WORST CAST SCENARIO HAS OCCURED...I'M STILL ALIVE BUT...

BARELY. No I wasn't physically harmed. Let me start off by saying I promise to never post a blog message that seems to indicate a trip is over until I'm home safe and sound. Its like the last run of skiing for the day: you never say it's the last run because your bound to get hurt if the powers that be know its the last run. The night went like this. Eric and I were hanging out at a club watching some tourists try to box each other. We were walking back to our room and I had the thought I should update the blog since I didn't want to get up early to do it. Eric didn't want to stay up so he headed to the room by himself. That was about 11:30. I worked on the internet for probably about 45 minutes and walked back to my room. That is when things went terribly wrong. TERRIBLY WRONG! We had an early ferry to the mainland so I started organizing some things to be ready to head out. I was probably home five minutes. Eric was stirring a little but still pretty much asleep. I zipped up my bag and turned toward the bed when it occurred. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something that didn't look right so I looked better. "Something that didn't look right" moved and I lost my mind. "Something that didn't look right" was a black and green snake hanging from a hole in our bungelow. When I say I lost my mind...people...(keep in mind snakes are the bain of my exsistance)....I LOST MY MIND!! Eric was sleeping well up to that point. Eric suddenly had a screaming person as a bed fellow. For whatever reason unknown to me I jumped into bed with him screaming profanities I thought I had forgetten. Eric kept saying "What's wrong?" "What's wrong?" I finally managed a "Snake!" and pointed to the wall. I'm not going to swear by it but there might have been a choice word or two come from Eric as well. The snake was black with green stripes. I estimate it was about 13 meters long about 8 inches thick. Eric says it was about a meter and big around as a thumb. It was all over for me at that point. I could't stand/sit anywhere without being convinced it was infestated with snakes. I managed to stand on the front porch for about fifteen minutes while Eric kinda shooed it back into its hole in the wall. It literally had come through a crack in the wood which I will include pics of in this post. Unfortunately, this wall was thick and it didn't go outside from there meaning it lives in the wall. The rest of the night was spent staring at the hole in the wall while I laid in bed. The littleist bug/mosquito got my full wrath as I was convinced everything was a snake. Keep in mind we managed this entire trip with ONE SNAKE....ONE SNAKE. It was in the jungle in Laos and was running for its life when it saw us. Now, here we are in the most touristy locale of the entire trip and we have this. No I didn't get any pictures of the actual beast but I did an internet search and found one somebody had in his bed after a night on Ko Phi Phi and it looks identical(I'll include that picture). If your not conviced I'm THAT afraid of snakes, ask Eric! Eric now understands that this is infact the worst cast scenario for me. I would have rather gone on a dinner date with Jason from the Friday the 13th movies than this. I REALLY DON'T LIKE SNAKES!! We did end up staying the night in that room since it was so late. We woke up the next morning and Eric got the ultra brave task of shaking our gear out to make sure we didn't take on a new friend. I wish I was kidding about this post but listen....this is my luck. You take the guy most afraid of snakes to Asia and your bound to have something freakishly eventful happen.



All said and done.....I'm still alive....I'm in Kuala Lumpur for about 12 more hours...and I'm catching a flight to Seattle tomorrow afternoon. I will never forget that two second glace that confirms that snakes really are the bain of my exsistance. I hope this made for an entertaining post because snakes have reopened the once scarred over wound which I live with everyday



This wont be the last post!(see the skiing reference from ealier)

Good Night!

Rob

A cool pic I took on Ko Tao

Probably the coolest picture I've ever taken.

Just a local four year old fixing a boat engine with a machete....pretty normal for around here.

Monkey on monkey beach....they were aggessive little punks!

The bow of our longboat with a Thai island in the background. This island has the beach from the movie the The Beach. I've never seen the movie but the beach was really cool!

Last REAL day of Vacation!

