Thailand, Bangkok, Patong and on and on

Hideeho neighbor! We've been in Thailand for oh about a week or so. I lost track of the calendar after about 48 hours. We've seen a bit of Bangkok -- Wat Pho, several others, the Bangkok zoo, a canal tour, even Khao San Road and IT City (6 stories of gadgets and geek-dom). Bangkok's a cool city, but being hounded by tuk-tuk drivers every 10m or so is draining. I'm writing from Patong Beach which, according to the Lonely Planet guide is the "epicenter of the tourist earthquake." Of course, those words were written pre-tsunami, so perhaps they will be striken from the next edition. There's really no evidence of the damage done. Everything seems to up and running. Comments from returnees is that the prices are much higher this year.

We went on a river rafting / wat in a cave / elephant ride package. As cheezy as it sounds, it was fun to get out of noisy, smelly sexpat Patong. We had a nice swim by a waterfall about halfway through the day. Both Amy and I felt like the trip has finally gotten started.


Yesterday we went on a dive with West Coast Divers. We spent the day a Racha Yai. The water was warm, but Bungalow Bay was very, very crowded. Being the typical jaded dive instructor that I am, I lost track of the dive guide after about 30 seconds and then Amy and I did our own thing for the rest of the dive. We saw a banded sea snake, a spotfin lionfish and a lot of the usual suspects from Hawaii.

Today we are just chillin' until the van picks us up to take us the M/V Queen Scuba. We're off to the Similans for 4 days. We'll let you know how it goes once we get back.

As a postscript; just a day or so after landing in Bangkok we heard that we lost a friend back home. Jansen was just 18, just a kid, and we are struck sad by the his death. We talk about him daily, and we remind ourselves how precious and short life can be. We wish we could have been back home to pay our respects and celebrate his life with friends and family. We'll miss him.

ANNOUNCEMENT: More photos (more or less at random)

I've started to post some random photos from whatever I'm doing on my .Mac site:

Ken's Pensieve

Share and enjoy!

Kermit the Monk Seal at White Plains beach

Kermit came to visit at White Plains today...

Here are some more pictures Kermit at the Beach

Halloween Waikiki Style

It figures that I write about my Halloween on the first day of December, but that's just me.

It got off to a rocky start because neither Amy nor I are big "party goers" that is, we don't like to get falling down stupid drunk. That, for Amy, is an understatement, by the way. Been there, done that. So we didn't think about costumes. Of course as the day rolled around, I got more and more comments about how lame we'd be if we didn't show up dressed. Amy decided that Waikiki would be too toxic for her -- a could call and another serious understatement. I finally found something quick and easy to do: I'd dress as a spear fisherman and have a catch bag with pieces of paper with the word "Compliment" on it. Get it, fishing for compliments? Yeah, well, most people didn't get it either.



Of course there was lots of drinking. And scantily clad girls. Some naked ones, too! I think Jo was pretty ripped even before we left Kaio'o. He kept shoving his video camera in my face. Soon we were out of beer, so it was time to start cruising the streets of Waikiki. Police were out in force, of course, but so was the military security police. Of course they look just like people pretending to be military. That caused a few problems during the night.

As we left The Clubhouse, we were in search of Leda's housemates who were dressed as Mariachis. This led to a whirlwind wandering around Beachwalk looking for the gang. Eventually we had enough cell phone calls to zero in on the exact location. It was touch and go there for awhile, though. Next stop was the ABC Store for more alcohol. Be afraid. Be very afraid of the drunken Mariachis! Then things start to get a little hazy.

I remember having a shot of Patron from the bottle, and mixing up a bottle ginger ale and Captain Morgan. Then wandering through the crowd. There were lots of very cool costumes. You can see my favorites over at my Halloween 2005 Photo Album. I really liked the one with bolt stuck in the guys head. Some other favorites, well, there was something for everyone that evening.



Finally I ended up hanging out in front of Kelly O'Neil, first waiting in line, then waiting for Katie to come out of the bar, then deciding that waiting wasn't worth the wait, then having some girls dressed like a grecian chorus, carrying torches, asking us if we could light their fires. They said it could be done, we said that they needed to take their clothes off first. Not much really happened after that.

I went back to Kaio'o where Mark and Jo were passed out on the couches and I took the stuffed chair. I'm not sure why Jo didn't just go into his room since he lives there, but he wasn't really up to answering questions. My alarm went off at about 05:30, because I had the morning charter. Still dressed in my costume (a wetsuit, thank god), I drove back to the shop and started the day.

A Perfect Day!

Wow, what a great day! Calm conditions, no current, clear viz. All at the same time! The first dive was at the Corsair [109fsw/0:13]. You could see the plane clearly from the surface. Neal found not one, but two eels wrapped around each other under the starboard wing. Tremain had a little trouble clearing his ears, but he hovered above the dive site like he was laying on a table. That's the way to do it; don't abort the dive, just practice good buoyancy control and stay with the group! On the way up, you could see the NoriZ, you could almost touch it.

