TravelStream™ news feed for member ritchie on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/ritchie en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Mon, 08 May 2006 00:49:40 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1147063680/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1147063680/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1147063680/tpod.html Mon, 08 May 2006 00:49:40 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Bangkok, Thailand

The end is nigh. My travel funds were long ago depleted and with a pining to see friends and family it's time to close the lid on this travel adventure. This time next week my Lonely Planet will be back on the shelf and the Village People vest tops you may have seen me wearing will be safely retired to the deepest darkest corners of my wardrobe. I fly home on the 11th, arriving in at Heathrow at 7am, unless something out of the ordinary happens I think this will be my last update. It doesn't seem like I'll ever forget this trip but some things stick in my mind as unforgettable. Such as standing on the unnerving Balancing Rock atop the cliff looking out over the Copper Canyons in Mexico, the arduous trek up and down mountain for 4 days in Peru to reach the Inca city of Machu Pichu, watching the stunning sunrise from the top of an active volcano in Indonesia, seeing the giant Manta Ray on our last dive in Thailand, and spending days amongst the ruins of Angkor. There's still plenty I haven't done and many places I still want to go so I imagine this wont be the last time I call a shabby hostel home. As is to be expected I've become quite accustomed to certain aspects of the travelling life. I'm going really to miss relaxing on beautiful beaches and wondering about wearing nothing but shorts and flip flops. Taking a motorbike taxi was initially terrifying but I've actually come to enjoy bombing about on the back of the little kamikaze 2 wheelers with no helmet and a driver at the helm who has a total disregard for safety. And I don't know how I'm going to shake the habit of doing nothing all day, losing track of time and being able to wear the same pair of boxer shorts for up to three weeks at a time-just kidding, it can't have been more than two and a half weeks. With this in mind and the daunting prospect of returning to working life I've added "good at doing nothing" and "poor personal hygiene" to my CV and the doll office has accepted me for a position (at the back of the queue). Controversial. Some things I wont miss: cockroaches (what are they for?), bad smells, the impossibility, due to the heat, of getting a good nights kip, people forever trying to sell me stuff, getting ripped off, never ending bus journeys, border crossings. As is customary with all travellers I've grown a beard resembling a small shrubbery and I only wear clothes made from tofu that are 3 times too big, look like table cloths, and cost no more than 25p (haggled down from 50p you understand); I also now want to be known by my true tribal name, Ayisiyiniwoktok. Cynicism aside, I've seen so many amazing things, made lots of friends, and had so much fun, so I can't really knock it........but you have to a bit don't you?I've missed everyone so much but have been kept strong by the words of an old wise monk I met on my travels. He told me, "Near, far, wherever you are I believe that the heart does go on." "Love can touch us one time," he went on, "And last for a lifetime. And never go till we're one." How true brother, how true. Deep moving words. I'm not sure where they came from but I like to believe that they were passed down through generation of noblemen. Germany 2006 is almost upon us. World Cup summers are always the best summers and I've no reason to doubt this one will be any different. That's not to say that the weeks leading up to the final wont be full of anguish and despair, maybe disappointment, and definitely a lot of pulling ones hair out, and maybe the person sitting next to you as well.....wahey! pub brawl!!!. There's some good festivals on the cards with some top headlining acts to boot; and there's even talk of a long fabled trip to the October Beerfest in Munich to top it all off .....roll on May 11th and the English summer. So cancel your hair appointments, put your drinking hats on, and get ready to receive some of the finest tat on offer in Bangkok's markets. I can't guarantee quality but I can promise you it wont go with anything you currently own. Emma, I have a waving golden plastic cat with your name on it, Hugh, a "Same Same, but Different" t-shirt.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146834840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146834840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146834840/tpod.html Sat, 06 May 2006 09:25:16 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

