managed to finish completing our exercises at the bottom of the ocean and we even completed an underwater kiss for the camera! On a positive note, I think I achieved my desired sodium intake for the day.



Roctopus saved my life.  Literally, its employee, saved my life!



Seeing as how we couldn't talk underwater, upon surfacing I could just tell that everyone was like "what the fuck just happened!?".  I explained the situation with my mask and that one thing led to another and before I knew it I was in the throes of a full on panic attack.  I was not sure if Amber was going to pass me, and I was suddenly having flashbacks to when I was 16 years old and ran a red light due to nervousness while taking my final Young Drivers of Canada exam.  I am pretty sure I was the only student to ever fail driving school (Sidenote: I passed all three of my government driving tests on the first try).  Thankfully, not only did Amber save my life, but she also passed me after I promised her I had learned my lesson.  I like to think that it was good for her as an instructor, as she had never had anyone pull a stunt like that on her before.  Yup, I was a real life First Aid Course.  Despite my brush with death, Colleen was not deterred and before I could say "drowning" she had enrolled us for the Advanced Adventurer diving course that was starting the next day.  Yup, looks like my diving days weren't behind me quite yet.



Captain's cool. He don't give a fuck about no drowning white boys.



With our newly minted status as "Open Water Divers", Colleen and I headed back to our bungalow to rest before sauntering over to one of the local bars, Chopper's, to meet up with Amber, Prat, and a bunch of other people who had been out diving with Roctopus that day.  As is customary with people who finish their course, they played Prat's video of Colleen and I on the big screen in the bar for all to see.  Sadly, the footage of me going all Helen Keller was left on the floor of the editing room, but the video was awesome nonetheless.  Of note in the video was the fact that Colleen and I both like to flap our arms under the water which made us both look like a couple of newbies tools.  Aside from that, the video was awesome and Colleen most definitely bought a copy.  To further celebrate the successful completion of our course, and me still being alive, we indulged in some drop shots and a few rounds of beverages before heading over to some other "diver's bar".   At bar number two we were fortunate enough to introduce some of the others to the fine world of Canadian culinary delights aka poutine.  Throw in witnessing a lesbo make-out session  between a newlywed (we'll just call her bi-curious) and her friend, and you my friends have the recipe for a perfect night.  French fries, gravy, cheese, and girl-on-girl.  What more could a guy who stared down death that day ask for?  Heaven.

~Brentski~