The second dive was at Spitting Caves. The current was Diamond Head, we could see the bottom while we got ready. We were hoping for a repeat appearance of one of the Hawaiian Monk Seals that Chris spotted yesterday. But even before that, as soon as we were on the bottom, we spotted a White Tip Shark in one of the caves. Just a few minutes later there was a Commerson's Frogfish hanging on the reef for his photo-op.
And then we found the seal hanging at for us. I think it was Erma. It was a little hard to tell since I was trying to keep a respectful distance from these endangered and mysterious creatures. I did manage to get a couple of good shots as she glided by! After that, we drifted along for another 20 minutes, spotting turtles every few minutes or so. After the safety stop, we surfaced and someone shouted, "There's a[n Eagle] ray down there!" Sure enough, the ray was doing orbits on the sandy bottom just below us! Woohoo! Melissa said that this was probably the best dive she's ever done here. It certainly is going to be hard to beat!

The Sweetest Day

Today is the day to practice random acts of kindness and senseless beauty.

It was a sweet day! We had the NoriZ almost entirely to ourselves, Amy was on board and she brought her housemate, Pammy, Mike is putting his AOW cert to good use, Dianne and Denny were here to get just one more dive in before their flight to Harrisburg, PA -- NOT your major dive destination -- and Paul PCS'd just two days ago and he's already getting into the diving groove. Conditions were outstanding. Light Makapu'u current, 100+ visibility on the Corsair and no one else around. [Time IN: 9:05, Max depth: 107 fsw, Bottom time: 15 minutes*, 79F]. I found the big yellow margin eel underneath the starboard wing, getting a cleaning from a banded shrimp. The garden eels were out in force of course. The usual critters were making lazy turns through the water. You could see the bottom of the 'Z -- you felt like you could almost touch it!

On the second dive, we wanted to do Spitting Caves [SI: 0:38, Time IN: 10:15, Max depth: 46, Bottom time: 36, 81F], but it was unclear whether the current and visibility was going our way. We took a bit of a surface interval at the #1 marker to switch tanks and wait for the tide to turn. Then we crossed our fingers and headed for the wall. It was looking good! Everybody dropped in and lo and behold: the current was Diamond Head just like we wanted! Yea! So we drifted along, we found a couple turtles -- some swimming, some wedged into the rocks. We also discovered a four foot white tip reef shark in one of the little caves. It's a fairly recent discovery, but some sharks don't need to keep moving to breath through their gills and white tips are one of those species. The little guy was well protected in his cave, I just barely caught a glimpse of his dorsal fin or I would have missed it completely.

After we got the boat unloaded and the van packed, we headed over to The Shack for a post dive beer and meal. The sun was warm, the beer was cold and the sea just about put me into full siesta snooze mode. We drove back to the shop, unloaded, rinsed, hung and put away our dive gear. Amy, Pammy and Paul (sounds like a 60s folk rock group, doesn't it) hung out on the pool deck for some sun and story while yours truly cranked out this dive report and paid the bills. It's all good!

NOTE: Bottom times are approximate due to variable entry times and some divers using enriched air gases

Let's get it started

On this day in 1960, President John F. Kennedy first proposed the Peace Corps to 10,000 students at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with the famous speech:

"And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."

Do you have a passion for something? Do you want to change the world? Do you feel that nothing you do matters? I changed my life to become a SCUBA diving instructor. I wanted to change the world, one person at a time. Nothing is more satisfying to me than completing an open water class and watching as new divers discover Hawaii's under water world.

Today was the last day for Nick, Erik, Ryan, Chris and David. We were on the NoriZ again, same as Wednesday, except the Capt. Wade was driving this afternoon. The wind chop was up and the current was pretty stiff on the outside of the bay, so we chose some protected sites for our third and fourth open water dives. Our first stop was Hawaii Loa crater (Time IN: 13:35, Max Depth: 42 fsw, Bottom Time: 0:36 min, 79F). The surge and current made it pretty challenging to complete the skills, but everyone nailed it, and we even had time for a nice tour of the crater before surfacing.

Our second dive was on Angler's Reef (SI: 0:38 min, Time IN: 14:55, Max Depth: 48 fsw, Bottom Time: 0:38 min, 79F). Katie and her mom, Pat were also along, nominally to help with my class, but mostly to dive! My students had to do the surface navigation skill through a pretty stiff chop, then a free descent through clear water to the bottom. After knocking out the last of the skills we started our dive tour. Meanwhile Katie was on a roll. She found 5 leaf scorpion fish on the dive! Way to go Katie! David also saw a ray off in the distance, but we never got a really good look. We all came back to the boat happy, tired but with a feeling of accomplishment.