Today I went to the war museum. The Vietnam War Remnants Museum, to give it its full name, is not for the feint hearted. The full horrors of armed conflict are there on the walls for everyone to see. They tell it how it was, albeit from a naturally biased point of view; nothing is glorified. I knew the Vietnam War wasn't exactly overflowing with morals- which wars are- but I was unaware to just how barbaric it actually was. When I saw the photographs and exhibits in the museum it shook me as to just how cruel the human race can be and, when we put our minds to it, just how brilliantly we can excel at coming up with a plethora of different ways to maim, torture, and kill each other. Some devices for this purpose on display were cluster bombs, grenade launchers, nail bombs, phosphorous grenades which melt the skin on contact, napalm bombs which burn everything they touch, and Agent Orange.Agent Orange was the nick name given to the herbicide used by the Americans to clear the forestation that provided cover to the the Viet Cong fighters. Containing Dioxin, one of the the deadliest chemicals known to man, the herbicide caused untold suffering to the hundreds of thousands of people that came into contact with it, their spouses, offspring, and their offspring. Nearly 11 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed on North Vietnam during the conflict. Many died of cancer, many were born with deformities. The US denies the link between Agent Orange and the catalog of ailments suffered by the Vietnamese after the war, even though they've handed out millions of dollars in compensation to their own veterans for exactly this. It's odd to think about the people who designed these weapons of war. How they must have sat at their drawing boards as if designing a new car or airplane, but the purpose is not to dream up something that will go faster or be more economical but simply to cause more death and injury per dollar spent. What a macabre profession to pursue.Not only were the weapons so utterly cruel but the soldiers who conducted the war were pretty much on a par. Some disturbing pictures showed VC soldiers being dragged behind tanks, families of 3 or 4 generations just before they were shot dead, GIs with beaming grins holding up to the camera parts of the exploded remains of opposition soldiers; and piles of children and babies shot, presumably, because they were Vietnamese. A report of one of the massacres included the killing of 182 women, 17 of whom were pregnant, 173 children, 56 of whom were between 0 and 5 months old, and 60 men over the age of 60. One of the soldiers convicted of one such massacres went on to become US Senator Bob Kerry; at the time he was awarded the Bronze Star for the action in Thanh Phong where the killings took place.Obviously it would be stupid to believe that atrocities weren't committed on both sides but, with their far superior firepower and war chest, America's seem infinitely more calculated.Now everybody, think happy happy thoughts. Sorry but this is what I did today. Right I'm off now because what ever they're cooking in this internet cafe it sticks.Here's food for thought, literally. While I was checking out a lot of the stuff I just wrote about I came across an article stating that in December of 1999 traces of Dioxin were found in tubs of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Shall we have Honey and Herbicide or Cookies and Cancer this evening? Yum!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146577380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146577380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146577380/tpod.html Wed, 03 May 2006 10:37:53 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam

After many years abroad, including a few years in England, Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969) returned to Vietnam to lead the Viet Minh Independence movement. He was pivotal in arranging the signing with France of an agreement which recognised Vietnam as an independent country. Ho Chi Minh later became President of the (Communist) Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). North Vietnam being communist was allied with the Soviet union and China; the south, known as Republic of Vietnam, with the United Sates, Australia, and Korea.I wont be a grandad and go on about the war too much as I've yet to visit the War Museum. I'll just say this one last thing. North and South Vietnam were divided at the 17th parallel, a line drawn by the French during the Independence negotiations. One province that overlaps the 17th parallel is Cu Chi, and this is where the famous Cu Chi tunnels are located. The tunnels were used by the Viet Cong to move supplies between the north and the south, for evading attack from the Americans, and also to outsmart them in battle-often when under attack they would use the tunnels to pass underneath the Americans and then attack them from behind.The tunnels had everything needed for jungle warfare: sleeping quarters, hospitals, ammunition stores, wells, toilets, air vents, and kitchens. This is not to say that the living standard was high. Most of the tunnels were only around 50 centimetres high, I don't think any of us would have fitted through them if we'd tried.We got to see the way the soldiers would have lived underground, the traps they used for catching Americans, and we even got to go through some of the tunnels. The tunnels we went down were reconstructed so tourist could get through them. They were not as small as the originals but still tiny. They had a live firing range at the site of the tunnels. At more than a pound a bullet I couldn't be arsed. I've never heard a real gun being fired. It's about 10 times louder than you expect it to be. You instinctively blink every time a round is fired. After about 10 minutes there the noise was really starting to put me on edge and I wanted to leave. I can't imagine what it must have been like to listen it all day every day. It's no wonder people go mad during war, I would have if I'd been there for more than half an hour and the worst fatality I saw was a cardboard cutout cow taking a bullet in the gut.The US army led many offensives to destroy the Cu Chi tunnels which, for the most part, were unsuccessful. Tactics including carpet bombing, gassing, and sending in "tunnel rats"-special trained soldiers-to clear the tunnels inch-by-inch. By 1969, B-52 bombers were freed from bombing North Vietnam and were used in a heavier carpet bombing attack in the area which ultimately proved to be the downfall of the tunnel network and the VC resistance in the Cu Chi province.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146402960/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146402960/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1146402960/tpod.html Sun, 30 Apr 2006 09:43:02 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Phenom Penh, Cambodia

