Jul 2006

Hello my friend. Where you from? Kentucky? Oh! Fried Chicken!!
That conversation is one thing I won't miss when I'm home.
Well, I'm back in Bangkok now. The rest of the dive course went great. We were in the pool the second day practicing breathing with our regulators, and learning skills etc that would make us more comfortable when we did our actual dives in the ocean. And make no mistake, this was a pool not an "ool" as everyone put their "p" in it. Some more discretely than others. The pool is also where you weed out some of the softies. An Irish lass from my group and a Canadian from another group got a bit claustrophobic and nervous breathing through the hose and practicing taking the goggles off underwater so they dropped out of the course. I took to it pretty easily. As long as you just relax, don't get tense and panic, you'll be fine. The third day we went out and did two actual dives. The first one was to about 14 metres and the second to about 10 (always do the deeper dives first). It was a cloudy day and was actually storming as we were underwater for the second dive. Add that to the fact that one guy (bloody English!!) took forever equalize properly (pop your ears during the descent) and the first two dives were ok. We practiced some more skills on the bottom and tried to maintain buoyancy as we swam. The last day, though, was when we took off the kiddie gloves and saw some action. It was a perfect day for diving w/ visibilty around 20 metres. We did 2 dives to 18 metres and I saw a couple white tipped reef sharks, a sting ray, an eel, great coral and lots of ther fish. Couldn't have asked for better. Even bought the DVD of the dive to show my true tourist colors and to have a memento. The last night, the whole grouped celebrated our Open Water PADI certification, and the next morning, I was on the morning ferry back to Bangkok, where I leave for the airport in 10 bleeping minutes.
What a trip it has been. No regrets at all about the places I visited or the length of time I spent in them. In fact,I would have liked longer. But all good tihngs must come to an end. I read the message board for UL Med School, and the first post was from this guy and it was titled: "Once a Cardinal, always a Cardinal". So, I think I'll be buying numerous Powerball tix when I get back to see if I can't get out.
All right. That's it for now. I'll talk to all y'all back stateside. Thanks for all the encouragement and suppport.

James

Greetings from Koh Tao, from a 23 year old Kentuckian. I want to thank all those who took the time to email: Mom, Dad and Babs. Mike and Ed, I guess yours got lost in cyberspace. Grellan and Niall: a day late and a dollar short was barely acceptable.
Koh Phangan was my first stop from Bangkok, where I celebrated the big 2-3. The stomach was a bit dodgy from some bad chicken, but tanks to some Levaquin, I got over it. Foley and Burn, the two Irish lads I met up with, helped me share in a bit of craic. The next night, I caught the bus to Koh Phnagan, which is a nice island off the east coast of southern Thailand. It's very well known for its full moon celebrations, which, as the name suggests, happen every full moon. Pretty much every visitor young and old revolve their travel plans around this event, so you meet a lot of people here who you have met earlier in your travels, which can be a good or a bad thing. I booked this nice villa which is right on the beach and would be better if the ocean came in closer, but that only happens late at night when the tide is in. As for the full moon celebration, it's an all night event on the beach of Haad rin. Basically people of every nationality are present, and there are crazy fire shows, loud music and thousands of people crouding the beach. Never seen anything like it. My only wish was that the weather had been better. There was some sun in the AM, but it usually clouded over in the afternoon. All in all, it was a good place and I met good people.
Now I find myself in Koh Tao, another island about an hour ferry from Koh Phangan. Koh Tao's big attraction is its scuba diving courses. I've booked a four day course that will give me my PADI certification, which clears me to dive up to 18 metres on my own. Today was the first day, and we spent it in a room watching videos and learning about technique, breathing, signals, safety etc. All the equipment and facilites here are great, so there's no worrying about dodgy gauges or tanks or anything. Tomorrow I'l get up early and we'll go into the pool and practice being underwater with the tanks on and doing other things that will help us when we actualy go into the water the following day. The dives are supposed to be great with good visibility and nice coral and marine life, so I'm hoping for sunny days and some god times.
Hope al is well in Denver, Boston, NYC and the Ville.

