~paradise waits, on the crest of a wave~

After two desperate, patient, futile hours I've arrived at the conclusion that I have not the slightest hope of falling asleep on this freezing, shakey bus swerving throught the Borneo jungles. Time for blogging, I guess.

So I left off after getting my diving licence. We went on a couple more dives afterwards, including one where it was just the divemaster and me where we saw a ton of awesome sea creatures.

 BARRACUDA

I was half expecting a mermaid to pop up because I felt like I'd seen everything else under the sea. The day continued with hours of beach volleyball until our feet were dangling limply from their hinges; but man did that make me miss summers at westpoint apartments! Maybe I'll sneak in a game when I'm back home. I said bye to my German and American friends and set out to the uber luxurious night ferry to Surat Thani.

I had a 2.5 foot cot to stuff my shoulders into otherwise they'd be jabbing my neighbors.

This was my third consecutive sleepless night, and as I'd given up caffeine back at Suan Mokkh it meant my brain felt like a bowl of porriage in a zero gravity chamber. A 6 hour bus ride to Phuket station and two hitched rides from kind strangers put me square in the tiny Jewish block of Patong Beach. After chatting it up with Eliav over a falafel at the Chabbad House, I caught a much needed meganap into the next day.

That afternoon a driver from my scheduled liveaboard (www.thejunk.com) found me. I was enjoying delicious Thai cuisine to the gentle sway of the Indian Ocean in no time!

The other three guests on the boat were seasoned divers, two Danes and a Chinese all living in Dubai. We shared great sights and stories and laughs for the next four nights. An unexpected delight I found on the boat was "On The Road", a book that refuels anybody's mad craving for life and adventure! I happily deposited my under-utilized, outdated Lonely Planet in exchange for that lyrical masterpiece. I've been collecting quotes from all the books I've been reading and here's a couple that illustrate why I love Kerouac's style:

"Then, two tired angels of some kind, hung up forlornly in an LA shelf, having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together, fell asleep till late afternoon."

or

"He didn't give a damn about anything. He is a great scholar who goes reeling down the New York waterfront with original seventeenth-century musical manuscripts under his arm, shouting. He crawls like a big spider through the streets. His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstacy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He could hardly get a word out, he was so excited with life."

You just feel Keroauc's passion for and tenderness towards humanity bleed through his pen. His observations are beautiful and spot on!

And so the 3 following days were spent diving, eating, napping and reading on the ship. Beer and good conversation ushered us into the nights. The first night I left my underwater camera case open... overnight... on a boat...in the ocean... during monsoon season - and naturally, I got what I deserved. A ruined camera and micro sd card where all my music used to live... :-(.... And so I have no record of all the awesome lobsters and cuttlefish and sting rays and crabs and baracuda and shipwrecks and other breathtaking submarine sights... Luckily, Fu, the kind Chinese girl who was documenting everything will send me a dropbox link to her pics which I hope to upload soon.

Sidenote: the banded sea snake of which we saw several is 20x more venomous than the most venemous land snake. It's incredible how many perfectly safe creatures there are under water that could kill you in seconds. There are scorpionfish that look just like the rock you are about to put your hand on. Lionfish that look like toys. Sharks are just about the only harmless underwater creature...

Not me, I was an underwater wrecking ball bumbling into coral and divers alike. It seems I can either stick with the group, watch where I'm going, or admire the marine life at any given moment. But when I aim for all three, I hopelessly miss. Oh well, I hope to get much more practice in over my life. Diving is the absolute coolest sensation I've ever felt. Everyone should dive. Soon and often!