According to my credit card statement I've been to Brunei. Also according to my credit card statement I spent over £2000 in one day while I was there. I've never been to Brunei and I certainly wouldn't consider spending that kind of money in one day. Obviously I was quite surprised when I loged on to my Internet banking to see how big my credit card bill was. I've cancelled my credit card and the bank are getting their fraud team to look into it. I think the fact that I have a stamp on my passport that says I was in Cambodia at the time the transactions took place should be sufficient enough evidence to get the money back. I bloody well hope so anyway.Fraud aside the past week has been really nice. I took the bus to Sihanoukville on the south coast. I made friends with a group of really nice English people and also a couple of Swedes. We spent the week staying out until the early hours, getting up late, hanging about on the beach, playing pool, and watching films. We all got the bus back to Phenom Penh together today but they carried on to Siam Reap, where I've already been. I've stopped here one night to pick up my passport and my visa for Vietnam; tomorrow I'm taking the bus to Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as most people would know it. I wont have much time there as I have to be back here by the 6th to fly to Bangkok. I was having such a good time in Sihanoukville I didn't want to leave and now the 10 hour journey each way to Saigon seems like quite a lot but I've paid for the visa now.A curse on the Portuguese for Rooney's injury. How is it possible that we can always be so goddam unlucky. Please please get better before the World Cup.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145791260/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145791260/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145791260/tpod.html Mon, 24 Apr 2006 09:53:20 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Siem Reap, Cambodia

Using words it's hard to convey how massive the temples of Angkor are, and without actually going there -which everyone should- it's hard to imagine how utterly amazing they are. The temples are mind blowing in every way. They're huge in the area they cover-some 65 kilometres around Siem Reap, and astounding in the scale and complexity of the architecture-Angkor Wat is 170 metres wide by 6500 metres long, Preah Neak Pean is a monument within the centre of a series of raised artificial lakes themselves surrounded by a 900 metre by 500 metre man made reservoir. The mind boggles at the man power than must have been required to erect or excavate such ambitious designs. According to inscriptions just one of the temples is said to have taken 80,000 men simply for maintainenance. The temples were built nearly 1000 years ago and a lot of them still stand to this day-genius, probably more would be upright if it weren't for the encroaching jungle. It's hard to stand amongst the masonry and not feel a sense of awe for the men who managed such an amazing architectural feat for their time.Tickets for Angkor come in the form of 1 day, 3 day, and 7 day passes; 1 day is barely enough to take in just a couple of the temples- there are 9 in total. I bought a 3 day pass, which at USD40 is comparatively darn expensive. On my first evening in Angkor I went to see sunset from the top of Phenom Bakheng. Sunset was obscured by cloud on the horizon. My intention was to come back the next day for sunrise at Angkor Wat but I ended up going out with a few guys from the hostel so it never happened- I still got to see some temples the next day though. On Sunday I made it for sunrise at around 6am, which well worth the early rise.On Saturday evening I went to see a Cello concert at the Siem Reap concert hall. It was a free concert and the cellist, Beat Richner, turned out to be a Swiss and a doctor at the next door children's hospital. He talked more about Cambodian paediatrics and Western neglect than he did play Cello, but that was interesting anyway. I changed my bus ticket for Monday so I could donate blood at the hospital, which is one of three children's hopitals set up in Cambodia by the 49 year old Swiss.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145513160/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145513160/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145513160/tpod.html Fri, 21 Apr 2006 01:47:52 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Siam Reap, Cambodia

