The beginning...

The view from my office :)

I’m sitting here in my new office. Wooden floors, bright and cheery. We have no windows, and the floor is usually wet and covered with sand. Our front entrance has small buckets of water for people to stand in before coming up. This keeps even more sand from being tracked around. The day starts at around 8 am, or so, with cups of coffee, sitting around, and getting gear ready.

Today starts my first official day in the process of becoming a Divemaster. Before I can even start that, I need to get certified for Emergency First Response, CPR, and Rescue Diving. These are all the prereq’s for becoming a Divemaster, anywhere in the world.

Let’s start from a week ago, when I left Asian University and headed South. Camp finished, and after a challenging exit procedure (which involved running down the highway trying to flag down any bus headed to Bangkok) we arrived in Bangkok, during a ridiculously hot period (up to 40 degrees). That’s 104 degrees. To make things better, my friend’s apartment where I was staying had a broken Aircon machine. We both ended up on the floor with one fan locked onto our faces. Let’s just say it wasn’t the most relaxing night.

The following morning, I woke up early and went to a nearby mall to go to tbe bank and deal with transferring my money back to America. The bank and mall didn’t open till 11 am. We went back to grab a bankbook for a friend, then walked to another bank, also not opening till 11, and they directed us to a third bank. There we spent over 2 hours trying to transfer money, and in the end was only able to transfer half. The other half I took CASH and put it in my pocket.. This took longer than I wanted, and I had to rush back to get my bags and rush to the train station to get my train at 1 pm. If you know how Bangkok traffic can be… it was lucky we made it!

At the train station I had about 10 minutes to spare before my train took off, and if I mentioned, it was 104 degrees. I decided on a second class fan sleeper train, which a week earlier seemed like a great idea. Now, sitting and profusely sweating, I regretted the decision.. The train took off, and spent the next 6 hours slowly making it out of Bangkok and down the western side of Thailand.

Saying it was hot is simply an understatement. It was unbearable. I almost fell asleep at one point, and woke up with sweat dripping off my face, my arms, and down my legs. My back and butt were wet from the train seats and I’m pretty sure I became dehydrated within the first hour of the ride. At one point, we stopped for about 20 minutes, and half of my train car (all thais) ran off and bought big bags of ice. Then, another woman pulls out a knife, and starts cutting our bottle tops off, creating huge cups, to which we fill with ice and water, and hold to our faces. So it was a nice break from the cool. It was my personal saving grace.

The train ride was ok after that, and only took about 22 hours to get to Sungai Kolok, the border town next to Malaysia. Off the train and on a motorcycle taxi to the border, and another notoriously sweaty and hot border crossing to Malaysia, a taxi into town and I was in Kota Bharu, northeastern Malaysia. I got dropped off at the bus station but was told the next bus to my city was 2 hours later, so I took a bus to a small city as a transfer, and made it to the port city in time for the last boat, or so I thought.

I bought a ticket and was told to wait until there was an announcement. I never heard the announcement. When I went back to check with the boat office people, they were shocked to find out I was still here. In the office they told me to wait till tomorrow, and a German guy was also trying to get a boat ticket, so we befriended and shared a hostel for the night. A ramshackle, dirty, ant-infested hostel.

It was the 3rd bad night sleep in a row, and we woke up to take a 10 am boat and head off to the Perhentians. The morning went off smooth, no problems, and on the island we walked around for about an hour trying to find somewhere that was cheap. But nothing is cheap here. We were paying double what we wanted but it was too hot to keep looking, so we took a room, showered and drank liters of water.

I went to talk to a dive shop I had been recommended to, liked it, and booked up the next 2 months of my life with them. Then I went around to the chalets that they recommend, and booked one for the next month, more expensive than I’d prefer, but better than daily prices. We spent the afternoon trying to stay cool, and look for the cheapest food on the island (which is a preorder for the next day rice packet). Then I started learning about EFR and CPR, watched a boring video about the same thing I just read, and watched a movie before bed.

This is the view from my room

On May 13th I started my CPR training and my Rescue Diving bookwork. Honestly I just can’t wait to get into the water, and cool off, and start diving. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll start water dives, or this afternoon if I can push my way into it. We’ll see. Hopefully I’ll get some pictures up soon of the beach, island, my house, etc.

The view from my steps/front yard
My A-frame house