Thailand- a little west and a lot south, but a step in the right direction toward home. During an all-airport layover in Guangzhou, I met Tori. There are worse ways to spend 11 hours than playing movie title hangman with an international fashion model. Once the flight arrived and I got gouged by a taxi driver, I collapsed into a dark dorm bed in Bangkok surrounded by snoozing Danes. I woke up at about 10:30 and the Danes invited me along to lunch with them at an alleyway food stand a few blocks down the road. For about 66 cents I got a full bowl of rice with my choice of stews to pour on top. Very little of it was identifiable, but all of it was astoundingly good. And Spicy. We toured the Grand Palace, bought apples, lounged at the plush guest house and parted ways.
Before leaving the guest house, I had them recommend and then book me a bus/ferry ticket to an island in the gulf called Koh Tao (Turtle Island), home to the venerable Ban's Diving Resort. Ban's makes the remarkable claim to have PADI-certified 10 percent of all of Asia's scuba divers. At the rate my certification course is going, I don't doubt it's true.
My class consists of one dive instructor, one dive master/assistant instructor, myself and eight other students: three Brazilian ex-pats from London, two (more) Danes, two Germans and an Irishwoman. We're all getting along like kings, having dinner together and discussing the peccadilloes of cultures worldwide (Danish bike rentals are unimaginably utopian, London's less so, etcetera).
Tomorrow morning are the final two dives before I'm awarded my PADI certificate, after which there will be celebrating.
Click on the pictures for a magnified view.
The Grand Palace
Freedom Bay, south Koh Tao
The view from my bungalow on Freedom Bay
Jelly
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