With my sister and Hugh homeward bound and two and a half weeks left until my flight home I needed something to fill the time. Staying in Bangkok didn't seem like an option. I like the city but it's very very hot, busy, and polluted; and there's not enough to do there to fill the time. I think after more than 3 weeks there I would start throwing rocks in the street.When I originally planned my trip I included Cambodia and Vietnam or the itinerary but then thought I wouldn't have enough time to fit them in. The turbulent past of these two countries really interests me so why not a whistle stop tour taking in Siam Reap and Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh and the killing fields, then on to Saigon, maybe a few days on a beach and then back to Bangkok for my flight on the 11th.The bus from the Khao San road, the main backpacker area in Bangkok, left at 7.30am. The bus was an air conditioned double decker with standard seats. The air con was struggling to cope with the midday sun; I thought it was uncomfortable but the worst was yet to come. My planning for entering Cambodia was a bit haphazard. I only checked whether or not it was possible to get a visa on arrival about 10 minutes before the bus left-luckily I could-and I neglected to read the bit about there being no cash machines in the country. We reached the Thai side of the border around 1pm. I changed the remaining 4500 Baht I had in my wallet, which got me a whopping 450,000 Cambodia Riel, and handed over another 1300 Baht for my visa (luckily I had some spare passport photos which were another thing I didn't realise were needed). By 5pm I was through to the Cambodian side of the border and sitting on a minibus waiting to leave for Siam Reap. Only 4 hours to go all of 500 metres.The bus kept filling up and filling up. Just when we thought they couldn't fit any more people in two more would turn up, seats would fold down out of nowhere, and they would be shoehorned in. Cambodia has a reputation for having bad roads - I say roads, they're actually just dirt tracks - tracks full of spine jangling, frame shaking, unforgiving potholes, mile after mile, after mile. Like a bad babysitter the road shook us to within an inch of our lives. Then the rain. Sheets of rain. Coming in through gaps in the windows. The road was now like a river and the water was so deep the swell from passing cars would come underneath the door. At one point in a particularly muddy section of road the bus started travelling sideways in the brown soup. The mood was good and after not long someone pulled out some speakers and an iPOD and we had ourselves a sound system.At around 9.30pm we met big articulated lorry jackknifed across the road. Our route was blocked. Cambodia is one of the most heavily landmined countries in the world. The mines left over from the Khmer Rouge have caused more than 40,000 amputations since 1979 and there are said to be as many as 4 to 6 million landmines remaining unexploded. All the guidebooks tell you not to stray from roads or paths and even our helper was telling us of all the mines in the area. So when our bus left the road and started driving through fields to get round the obstacle we were all a little nervous. Needless to say we didn't blow up but there was a cheer of relief when we returned to the (relative) safety of the road on the other side of the lorry.We got to Siam Reap around 12pm, 16 and a half hours after leaving Bangkok. One of the hardest journeys I've done so far. I got a key for my room, booked in for some spinal surgery, and went straight to bed.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145344980/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145344980/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1145344980/tpod.html Wed, 19 Apr 2006 05:09:36 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Bangkok, Thailand

To to book transport in Thailand you go to a travel agent. The travel agent phones the respective travel company and makes the booking for you. We did, they didn't. Our journey from Koh Phangan to Bangkok was supposed to be a catamaran to Chumphon then a VIP bus from there to the capitol, arriving at 11pm. When we got to the ferry terminal we discovered that our travel agent had not made the booking. He had in fact written our departure time half an hour after the boat was due to leave so we would purposely miss it. If we wanted to leave that day we had no choice but to get on a 4 hour ferry to Surat Thani and then a bus from there to Bangkok that eventually got us in at 5 in the morning. So we took it up the proverbial but I guess it was going to happen sooner or later. Anyway, don't let the travel agent get you down as they say (always). After recovering from our long journey we headed to Wat Pho, Temple of the Reclining Buddha. Wat Pho is Thailand's biggest and oldest Wat (Wat means temple in Thai) and also houses the largest reclining Buddha image in the country. The lazy gold plated Buddha is 46 metres long and 15 metres high. It's one massive Buddha-so big it had to be built before the building that houses it otherwise they would have never got it in. On Tuesday we visited the Grand Palace. Once home to the King of Thailand but now only used for ceremonial purposes the palace is, as the name implies, grand. The grounds cover an area of 218, 000 sq. metres and numerous extravagantly decorated buildings cover the site. Tuesday was a particularly hot day-around 35 Celsius- and by the end of the two hour tour we were all pretty whacked. A short period of recuperation in the hotel and we were ready to go out for the evening.Thailand is renowned for it's sex industry - where's this going I imagine some of you are thinking- and the district of Patpong in Bangkok is one of the places to go if you want to Go Go. Go Go bars are the Thai equivalent of our strip bars I guess. Although it's not really my sort of thing nor was it my idea I'm normally up for giving something a go at least once. The aforementioned Go Go bars line the street of Soi Patpong 1 and belligerent men tout spectacles such as "ping pong" shows and cigarette smoking "tricks": go figure. We found a bar that we thought looked good, paid our entrance fee, and sat down with a beer. I wont go into the detail or the mechanics of it but suffice it to say it was about the least arousing thing I've ever had the misfortune of watching. We downed our beers and left.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144981380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144981380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144981380/tpod.html Sun, 16 Apr 2006 23:45:48 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Koh Phangan, Thailand

