I never had any intentions to go to Thailand at any point in my planning to come to Australia, but after talking to my friend Siobhan who had been and did her diving course there, I thought maybe I should do the same thing. Not only did I do and complete my diving course there, but I had a trip that will be apart of my memory for many years to come.
We flew 9 hours from Sydney to Phuket and spent the first night in a beautiful resort before heading to Patong the next day. I'm not sure if it was culture shock or just the mere fact that I was in a very weird place (I'm going with the later), but I really felt like we were far away from home in Thailand. We arrived in Patong only to be followed (or stalked) for an hour by a taxi driver constantly saying "Tuk Tuk" convinced that we needed him to give us a ride. Along with that we were called upon by many of the sales people along the streets to buy their goods... whether it be pirated DVD's and CD's or clothes or interesting wooden carvings. By day, Patong was a big huge market, by night, the streets were filled with open bars and tons of... well... to put it nicely... women selling themselves. At this point I wasn't sure if it was harder to deal with that, or the bad smell every time we walked over a sewage drain. Eck... makes me nauseous just thinking about it. Combined with the heat and stray dogs running around everywhere, I'd have to say Patong wasn't my favourite place, although the beach did have a beautiful sunset, which Jesse and I enjoyed blissfully.
The next day we left for our 6 night stay on Phi Phi Island. Also where Ma Ya Bay is, or where most of you will know where "The Beach" was filmed. We started our 3-day dive course right off the bat so that we could get it out of the way and enjoy the last few days exploring the island. I LOVED Phi Phi Island. Not only is it a beautiful beach island, but there are no cars! How wonderful is that??? You just walk everywhere... or some people would ride their bikes, but it was so easy to get around on foot, it was great. The first day of the dive course taught us the basic skills of diving and what to do if we encountered certain common situations. We did some of the skills in shallow water in the ocean, but our actual diving took place on day 2 and 3. The dives were amazing! Saw everything from Nemo fish to Octopus to turtles and even a Leopard Shark! The coral was absolutely beautiful... so many different shapes and colours, it was almost mesmerizing. After 4 open-water dives and a written exam, Jesse and I are now certified open-water divers! Yay! Now I can use my certificate to go diving in Australia!!!! We celebrated by enjoying a couple of "buckets" and partying the night away at the "Half Moon Party". A little kitty came to celebrate with us as well... I guess Patong has the dogs and Phi Phi has all the stray cats. Weird.
Our last couple of days we got to enjoy relaxing and seeing more of the island. We went to Ma Ya Bay where "The Beach" was filmed and went snorkeling there. It looks exactly like in the movie. So secluded and private... aside from the 30 or so other tourists that were also on the island. ;) We found a cave at the back of the island where there were ropes hanging so that you could hang on. I soon found out that they were well needed as everytime a wave would come, it would knock us right off our feet. Spent a little bit of time lying on the beach, but we were only allowed to stay at Ma Ya Bay for 2 hours, so our longboat driver called on us to take us back to the hotel soon after.
The next day we thought it would be fun to go snorkeling in search of Reef Sharks. We met a guy named Val a couple nights before who came along with us as he had been before and seemed to know where they were. We swam around for about an hour and didn't see any sharks. Saw lots of other kinds of fish and coral, but no sharks. As we slowly started to make our way back to shore I was just floating on top of the water with my head under looking around when all of a sudden a huge Blacktip Reef Shark swam right in front of me! I froze and I think my heart skipped a beat. When it swam far enough that I couldn't see it anymore my head jolted out of the water and I looked around for Jesse who was looking straight at me. I screamed, "did you see that?!?!?!?". He was like, "what?". At this point I thought... I should probably put my head back in the water in case the shark comes back. It didn't, which was probably a good thing cause it scared the begeezes out of me. I've attached a link to a photo of a Blacktip for those who care to see what they look like.
That night we hiked up this crazy long staircase that took us up to the viewpoint of Phi Phi Island. We went just in time to see the sunset, so it was absolutely beautiful. It was a great end to our stay on the island, and the next day we were back on the boat to Patong. We spent our last night and day in Patong so that we could do some shopping since everything is SO cheap there.
Thailand - the land of smiles it truly is. The people are so friendly and nice. It was almost as if nobody had a care in the world.... they were all chilled and relaxed all the time. If only we could all live that way.
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