Back home after the relatively easy flights via Qatar. First 7h flight passed sleeping as it was a night flight and the second one working. Finnair wifi seems to be really good nowadays, working was perfectly possible all the way from Doha to Helsinki.
The last Bangkok days were spent shopping for souvenirs and visiting the Sea Life aquarium. It was still hot as sauna, so indoor spaces felt better...
Changed city to Bangkok in the morning. Damn it's hot.. It's like sauna outside. :)
Due to the horrendous temperature we spent most of the day in shopping centers. Some sushi and chinese dumplings, watching Dune II movie in a 4DMX cinema and browsing stores. The 4DMX was rather boring, the seats move a bit but that's it, a big screen IMAX would be my preference.
Snif. left the winter home island today to Koh Samui. Tomorrow morning we should take an early flight to Bangkok, spend a couple of days there and start our journey towards home on Tuesday evening.
I'm almost missing the colder climate already, March and April are the hottest months here and it's getting rather warm. I think I lost liters of water in sweat today dragging the heavy bags to the ferry pier... That wish will probably change very soon in Finland though. :)
Yesterday I did my last evaluation dives and completed the training to be a certified diving professional, an SSI Divemaster. That was a fun and educative course during the two months, learnt a lot about diving and guiding the dive groups.
Maybe during the next winters I will put that certification to use, earning some extra cash (or well, just diving for free even if someone is all the time following, salary ain't that high.) on the island as a dive guide.
At Koh Tao Divers it's a tradition to celebrate new dive masters by organizing a "snorkel test", a barbecue party with themed clothes, stupid games and general funny diving-related humiliation of the graduates, including drinking strange drinks via a snorkel.
Due to the schedule reasons and me being the only graduate at the moment it had to be skipped and left to next winter, but the guys quickly corrected that by organizing an improvised "try snorkel" light version event for me. We actually had quite a lot of people and fun. Even dressing as a ladyboy didn't bother too much.. :)
Diving and diving, so far over 60 dives on the island. :)
Seems like I have some bad luck this year though, constant ear infections and one flu have been limiting the diving a bit. Haven't needed a doctor and they have passed by themself, but still... Well, still should have enough time to pass the remaining requirements during this week and graduate as a dive professional. :)
And the same continues. Diving most days and working.
It's fun to notice how the skills of me and other trainees are improving without even actual teaching, just by practicing. We are diving with each other and just taking turns in navigation and leading the dive. Navigation suddenly has started to feel easy and we are not getting lost all the time anymore. :)
It's still a bit over two weeks left on the island... And I'm already feeling like that's not enough. It's good here, even if 5am wakeups to dive boat are hard. :)
Days are still the same. Diving in the morning, work in the afternoon. Another ear infection in another ear kept me on surface for some days, but that's now fixed due to immediate medication and I'm back diving. :)
Course continues, basically just normal boat dives together with other trainees. I survived my two first dive leads, managed to navigate the entire dive and find back to own boat. :)
My ear is officially healed, so I got permission to dive again and started using that by signing up to every morning dive for the coming week, in addition to some afternoon and night dives. :)
Otherwise no much news, work mostly. We found the joys of Lazada, a local online shop where you can order basically anything with cheap shipping. So far I have ordered for example a shelf.. Didn't like the fact that there is no proper shelf in the room, so ordered one for 8eur. :)
Less updates now, as we are more stationary at Tao and busy with settling in and work and such.
Seems like I'm not starting the diving part of the divemaster course yet, as doctor didn't give permission for my ear to dive. The infection has healed, but it was still showing some redness and other signs of ongoing healing process. Well, next week then...
We visited the Koh Tao pressure chamber today though, on an educational visit with other divemaster trainees. Otherwise just been working and being lazy on the island.
Arrived to our favourite winter home island. :)
This time we are staying a bit further from the center, basically in middle of the jungle on a steep hill. I'm not sure yet if the location is perfect as it's a bit annoying to commute from there, but on the other hand it's silent, the place is beautiful and the sea view is gorgeous. Well, let's see how we feel about this, at least this month will stay here.
Also obtained a scooter to get around, had an excellent breakfast at the vegan cafe Factory (our favourite breakfast place here) and a spicy Thai dinner. I signed up in the dive center to my Divemaster course and got a lot of new material to read during the next days...
Tomorrow need to find Pasi who will be my Divemaster instructor and start the actual course, which will mostly consist of just diving. Diving a lot, almost every day for the next 2 months.