Take a beach in Thailand, add 8000 people, mix in some music and a lot of drugs and alcohol and you have one large serving of hedonism in paradise, or the monthly Full Moon party as it's known here.A lot of people come every month for the party-on the days running up to the party the beaches are packed with sunbathers, I've never seen so much bare flesh- and good accommodation is hard to come by. Turning up a few days early is essential if you want to find somewhere at all. We booked a place to stay on the trip over but then found somewhere much more central so moved after a couple of nights. The party takes place on Sunrise Beach, Haad Rin, and the music is pumped out by the bars and clubs that run the length of the beach. The party is naturally an all night affair. We mixed up the dates and had thought that the full moon was on the 14th when in fact it was on the 13th. If we had known different we wouldn't have gone out on a mission to destroy ourselves on the 12th. But apart from the ginormous hangover we had on the 13th this was a good thing as we had breakfast around 1pm, lunch at 6pm, and dinner at 11pm, which meant we didn't hit the beach until around 12am which allowed us to carry on all the way until sunrise the next day. Alcohol is served in little sand buckets (really) and costs 300 baht (4 pounds) for a small bottle of Vodka mixed with 2 Redbulls; these get you well on the way in no time at all. I'd heard a lot of stories from other travellers about people getting set up when trying to buy drugs so after a lot of umming and arring we decided against trying to get the gram of crack cocaine we had been after for the last few weeks. I'd even heard of stories (from Amy) of people having drugs planted on them by the police or by other travellers paid by the police and of unavoidable robbery, rape, beatings, drownings, locusts, and floods. All of these turned out to be unfounded. Emma did get felt up by some guy in a bar but after 5 minutes with Hugh he was on his hands a knees begging for forgiveness. I got slapped on the arse by a guy who was returning his hands from the euphoric breakdown position (in the air) to by his side and happened to catch my arse on the way. We all had a good laugh about it. So the full moon party turned out to be a lot of fun but the only reservations I had were that I felt that we were imposing something upon the Thai people that perhaps they didn't want or wasn't in fitting with their culture or way of life. This feeling was enforced when I saw a young girl of perhaps 7 or 8 walking around in the early hours of the morning selling necklaces and some stupid twat asked to have his picture taken with her. I don't know why it annoyed me so much but it's not really a place where kids should be: surrounded by drunk idiots at 2am.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144742520/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144742520/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144742520/tpod.html Tue, 11 Apr 2006 07:13:58 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Koh Phi Phi, Thailand

