Change of Plans

It is Tuesday evening, June 12 and we are sitting in the open air lobby of View Cliff Hotel in Koh Tao writing post cards, booking our last flight and hotel stay for the trip. We had planned to be on our way to Koh Samui today, then on to the Andaman coast. Alas, we have fallen in love with Koh Tao and with SCUBA diving. So, we will be staying here for another 5 days and doing our advanced Scuba certification! We just can't get enough!

We hear we won't be missing much in Koh Samui. It's a lot like Koh Tao, just more busy and popular with the young party crowd. The laid-back vibe here is just what we're after.

Today was a break from diving. We checked out of our fancy room at Sensi paradise, rented a scooter, and now we're staying a little further from town at a cheaper place so that we can spend our money on diving. Last night we rode the scooter down to Sairee beach and had dinner at Simple Life restaurant. The spicy squid salad rocked the party for only 90 Baht ($2.50).

After that, we parked the scooter at our hotel and walked up to Moov bar for some drinks. This place was rad! They had bean bag chairs, a tree house, an art garden and a free pool table. The decor was Moroccan inspired and the drinks were so cheap! Fueled by Cuba Libres and Singhas, I won 4 games of pool to Chris's 3. The DJ played Euro dance music, to Chris's dismay.

This morning we scootered over to the dive school to tell Adnan that we want to do the advanced course starting tomorrow. He showed us some photos of our last dive that he posted to the New Heaven Dive Shop facebook page. He signed our Dive Logs for the last 2 dives and gave us our text books for our new course. Over the next 3 days, we will be doing a Deep Dive (40 meters!), learning AWARE Fish Identification and even going on a night dive. We figure SCUBA diving may never be this easy and cheap. So, we're going all out!

After checking in with Adnan, we went down to a Thai massage parlor where Chris was relieved of the neck pain associated with the firm Thailand beds (30 minutes for 200 Baht = $6) and I got my hair braided in corn rows. This humidity is no place for my mane. I had three ladies working for 2 hours to braid my hair and add some sweet rasta beads. Now I am set for this weather.

It's almost dinner time, so that's all for now. Lots of Love to all of you!