Cheers,
James

Sabaay di from Vientiane, Laos. I've been here a day and tonight I take the night train back to Bangkok, where I'll celebrate my birthday (23, if you're counting. and yes, donations are still accepted). I want to do it up in style in a four star hotel, but I'm meeting up w/ 2 lads from Galway and they're scraping nickels together at this point. So, i see a "tree" dollar guest house in my future.
Laos has been great. I took the slow boat from the Thai/Laos border down to the town of Luang Prabang. The slow boat is this long, narrow boat that's probable 70 ft long and 9 ft wide. It has cushioned seats up front (1st class), fold out wooden chairs behind them (2nd clas), then floor space (third class) and finally the engine room (steerage). Seating is on a first come/first served basis, and the first day I found myslef in 2nd class with ample leg room, sitting next to this lad from Wales. The next day, I wasnt so lucky. Got to the boat late and found myself in steerage sitting literally right behind this diesel engine with an almost deafening roar. Thankfully, this guy next to me had a spare pair of earplugs, so I was able to drown out some of the noise. After adjusting to the noise, I tried to read a bit, and then settled on sitting out the window and taking in the view. All in all, not bad. The slow boat cruised down the Mekong river at a gentle pace, and lasted two 7 hour days. We stopped at this tiny place, Pak Beng for the first night to refuel and stay the night. Overall, I really enjoyed the boat ride. They served refreshments on board, the scenery was nice: mud brown river with lush vegetation on the mountains surrounding us. Plus, we had some good craic. I met a good group of people on the boat, and I've traveled with them the rest of the way down Laos. In all, there's 2 Dutch girls, a Swedish girl, 2 Americans, and 4 English blokes.
Luang Prabang was a nice town, but not exactly what I expected from the glowing review it got in my guide book. I visited the former royal palace there, and biked around town seeing the various temples and such. LP, like Thailand and everywhere else I've been has been very humid. You sweat when you sit, and you're dripping if you have to walk long distances with a bag on you back. So, I opt for the tuk tuk (motorbike taxis) everywhere I go.
From LP, I caught a 8 hr bus (advertised as 5) to Vang Vien. The trip was longer because 1) you can't hardly believe a word anyone says and 2) the bus got a flat tire. About the dishonesty, 99.99% of people in the tourism industry lie to you. Whether it's about prices, quality, duration, amenities or whatever you gotta take it worth a grain of salt. Unfortunately, it took me a couple days to figure this out. So, if they ever made a National Lampoon's SE Asian Vacation movie, I could definitely play the part of Clark Griswald. But to my own defense, this is SE Asia. I mean Laos doesn't even have foreign ATM's, so you don't want to get assume it's gonna be like home.
Anyway, Vang Vien had nice scenery to the west, where there were large mountains that pierced the clouds. The streets and the buildings in the town, however, weren't as picturesque. A lot of rubble in the strrets and worn down buildings. VV's best attraction is the tubing, where they drop you off 6K north of town and have you float down the river, and stop at these places along the river where locals sell refreshments etc and there are rope swings along the way. I did it twice, and they were two relaxing days.
Instead of getting the bus to Vientiane some of us decided to kayak part of the way and get a tuk tuk for the second part. We were two to a kayak, and it was a nice float down the river through some grade 2 rapids. Weather wasn't the best, as a thunder storm came through. And when one of the Dutch girls asked about if anyone's died from the thunder, the guide quickly replied " no no... but from the lightning, yes". And he wasn't kidding or even fazed. So, with that, we hightailed to the end. The storm didn't last long, but when it rains here, it pours, and we were a little soggy for the journey home.
Vientiane isn't much, although it does offer the only international ATM's in the entire country. I had to bring in foreign currency and exchange it over as my ATM card doesnt work here. Laos has a crazy exchange rate (10,000 kip=1USD), so it was a bit strange walking around with a mil in my pocket, but I got used to it.
Sorry, for the delay in blogs, but I hope Ireland has been great and the lads have been firing at the sticks. Niall, congrats once again.

Cheers,
Jaimito