Well, its finally here. Even tho I'm not home for a couple days today is the the last real day of vacation. Starting tomorrow I will start the difficult task of finding my way home. I have a night planned in the Kuala Lumpur airport so that should be exciting(hopefully they have free internet!). Anyway for the last day I've planned a snorkelling/beach trip here on Phi Phi. We go out in a long tail boat and visit the big sites on and around the island. On of the beaches (Maya Beach is the beach they used in the movie "The Beach" so it should be a good day. Even tho vacation has been great I'm ready to come home. I'm ready to see Cindi, I'm ready to go mountain biking, and I'm ready to start planning for my next trip! :-) I'm definately not finished with the blog as I have hundreds of pictures that I will be putting on Flickr once I get a solid internet connection. I hope to see and hear from all of you soon.
Rob

I'm Alive!

....but i only have 2 mins. to post before im out of time!....Dives went fine. On the way to Ko Phi Phi for the last couple days of vacation. Should be pretty exciting. Hoping to catch one more dive tomorrow in Phi Phi. Its been a blast. Thats all I have time for. Bye for now!
Rob

I figured out theres alot of fish in the ocean!

I think the title says it all! Today we got to sleep in because our daily dive coarse didn't start until 930 am....YEAH! We headed out to Champun Pinnacle at about 12:30 after a good Thai Lunch. The weather was stormy and rainy today so that made for a bumpy 45 minute ride to the dive site. Champun Pinnacle is a formation in deep open water that is about 20 meters deep. The schedule called for our first dive to be a deep water dive. We decended the farthest I've ever been....30 meters. It's a bit unnerving to realize your almost 100 feet underwater but I managed pretty well. Anyway, back to the title of this post......Theres alot of fish in the ocean. HOLY CRAP!!!....that's all I can say. I would place the number of fish we saw on our 45 minute dive at approximately 123,763. There were just massive schools of various species of fish. We saw one small shark and several hundred Giant Barracuda that were upwards of 4-5 feet long. The quantity of fish is by far the most staggering part of being out there. At one point two massive schools of different kinds of fish passed under us. It was remarkable to see the precision which the avoided each other and worked out the lack of open water. It reminded me in alot of way to the traffic patterns of Bangkok. I would honestly guess that those two schools alone has more than 10,000 fish in them. And theres just more fish everywhere you look. It wasn't possible to look in any given direction and not see fish. Remarkable! The afternoon consisted of a navigation dive at about 15 meters because we were in a high "pressure group" from our previous deep water dive. In the second dive we were split into buddy teams of two and it was up to us to navigate around and find our way back to the boat. Although Cindi thinks I have a pretty good sense of direction....underwater is a different story to say the least. I made it back to the boat but not without alot of flipping the map around alot trying to figure out which way was which. I guess we could have just gone up but that spoils the fun!
I'm looking forward to tomorrow. We will visit two new dive sites: Southwest Pinnacle and Shark Island. We are hoping for either a sea turtle or a whale shark or both so keep your fingers crossed. Tomorrow night we have our night dive which should also be quite an experience. It's time to head to the Mexican restaurant because its buffet night on Ko Tao...WOOOO HOOO! I'll talk to you all later. Rob

Koh Tao life

Hello from Koh Tao, Thailand!
Its been a few days since I checked in and I hope the photos that Rob has posted give you a little taste of the beautiful place that we have been enjoying for the past few days. It has been great to be able to settle down in one place for a few days and just take the time to enjoy it and try to take it all in. As Rob mentioned, he has been working through the diving certification course and I have been bumming around the island and getting some good R&R. I did go on a day long snorkling trip yesterday which we circumnavigated our way around the entire island and stopped at about 5 or 6 places. I saw about 6 reef sharks and many many more types of tropical fish of all kinds. We stopped at this small island that was definately one of the most beautiful places that I have ever had the pleasure of going to.
Last night we went to a restaurant/pub that had some amazing fire entertainment and the fire dudes were throwing the fire kabobs or whatever you want the call them across the people in the outdoor lounge area. One of the flying blobs of kerosene came about 12" away from my head and when one of the guys was walking by swinging the ball of magma around a small piece of debris went into my eya and I spent part of the night last night extracting the painful particle.
I may move on to Koh Pi Pi tomorrow or the next day depending on the weather and meet up with Rob before we head back home. All is well and we are having a great and relaxing time over here. They even have a cool sports bar where I can watch the NBA finals at tonight - I'm pulling for the Celtics! Take care everyone and thanks for the blog comments. I 'll try to post some photos so Rob doesn't have to show you all of the fun stuff. Bye for now. Eric

THATS ME!!!!