The PADI Open Water course gave us a taste for diving and we all liked it. The Advanced Open Water course consists of 5 Adventure dives that can be completed over an unlimited amount of time and, unlike the Open Water certificate, there is no exam that has to be taken at the end.We wanted to dive Hin Daeng as we had heard good things about the quality of marine life there, including the possibility of seeing Whale Sharks and Manta Rays. The Hin Daeng dive site is around 60 minutes by speed boat from Koh Phi Phi. Hin Daeng means red rock and a rock is all it is (although it's in no way red). Like the tip of an iceberg it sticks out of the water only a couple of metres but put your head below the surface and you see it stretching down to the seabed some 40 or 50 metres below. On this particular trip we were going to do 2 adventure dives, two fifths of our Advanced Open Water certificate. The first dive, a Deep Water dive, would take us to 30 metres below the surface, almost double the depth we had previously dived; the second dive, a Naturalist Dive, doesn't involve getting naked and going diving but spotting and identifying marine life over the course of the dive.During the second dive we circled Hin Daeng, keeping the vertical rock face of the island to our left. Because of the pressure at 30 metres you use 4 times as much oxygen from your tank as you would at the surface and you therefore cannot stay down as long. Even with an unlimited air source bottom time is limited due to the increased amount of nitrogen that builds up at deeper depths. Between dives we had to wait around on the boat for over an hour to let the nitrogen in our blood fall to a safe level to complete the second dive.As we were completing our safety stop on the second dive just before we were about to surface a Manta Ray appeared out of the blue. Curious as to what we were it circled us about 4 or 5 times. As it swam off we followed it for a while. Adam, our instructor, reckoned it was around 4 metres across, one of the biggest he had ever seen. They're large graceful creatures, moving in the water with minimum effort, followed by several other large fish which feed off the them. It was a perfect end to our diving and our last day on Koh Phi Phi.The weather is still really hot here-I'm so tanned people keep thinking I'm Thai-but the rainy season is starting to kick in. Tomorrow we're swapping west coast for east coast and making the trip to Koh Phangan for the full moon party-let hangover hell begin!!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144319700/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144319700/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/ritchie/just_a_ride/1144319700/tpod.html Sun, 09 Apr 2006 09:18:00 -0400 London to London with bits in between.

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Ko Phi Phi, Thailand

Taking diving lessons is much like being back at school. Classrooms, whiteboards, formulas and tables to remember, and cheesy educational videos that were shot in the 80's on a production budget not much larger than the daily income of a Thai family. But it serves a purposes: learn this and you'll have some great fun and see some really cool stuff as apposed to learn this-because!.The first morning of the course is spent going through the first 3 chapters of the PADI Open Water book then after lunch you don your (heavy) gear and get in the water, entering from the beach nearby. There's four of us in our group and once buddied up we descended to the sea floor (around 2 metres below the surface) and practised some of the techniques we had learnt in the classroom such as clearing the regulator mouthpiece, clearing your mask of water, and using someone else's alternate air supply to simulate loss of your own air source. It's an odd sensation breathing underwater and getting the correct buoyancy so you float weightless takes a bit of mastering. We left the water all looking forward to the next day's dive which was on a reef off Bidah Nok, just south Ko Phi Phi Lay.On Thursday we boarded the dive centre's boat and set sail. Thirty five minutes later we were in the water and ready to start descending. Starting in the shallows we followed the decline of the reef bed heading out towards sea. As you get deeper the pressure increases and, if you like your hearing, you have to equalise your ears with the surrounding pressure to stop your ear imploding. We sat on the bottom at around 12 metres below the surface and carried out some of the exercises we had done the previous day. Once we had completed these we were free to explore the reef.On the third day we headed out in a long boat with just Emma, Hugh, our instructor, and myself; Jasmine, the other girl in our group, was missing this one out due to painful ears-she had had problems equalising the previous day. We hired an underwater camera for the day and took this with us on our dives. More exercises were completed on the bottom then, with our buddies, we swam away from Bidah Nai island, under a few boats and then started looping back toward the island. We dived to a depth of around 16 metres. At a depth of 5 metres a three minute safety stop has to be completed to allow the nitrogen levels in the blood to return to a safe level before surfacing. We completed the safety stop, surfaced, and signalled our boat to pick us up. The dive lasted for around 45 minutes.The last dive of the course was, we all agreed, by and far the best. We had fewer exercises to complete and more time to explore, watch, and be amazed. The reefs are extensive; huge bulbous coral formations create gullies, caves, and hills that we would have surely been lost in had we not been with a dive master who knew the area well. Amongst the hundreds of types of fish and aquatic life that inhabits the reef we saw lobsters, flute fish, eels, sea snakes, octopuses, barracuda, starfish, clown fish (Nemo), and lion fish. The brightness and range of colours of fish is food for the eyes, and the beauty and complexity of coral formations is astounding. We're all now addicted to diving and have decided to stay another few days and dive an island around 60 minutes from here.
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