Subject: Post: <p>Three nights and three days on the boat passed quickly, following the same formula. Wakeup at sunrise around 06:30, briefing and the first dive of the day. Breakfast, some two hours of rest and the next dive briefing and dive. Lunch, rest, dive.. The boat itself was well equipped with comfortable facilities, and the excellent crew cooked us tasty food multiple times a day. As a funny fact the boat was well equipped with Finns too, myself including I think we had at least five Finnish divers on board, out of some 14.</p><p></p><p>Diving waters at the island belong to the best of the world, so all the diving was really enjoyable. Clear water provided long visibility, and we saw millions of different kinds of fish and other marine life. Only two turtles unfortunately though, and only two sharks. The cheap chinese diving box for the camera performed well and kept the camera dry, but unfortunately the same cannot be said about the red filter included with the box. It was completely useless turning all pictures totally red, so now they are missing colors and blue. Underwater red light is the first one to disappear, so it has to be compensated with a red filter on the camera. Well, have to obtain a proper filter for the next trip.</p><p></p><p>In addition to diving the boat also stopped to Surin Islands national park on the second day for some hours. Not a bad place to spend a vacation, as you can see in the pictures.. A small paradise island in middle of nowhere, with coral reefs all around the island. On the second evening there was also an barbeque and cocktail party on the top deck, which was great fun in the beautiful moonlight. Not that we stayed up long though, the diving days made everyone ready to sleep well before nine every evening.</p><p></p><p>I had some bad luck with the boat trip though. On the departure evening I started to notice symptoms of flu and mild fever, which kept annoyinbg me for the rest of the trip. Ibuprofein kept the fever low and feeling good enough to dive though, but on the last day the infection started to aggressively affect my stomach too and the fever rise higher. Had to skip the last dive due to not feeling good enough, and when we returned to Khao Lak I visited a local clinic. After taking blood tests the doctor diagnosed an unspecified virus infection which affected both lungs and stomach, for stomach stimulated by ibuprofein.</p><p></p><p>Well, now on the next day I'm already feeling mostly fine and the fever is gone, so that was not a very long lasting problem. Yesterday went entirely sleeping though, and so did this morning. Sleeping until midday destroyed our plan to reach the island of Koh Tao today, but the hotel there was kind enough to postpone our reservation a day. After getting myself back on my feet and being able to even eat something we spent the day by renting a scooter to visit a nearby beach and took the evening bus for five hour journey towards Chumphon where the ferry to Koh Tao will depart tomorrow morning at 07:00. Getting on the bus was not the easiest task by the way, as absolutely nobody here knows the schedules of the busses. They just appear at random times, and you stand on the roadside and wave one to stop. Took an hour this time.</p> Latitude: Longitude: Security Code:
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