It's Official!!!

I just graduated from my diving class and now have an Open Water Diver Certification. In fact, I like it so much I signed up for the Advanced Open Water Class. It is a two day coarse that starts tomorrow. One of the dives is a photographic dive so hopefully I'll be able to provide some pics!....I do have one pic tho. One of the girls on our boat had a waterproof digital so in the down town we were jumping off the top of our dive boat! It was amazing. Anyway, have to go, talking to my mom online! Later.

Shots from Ko Tao

I just wanted to post some pics of Ko Tao. Sorry i don't have more but pretty much all i took was sunset pics from last night!

Sorry!!!

Our resort on Ko Somui...you beach is just past the trees.
























Me and Martin (from America)...and Libby (from Calgary, CA)....and yeah...i think I'm probably as tired as I look



















Sunset from last night....just to give you an idea of Ko Tao.





















Same sunset

Advanced Open Water?

This morning was my first two dives. Its really remarkable....everything moves! You'd look at a rock and the rock would turn and look at you. You'd try to touch a plant and it would pull back into some coral. It amazing. It's so amazing that I'm very tempted to sign up for the Advanced Open Water Training course. It would be an additional five dives including a night dive. This is the least expensive place in the world to obtain these certifications so in addition to it being great it's also the most economical. On the dive this morning we went to 12 meters (36 feet) and tomorrows dives will take us to 18 meters (18x3 feet...?)(too lazy). The advanced course takes you to a depth of 30 meters (90 feet) and gives you the certification to dive alone with your own equipment. I'm just on lunch and need to return to "class" but wanted to say hi. I should have some pictures up tonight to give you an idea of where we are at the very least.

Take care,
Rob

P.S. Just to tell you the kind of lifestyle we're leading here....someone today asked what day of the week is it. About 10 of us worked together for about 5 mins and came up with the answer but it was a much heated debate. It's been pretty laid back!....Rob

So I've Decided Snokelling SUCKS

Yesterday we took the 2 hour high speed boat from Ko Somui. We arrived at Ko Toa about 4 oclock. We found a driver from the dive school I was interested in and he brought us straight to the hotel. Within 10 minutes of that ride I was sitting down in my orientation for my diving certification. Eric chose not to do the diving coarse. It is a 3 1/2 day coarse. The first day is orientation. We just finished the second day which was skills and drills in the hotel pool. It's frickin amazing and we were in a pool! Just the feeling of breathing underwater completely still and calm is the weirdest thing. We had class from 8 am to 430 today. Tomorrow the real fun begins. We meet at 730 am and head out to open water. We will do two dives tomorrow and two dives the next day. At the completion of the coarse i will have my Open Water Diver Certification. I'm not really sure what thats gonna give me but it'll sure look cool in my wallet. Anyway, i have to catch a quick shower before dinner we friends from the class. Sorry for the lack of pictures but I don't have my camera with me while in class so I really don't have many pics of Ko Tao yet (but trust me its amazing!)

Later for now,
Rob

Last Nights Sunset from our Hotel. (Not too bad)

Days on the Beach!

I can't put too big of a post down because I'm talking to Cindi online right now. Eric and I are still doing great. We're spending lazy days on the beach working on our tans. I'm planning on the three day diving course here in the next couple days. We're going to a Thai Boxing show tonight then probably going to Ko Tao tomorrow where the diving is. Anyway, have to get back to my conversaition.
Later,
Rob

New pics....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rsamsel/sets/72157605196879509/

On the move again!

Just a quick update to tell everyone that were in Bangkok again. We're on the way to southern Thailand to the beaches on the night train tonight. Im uploading more pics to Flickr right now. Some are from various times throughout the trip and others are recent. The link is posted in the post above this one.

Later,
Rob