Congratulations are in order -- Adina and I are now certified open water divers!! (All that's left now is a pilot's license. What are the odds that Adina lets that happen?) We finished our four day class today with two more dives in the ocean. Tomorrow we're doing our fist adventure dive, the next step towards and advanced open water license. We'll try out a night dive where we get to see rays, glow in the dark plankton, and more cool stuff that doesn't come out much during the day. We're also hoping the weather gets better so we can go to the west side of the island where the diving is a bit more interesting. So far choppy waters have kept us on the east. Not that we're complaining, we've been blown away and especially since we have no basis for comparison we think it's been amazing. Our first two dives I did have a bit of trouble equalizing my ears (getting them to not feel like they're being squeezed into my head), but today I woke up with a funny feeling in my ears. It turns out that funny feeling was the feeling of being clear of congestion, something I really haven't experienced in about 10 years. Since it's the congestion that gets in the way of clearing the pressure, today was a breeze and we got as deep as 18 meters (we really need to pick up the metric system back home) which is as much as we're allowed to until we get deep water certification. Some highlights of the dive include triggerfish (which we avoided because they have a funny way of snapping at fingers when they feel threatened), sea cucumbers, (holy) barracudas, fully grown hammerhead sharks (only kidding), juvenile sweetlips (not kidding), boxfish, some cool dude with a beak whose name I don't know but assume involves the word beak, pointy sea urchins, and coral. Lots of coral.
In other news.....there is no other news on this island. It is all diving, all the time. Other activities include swimming in the ocean, snorkeling, or sitting on a pier watching people dive, snorkel, or swim. Of course there is also hiking to a dive site, renting an ATV and driving to a dive site, or riding in a boat to a dive site. And bowling. We did finish up our free stint in the bungalow/sauna, so we moved into the attached hotel with gorgeous AC rooms, albeit slightly strangely arranged, Adina keeps asking why they bother having a door to the bathroom if the wall separating it from the bedroom has a giant square cut out of it. Hopefully Borne Supremacy will be on HBO again tonight so we can really enjoy it. The rest of our time here has been spent hunting an elusive veggie restaurant which apparently used to stand in that spot where all the cinderblocks are now. D'oh.
After tomorrow's night dive we may do one more Thursday morning before another overnight journey, this time back to Bangkok. There it's Shabbat at chabbad, shopping till we drop (or run out of money), then head to the airport in the middle of the night for our flight to Tokyo. We're trying to prepare ourselves for a giant culture shock, but then again maybe the busiest and fastest city on the planet won't be all that different from Thai beach island paradise that we've gotten used to. Here's hoping.
Oh, and in case it hasn't become apparent yet, we were not on the Thai airplane that crashed today.
Till next time...we'll say hello to Nemo for you.
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